The Catch-22 Of Blockbuster Subversion
Maisie Williams as Arya Stark in HBO’s Game Of Thrones (Source: HBO)
SPOILER ALERT: DON’T READ THIS ARTICLE IF YOU HAVEN’T SEEN GAME OF THRONES, AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR, AVENGERS: ENDGAME, OR ANY OF THE RECENT STAR WARS FILMS.
Blockbuster films and intellectual properties with a large fanbase in general are at a pivotal moment in their history.
This year alone, three gigantic properties will come to a definitive end. Game Of Thrones currently has three episodes left in the tank, Avengers: Endgame - in theaters now, if you haven’t heard - is the final installment in a 22-film storyline that spanned 11 years, and Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker, slated for release this December, will be the last Star Wars film in the 9-episode Skywalker saga - a saga that’s 42 years old.
Fans of all three pop culture behemoths have invested years of their lives following every character and plot point, discussing theories, and even writing fan fiction that exists within these worlds they’ve so thoroughly immersed themselves in. Needless to say, the stakes are high for all three properties to stick their respective landings.
The problem is, we’re pretty much at capacity when it comes to formulaic blockbuster films with traditional Hollywood endings.
Every genre goes through the same lifecycle: A series of films come out that follow a similar set of cinematic rules. They play within the same box. They’re originally seen as fresh and innovative, until more films come out that follow said cinematic rules within the same box - then they become predictable and stale. Experimentation is necessary for survival; where rules are broken and tropes are subverted. Towards the end of the cycle, full-on parodies are made, mocking the genre itself, until the genre resets itself, often with tweaked rules, or simply becomes played out and eventually dies down.
It’s difficult to pinpoint exactly where we are in the blockbuster genre lifecycle, but one thing’s for sure - it’s certainly not fresh.
There’s a reason why many Game Of Thrones fans say they’ll be annoyed and disappointed if Dany or Jon Snow ultimately end up sitting atop the iron throne. It’s too predictable. It’s too cookie-cutter. It might make the most sense on paper, but this is Game Of Thrones; you can’t end it by putting a neat little bow on its fantastical, bloody, incestuous wrapping.
Superhero films have sequels to make and merchandise to hock. You really can’t kill off any major characters because doing that’ll potentially cost you millions, if not billions of future dollars. But by the same token, how many times can we see the superhero save the world with minimal scrapes and bruises?
“Endgame” is literally in the very title of this latest Avengers film. There’s no tomorrow. Lines have to be drawn in the sand. But the problem with that is - since your audience is so large, there’s simply no way to please everybody. Creative risks are always 50/50 - but in this social media world, where good things have a short shelf-life, and bad things are viciously mocked and memed to the point it could affect a film’s bottomline - that risk is sometimes too dangerous to take.
Writers and directors are caught between making ambitious shows and films that surprise a smarter, more self-aware, cinematically-numb audience that’s seen it all before, and making a film that plays it safe and predictable throughout, out of fear of critics and the social media mob. Those kids with their venomous tweets and dank memes. Damn them!
The problem is, you want to appeal to the social media base. Game Of Thrones routinely has 5-8 worldwide Twitter trends during the airings of their episodes. Memes can be good! You want people talking about your show or film, obviously. Just, you know - positively.
The upcoming Sonic film has experienced the opposite of that, showing the power of social media’s wrath, and it’s not even due out for another seven months. It’s trailer on Youtube currently has 318K thumbs up, against 555K thumbs down.
Game Of Thrones itself recently faced some social media criticism, because its last episode, which was supposed to be the biggest, most important battle sequence of the show’s history, was considered too dark - not in terms of content, but actual lighting. To be fair, it was.
Now, these kinds of complaints are understandable. If you’re botching the design of a beloved video game character that’s been around nearly 30 years, because you didn’t look to any of those near-30 years for creative guidance - or if the most important battle in the most watched show on television is too dark for its audience to see - the social media backlash is warranted, and even welcomed. Creators for shows and films with followings of that magnitude should have the self-awareness and humbleness to listen to the fans and admit when they’ve fucked up.
