There is always outrage in a fandom when the authors change a key part of their story, whether for good reasons or bad reasons.
We've seen this with the changes to superhero characters in recent comics and movies, but change is present in pretty much every franchise.
We have seen new characters appear out of nowhere to liven up long running franchises (like Scrappy Doo in the Scooby Doo cartoons) We've seen long running characters axed and killed off to freshen them up (like Damian Wayne being killed in Batman comics, or Cortana in Halo 4)
Entire franchises have seen massive tonal shifts (compare Adam West's Batman to Ben Afflecks) or have been morphed beyond recognition (Mario games - Just any of them!)
The question is, why are the writers making these changes, and the answer is simple - A story that is told once doesn't really need to be told again. James Bond dresses suave, wins the girl and stops the bad guy, but there are only so many different ways you can play around with that narrow formula until the audience get restless. The writers must use bigger stunts, better villains, crazier gadgets, and hotter women each time, and there's only a certain number of times this can be done until the whole thing jumps the shark and becomes a parody of itself (resulting in the disastrous Die another Day - Complete with invisible car, Ice castle, Madonna sword fighting, satellite lasers, iceberg parasailing and double entendres about owls.)
The only other way they can keep things fresh is to mess with the formula, which means subverting the character. So James Bond gets changed. Daniel Craig comes in, he's grittier, more brutish, they remove the gadgets and sci-fi stuff and make him troubled and broody, and people want to go see the new iteration, because it's a side of the character they haven't experienced before.
It's the same with comic book characters, some of the best DC stories are reportedly the 'elseworlds' stories, where the writers mess with the standard formula, and say "What if... Superman landed in Soviet Russia as a baby?", "What if... The Flash went back in time and mucked everything up?", etc.
When we have seen a particular character play through a particular story enough times, it gets boring. There is only so many times people will buy a comic of Captain America punching Hitler in the face. Eventually the writers are going to have to take him in a new direction, and the clearest way of doing that is to subvert the main quality of the character and ask "What if Captain America were to HELP Hitler, not fight him?"
These stories if done right can not only serve to keep a character fresh, but to tell us other important things about them - How much of their personality is informed by circumstance, and how much is natural to them?
For this reason we shouldn't be surprised when a character that has been in print for 50+ years gets a storyline subverting their beliefs, or changing their personality or circumstances, it is done to keep them fresh, because the stories that have established their character in our minds have already happened, we already own them and don't need to be told them again. The characters need new challenges, new opportunities to grow and continue to reach out to the audience, and one of those ways to achieve this is to change their circumstances and see how that affects their story.
It's kind of like the Joker says, you either die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself become the villain. In the search for new storylines a long running franchise will try every storyline available, so the character will eventually become everything they are opposed to, and spring back and forward and back and forward as the franchise continues. Captain America is a hero, he's a villain, he's a patriot, a traitor, he's been killed off, resurrected, he's now black, eventually he'll be Asian, Latino, Native American, white again etc. He'll be a woman, he'll become everything and anything to keep the franchise fresh, whether it makes sense or not, and he'll fight bigger and bigger villains until they get ludicrously large, then he'll go back to small, more intimate threats, because the formula must keep changing.
It's the same for every franchise, and we'll keep getting angry at the changes, but we shouldn't worry really, because the franchise will always need to change to stay fresh, and it will eventually change back in a way that really honours and does justice to our favourite characters.
So yeah. I'm probably going to regret posting this, but any thoughts?
We've seen this with the changes to superhero characters in recent comics and movies, but change is present in pretty much every franchise.
We have seen new characters appear out of nowhere to liven up long running franchises (like Scrappy Doo in the Scooby Doo cartoons) We've seen long running characters axed and killed off to freshen them up (like Damian Wayne being killed in Batman comics, or Cortana in Halo 4)
Entire franchises have seen massive tonal shifts (compare Adam West's Batman to Ben Afflecks) or have been morphed beyond recognition (Mario games - Just any of them!)
The question is, why are the writers making these changes, and the answer is simple - A story that is told once doesn't really need to be told again. James Bond dresses suave, wins the girl and stops the bad guy, but there are only so many different ways you can play around with that narrow formula until the audience get restless. The writers must use bigger stunts, better villains, crazier gadgets, and hotter women each time, and there's only a certain number of times this can be done until the whole thing jumps the shark and becomes a parody of itself (resulting in the disastrous Die another Day - Complete with invisible car, Ice castle, Madonna sword fighting, satellite lasers, iceberg parasailing and double entendres about owls.)
The only other way they can keep things fresh is to mess with the formula, which means subverting the character. So James Bond gets changed. Daniel Craig comes in, he's grittier, more brutish, they remove the gadgets and sci-fi stuff and make him troubled and broody, and people want to go see the new iteration, because it's a side of the character they haven't experienced before.
It's the same with comic book characters, some of the best DC stories are reportedly the 'elseworlds' stories, where the writers mess with the standard formula, and say "What if... Superman landed in Soviet Russia as a baby?", "What if... The Flash went back in time and mucked everything up?", etc.
When we have seen a particular character play through a particular story enough times, it gets boring. There is only so many times people will buy a comic of Captain America punching Hitler in the face. Eventually the writers are going to have to take him in a new direction, and the clearest way of doing that is to subvert the main quality of the character and ask "What if Captain America were to HELP Hitler, not fight him?"
These stories if done right can not only serve to keep a character fresh, but to tell us other important things about them - How much of their personality is informed by circumstance, and how much is natural to them?
For this reason we shouldn't be surprised when a character that has been in print for 50+ years gets a storyline subverting their beliefs, or changing their personality or circumstances, it is done to keep them fresh, because the stories that have established their character in our minds have already happened, we already own them and don't need to be told them again. The characters need new challenges, new opportunities to grow and continue to reach out to the audience, and one of those ways to achieve this is to change their circumstances and see how that affects their story.
It's kind of like the Joker says, you either die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself become the villain. In the search for new storylines a long running franchise will try every storyline available, so the character will eventually become everything they are opposed to, and spring back and forward and back and forward as the franchise continues. Captain America is a hero, he's a villain, he's a patriot, a traitor, he's been killed off, resurrected, he's now black, eventually he'll be Asian, Latino, Native American, white again etc. He'll be a woman, he'll become everything and anything to keep the franchise fresh, whether it makes sense or not, and he'll fight bigger and bigger villains until they get ludicrously large, then he'll go back to small, more intimate threats, because the formula must keep changing.
It's the same for every franchise, and we'll keep getting angry at the changes, but we shouldn't worry really, because the franchise will always need to change to stay fresh, and it will eventually change back in a way that really honours and does justice to our favourite characters.
So yeah. I'm probably going to regret posting this, but any thoughts?
R version?
