Other Worlds Than These — Expanding Beyond Nerd Culture

The biggest movie in America right now is a stand alone story from an Expanded Universe.

It’s a sentence that would have made very little sense ten or fifteen years ago. But that was then; this is now. Today, the playbook for major movie studios is simple: if you aren’t milking the intellectual property teat, you’re doing it wrong.

Marvel has completed its global takeover by weaving together an immense film universe, complete with cameos and easter eggs and fan service and all the other hallmarks of what is now charitably called “Nerd Culture.” DC Comics — ahead in terms of popular superhero movies but far behind in terms of world building — is trying with muted success to catch up to their comic nemeses, by building a photonegative universe. Marvel’s vibrant color palette is mirrored by grey, ash grey, cool grey, and charcoal in the DC movies. All of Marvel’s laughter and irreverence is echoed by grunts and mopey stares.

Of course, the comic book guys aren’t the only ones banking on the marketability of worlds instead of stories; Disney smartly pulled Star Wars — with all its juicy IP potential — off the shelf and relaunched a galaxy of stories that will include sequels and one-offs. Early efforts from the expanded universe far far away have been immensely successful.

For the segment of the film-viewing audience that doesn’t overlap with the hordes at comic-con, though, this should be dulling, if not boring. It’s no longer novel or particularly insightful to observe stand-alone films with modest budgets struggling for air, smothered by release calendars stuffed with more and more sequels, expansions, and reboots each year. Whatever fatigue may fester in film audiences (for what it’s worth, there doesn’t seem to be much yet — these movies are giant successes overall) will be a reaction to the fact that, for all their breadth, these universes are actually quite narrow — and they are all pointed at the same audience: the curators, consumers, and fanatics of Nerd Culture.

That Nerd Culture became Mass Culture a decade ago doesn’t undermine the overarching idea here — all of these worlds use the hungriest core segment of that particular audience as a launchpad into the mainstream. The majority of the population doesn’t line up at Hall H to view a 90 second teaser trailer for a movie still many months away; measured against the entirety of the filmgoing audience, you’re looking at a minute fragment. Still, though, the import that films assume through those rituals — the hype that glues itself to them — builds through internet speculation and trailer dissections, before cresting sometime close to theatrical release with a full ad campaign and finally crashing. A Tsunami of cash. Billion dollar domestic releases are born from seeds planted at conventions and on fan culture websites.

Put another way — every movie at comic-con doesn’t end the year number one at the box office. But if a film ends the year number one, you can be sure it’s path to success began with thunderous applause in San Diego.

And it’s becoming kind of a bore; that many of these have merit without considering their larger canon doesn’t make it any less so. It’s time to expand the idea of the expanded universe — to move this treatment into unexplored film territory, into genres that fall outside of the fantastic, the super, the galactic, the astonishing. Surely every expanded universe doesn’t have produce a march of safe, somewhat comedic, and easily digestible films based on the posters that once hung in the bedrooms of young boys in the 1980s. There must be more worlds worth exploring. In that spirit, these are some ideas for hollywood’s next expanded universe.

Before beginning, to clarify what we’re talking about: The Fast and The Furious franchise, for instance, is not an expanded universe. It is a series of sequels that has grown in scope and roster size with each consecutive movie. The following films are worthy of more than just sequels — worlds can be be built around them — sequels, sure, but stand alone stories, spin offs, prequels, and crossovers as well.

Goodfellas

Goodfellas is an easy first example of a stand-alone film that could be stretched into a broad universe of stories without much effort. Some ideas that jump quickly to mind after only a brief brainstorming period:

