I wrote a paper on my favourite subjects: world-building, fan
culture, Star Wars and Marvel movies. I
had intended to get it properly published, but film studies journals don’t publish
quickly enough or often enough – much of this may go out of date once The Force
Awakens arrives in cinemas on December 17th – so I decided to
publish it here, for your enjoyment or mystification….
Legend
has it that in 1893, when Sherlock Holmes was apparently thrown over the
Reichenbach Falls by his creator, Arthur Conan Doyle[1], young men wore black arm
bands in London’s streets to mourn his passing.
While the veracity of this has been hotly disputed[2], the public did actively
engage with Holmes’ fantastic world in a ground-breaking way. Historian Michael Saler notes:
[A]dults
no less than children pretended that his world was real, inhabiting it in a
communal fashion for prolonged periods of time.
Holmes fandom was the template for subsequent fan subcultures dedicated
to fictional worlds and characters.[3]
In his essay On Stories[4],
C. S. Lewis noted the different pleasures afforded to him and one of his pupils
by their childhood readings about cowboys and Native Americans. While his pupil preferred the danger and
suspense of the plot, Lewis was interested in ‘that whole world to which it
belonged – the snow and the snow-shoes, beavers and canoes, warpaths and
wigwams, and Hiawatha names.’[5]
Fascination with other worlds is
clearly not a new phenomenon, but as physically, sensually and conceptually
immersive media[6] technologies develop, they provide more readily-available tools for
world-building, and fan practices that were once considered ‘cult’ (for
example, role-playing games) have become more mainstream. The media industries are recognising the
power of other worlds to engage fans, and shifting their approaches
accordingly. An article on
cult-media news website Den of Geek
asks, ‘Why is Hollywood building so many cinematic universes?’[7] In an interview with Henry Jenkins, MIT
professor Ian Condry recounts his experience meeting with the producers of a
Japanese anime series: the producers
spent an hour describing the series’ characters and its world without a mention
of the story, which in fact hadn’t even been written.[8] When writer/director siblings Lana and Andy
Wachowski auditioned actors for roles in Jupiter
Ascending[9],
they gave out a 300-page ‘“Bible” detailing the societal rules and regulations
and all the technical whatnots of their latest “verse”.’[10] In a review of the Wachowski’s Matrix franchise, critic Louis Kennedy
notes, ‘[W]e should not fall into the trap of calling them bad
storytellers. They aren’t storytellers
at all. They are worldmakers.’[11]
In his book Convergence Culture, Henry Jenkins writes that ‘storytelling has
become the art of world building’[12]. He implies that fans’ engagement with a world
often results in productive activities that can become as much a part of that
world as ‘official’ or ‘authorised’ ones.
Conversely, fan communities may
themselves be viewed as ‘worlds’ with which media producers, increasingly, must
engage to extend the range or value of their intellectual property. This has become especially important in the
present digital or ‘Media 2.0’ age, when fans’ opinions may be highly visible across
digital platforms (social media, for example) and are potentially, therefore,
extremely influential. We might consider
these two worlds – the created world and the world of the fan community – as
‘intratextual’ and ‘extratextual’ worlds.
Each world sustains the other.
In
the mid-1970s, Star Wars creator
George Lucas wrote one long screenplay – too long for one film – telling the
adventures of Annikin Starkiller. He
also wrote outlines for several more films set in the same galaxy. As, according to standard industry practice
at the time, only one film had been initially greenlit, he was forced to choose
one section of the story[13], which eventually
became Star Wars[14]. Although a couple of novels were released
around the same time as the original film trilogy, they did not significantly
expand the Star Wars galaxy, and
little thought was given as to whether they harmonised with or contradicted the
developing film canon. In February 1987,
with new stories to hold its members’ interest, the Star Wars fan club shut down.
However, with the release of Timothy Zhan’s popular Heir to the Empire novel trilogy in 1991, the Expanded Universe
(the ‘EU’), as it became known, was birthed, and grew at a rate unanticipated
by industry professionals[15]. In 1997 alone, 22 EU novels were released.[16]
In contrast, when Marvel Studios
released Iron Man[17] and The Incredible Hulk[18] in 2008, those two
films were the beginning of an entire ‘phase’ of new film franchises, already
planned, and all revolving around different characters living in the same
filmic ‘universe’, known as the Marvel Cinematic Universe (the ‘MCU’). (Marvel Comics takes this same approach – all
its superheroes’ stories exist within the same ‘multiverse’.) The stories and characters in this first
phase would converge in 2012’s The
Avengers[19],
which for a period was the third-highest-grossing film of all time[20]. Subsequently, Guardians of the Galaxy[21] was the beginning of a separate franchise which also shares and
extends the MCU. Other studios have
taken note of Marvel’s successful strategy and are following its lead in
creating new franchises within existing ‘universes’.
