Jeet This Week: Why hardcore fans are their own worst enemies
Have your favourite fictions been spoiled by "fan servicing" — or do those little geeky details make the movie for you?
Cultural critic Jeet Heer joins Shad to define "fan servicing" and explain the downside of catering to diehards.
Star Wars obsessives, for instance, may be psyched for an update on Han Solo and Chewbacca — but Jeet argues that some characters, plot points and details might actually overload the story.
"It's a retreat from mystery," he tells Shad, adding that we don't need to know how the big bad wolf became so big and bad.
q: Have your favourite fictions been spoiled by superfluous details and backstory — or do those little geeky details make the movie for you?
Jeet's references
- Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens
- Star Wars (later re-titled Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope)
- Book of Genesis
- Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace
- Little Red Riding Hood
- The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (short story originally published in 1924)
- Sherlock Holmes and the Giant Rat of Sumatra by Alan Vanneman
- The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes: The Giant Rat of Sumatra by Richard L. Boyer