Entertainment Woes Pt.2: Interconnected Universes and Longstanding Franchises
you can check out part one of this ongoing series here
This may feel new, with Marvel’s success with their cinematic universe and the subsequent attempts by other companies to leech off that success;, but I’m told crossovers in TV and Film have been around for decades. I think it’s more apparent now that Marvel has made all the money, ever. You have the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the DC Extended Universe, Dark Universe (maybe), and even a Monster Universe. I heard rumor of a Men in Black/21 Jump Street crossover. Everything’s connected! On paper, this is a wonderful idea, and in 2012 when the Avengers stood together and tall in the Battle of New York, oh my goodness… I was a kid again. I felt ALIVE.
But man, is this so very exhausting. I don’t mean that in the “there are too many movies to watch” kind of way, even if it is hard to get my friends to sit down past more than two movies. It’s exhausting in that, for the foreseeable future, this is what we get. For the next potential decade, Henry Cavill’s inhumane Superman is going to be the definitive on-screen Superman (sorry Tyler Hoechlin, you just don’t make waves). Tom Holland’s Spider-Man will be the Spider-Man. This is due mainly to contracts, character rights, licensing and all that super fun legal stuff I don’t quite understand; these things play a big role in what gets made and who gets to be involved, and to such an extent that studios will even put movies out just to retain rights a little longer — see: The Fantastic Four (1994), The Fantastic Four (2005), and Fant4stic (2015). Each of those movies were made simply to retain character rights, and it shows. It’s like a bad case of procrastination on a multi-million dollar level.
All that tasty legal stuff gets in the way of creative content, and it’s why you get shows like Arrow or Smallville. Not that those shows are bad! (except for you, Arrow, you’re kind of bad) It’s just that those shows weren’t always what we ended up with in the final product. Smallville, a wonderfully campy retelling of Superman’s angst-ridden origins, was initially supposed to be a show about a coming-of-age Bruce Wayne (back to that Batman nonsense, referenced in pt.1 of this series), but as the character was tied up in whatever fictional characters get tied up in during film obligations, they went with Superman instead. I don’t know the details behind Arrow’s blatant thievery of Batman mythos, but everything I’ve seen on that show screams BATMAN (League of Assassins, villains, and a dark, brooding Bruc-I mean Oliver Queen), just prettied up with Green Arrow content. This feels directly related to the success of Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy, and that’s heavily apparent in the first season of Arrow.
I could ramble about this all day, but to circle back to my point: Due to the restrictions on certain intellectual properties, creative content is severely limited when it comes to popular characters. Therefore, we have Supergirl and Krypton (yikes) instead of a Superman series, Arrow and Gotham instead of straight-up Batman, and Inhumans/experiments in the MCU instead of Mutants (this may change due to recent purchases made by Disney, but that’s still up in the air). There are a few exceptions, but they’re just as complicated as the surface level restrictions. The spelling of Quicksilver’s real name, his parentage, and origin (Baron Strucker’s experiment in the MCU vs Mutant in X-Men mythos) in both X-Men and Marvel are chief among them.
How to Fix It: Creative Commons Licensing
Creative Commons licensing is a fancy way of saying “hey, I made this thing and you liked it, and I like that you liked it, so I’m willing to let you expand on it” or something like that. There’s a whole bunch of legalities involved, and when I tried to research the technicalities, I had to take a break and wait for my brain to cool down, but ultimately this allows for outside parties to effectively create their own stories. This means Superman gets to be in the movies and on TV in various iterations, stories, and capacities, and doesn’t need to be restricted to vague references or 10 minute guest appearances (looking at you, Supergirl). You can see a little spark of magic in this possibility in the recent Logan, which functions as a glorious swan song for our favorite Hugh Jackman-Wolverine. It acknowledges the character’s on-screen origins (the X-Men franchise) but ultimately stands on its own as a film. It’s standalone! Unfortunately, due to the connection with the X-Men franchise, this had to exist in an alternate future of sorts to work properly. Creative commons licensing would help alleviate some of those hoops. Logan’s old, man, he can’t be jumping through all these hoops. Most importantly, this means we could have various versions of the same characters happening at the same time, no need to wait for the reboot.
DC Comics used to do this thing called Elseworlds, where popular characters such as Superman, Batman, Green Lantern, etc. would have their stories told in dramatically different ways. It’s essentially just a “what-if” scenario. What if Batman became a Green Lantern? What if the Justice League were steampunk? What if Superman were also Batman (yep)? Nowadays, we get these stories in mini-series like Earth One and American Alien, but if this could be transferred to movies and TV? Exciting stuff.
As I mentioned before, I’m pretty ignorant to how this whole licensing rights process works. It’s hard to read up on it in a way that I can understand it.
My ideal future for entertainment is definitely something along those lines, though. Being able to see (or even create, should I ever be so lucky!) new stories without being hindered by the fact that someone else is creating a story that happens to feature the same character? That would be paradise. They already do this with comic books — a bunch of different titles featuring the same characters, not restricted by stories already in progress. And it works, some people flock to one title, some to the other, and still others might buy all the titles they can get their hands on.
Imagine a world where The Dark Knight Returns is properly adapted into a live-action film, featuring a mighty brawl between the Man of Steel and the Caped Crusader, while in the same few years, a separate iteration of Batman or Superman exists (featuring Matt Bomer or Jon Hamm as Clark Kent, and Gabriel Macht or Armie Hammer as Bruce Wayne) and they don’t tread on each other. Wouldn’t that be something?
Allowing all these new and separate stories would help to alleviate that exhaustion you feel when another movie comes out in the same franchise you may be tired of (like I am with the direction taken by recent DC Comics movies). There’s not a sense of dread when you realize there’s another Spider-Man reboot on the way. Frankly, I’m not sure there’s any legitimate reason preventing this from being possible that doesn’t involve money. As far as I can tell, more stories = more money. Win-Win for everyone.
What do you think? Would allowing separate stories to be told simultaneously work? Would you support that, and go see the movies/watch the shows? Let me know in the comments, or on Twitter: twitter.com/ajisokay
And stay tuned for more on this series! My next topic is surrounding Blockbuster movie franchises. Thanks for reading!