The
Star Wars and Marvel worlds, two of
the largest transmedia franchises, and the fan communities connected with them,
are useful case studies. This paper uses
them to examines certain methods of world-building that serve to engage fan
communities and garner their loyalty, discuss the mutual benefits to media
producers and fan communities of engagement and collaborative world-building,
and consider some of the problematic issues that arise from producer-fan
collaboration, world-building and transmedia storytelling. It draws on the work of Henry Jenkins in
relation to media fans and production, as well as Umberto Eco’s discussion of
cult media, Derek Johnson’s theory of enfranchisement, Will Brooker’s arguments
about canonicity and authorship, and Mark J. P. Wolf’s writing on
world-building. It also refers to the
results of two qualitative questionnaires which were completed by 80 anonymous,
self-identifying Star Wars and Marvel
fans, contacted via postings on the website Reddit[22].
As
much of this body of academic work relates to fans of cult media, it is
necessary to define ‘cult’ and, indeed, ‘fans’, which are both slippery terms.
The Cult Film Reader’s definition of a cult film is too
detailed to discuss in full here, but it may be summarised as follows: a cult film is one that may cross boundaries
(moral/technical/aesthetic); inspire a community of fans who are committed to
publicly celebrating it and who appropriate its themes to build identity; have
‘legends’ or disasters associated with its production; make use of allegory,
counterculture, ideology and/or mythology; and have continuing relevance and
value.[23] A cult film is therefore defined by the
community activity that surrounds it as well as the characteristics of its
production.
As
the following discussions will demonstrate, both Star Wars and the MCU fit this definition. They are technically, industrially and
sometimes aesthetically innovative; they have ardent, active fans who
appropriate their themes and incorporate them into their speech, beliefs and
lifestyles; they have creators who are held up as inspirational to the extent
of having a legendary status (additionally, the set of Episode IV was beset by environmental disasters, and Marvel’s
future was threatened by bankruptcy prior to the release of Iron Man); they draw on elements of
mythology, make use of archetypes and ideology; and they have maintained market
and cultural values over significant periods of time.
The
pervasiveness of these franchises would seem to contradict the common
application of ‘cult’ to media or fan practices that are not mainstream. John Fiske provides useful definitions of
‘mass culture’ and ‘popular culture’:
mass culture is ‘mass produced and distributed’; popular culture is a
text which has ‘been meaningfully integrated into people’s lives’, regardless
of its production and distribution methods.[24] The two terms are not mutually
exclusive. This definition aligns
popular culture with the above definition of cult media (if popular culture
were set on a sliding scale of meaningful integration, we would find cult media
at the more extreme end), which demonstrates how both franchises, while being
part of ‘mass culture’, can simultaneously be considered cult.
The
problem of defining ‘fans’ is tied up with common arguments in the literature
about which fan activities can be classed as productive, and whether fans are
‘producers’ or ‘consumers’ who are ‘engaged’ or ‘exploited’ (or varying degrees
of both). Fiske writes, ‘Every act of
consumption is an act of cultural production, for consumption is always the
production of meaning.’[25] Matt Hills, however, claims that, in order to
cast fans as ‘good’ producers rather than ‘bad’ consumers, Fiske and his
protégé Jenkins push the meaning of ‘production’ too far – that by their
definitions, all fans are being productive merely by consuming media, and
everyone who consumes media is therefore a fan.[26] Jenkins and co-authors Sam Ford and Joshua
Green later state that while they ‘respect’ Hills’s objection, they wish to
lower ‘the barriers to entry to cultural production’.[27]
In
a discussion on gender and fan culture wherein Anne Kustritz and Derek Johnson debate
contradictory ideas of how to define ‘fans’, they conclude that ‘the scholarly
enterprise of studying fans should strive for contextualization and
multiplicity, rather than some unifying theory of fandom.’[28] Hills, too, takes the position that ‘rigorous
definitions’ and ‘clearly definable entities’ are impossible within fan
studies, and that definitions should remain fluid and contextual.[29]
For
the purposes of this paper, it is perhaps best to define the type of fans under
discussion as ‘produsers’. ‘Produsage’
is a term coined by Axel Bruns[30]. It is a combination of ‘production’ and
‘usage’, and it is helpful for a discussion of collaborative engagement between
producers and audiences, as it removes any ‘moral’ divides between production
and consumption and blurs the lines between producers and fans.
There
is a related debate in the literature over whether or not fans are exploited
when producers collaborate with them in world-building activities. Jenkins, Ford and Green argue that audiences
should be considered ‘“engaged” rather than “exploited”’[31], as ‘engagement’
comprehends mutual benefit to producers and fans.
Hills
notes that one cannot ‘expect an argumentative position to operate entirely
without contradiction.’[32] With this in mind, many of the discussions in
this paper may include contradictory arguments.
Therefore, the author takes a postmodern-relativist position that an
attempt to resolve these cannot or should not be attempted.
