By Peter Rizzo | Staff Writer
(Spoilers ahead for Avengers: Endgame and Star Wars: The Last Jedi & The Rise of Skywalker)
What does it mean to be a “fan” of something? You don’t have to have seen every episode or analyzed every movie to be considered a real fan, but fan culture is evolving in a way that is equal parts interesting and concerning. On the one hand, it’s great that there are so many easy outlets to talk about something you like, but then you have people who ruin it by creating what I like to call “toxic fandoms.”
It’s one thing to be disappointed if a movie or TV show makes certain creative choices, it’s another to be personally offended by that fact. Avengers: Endgame was a recent film I was very excited to see, and though I enjoyed the film very much, there were certain things I disagreed with, primarily how the arcs of certain characters were handled. In the end, I accepted that though I didn’t enjoy certain endings, the older characters needed to be cycled out in order for the franchise to move forward. However, there’s a large group of fans (I hesitate to call them the majority) who refuse to accept it. There is a petition on Change.org that currently has over sixty-five thousand signatures demanding that Marvel retcon Tony Stark’s fate so he survives the events of the film.
I know plenty of people who disagree with Iron Man and Captain America’s endings in Endgame, and most of those people engage in debate and discussion about those choices, not petulantly demand the studio change the canon to appease their feelings. After five minutes on Google, I uncovered petitions demanding the following: the MCU not make Sam Wilson, a black man, Captain America; the MCU not make Thor a woman; Star Wars: the Last Jedi be removed from the canon; the eighth season of Game of Thrones be remade with “competent writers.”
If you’re like me, you’d laugh at the audacity of some people to stomp their foot and expect million dollar studios to bow to you, but the issue is that while some of the petitions I listed had less than fifty signatures, some had over a million. And counting.
Some of those petitions could be written off as people being passionate about a given franchise, but they’re passionate to a fault. There’s nothing wrong with being a part of a fandom and wanting that franchise to produce the best possible content, but your enjoyment of a show or movie shouldn’t hurt anybody, and if it does, then you’re the problem. The most glaring example I can think of came following the release of Star Wars: the Last Jedi in 2017. At the time, I didn’t think the movie was great, but looking back at it now, I respect it for at least trying to take a franchise quickly becoming formulaic and trying something new while also feeling consequential, which is hard to do in an “eternal franchise” like Star Wars. However, the film, while critically praised (with a 91% on Rotten Tomatoes) was hit hard by fans who believed it went against everything Star Wars stood for.
They’re not technically wrong, since Star Wars stands for different things for different people, but it’s the way fans react to the film that determines whether they’re part of a toxic fandom. Some fans discussed the film and debated its merits; others took routes that led to the aforementioned petition and cyberbullying over social media. The studio, writer/director Rian Johnson, and the film’s stars were all hit hard with criticism over the film, but none more so than Kelly Marie Tran, who, after her new character, Rose Tico, partook in one of the film’s most divisive subplots, was harassed by fans with both racist and sexist comments over social media until she ultimately deleted her accounts.
When I looked back at the Last Jedi, I realized the big “flaw” some fans had with the movie was that it didn’t match the fan theories they had come up with or the fanfics they had written. And Star Wars: the Rise of Skywalker is a perfect example of a movie that has less self-esteem than a porcupine at a petting zoo. I did not enjoy the film. And that was largely because the film spent a lot of its runtime backpedaling after the divisive Last Jedi, and as a result, played everything completely safe - so much so that Kelly Marie Tran was essentially written out of the film. Obviously people didn’t go into the Rise of Skywalker hoping it would be centered around Rose, but doesn’t demoting the character to an extra with a few lines after the actress was subject to racist and sexist abuse empower the abusers? The message that sends to people who bullied her is “you know what? You’re right. You deserve to have your racist and sexist beliefs dictate the plot.”
Additionally, the same entitlement spills over to not just expecting certain things out of media but out of the people involved in it. David Dobrik, a YouTuber with over ten million subscribers, has talked in length about having to move out of his house because people keep coming up to his home, taking pictures with his cars and bragging about trespassing despite his frequent requests that they stop doing that. The common defense to situations like that is that since the person chose to pursue a career in the public eye, they essentially give up their right to privacy, but why? Celebrities shouldn’t have to justify their private lives just because part of their job is public, yet “stans” always seem to want the Venn diagram of fiction and reality to look like one circle. There are plenty of examples of fans getting upset when two actors who portray lovers on-screen aren’t dating in real life, but the worst I can think of is that of Jack Dylan Grazer and Finn Wolfhard. The two boys starred in both It films, and since their characters are implied to at least be crushing on one another, fans constantly ask if they’re dating in real life, something oddly never asked of the actors who portray their adult selves. If you want to imagine two fictional characters getting together, that’s perfectly fine since it’s the foundation of headcanons and fanfiction; but to let that translate into sexualizing real-life children, it’s not just for fun anymore.
You’re allowed to enjoy any piece of media you want, however you want; it’s your choice what you do if you dislike a movie that exists in a larger canon that you care about. But we’ve allowed ourselves to become content with people who make movies getting relentlessly hated on because they subvert expectations or take risks with celebrities being harassed because they have the gall to not want to be hounded wherever they go like a dancing monkey. It’s easy to be so comfortable giving out hateful comments because we can hide behind screens and we can block anyone who disagrees with us. There’s a difference between constructive criticism and lambasting. The latter, even if they’re not the majority, are certainly screaming louder than everyone else, and they get listened to. If every movie or TV show that does something new, unexpected, or different is shot to the ground by thousands of people who can’t stand change, then all we’ll be left with is shallow pieces of media that try to please everyone by being inconsistent and soulless.