A Lesson Learned: Fans Want Familiarity

Posted by Adam Sweeney (adam@filmschoolrejects.com) on March 10, 2009

In our continued effort to understand the American moviegoer’s psyche, we uncover a diamond of truth revealed to us this weekend during the Watchmen premiere. At the expense of throwing away originality, we love stories that we already know.

Zack Snyder’s adaptation of the greatest graphic novel of all-time has received the most polarizing set of reviews we have ever seen. Some critics are calling him a visionary, others a hack that choked the life out of Alan Moore’s work of art. All you needed to know of what many moviegoers wanted from the film can be explained by a brief story regarding a screening I was at this weekend.

With about twenty minutes left in the film, ten or so people stood up and walked out. A few of them started booing, oddly enough to about half of the crowd’s delight. Those who hated the film might explain this reaction by pointing to the flaws of the film, which there certainly were more than a few. But I have never seen that many people walk out of a theater on an opening weekend, not even during awful films like Mission to Mars or Blair Witch 2.

The reaction from some people after the film was similar. One girl said that the film was “not full of enough action for a comic book film,” which leads me to my point. Watchmen is a victim of expectations set before it in a genre that only recently tried to break the mold. As popular as Alan Moore’s work is, there were plenty of people who went to see the film without a clue of what it was about. They watched the trailer and saw a superhero film, only to be disappointed to find a movie that was focused on the human flaws of characters that try to fly too close to the Sun. The average fan won’t likely admit it, but they wanted more Fantastic Four and less of a thinker’s film. They wanted something they knew.

Even Zack Snyder himself is guilty of attaching himself to works that have a previous fanbase. Dawn of the Dead? Remake. 300? Has a cult following. And we already discussed Watchmen. Snyder grasped tightly to a double-edged sword when choosing to do Watchmen. If he stuck to the original artwork and dialogue, he wasn’t breathing any life into the story. If he strayed from Moore’s vision, he was a bastard that couldn’t stay on the path ingeniously laid before him. So what did we get? The middle. It’s a case of Hollywood playing it safe, which again makes our case.

Any opponent of this opinion needs to only look at the top films of each year since 2000. Here’s a quick rundown of the champions of familiarity.

2000 - The Grinch (Adaptation of a classic Dr. Seuss book)
2001 – Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (Top-selling children’s book)
2002 – Spider-man (One of the 4 most famous comic book titles around)
2003 – Return of the King (Adaptation of Tolkien classic novel)
2004 – Shrek 2 (A sequel and reason for Eddie Murphy to make an ass of himself)
2005 – Revenge of the Sith (Star Wars’ final film effort to bridge the Skywalker story)
2006 – Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest (More of Johnny Depp in eyeliner)
2008 – The Dark Knight (Christopher Nolan exorcises the demons of the Ghost of Schumacher’s Past)

Every single leader has a fanbase built to sell tickets. This tells us that while American film lovers like to pretend they want new stories, new characters and new reasons to go out to the movies, they are – in reality – in love with what they know. It makes sense. We may be free thinkers but we are still animals. The herd mentality is honestly the only way I can explain why people continue to go see Tyler Perry in those pathetic Madea Goes to films. That and the fact that we love cross-dressers, which we discussed last week in A Lesson Learned.

The sad truth is that Hollywood isn’t going to stop their own version of recycling any time soon. We’ve already seen a My Bloody Valentine and Friday the 13th remake in the past two months. This week we are treated to a re-wrapping of Last House on the Left. In this economy, they are going to play it as close to the chest as possible. They can do that by spoon-feeding us the same stories that we’ve already seen, and the worst part of it all is that we will go running back into theatres to watch. Until we elevate truly groundbreaking films to the top of the theatrical totem pole, Hollywood will continue to sing the same song. If past is prologue then it appears we will continue to hum along.

Read more articles by Adam Sweeney