Chapter 1: Intratextual and Intertextual
World-Building
Writing
or production techniques used in building worlds that effectively and, indeed,
affectively engage fans may be ‘intratextual’, in that they work within a text,
or they may be ‘intertextual’, in that they work by referencing other texts. This chapter looks at how various techniques
work to engage fans and garner their loyalty to the created world.
Every
creative writing student is taught what Mark J. P. Wolf calls ‘one of the
cardinal rules’ of writing to engage your audience: eliminate anything that doesn’t ‘actively
advance the story’.[33] Building a valuable world with a dedicated
fan-base, however, requires the inclusion of additional elements that inspire
produsage.
Umberto
Eco states that a cult text ‘must provide a completely furnished world….’[34] Matt Hills refers to this ‘furnishing’ as
‘hyperdiegesis’[35] – providing small details that stimulate the audience to imagine something much
larger going on ‘off screen’.
Hyperdiegesis creates an immersive world that audiences can believe (to
quote Will Brooker) ‘was alive before we arrived, carries on in the background
while we focus on the main characters, and continues after we leave.’[36]
Hyperdiegesis
creates ‘gaps’ in the text that encourage on-going speculation by audiences.[37] This speculation results in produsage and,
importantly for the media industry, repeated viewings (or readings).
One
of these ‘gaps’ appears in The Avengers. During a battle, Black Widow comments, ‘It’s
like Budapest all over again’, to which Hawkeye replies, ‘You and I remember
Budapest very differently.’ The history
is never explained, leaving fans to speculate about what happened in Budapest (Figure 1).
Figure 1: a fan-produced poster for an imaginary film
about the mysterious events in Budapest.
Eco
calls this type of text ‘ramshackle, rickety, unhinged’, and adds that ‘only an
unhinged movie survives as a disconnected series of images, of peaks, of visual
icebergs.’[38] These ‘visual icebergs’ are often the
elements that are echoed in popular culture, as they encourage parody and
play. They are examples of what Jenkins,
Ford and Green have labelled ‘spreadable content’ – media content, usually
digital, that is easily appropriated, recreated or repurposed, then shared by
fans.[39] Spreadable content reflects a shared fantasy
(often nostalgic), or contains humour, parody, intertextual references,
mystery, timely controversy or rumour.[40] For example, at the end of Guardians of the Galaxy, there is a short,
comedic scene where a character, who became known as ‘Baby Groot’, dances
joyfully to The Jackson Five’s I Want You
Back (1969) (Figure 2). Audiences considered it
a highlight of the film, and a social media ‘buzz’ grew around it soon after
the film’s release. Marvel, recognising
this, quickly uploaded the scene to the internet in an easily-sharable video format[41]. (It also added a ‘Dancing Groot’ to its toy
range.) Jenkins, Ford and Green call
this type of video a ‘quote’ which is ‘grabbable’ (made ‘easily portable and
sharable’ by the producer).[42] Producers who create content with
‘spreadability’ are ‘generating audiences through heightening popular
awareness’ and ‘sustaining audiences through fuelling ongoing conversations.’[43]
Figure 2: Baby Groot’s joyful dance proved extremely spreadable.
Star Wars is a benchmark for all of these
aspects of world-building. Although Star Wars contains many ‘icebergs’, both
visual and aural (fans can and do utilise anything vaguely tubular to recreate
lightsaber battles), its textual ‘gaps’ are what has really granted it
longevity. When Episode IV was released, fans were left pondering mentions of
‘Jabba’, ‘the Clone Wars’ and ‘the Kessel Run’.
The near-extinction of the Jedi went unexplained. The Force was an elusive, largely undefined
power that could be shaped to fit comfortably with almost any community’s belief
system.
The
EU rushed to fill these gaps. As
previously mentioned, the Star Wars
fan club shut down in 1987, due to a lack of new stories, but interest was
reignited in 1991 with the birth of the EU.
Since then, the supply of new stories (in novels, the prequel films,
three animated television series, and various comic books and games), and fans’
produsage in response, have been relentless.
If
new ‘official’ stories are not provided, fans will likely lose interest over
time, and the world will lose its value as an intellectual property. This can create other problems. Derek Johnson notes, for example, that in
2003, games publisher Activision sued Viacom, the owners and licensors of Star Trek, for devaluing their exclusive
games licence by ‘failing and refusing to continue to exploit and support the Star Trek franchise’[44].
New
stories or, as Jenkins calls them, the ‘raw materials for playful re-workings’[45] keep fans interested,
but there is a catch – they also fill the gaps that allow for fan engagement, eventually
bringing the world to a ‘saturation’ or ‘breaking’ point. Jenkins writes, ‘There has to be a breaking
point beyond which franchises cannot be stretched…We just don’t know where it
is yet.’[46]
Brooker,
writing in 2009, suggested that Star Wars
had reached this point.[47] Lucasfilm apparently agreed. Following its purchase by Disney in 2012, the
company announced that the EU (in other words, everything except Episodes I-VI and two of the animated
series[48]) would no longer be
considered canon, and would be relabelled Star
Wars Legends.[49] This reopened the gaps and gave Lucasfilm
more freedom when planning new films. An
alternative to ‘de-canonisation’ for worlds that have reached a saturation
point is to ‘reboot’ them, as was done with Star
Trek[50] in 2009. Either option, no matter how carefully done,
will likely divide fans’ opinions and loyalties.