• A Heist film that tells the entire story of The Lufthansa Heist. In Goodfellas, the audience understands the heist only through radio clip and a soapy Ray Liotta fist pumping in a shower. Lufthansa would tell the whole story, from early planning all the way through the division of spoils. End the movie right where the bar scene in Goodfellas — the one where De Niro yells at everyone — picks up. Not only could Lufthansa be a fun, Oceans or Heat-esque heist movie; it would give audiences some more time with tertiary characters from Goodfellas, creating a stronger emotional payoff when those characters are all brutally murdered in the 1990 original.
• A 1950’s prequel film. Goodfellas begins with Henry’s narration, about how as long as he could remember he wanted to be a gangster. But the film moves briskly, from the principals’ early days stealing cigarettes to their formal initiation as adults. The prequel would add mass and context to that world, and clarify motivations for Henry and the rest of his crew.
• After Tommy freaks out at Billy over some pointed Ball-busting at a welcome home party, Billy mutters this: “I’ll fuck him in the ass. I used to fuck kids like him in the can in the ass.” This is a guy that has clearly lived a full life — and the audience should know more: Billy Batts spinoff. Probably titled Get Your Shinebox.
• After Goodfellas ends, in real life, Henry Hill entered the witness protection program. In real life, again, he was popped on some drug offense and ended up divorced from Karen by the time the movie about his life was released. The dissolution of this marriage is prime material for dramatic treatment, from a director like Derek Cianfrance (Blue Valentine), who knows a thing or two about anti-romance dramas.
• Morrie, who in Goodfellas was murdered via icepick, is — this is real — the subject of this reddit thread, which asserts that the murder may have never happened at all and that the recounting in the film is an error of unreliable narration. This has potential the “Han shot first” of the Goodfellas universe, a malleable event that can be warped to match artistic needs. Tell audiences the story of Morrie faking his own death to escape and start a new life for himself.

Boogie Nights

Obviously. The defining characteristic of Boogie Nights is how extensively and thoughtfully the world of the film is drawn, and how vivid and memorable the characters are within that world. There is enough density in this film to weave an Avengers-like tapestry. Amber Waves, Reed Rothwell, Little Bill (and Nina Hartley), Roller Girl, Jack Horner, Dirk; they all can star in their own tangential arcs, which come together from time to time to form the backbone of the franchise. So you have Boogie Nights 1, 2 and 3, but you also have Little Bill: Ass in Her Cock and Jack Horner 2: A Filmmaker to serve as the connective tissue between the marquee releases. This should happen.

Do The Right Thing

Do The Right Thing is brilliant as a snapshot of a specific time and place — the framing of the film’s events within one day somehow gives those events more gravity. This attention to form is an unmistakable implication: “and look, this is only just ONE day“. It feels like a boast, or a taunt, or at least a stunning spotlight shining on the friction that comes from distinct cultures and perspectives rubbing against one another, but not off on one another. The film does this effectively by relying on the sheer number of vibrant personalities packed into the small world presented on screen, filling it from the center all the way to the periphery. And each of those characters, and their intersections, carries with them a story — or stories — worth telling. Stories of Immigrant grocers, Brooklyn natives displaced by the gentry, Disc Jockeys who are Samuel L. Jackson, family histories within a Pizzeria, NYPD officers. There is no limit to the branches that could stem from Do The Right Thing, now matter how tightly confined it may seem on it’s own.

The Breakfast Club

Duh.

The Mighty Ducks

The MDCU (Mighty Ducks Cinematic Universe) would need to start with some retconning, because it can only work without D3. The characters need to stay at their D2 ages to begin with — with that in mind, you have the potential for:

A baseline of team stories, basically formatted like Mighty Ducks and D2. The team gets back together every other summer to take on a new bad guy, play in a new tournament, etc. Eventually, after MDCU Phase 2 ends and Emilio’s contract expires, Charlie assumes the mantle of Ducks Head Coach, ushering in a future generation of Mighty Ducks stories.

At the same time, though, as long as the timeline of D2 is used as a starting point, there is an intricate web of stories that could be told. An origin story of Iceland’s Wolf “The Dentist” Stanson, one of cinema’s great villains. An tale following Russ’ transition from a tough, inner-city roller-blade upbringing into the overwhelmingly white hockey world, and all the tensions and identity crises that come to bear. A rom-com focused on Guy Germaine and Connie. A Gordon Bombay prequel, following his trajectory from the pro-hockey pipeline, to the world of law, to his ignominious exit from that world.

Only by freeing Expanded Universes from the shackles of men in tights, will we fully realize their potential: Lufthansa, Jack Horner 2, Wolf: The Denist, and Bender: An Imperfect World. These are stories the world needs to hear.