The Value of Fandom
Written with contributions from Flourish Klink and Sascha Hecks.
Charles Bramesco lamented in Rolling Stone that “the new ruler of the American film industry is the common fan, once ridiculed as a basement-dwelling outcast.” He claims Hollywood studios churn out one blockbuster after another in a desperate bid to please these rabid fans and have therefore created a culture where nerdy fans, with their newfound entitlement, can just lash out when things don’t go their way. According to Bramesco, these “no-goodniks [are] holding the cultural conversation hostage.”
Except…
Let’s be clear: the behavior of a small faction of Suicide Squad fans has ranged from ridiculous to abysmal. Petitioning to shut down Rotten Tomatoes over bad reviews demonstrates a lack of understanding, and harassing critics for reviewing a movie poorly is simply inexcusable behavior. It’s also ironic given Rotten Tomatoes is the one site that consistently illustrates that critics and mainstream audiences often have opposing tastes in movies and that bad reviews don’t necessary impede financial success — in the same way good reviews don’t guarantee big box office either!
Bramesco may be right when he says, “Scan the marquee at your local multiplex, and you’ll find that top billing usually goes to a franchise picture with a built-in following, or barring that, a property poised for franchisehood.” But framing this as something new and apocalyptic (because Hollywood is now subservient to the whims of fans) is woefully incorrect and misguided.
It’s not that Hollywood is bowing to entitled nerds, it’s that Hollywood, first and foremost, is a business. It’s strategically sound for Hollywood to make some movies based on existing properties that already have a fanbase. Bringing these stories or characters to life feels less risky and more likely to yield returns on investments.
It’s not that Hollywood is bowing to entitled nerds, it’s that Hollywood, first and foremost, is a business.
In this sense, Hollywood has been “subservient” to the whims of fans for a long time… by making movies they know people will want to see. The film industry has been appealing to many different types of fans for many years. The first known silent film featuring Sherlock Holmes was made in 1900. Superhero films themselves have been around since the mid-1900s, so it’s not as if comic book nerds are seeing their favorite stories brought to life just now. If no one had read The Notebook, that movie would never have been made. Major film franchises like Harry Potter, Twilight, and The Hunger Games were all brought to life because millions read their book series.
So of course fans effect the decisions that entertainment executives may make. But the particular group of “entitled” fans Bramesco rightfully calls out for boorish behavior don’t have any more power than other types of fans he briefly acknowledges (female comic book aficionados and “clearer-minded nerds”). And all these fans want quality entertainment. In fact, fans, while the most keen to see their favorite characters or worlds explored in a TV show or movie, are also often the most critical and difficult audience to keep happy. It’s hard to measure up to the imagined version of the book/comic/game that lives in every individual fan’s head.
Nor do “entitled” fans have any ability to make a picture succeed or fail on their own (no matter what they believe). The 22,000 fans petitioning to shut down Rotten Tomatoes, contrary to what Bramesco seems to imply, didn’t propel Suicide Squad to box office success — they didn’t generate $290 million worldwide and counting by themselves.
Hardcore fans may shout the loudest, and the internet age gives them a public platform to do that, but in reality they actually make up a very small percentage of the moviegoing public. To say that Hollywood will feel beholden to the hardcore “basement-dwellers” because Suicide Squad had a record-breaking August opening weekend misunderstands why Suicide Squad made the money it did.
People bemoaning entitled fans often neglect to point out the real reasons why a devoted fandom is valuable to franchises. It’s not just the sum total of their ticket sales. Fans are not only a guaranteed audience, but they’re also great evangelists, the much sought after “word-of-mouth” marketing. There are already some signs fans are helping out Suicide Squad in that respect, since it continued to perform well at the box office on Tuesday.
Additionally, if a movie does happen to be part of an ongoing franchise, fans are the people who keep momentum going between films. They keep the property in the public eye through constant discussion, fanart, shareable GIFs, and so on. Or they fan the flames amongst themselves, keeping a core group of devotees alive while the studios or networks are ignoring them — ready to then mobilize when the next installment drops.
Pre-existing fans will reliably show up to films, so the studios’ marketing machine is more concerned with reaching the mainstream audiences to achieve big box-office. Warner Bros. started marketing Suicide Squad very early — the film’s stars were posting about it on their Instagram accounts over a year before it came out, and the marketing then ramped up from there to near-ubiquitous TV spots and billboards. Suicide Squad wasn’t just a comic book movie — it was billed as a theatrical event, a wickedly fun, action-packed summer blockbuster to catch before the season’s end.
The generalization that the stereotypical antisocial, male nerd is responsible for Suicide Squad’s financial success isn’t supported by the data. Based on exit polls, 46% of Suicide Squad’s Friday audience was women. This shouldn’t be a surprise — women like superheroes, and superhero movies. Suicide Squad courted female audiences by featuring characters like Margot Robbie’s Harley Quinn, long a fan favorite, and Viola Davis’ Amanda Waller in advertisements. If women hadn’t shown up, Suicide Squad would not have been a hit.
The generalization that the stereotypical male nerd is responsible for Suicide Squad’s financial success isn’t supported by the data.
The fact is, fandom is not a monolith. Many hardcore fans who of course want a high-quality movie are also disappointed in Suicide Squad; even skimming the top post on the DCEU subreddit reveals mixed reactions to the film from fans. Geek culture does have a well-documented harassment problem. But, across the web, harassers are only sometimes long-belittled nerds; trolls, in their many forms, are always assholes. This is not just a geek culture problem. This is an internet problem.
So we can all take a collective deep breath. Hollywood isn’t beholden to angry internet fans, and neither is pop culture at large. In fact, Hollywood could do much, much more to court their most passionate fans! Instead, they simply see existing fandoms as a signifier that they can justify their green light because a property has already succeeded in a different marketplace; they know they can grow a larger audience from there.
And regardless of Suicide Squad’s overall box office take, the pressure is still on Warner Bros. to make a DC film that’s both a critical and crowd-pleasing hit. Even if the films make money, poor reviews reflect badly on the still-young DCEU. But they’ve got another bite at the apple coming — maybe this nastiness will be avoided when Wonder Woman rolls around.
We can hope.