Brooker[51] and Jenkins[52] both use the character
Boba Fett as an example of how new material can shut down engagement. Fett is first seen in Episode V, receiving a stern warning from Darth Vader against
disintegrating main characters. We are
told nothing about him other than that he is a particularly ruthless bounty
hunter. His armour completely covers his
body and face, and his voice, when briefly heard, is distorted by his
helmet. The mystery surrounding Fett
caught fans’ imaginations and provided plentiful opportunities for speculation,
invention and play. His popularity led
Lucas to feature him as a boy in Episodes
I-III, but by doing so, Jenkins points out, Lucas ‘closed down those
possibilities, pre-empting important lines of fan speculation even as he added
information that might sustain new franchises.’[53]
There
is another difficulty associated with the provision of new material: to meet the current demand for transmedia
storytelling, the world’s creator must relinquish a certain level of control to
other producers, whose products may be significantly different in tone, or of poorer
quality (several questionnaire respondents were pleased that the
de-canonisation of the EU would remove ‘the bad stuff’ from the canon).
In
any discussion of world-building, transmedia storytelling cannot be
ignored. There are pros and cons to a
transmedial approach. Jenkins says, ‘[T]ransmedial
extensions are designed to serve one of three tasks: explore the world, expand the timeline, or
flesh out secondary characters.’[54] They provide multiple entry points for
engagement, catering to different interests.
They provide a deeper level of immersion as fans hunt for and share new
information, building communities in the process. The more details that fans know, the more
they are rewarded by their recognition of ‘Easter eggs’, in-jokes and intertextual
references (these are discussed below).
Not
every fan will be interested in every aspect of transmedia storytelling. However, director Ed Sanchez notes, ‘The
people who do explore and take advantage of the whole world will forever be
your fans, will give you an energy you can’t buy through advertising.’[55]
The
publication of what historian Michael Saler calls ‘paratexts’ – ‘making of’
documentaries, maps, technology guides – helps fans to visualise the world and
render it, he says, ‘not only more “real” but more “alive” or virtual.’[56] There have long been jokes about ardent
Trekkies (or Trekkers, if you prefer) investigating the location of the
bathrooms on the Enterprise.
Different
texts also engage different age groups. Guardians of the Galaxy, an adaptation
from Marvel’s comic book series, has in turn its own Lego comic book, which
would appeal to much younger fans.
However,
the market will be smaller for a transmedia world that demands a heavy
investment of time and energy to be understood.
Neil Young, a digital arts executive, suggests that audiences need to be
eased into a ‘deep love of the story’, which means ‘you might need to express it sequentially…rather than
trying to put it all out there at once.’[57]
The release or viewing order of individual
texts can affect fans’ experiences of the world. Someone viewing the Star Wars films in chronological order (Episodes I-VI) will experience the world very differently to
someone who views them in release order (Episodes
IV-VI followed by Episodes I-III). The former viewer may find the special
effects in Episodes IV-VI ‘clunky’
after the slick CGI of Episodes I-III;
conversely, the latter viewer may find the CGI in Episodes I-III objectionable and feel that it is not as ‘real’ or
‘substantial’. The former viewer misses
the surprise when the Skywalker family connections are revealed in Episodes V and VI, as it is spoiled by Episode
III. But fans will also experience
the world differently depending on which type
of media forms their entry point to the world.
A young child playing a Star Wars
Lego video game will know essential plot elements of the films before they see
them.
Another difficulty is distribution
timings. In 2014, Marvel set a precedent
by linking its Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.[58] television series with the film Captain
America: The Winter Soldier[59]. In the USA, episodes of the series that
fitted narratively before and after the film were scheduled to air a week
either side of the film’s release date.
However, simultaneous world-wide releases are not always possible,
despite a growing need for them in order to combat piracy and the appearance of
‘spoilers’ online, and to meet the demands of fans and transmedia storytelling.
Finally, licensing agreements can cause
headaches for transmedia producers wishing to create a cohesive world. Two of Marvel’s most valuable properties,
Spider-Man and The X-Men, exist in the same Marvel Universe as the
Avengers. However, licencing agreements
made with Sony and Fox when Marvel was facing bankruptcy meant that they could
not co-exist in the MCU (see Figure 3 for a fan's commentary on the situation).[60]
Figure 3:
licensing can stymie world-building – Spider-Man is part of the Marvel
Universe, but he has not, until recently, been allowed to ‘play’ with the
Avengers in the MCU, as he is licensed to Sony.
