Big Media Properties as Old Growth Forests
Aug. 3rd, 2011 02:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mishalakI sometimes think about why I am typically uninterested in big media properties like Star Trek, Batman, Spider-Man, Star Wars, Doctor Who, etc, etc, etc. This is not to say that they are bad, I just do not get terribly excited about going to see the big summer/Christmas movie as I did when I was young. Even when it comes with big huge updates to it where everything, you know, is wrong! In contrast I was interested in and excited by the re-imagining of Battlestar Galactica a few years back. I did not like where it ended up, but that could have happened with any series.
What I think is different is the degree of change and the feel of what they were doing. When I read the phrase, "endless second act" in a post about the new Spider-Man I said to myself, "That is it. That is what I do not like." For all that they try to get readers and viewers excited about the big changes that they have in store for us nothing changes very much. Instead the "daring material" are things that would have been controversial ten years ago (and to be fair still are controversial among a set of white males with no social skills, hi Sheldon). The big changes always come with some some sort of reset button to take things back to the status quo. My metaphor for this is comparing them to a forest that has reached an old growth/climax equilibrium. There is change, but it is cyclical, slow, and usually limited to adding additional growth rings rather than anything actually radical.
Over time the changes will accumulate, but there is not room in the forest for more than the occasional new tree. Also the changes that do happen tend to be of the tragic fan-fic turn of events variety. Oh, poor Spock who is now without a home world. Tragedy off screen, millions dead, and no actual changes to the characters except to make them more Mary/Marty Sue like, but if people do not like it there is a built in reset button. More time travel for everyone!
On the other hand the re-imagining of Battlestar Galactica was authentically radical. Rather than just a new iteration with enough updating to bring it to a new audience with more explosions and battles it actually told a different sort of story from the original series. The new series seemed, to me, to be more about cold war paranoia and technological fears instead of swashbucking in space. It kept names and some of the props, but came up with new reasons for them and new themes. I think if Battlestar were revisited again it would probably be a climax property, it would be once again about paranoia and technology because the new series is beloved in a way that that the old was not and the owners would restrict what the writers could do because doing something too radical could turn off the fans. And, unlike a most established property, they could do things that raised authentic moral questions instead of giving pat answers to settled areas of social morality. Old Trek, likewise, could have an interracial kiss when that was hugely controversial and only deal in platitudes when it was Next Generation.
I am not interested in just another "untold until now" story about characters I loved when I was 13. I want something new and preferably without an excessive number of battle sequences. Burn the forest and let something come up from the ashes! Well okay, you do not have to burn the forests (to save them), but I will be off busy looking at newer series rather than revisiting the old with a new foil variant cover. Alas, it seems for me this summer there is nothing like a Pan's Labyrinth set to be released. It is all remakes and reunions as far out as October.
What I think is different is the degree of change and the feel of what they were doing. When I read the phrase, "endless second act" in a post about the new Spider-Man I said to myself, "That is it. That is what I do not like." For all that they try to get readers and viewers excited about the big changes that they have in store for us nothing changes very much. Instead the "daring material" are things that would have been controversial ten years ago (and to be fair still are controversial among a set of white males with no social skills, hi Sheldon). The big changes always come with some some sort of reset button to take things back to the status quo. My metaphor for this is comparing them to a forest that has reached an old growth/climax equilibrium. There is change, but it is cyclical, slow, and usually limited to adding additional growth rings rather than anything actually radical.
Over time the changes will accumulate, but there is not room in the forest for more than the occasional new tree. Also the changes that do happen tend to be of the tragic fan-fic turn of events variety. Oh, poor Spock who is now without a home world. Tragedy off screen, millions dead, and no actual changes to the characters except to make them more Mary/Marty Sue like, but if people do not like it there is a built in reset button. More time travel for everyone!
On the other hand the re-imagining of Battlestar Galactica was authentically radical. Rather than just a new iteration with enough updating to bring it to a new audience with more explosions and battles it actually told a different sort of story from the original series. The new series seemed, to me, to be more about cold war paranoia and technological fears instead of swashbucking in space. It kept names and some of the props, but came up with new reasons for them and new themes. I think if Battlestar were revisited again it would probably be a climax property, it would be once again about paranoia and technology because the new series is beloved in a way that that the old was not and the owners would restrict what the writers could do because doing something too radical could turn off the fans. And, unlike a most established property, they could do things that raised authentic moral questions instead of giving pat answers to settled areas of social morality. Old Trek, likewise, could have an interracial kiss when that was hugely controversial and only deal in platitudes when it was Next Generation.
I am not interested in just another "untold until now" story about characters I loved when I was 13. I want something new and preferably without an excessive number of battle sequences. Burn the forest and let something come up from the ashes! Well okay, you do not have to burn the forests (to save them), but I will be off busy looking at newer series rather than revisiting the old with a new foil variant cover. Alas, it seems for me this summer there is nothing like a Pan's Labyrinth set to be released. It is all remakes and reunions as far out as October.