I wrote last time about Metallica’s version of fan service. Sounds great, right? Why doesn’t everybody do that? There can’t be too much?
Maybe. But then there’s Star Wars.
It’s been said that Episodes 7-9 (the sequels) in general and Episode 7: The Force Awakens in particular was developed with fan service in mind, meaning callbacks to the earlier movies and deliberately trying to recreate similar situations and story beats from the previous movies explicitly so fans will get more out of the movie than the uninitiated. So Episode 7 becomes has more or less the same plot-line as the original Star Wars: young orphan hero on a desert planet comes across a lost droid carrying secret files, discovers they have magical gifts, walks into a bar filled with strange aliens, and helps star fighters flying down a trench destroy a planet-killing space station.
I liked the movie, and fell for the nostalgia pretty hard, but the writer in me felt like there could have been more. And I sympathize with the screenwriter! You have 90-180 minutes to tell your story and every second is precious both in production dollars and audience attention. Every moment on screen has to advance the plot and fill in the characterization through action and dialogue, all while giving the audience the information needed to understand what’s going on. It’s hard enough to use this time wisely when you’re making a normal movie, but when you’re also adding in fan service? It adds a level of difficulty or two. In my Metallica example, the band doesn’t change their song content, they just present it in a way that makes it accessible to the fans. (You could argue that the band might only write songs their fans will enjoy but that’s another discussion.)
When the story puts too much emphasis on fan service it distorts the overall narrative. It draws our attention to things that never pay off. Why did C3PO have a red arm? Why did Maz tease us with a story about Luke’s lightsaber? Worse, time spent on fan service is time that could be spent on rounding out the characters or advancing an overall story arc or theme. So while it wasn’t all fan service’s fault, by the time we get to Episode 9: The Rise of Skywalker the movie has characters speaking exposition to each other and falling back on cliched trope-y reactions because it’s collapsing under its narrative bloat. Add in the transmedia strategy of spending movie time referring to events outside itself and the story wobbles when trying to stand on its own.
Wobbly stories might be called cute, perhaps enjoyable, but never great. Sometimes you can be too clever. When you put in fan service just for the sake of it, you risk confusing the newbie or casual fan and taking them out of the story. Worse, it can contort your story into something that works in the short term, but harms the long-term story. Fan service isn’t salt, it’s habanero pepper. A little goes a long way.
What do you think?
Too Many Books!
Here are some things that have caught my attention from my fellow indie authors.
The Free Fantasy Reads promotion runs through July 30. If you haven’t already taken a look around, give it a click now and see what catches your fancy.
A madcap story of everyday people caught in bizarre situation when their small English Town is transported to an alien planet. I can’t give away any spoilers, so let’s just say it’s British sci-fi humor in the same vein as Douglas Adams, Neil Gaiman, and Terry Pratchett.
Note: It’s a free read, so you have nothing to lose.
This intrigued me because it seemed to share some of the same sensibilities as Badlands Born though this story delves deeper into each character’s thoughts and reactions. It’s dark fantasy with some horror elements and not for the squeamish, but isn’t that a good thing?
Three people living in different centuries are bound by one thing: The Axe. But they are also tied together by the one thing that wants them all dead…
Sci-Fi horror with three interlinked stories taking place in 1810, 2018, and 3015. This is a preview sample, so if you like it you can get the full story at Amazon.
