Kristin Thompson, Fans on the Margins, Pervy Hobbit Fanciers and Partygoers

(In The Frodo Franchise)

More good stuff from Thompson, this time moving on into the realm of fan sites and fan production. Although she keeps the films central to her analysis, her willingness to include everything from toys to slash fiction is commendable, and vital to any study of franchises. I hope to expand on her historical and rehabilitate the notion of "franchise" as a critical concept - a methodology for looking at certain kinds of texts, products and discourses.

Kristin Thompson, Click To View Trailer

(In The Frodo Franchise)

Here, Thompson outlines how the struggle between studio control of marketing and film information and fandom's insatiable desire for new details and minutiae can create extremely positive results for the studio from a promotional perspective. This struggle, I think, is indicative of the larger struggle between various kinds of users - producers, creators and audiences - which is the site of definition and articulation for a franchise. It is only in that give-and-take that the franchise exists.

It seems that The Lord of the Rings was instrumental in Hollywood's embracing the marketing potential the Internet, not only to attract and encourage fans but also to pitch new audiences on a film via mainstream, third-party news sites and so on. The Internet, even moreso than television, allows different forms of marketing and information to be targetted at various audiences for maximal effect.

One interesting anecdote Thompson relates is that apparently early in the marketing for the trilogy, it was assumed that the target audience was primarily 15-30 year-old males - an assumption which was disproven rapidly once the film was released. It strikes me that although the classic male fanboy audience might have been the most vocal and obvious potential audience, this particular franchise probably had a great many lapsed fans who had read the books as children in the 80s, 70s, 60s - probably even the 40s and earlier - but had not engaged with the franchise significantly prior to the films' release. The films, however, mainstreamed Tolkien in hitherto unprecedented ways, allowing these lapsed fans to reawaken their latent fandom.

Kristin Thompson, Flying Billboards and FAQs

(In The Frodo Franchise)

This chapter is lighter on analysis than other parts of the book, but effectively highlights some of the contemporary offline alternatives to traditional means of promoting a film. "Infotainment" such as Entertainment Tonight and making-of specials in particular are a highly effective means of marketing, with audiences actively seeking them out rather than being targeted. These forms allow the studios to tightly control what information is released and how the film is presented to audiences via electronic press kits and web content intended for journalists, actively constructing the franchise.

Peter Jackson seems very aware of the importance of behind-the-scenes content, and many hundreds of hours of footage were shot, to be gradually presented to the public in various forms and across multiple new DVD (and surely soon Blu-Ray) releases. These specials are often produced by networks, rather than by the studio, minimizing the studio's overhead. Again, because fans will seek out and pay for these supplementary materials, they become extremely powerful marketing tools which cost significantly less than traditional trailers and print campaigns.

Kristin Thompson, Handcrafting a Blockbuster

(In The Frodo Franchise)

Discussing the design aspects and attention to detail in developing the Lord of the Rings films, Thompson notes Bordwell's idea of world-building, which suggests that modern Hollywood films (especially blockbusters, Thompson adds) are engaged in creating elaborately detailed universes in which their stories are contextualized. In many cases, this occurs across media and helps to integrate the franchise, and Thompson cites the Star Wars franchise as exemplary in this respect. I would argue that although this is true, this world-building does not necessarily result in an integrated universe, but rather in many cases creates a wide variety of different versions of the same universe, such as in superhero franchises.

In either case, however, the intense levels of detail seem to translate for fans into greater authenticity (historical, fantastical or otherwise). This serves not only to create an ambient environment for the action and a believable world, but also (as I have discussed in the Terminator franchise) a network of self-reflexive links between different franchise texts. Not only are we given clues in the set-dressing, costuming and design of Terminator 3 that we are dealing with the same characters in the same world, we are also given stylistic and structural cues that we are dealing with the same franchise. Narrative and formal elements dovetail to create a worthy reintroduction.

Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003)

In T3, we see a prime example of a franchise become self-reflexive, constantly referencing its own tropes and conventions, often for the purpose of parody. The Terminator franchise could almost be seen to follow Schatz's model of generic evolution, from primitive to established to parody - an overly simple account, but strangely fitting.

In some ways, the franchise is constructed according to the same principles as the destiny-based narrative of the films: Judgement Day will inevitably happen and John Connor will lead the resistance with Kate Brewster at his side, just as a Terminator film will inevitably feature a character hunted by an advanced killing machine and protected by a friend from the future. The specifics of when, where, who and how vary from film to film, but those basic principles invariably remain.

Terminator 2: Judgement Day (1991)

I forgot how much I actually like this movie. Just a generally very well constructed action movie, even in spite of the sappy relationship between John and the Terminator - but that's not why we're here.

Already, the Terminator/Schwarzenegger character is becoming self-reflexive, with tongue-in-cheek references to the previous film abound. What is interesting however, is how these recontextualized repetitions serve to signify the changed roles: The Terminator takes Reese's line, "Come with me if you want to live," and becomes the protector, while Sarah is the one presented in a video freeze frame of her seemingly insane rants about the future by the dopey Dr. Silberman, now filling the role of crazy person who knows the truth.