Even producers who resolve these issues
cannot eliminate all of the potential problems associated with providing new
stories. There is always a risk that
fans will react negatively to new ideas, as they did when Lucas wrote mentions
of ‘midi-chlorians’ into Episode I. Star
Wars chronicler Chris Taylor notes that ‘long-time fans revolted’ against
the introduction of a ‘rational, scientific component’ to the mystical Force.[61]
One way for producers to avoid negative reactions
is to recognise from the beginning which aspects fans are emotionally invested
in, and make efforts to maintain consistency in those areas. Jenkins explains that a fan’s ‘closeness’ to
a world ‘can only be sustained as long as the imagined world maintains both
credibility and coherence, and hence the importance the fans place on even the
most seemingly trivial detail.’[62]
When inconsistencies are introduced, fans
often feel a sense of betrayal. A
similar ‘betrayal’ occurs when stories are poorly adapted from one medium to
another (novel to film, for example), or when stories are ‘retconned’. ‘Retcon’ stands for ‘retroactive continuity’,
and applies when changes are made to a work after (sometimes long after) its
release, usually to increase a world’s
continuity, but occasionally for other reasons.
Wolf notes, ‘If a work is embedded in cultural memory, retconning can
damage the relationship that an audience has with a work….’[63],[64]
Midi-chlorians are not the only problem that Star Wars fans have had with new
material. In 1997, Lucas released what
he called the ‘Special Editions’ of Episodes
IV-VI (the ‘SEs’), which were heavily retconned versions – digitally
enhanced and re-edited. He has since
made several sets of further changes, and repeatedly refused fans’ requests for
the original theatrical-release versions (the ‘TRVs’) to be remastered for DVD
and Blu-Ray.
In the fan community, opinions are sharply
divided in relation to the SEs. The
prequel trilogy was also poorly received by many fans. The author’s interactions with fans suggest
that this division is largely to do with the site and time of a fan’s original,
emotional investment in the world. Fans
whose first experience of Star Wars
was through the prequels or the SEs, or fans who first viewed them at a young
age, are more readily accepting of them.
Many older fans, however, simply refuse to watch the SEs, resorting to
grainy VHS copies of the TRVs or the poor-quality versions that Lucas
grudgingly included with the 2005 DVD release.
Intriguingly, Lucas gave a testimony in
Congress in 1988 against the colourisation of classic films such as John
Huston’s The Maltese Falcon[65]. He said, ‘People who alter or destroy works
of art and our cultural heritage for profit or as an exercise of power are
barbarians.’[66] Taylor concludes that Lucas would not have
objected if Huston had made the changes himself.[67] This raises the issue of ownership, which
will be discussed in Part 2.
There are three areas where maintaining
consistency is vital: the look and
‘feel’ of the world, which we will here call its ‘aesthetic’; the canon; and
the characters.
Discussing his intentions for Episode IV in 1975, Lucas said, ‘I’m
trying to make a film that looks very real, with a nitty-gritty feel….’[68] This aesthetic is often referred to as the
‘used’[69] or ‘lived in’[70] universe and was identified by several questionnaire respondents as an element
that attracted them to Star Wars. The overt, heavy use of CGI is one of the
most common objections fans have to the SEs and the prequels. Producer Gary Kurtz felt that Lucas’s digital
retcons in the SEs did not ‘fit in with the mechanical style of the original
film.’[71]
Significantly, J. J. Abrams, a long-time Star Wars fan and now director of the
upcoming Episode VII[72],
in an effort to secure fans’ support for the new film, has made conspicuous
(through images released during filming) his use of physical sets and practical
effects to echo the TRVs’ ‘used universe’ aesthetic (Figure 4).
Figure 4: Episode VII
director J. J. Abrams on set, filming a video for the charity Force for Change.
Maintaining aesthetic consistency also
applies when a book or comic is translated to film. Fans’ conceptions of Middle-Earth (the world
of The Lord of the Rings novels) had
long been influenced by illustrators Alan Lee and John Howe. When Peter Jackson adapted the novels to
film, he brought Lee and Howe in to help with the production design, in order
to ‘get it right’ for the fans.
A consistent canon is enormously important to
fans. Debates rage all over the internet
about the canonicity of different texts, along with attempts to explain away
problems (such as Han Solo’s boast that the Millennium
Falcon ‘made the Kessel Run in less than 12 parsecs’, a parsec being a unit
of distance, not time). Improbable
explanations given by producers to explain canonical changes are also
problematic. Jenkins quotes one
frustrated Star Trek fan: ‘[Eventually,] the fans will refuse to keep
on “buying it” and will “check out” instead….’[73]
Despite the debates, an examination of the
questionnaire responses suggests that each fan ultimately establishes his or her
own ‘personal canon’, to use one fan’s phrase[74],
examining the ‘truth’ of each text by weighing it against various factors,
particularly its authorship, its quality and conformity to the existing canon[75], its
age[76], and
the consensus of the fan community.
Unfortunately, this does tend to splinter fan communities, making it
harder for producers of new texts to please a majority of the fans.
