The Modern Audience Myth
Some Men Just Want To Watch The World Burn
“Made for modern audiences.”
It sounds good, doesn’t it? An updating of old sensibilities, an injection of new ideas into a stagnating franchise. Everything needs a little ‘new blood’ every now and again to keep things “fresh” so what’s the worst that could happen?
A fucking lot, as it turns out.
You see, dear reader, things used to be marketed toward ordinary people with niche interests. The Corporations at large were largely indifferent to those people- right up until they realized that if they owned the rights to religiously purchased merchandise they could inject some sweet sweet revenue into their next Quarterly Earnings call with little to no effort.
Once that happened they began spreading their tentacles like an oil leak in otherwise pristine waters, buying the rights to one beloved franchise after the other and attempting to capitalize on the established fan base while simultaneously trying to widen the appeal to more general audiences (usually by sanding off anything deemed offenseive or problematic to certain modern sensibilities).
Such an endeavor all but guarantees the following:
1. The original fans get taken for granted, indeed are expected to willfully accept any and all slop offered them while they dutifully bankroll The Corporation’s rebranding of their beloved franchise into “content”
2. The Corporation will have none of the love for the franchise they now own and won’t know what makes it special in the first place and so cannot hope to make more of what actually worked going forward
3. Internally panicking at #2 the Corporation will attempt to soothe their bruised egos by pushing away those who know what they’re doing (looking at you Amazon and your treatment of Thomas Shippey) in favor of listening to groups with a (in some cases literal) list of grievances that need to be addressed so as to not be offended.
Now, here’s the rub dear reader: that same group in #3 with the list? The one that convinces the Corporation it is PARAMOUNT they change the established franchise and piss off the original fans in order to be on the right side of history?
Yeah those are the same fuckers that will inevitably fail to support that franchise going forward. They come in, bully the Corproration into changing things, and then fuck off to repeat the process with the next inevitable corporate fuck up.
So what happens to The Corporation? They did all the “right things” didn’t they? They listened to the bitchy groups and changed the product for the better, right?
Wrong.
Such wanton disregard for established lore alienates the existing fans, the people they made the changes for don’t actually stick around, and the inevitable shitty story telling caused by said changes inevitably fails to bring in any new fans because what made the franchise special in the first place is no longer there.
So in short: the new fans? Non existent. The people they made it for? Nowhere to be seen. That existing fanbase The Corporation paid millions of dollars to exploit? Gone.
This strategy has been proven time and time again to fail (Dragon Age, Rings of Power, The Wheel of Time show, Doctor Who, LOTR War of the Rohirrim, and inevitably James Bond now that the rights to it have been bought by Amazon) so the question, I feel, must be asked: how well does virtue signalling really pay?
How long can you ignore the fundamental principles of storytelling before no one wants to listen to you anymore?
How long can you pilfer what people love before there are no more franchise titties upon which to suckle and you have to face the fact that you are creatively as well as morally bankrupt to continue in the attempt?
And, the biggest question of all: how much longer must fans endure before the Corpos figure out they’re fucking things up beyond repair?
Too long, dear reader. Too long by half.
And when those fat cats finally do come around?
Well, by then there might not be enough of the fanbase left to care.