The cyclical nature of the franchise is really a defining feature - everything that happens, happens because of actions in the future, which happen because of actions in the past, which happen ... etc. It will be interesting to see how this plays out in the new trilogy - if the theme of the original trilogy (or at least the first two films) is that there is no fate, surely the new trilogy must rely on predestination in order to not render the original trilogy logically nonextant. John Connor of the future must send back Kyle Reese in order to be born; must send back the second Terminator to protect his childhood self; Kate Brewster-Connor must send back the third Terminator to protect both herself and the young adult John Connor, who is to be her husband. If the new trilogy strays from this, it will have to create a pretty complex system of rationalization in order to preseve the continuity of the franchise.

A shot of the T-1000 crushing the Terminator's sunglasses with its foot made me think - what is the relationship between film-maker trademarks (in this case, James Cameron and things being crushed by feet) and franchise conventions? Particularly interesting to consider in franchises such as this, or the Indiana Jones films, where the same directors or screenwriters are involved with multiple entries into the canon. I suppose in many cases, elements of the franchise are simply both, or begin as one but eventually become the other. Curious.

The Terminator (1984)

This is one of those films that upon viewing, I realized I had never actually seen before. Weird.

I was going to start this post by comparing it to First Blood, in that it is fairly distinct in style and structure compared to subsequent films in the franchise, but this is really not the case here. Essentially, what the Terminator franchise does is shuffles the roles of the characters, with slight variations, but maintains a fairly similar structure. Observe:

T1:

Villain: The Terminator
Fugitive/Character unaware of the future: Sarah Connor
Protector of fugitive/Hero/Love interest of fugitive/Crazy person who knows the truth: Kyle Reese

T2:

Villain: T-1000
Fugitive/Character unaware of the future: John Connor
Protectors of fugitive/Heroes/Friends: The Terminator and Sarah Connor
Crazy person who knows the truth: Sarah Connor

T3:

Villain: Terminatrix
Fugitive/Crazy person who knows the truth: John Connor
Protector of fugitive/Hero: The Terminator
Friend/love interest of fugitive/Character unaware of the future: Kate Brewster

Sarah Connor Chronicles:

Villain: Cromartie Terminator, the FBI
Fugitive: John Connor
Protectors of fugitive/Friends/Heroes: Sarah Connor, Cameron Phillips, Derek Reese
Character unaware of the future: James Ellison
Crazy person who knows the truth: Sarah and John Connor?

Although the recently announced fourth Terminator film appears at first to alter the formula, it could still easily operate along the same lines:

Villain: Skynet (and doubtlessly some new form of Terminator)
Hero/Protector of fugitive/Crazy person who knows the truth (now about the past): John Connor and Kate Brewster-Connor
Fugitive/Friend/Character unaware of the past (which is his future): Kyle Reese (who now needs to be protected in order to ensure John Connor's existence)


All by way of saying, the franchise has been adept at creating (often complex) variations on the basic villain-fugitive-protector formula.

Kristin Thompson, Introduction: Sequel-itis

(In The Frodo Franchise)

In what is possibly the only academic book to explicitly concern itself with franchises (certainly the only one to use the word franchise in the title that I've seen), Thompson (of Bordwell, Staiger and Thompson fame) sets out to trace the development of the Lord of the Rings franchise. Although positioned as a work of film history, Thompson is also concerned with using the franchise as an exemplar of changes in contemporary Hollywood and the larger entertainment industry.

Thompson is quick to point out that the film versions of Tolkien's books build upon an already rich and varied franchise, including many different printings of the novels, films, music and all manner of merchandising. This helps to put the recent success of the franchise in context - much as with superhero films, the pre-existing franchise and fandom is an essential aspect of a new text's success.

Additionally, Thompson notes that although Star Wars can be seen as a seminal contemporary franchise, Walt Disney had maintained tight control over merchandising for many years prior, indicating a long history of franchise approaches to film-making. Franchises (like genres), she suggests, make for much more effective branding than studios, stars or directors, which are of secondary importance. Familiar characters, stories and formulas attract audiences first.

The principle concern of this book is the industrial aspect of franchises, and Thompson (at least in her introduction) treats the concept as a network of branded products. For her purposes, this is sufficient, but I hope to expand the term to refer to a larger network including other discourses as well.

One theory Thompson presents for the success of Lord of the Rings is that the franchise is strong enough to last many years in the cultural consciousness and to live on in re-releases, merchandise and liscenced properties, but it is also narratively self-contained enough to avoid jumping the shark and "out-staying its welcome." This makes sense, but I wonder what Thompson would make of the possibility of a new film in the franchise, to take place between Guillermo del Toro's The Hobbit film and the existing trilogy.

Seymour Chatman, Introduction

(In Story and Discourse)

On the off chance that it proves useful, I'm looking into some narratology from the '70s, given that narratology is concerned with patterns and repetition, and that narrative structures are so important to franchises. Chatman's book seems interesting enough. What I appreciate most about it is his insistence that "definitions are made, not discovered," as opposed to the empiricist view that structures are fixed objects which scholars must uncover. Definitions and classifications are powerful tools with which we can create meaning.

Coming from a structuralist perspective, Chatman suggests that categorization is useful not because it helps us to find pure examples of whatever category we're dealing with, but because it helps us to plot texts in relation to one another - sort of an early transgeneric approach. I suppose that I am adding another axis to his abstract network to include the discursive and pragmatic elements of franchises. Story (referring to content) and discourse (referring to expression) need to be expanded to account for reception (referring to interpretation and use) in order to discuss the continuum of meaning which is genre, or franchise, or whatever. This multi-directional process is the only way we can fully understand their complexity.