The most infamous debate over a retcon has
made its way into the zeitgeist as ‘Han shot first’ (Figure 5). Brooker explains,
In...A New Hope, Han slides his gun from its
holster while cornered by the bounty hunter Greedo, shooting his antagonist
dead with a shot under the table. In the
Special Edition, Greedo fires first
by a split second and misses, justifying Han’s retaliation.[77]
The problem with this retcon was that it
altered Han’s character arc. Han
progresses from selfish, wily smuggler and ‘scoundrel’ – exactly the type of
man to shoot before he is shot at – to self-sacrificing, team-playing
general. To ‘justify’ one of his more
roguish actions is to flatten his character arc, not to mention make him look
rather inept.[78]
Figure 5: changes made to the canon of a world,
including retcons, can splinter fan communities, as each individual fan will
tend to adopt his or her own ‘personal canon’.
The Marvel fans who responded to the
questionnaire overwhelmingly placed importance on character consistency for a
good comic-to-film adaptation. Comments
from Star Wars fans in relation to the de-canonisation of
the EU also show the importance of the characters.
If
they want to toss away the events that’s fine….
But, please, some of the characters have been bigger fan favourites than
some of the movie characters. Adapt some
of the characters to the movies and I’ll be happy (Mara, Han and Leia’s kids),
because they’ve felt like canon for the last 20 years.[79]
Many
fans feel that future diversions from the EU (now Legends) stories are acceptable, as long as their favourite
characters appear. The ‘Mara’ referred
to above is Mara Jade Skywalker, Luke Skywalker’s wife, a character created by
Timothy Zahn. Many fans have read about Mara for so long
that she is as established in their personal canon as Luke. Other EU characters, such as the Skywalkers’
son, Ben; Han and Leia’s children; and Grand Admiral Thrawn, who led the Empire
after the Emperor’s death, are spoken of by fans in a similar way but, to date,
indications are that none of them will be written into Episode VII. This may
present a stumbling block to fans’ engagement with the new direction.
One final technique important to fan
engagement is the inclusion of intertextual references. ‘[M]edia fans take pleasure in making
intertextual connections across a broad range of media texts,’ writes Jenkins.[80]
Intertextual references heighten or maintain
the visibility in popular culture of the texts referenced. As Wolf notes, H. P. Lovecraft encouraged
other authors to use the ‘gods’ he invented, to create verisimilitude.[81] The presence of an Alien skull (from the Alien franchise)
in a trophy case in Predator 2[82] was responsible for years of speculation among fans of both franchises – which
they now knew existed in the same world – about a ‘crossover’ film. This extended the value of both franchises
when, due to the demand, two crossover films were made after the viability of
the individual franchises had waned.
Each
MCU film refers to the already-existing world, but with successive releases, audiences
became aware that MCU films also had ‘stingers’ – additional short scenes
during and after their credits rolls – that gave hints of a future film’s
storyline (Figure 6). Johnson writes, ‘Dangling
scenes and quick character teases in Marvel’s films foster not just narrative
expansion but also an audience participation that extends the commercial
viability of the films….’[83]
Figure 6: a Lord of the Rings meme, appropriated by fans to comment on Marvel’s use of ‘stingers’
The MCU films, especially when in the hands of
writer/director Joss Whedon, are full of intertextual references, and they come
in many forms besides stingers, including in-jokes, cameos and ‘Easter
eggs’. Tony Stark makes frequent
pop-culture references. Stan Lee, creator of many popular
Marvel characters, has an amusing cameo in every MCU film. Whedon’s fans will recognise several actors
who have worked with him on other projects in cameos or guest roles in The Avengers and Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D[84]. Easter eggs – partially-hidden details that
will appear significant only to viewers familiar with the comics – are included
as a way of saying to comic-book fans, ‘We haven’t forgotten you.’ In-jokes bring pleasure to the select few who
‘get it’. Sharing and discussing these
types of intertextual references helps to build and strengthen the sense of
community among fans.
(C) Danica Issell, 2015
[1] Arthur Conan Doyle,
‘The Final Problem’, The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes (1894; London: CRW
Publishing Limited, 2005), pp. 277-300.
[2] Peter Calamai, ‘A
Reader Challenge and Prize’, The Baker Street Journal,
http://www.bakerstreetjournal.com/armbands.html (accessed 8 November 2014).
[3] Michael
Saler cited in Henry Jenkins, ‘“From Imaginary to Virtual Worlds”: An Interview
with Historian Michael Saler (Part One)’, Confessions of An
Aca-Fan (11 December 2013), http://henryjenkins.org/ (accessed
27 October 2014).
[4] C.
S. Lewis, ‘On Stories’ (extract from Of Other Worlds),
http://campus.huntington.edu/dma/leeper/dm101/readings/@word/on%20stories.rtf
(accessed 27 October 2014).
[5] Ibid.
[6] Mark
J. P. Wolf, Building
Imaginary Worlds (New
York & Oxon: Routledge, 2012), p. 48.