But when it comes to the actual storytelling - there is no right and wrong. Things are largely open to interpretation. The problem comes when people who are invested in the characters feel they know the characters intimately, and as such, have a better understanding of how their respective arcs should play out.
It’s partly why Star Wars: The Last Jedi was such a polarizing film. The movie zigged at times where some fans of the franchise thought it should zag. For hardcore fans, it was damn near sacrilegious. Star Wars isn’t just a film series, it’s a cultural institution. And probably why J.J. Abrams, a director known for being secretive and mysterious before the release of films, but playing it safe when it comes to the actual film, has been tasked with directing the next Star Wars, after his A New Hope carbon copy The Force Awakens largely pleased critics and fans alike and was not at all polarizing. Disney is looking for a safer bet this time around.
In the last (absolutely, positively, too dark) Game Of Thrones episode I referenced earlier, there was another issue some fans had, outside of its cinematographic choices - a pivotal moment involving a dagger, a menacing ice zombie lord, and one Arya Stark.
The backlash was largely sexist, with some corners of the internet referring to Arya as a “Mary Sue” - a term defined as a female character with a noticeable lack of weaknesses or flaws.
In other words “Arya Stark shouldn’t/couldn’t have killed the Night King - she’s a young girl!”
Sexism and racism, especially as it pertains to blockbuster properties, is nothing new - and people who complain that female characters and characters of color being too strong/smart/important in a story should be ignored - but the fact remains: doing anything outside of the norm opens you up to potential backlash.
However, how interesting would it have been if Jon Snow killed the Night King? Would it have been satisfying? For some, sure. But for others, it would’ve been too predictable. Too neat.
How do you decide who gets tasked with such an important moment in the series? You don’t want to be overly predictable, but you also don’t want to pick someone completely unreasonable, to the point that the subversion comes off as forced; because subversion just to do it is equally damaging.
In Avengers: Endgame, Scarlett Johansson’s Black Widow character is killed off in surprising fashion - for literally no reason at all. During the final fight sequence, there’s a moment where all of Marvel’s recent ass-kicking ladies team up, prompting a resounding “Woo!” from my theater’s audience - but Johansson’s character is noticeably absent, because she had died 35 minutes prior. Again, for really no reason that made sense other than “This is the final film and we wanted to catch some people off guard, so let’s pick a character at random whose death will be impactful, but not too impactful, to the point that social media would hate us.”
It felt cheap. It felt like Black Widow was chosen as an empty sacrifice to the subversion gods.
Endgame’s predecessor, Avengers: Infinity War, suffered from subversion-related complaints as well. The film ended with half of the MCU disintegrating into ash. The likes of Black Panther, Spider-man, and Doctor Strange - all of whom we knew would be making returns in future films. It was a subversive fake-out. Most people weren’t impressed, because we all knew their “deaths” weren’t permanent.
How do you handle it? Most of us have grown bored with the formulaic tropes within the blockbuster genre, but these shows and films have their roots so deeply embedded into the cultural cosmos, to throw in any narrative surprises at the end feels almost disrespectful to certain segments of their fanbases.
There’s a tightrope the creators of these big budget monsters have to walk, and I don’t envy any of the people tasked with writing their endings.
At the risk of sounding cynical, there’s really no way for them to win. With an audience so large, and demographically broad, you can’t please everyone, or even most. 50/50 is about as good as you can get. Be predictable and safe, at risk of being boring, stale, and formulaic; living with the fact that you never took that big game shot, you never took that plunge into something greater - or subvert at the risk of suffering self-inflicted wounds. Those are the choices.
Disappointed voices will be amplified online, and they’ll do their best to put a cultural asterisk on the property when their respective curtains close. For the creators, it’s simply a matter of doing your best to make that asterisk as small as possible.