Victim of Culture

Continuing our story some other place, some other time

There was a time, not too long ago, that when a television show’s ratings fell too low and it was canceled, that was the end of the road.  Not so anymore. 

Ghostbusters is getting a second sequel, but in video game form.  Buffy the Vampire Slayer got an eighth season, but in comic form.  Highlander: The Series may have ended its run, but fan-favorite Methos got his own spinoff web animation series.  Welcome to the brave new world of endless media properties.

Why would, or should, devoted fans want to give up on created universes they have invested both time and money into?  Star Trek was perhaps the best early example of this phenomenon, where the live action series begot an animated series which begot films which begot TV spinoffs.  The Star Trek franchise has spanned eleven films and six series at this point, and all because the creators were willing to be creative with their property.

Of course, other properties have dabbled in books for years.  Walk through the genre section of an major book chain and you’ll see tons of Star Trek, Star Wars, Buffy, Babylon 5, and more books.  But these dabbles always felt like cheap conciliation prizes for many fans.  Sure, a new Star Wars novel could explore themes a mainstream Hollywood film never could, but it also couldn’t whisk its audience away in quite the same fashion.  George Lucas realized this and capitalized on the desire with original video games, cartoons, comic books, novels, soundtracks, action figures, and more.

But if Star Trek and Star Wars were the blueprints, few skilled architects followed them until recently, and likely for a very important reason.  In recent years the Internet and growth of both the home video and cable markets have created a gaping hole for original content.  Only so many networks can show reruns of I Dreamed of Jeanie!  With the advent of DVD and the unique idea of a sell-through home video format many studios found they could invest more heavily into direct-to-video productions, and so they have.

Perhaps the biggest motivator, though, has come from the Internet.  The endless message boards and chat rooms have enabled the nerds of America (and the world) to speak out in a manner they never have before.  While local comic book shops might have been filled with angry X-Men fans when the 1990s Fox Network cartoon was cancelled, there were few ways for them to voice their opinion to the powers that be.  The Internet provides that, and media owners are scrambling for ways in which to franchise any and every property they own.

Pitch Black, an above average horror science fiction film, therefore begets a live-action sequel, cartoon, video game, and more.  And now such a fate is befalling Ghostbusters.  A new video game will ship this summer chronicling the events after the second film, and a third film looks close to becoming a reality.  I guess that would make it part four in reality, right?

The Matrix tried this multimedia shotgun approach a few years back with the release of its two sequels.  They brought with them a video game (with live-action footage from the film actors), several cartoons, and even an online role-playing game.  Of course, just about the entire mess failed miserably with fans and the franchise is fairly stagnant at this point.  And of course, that’s the concern with a shotgun approach.  Creative minds begin spreading themselves too thin and the fruits of their work begin to come out slightly rotten.  But with such danger lurking in the franchise world, who ya gonna call?

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