[7] Mark
Harrison, ‘Why is Hollywood building so many cinematic universes?’, Den
of Geek (13
October 2014),
http://www.denofgeek.com/movies/cinematic-universes/32452/why-is-hollywood-building-so-many-cinematic-universes
(accessed 27 October 2014).
[8] Ian
Condry cited in Henry Jenkins, ‘“Media Mix is Anime’s Life Support System”: A
Conversation with Ian Condry and Marc Steinberg (Part One), Confessions
of An Aca-Fan (8
November 2013), http://henryjenkins.org/ (accessed 27 October 2014).
[9] Jupiter
Ascending (The
Wachowskis, 2015).
[10] Ian
Nathan, ‘The World Is Not Enough’, Empire 302
(August 2014), p. 89..
[11] Louis
Kennedy cited in Wolf, op. cit., p. 13.
[12] Henry
Jenkins, Convergence
Culture (New
York & London: New York University Press, 2006), p. 116.
[13] George
Lucas cited in American Film Institute, George Lucas on How STAR WARS Got
Made (30
October 2009), http://youtu.be/mztK3s63_OM (accessed 16 November 2014).
[14] Star
Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope (George Lucas, 1977). The
individual Star
Wars films
(Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace (George
Lucas, 1999); Star
Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones (George Lucas, 2002); Star
Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith (George Lucas, 2005);Star Wars:
Episode IV – A New Hope (George Lucas, 1977); Star
Wars: Episode V – The Empire Strikes Back (Irvin Kershner, 1980); and Star
Wars: Episode VI – Return of the Jedi (Richard Marquand, 1983)) are hereafter
referred to by their episode number; for example, Episode
IV.
[15] Chris
Taylor, How
Star Wars Conquered the Universe (New York: Basic Books, 2014), p. 289.
[16] Ibid.,
p. 290.
[17] Iron
Man (Jon
Favreau, 2008).
[18] The
Incredible Hulk (Louis
Leterrier, 2008).
[19]The
Avengers (UK
title: Avengers
Assemble) (Joss Whedon, 2012).
[20] The
Numbers, ‘All Time Highest Grossing Movies Worldwide’ (2015),
http://www.the-numbers.com/movie/records/All-Time-Worldwide-Box-Office
(accessed 16 November 2014).
[21] Guardians
of the Galaxy (James
Gunn, 2014).
[22] ‘/r/Marvel’, reddit,
http://www.reddit.com/r/marvel (accessed October 2014); and
‘Star Wars’, reddit,
http://www.reddit.com/r/starwars (accessed October 2014).
[23] Ernest
Mathijs and Xavier Mendik (eds.), The Cult Film Reader (Berkshire:
Open University Press, 2008), pp. 1-11.
[24] John
Fiske cited in Henry Jenkins and Sam Ford and Joshua Green, Spreadable
Media (New
York & London: New York University Press, 2013), p. 200.
[25] John Fiske, Understanding
Popular Culture (New
York and London: Routledge, 1989), 35.
[26] Matt
Hills, Fan
Cultures (London:
Routledge, 2002), p. 30.
[27] Henry
Jenkins, Sam Ford and Joshua Green, Spreadable Media (New
York and London: New York University Press, 2013), pp. 154-155.
[28] Derek
Johnson cited in Henry Jenkins, ‘Gender and Fan Culture (Round Thirteen, Part
One): Anne Kustritz and Derek Johnson, Confessions of An Aca-Fan (30
August 2007), http://henryjenkins.org/ (accessed 27 October 2014).
[29] Hills,
op. cit., pp. ix-xv.
[30] Jenkins,
Ford and Green, op. cit., p. 183.
[31] Ibid.,
p. 60.
[32] Hills,
op. cit., p. xii.
[33] Wolf,
op. cit., p. 29.
[34] Umberto
Eco, ‘Casablanca: Cult Movies and Intertextual Collage’ in Mathijs and Mendik
(eds.), op. cit., pp. 67-75, 68.
[35] Hills,
op. cit., p. 137.
[36] Will
Brooker, BFI
Film Classics: Star Wars (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), p.
30.
[37] Wolf,
op. cit., p. 60
[38] Eco,
op. cit., p. 68.
[39] Jenkins,
Ford and Green, op. cit., p. 3.
[40] Ibid.,
pp. 202-204.
[41] Yahoo!
Screen, ‘Guardians of the Galaxy Clip: Baby Groot’ (2014)
https://screen.yahoo.com/ guardians-galaxy-clip-baby-groot-234613832.html
(accessed 27 October 2014).
[42] Jenkins,
Ford and Green, op. cit., p. 188.
[43] Ibid.,
p. 188.
[44] Legal
complaint cited in Derek Johnson, Media Franchising (New
York and London: New York University Press, 2013), p. 44.
[45] Henry
Jenkins, Textual
Poachers (London:
Routledge, 1992), p. 75.
[46] Jenkins, Convergence Culture, op. cit., p. 131.
[47] Will
Brooker, BFI
Film Classics: Star Wars (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009) pp.
32-33.
[48] Star
Wars: The Clone Wars (Lucasfilm, 2008-2014); and Star
Wars Rebels (Lucasfilm,
2014—).
[49] Graeme
McMillan, ‘Lucasfilm Unveils New Plans for “Star Wars” Expanded Universe’, The
Hollywood Reporter (25
April 2014),
https://movies.yahoo.com/news/lucasfilm-unveils-plans-star-wars-expanded-universe-050000805.html
(accessed 27 October 2014).
[50] Star
Trek (J.
J. Abrams, 2009).
[51] Will
Brooker, Using
the Force (New
York and London: The Continuum International Publishing Group, 2002), p. 18.
[52] Jenkins, Convergence
Culture, op. cit., p. 117.
[53] Ibid.
[54] Henry
Jenkins, ‘Building
Imaginary Worlds: An Interview with Mark J. P. Wolf (Part Three)’, Confessions
of an Aca-Fan (6
September 2013), http://henryjenkins.org/ (accessed 27 October 2014).
[55] Ed
Sanchez cited in Jenkins, Convergence Culture, op. cit., p. 105.
[56] Michael
Saler cited in Henry Jenkins, ‘“From Imaginary to Virtual Worlds”: An Interview
with Historian Michael Saler (Part Two)’, Confessions of an Aca-Fan (13
December 2013), http://henryjenkins.org/ (accessed 27 October 2014).
[57] Neil
Young cited in Jenkins, Convergence Culture, op. cit.,
p. 130.
[58] Agents
of S.H.I.E.L.D (ABC
Studios, 2013—).
[59] Captain
America: The Winter Soldier (Anthony Russo and Joe Russo, 2014).
[60] Following
several box-office disappointments, however, Sony recently reached an agreement
with Marvel to allow Spider-Man to appear in future Avengers films.
[61] Taylor,
op. cit., p. 58.
[62] Jenkins, Textual
Poachers, op. cit., p. 115.
[63] Wolf,
op. cit., p. 213.
[64] See
Hills, op. cit., pp. 131-143 for a discussion of the psychology behind this.
[65] The
Maltese Falcon (John
Huston, 1941).
[66] Lucas
cited in Taylor, op. cit., p. 315.
[67] Taylor,
op. cit., p. 315.
[68] Lucas
cited in Brooker, BFI,
op. cit., p. 43.
[69] Brooker, BFI, op. cit., p. 33.
[70] Wolf,
op. cit., pp. 43, 135 .
[71] Gary
Kurtz cited in Taylor, op. cit., p. 312.
[72] Star
Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens (J. J. Abrams, 2015).
[73] Jenkins, Textual
Poachers, op. cit., p. 103.
[74] Questionnaire,
Respondent 18.
[75] Wolf,
op. cit., p. 266.
[76] Ibid.,
p. 273.
[77] Brooker, Using
the Force, op. cit., p. 75.
[78] Ibid.,
p. 76.
[79] soulblade64,
‘What parts of the EU do you think will survive Episode VII?’, reddit,
http://www.reddit.com/r/starwars/comments/1wh2fl/what_parts_of_the_eu_do_you_think_will_survive/
(accessed 27 October 2014).
[80] Jenkins, Textual Poachers, op. cit., p. 36.
[81] Wolf,
op. cit., p. 190.
[82] Predator
2 (Stephen
Hopkins, 1990).
[83] Derek
Johnson, ‘Cinematic Destiny: Marvel Studios and the Trade Stories of Industrial
Convergence’, Society
for Cinema and Media Studies 52, 1 (2012), http://filmadaptation.
qwriting.qc.cuny.edu/files/2012/11/52.1.johnson.pdf (accessed 27 October 2014),
p. 5.
[84] Agents
of S.H.I.E.L.D (ABC
Studios, 2013—).
Figure 1: Artist unknown (2014). Available at: http://www.fanpop.com/clubs/hawkeye-and-black-widow/images/31881226/title/clint-natasha-fanart.
Accessed 13 October 2014.
Figure 2: Guardians of the Galaxy (James Gunn, 2014) screenshot (2015).
Figure 3: Mauricio Abril, Poor Spidey (2014). Available at: http://geektyrant.com/news/poor-spider-man-doesnt-get-to-play-with-the-avengers-fan-art.
Accessed 13 October 2014.
Figure 4: Star Wars: Force for Change
- A Message from J.J. Abrams
(2014) screenshot (2015). Available at: https://youtu.be/XfNiC9iKM0Q.
Figure 5: Sean
McLean, ‘Who Shot First?’, Underwhelmed
Comics (2011). Available at: www.underwhelmedcomic.com. Accessed 25 January
2015.
Figure 6: Artist
unknown. Available at: http://www.quickmeme.com/meme/3u4wph. Accessed 13
October 2014.
