Quality Over Quantity; Fan-Fiction Vs Major Film Studios

An example of fan-fiction will be this week’s video of the week, “The Lord Inquisitor – Prologue [UHD]” (by Warpgazer).

It only took me 46 seconds before I came to the conclusion that I was mesmerised and hooked. My jaw dropped the moment I saw the incredible amount of detail on the ships, and on the planet, and with the background music fleshing out the opening scene; I was at a loss for words for all the right reasons.

Warhammer 40k’s universe is vast and offers boundless opportunities to create a magnitude of fan fiction, and Warpazer hasn’t that that opportunity slip through his fingers and instead created his own short film. After watching the video and picking up my jaw from the ground, the first thought that went through my head was, “this is miles better than the feature length film, Ultramarines: A Warhammer 40,000 Movie.” I could see what they wanted to do with the film, but it just didn’t hit the nail on the head for me, and unfortunately for a lot of other people as well. Games Workshop, who owns Warhammer 40k, took many years before they agreed to any company making a feature length film; but my overall review is it could have been much better than it was.

This could easily have taken its place. Being a prologue, not much of the story is revealed which is understandable, but it was gripping, stunning, and epic – all the ingredients needed to portray the impressive world that is the Warhammer 40k. The second thought that went through my head brought me back to when I was talking about the fan made video about the Doctor meeting Sherlock for the first time. I spoke about how a fan made production can sometimes look better than the ones that are acknowledged as being official and professional. This can be because when doing something by yourself, everything is yours, including your plan and therefore you can make the project the best of your ability, whereas within the walls of the BBC, or behind the official editor’s door for a full-length feature film, every aspect of the project has numerous deadlines. Whilst they are making each project the best it can possibly be, they can’t spend as much time as they probably would like to make it even better. The video above is another prime example of that.

So much effort and time has been put into making every shot so detailed and therefore perfect. To make any feature-film from beginning to end does take a very long time. Sometimes breaking into the third year from when it was first announced, but when it is eventually released, everyone loves it. It’s not always the case because sometimes certain productions are halted or deadlines extended due to various and/or numerous complications so when the final product is released, it’s not as good as it could have been. But even if those films were given the time to freshen up and be bettered, what could they have been? However, the deadlines are always creeping up behind everyone, meaning they have to be finished by then and not a day more unless rearranged otherwise.

My question is: Is it quality of quantity better? You do see this question more prominent within the game industry, and I do highly agree that quality over quantity is far better than pumping out a broken game every year, but can the same concept be applied to feature-length films and TV programs. My first initial example of this concept, is the TV series Sherlock. There are numerous reasons as to why each series is a couple of years apart from one another, but when the three episodes are released, they are a massive hit with audiences, and its popularity couldn’t be any higher with the anticipation of its fourth series beginning next year on New Year’s Day 2017.

I have looked at many of the main franchises that are dominating the film industry at the moment, and I can’t find any example of quality of quantity, but instead finding plenty of examples of quantity and quality, which is not what I was expecting. MARVEL studios is pumping out one to two films each year, and with the odd one, such as Ant-Man, Iron Man 3, not getting that good reception compared to all the other films in the series so far; I moved onto looking at another franchise.

I started to look into what films Pixar has made over the years from when Toy Story was first released back in 1995. It wasn’t until 1998 did A Bug’s Life hit cinemas, but it was only the very next year in 1999 when Toy Story 2 was released, and that was met with critical acclaim as well. Monsters, Inc – 2001, Finding Nemo – 2003, both major hit films two years apart – and some people are saying that they are better by a bit or by a lot than Toy Story 2. OK, so maybe there is an answer to all of this. The Incredibles came out the next year in 2004, and we all know how massive that film still is, and then in 2006, Cars came out and wasn’t met with as much acclaim as all the others previously. And I get further and further away from finding an example with the next 7 films in Pixar’s catalogue all released one year after the previous. These include: Ratatouille – 2007, WALL-E – 2008, Up – 2009, Toy Story 3 – 2010, Cars 2 – 2011, Brave – 2011, and Monsters University – 2013. Out of all those seven films, only Cars 2 is considered the worst and Toy Story 3 and Up are considered the best, so I can safely say that I won’t be finding any examples there. In fact, there were two films released last year in 2015: Inside Out, and The Good Dinosaur, and both of them were met with critical acclaim.

My third attempt at finding an example was looking at the franchise, James Bond, and I came close. Casino Royale came out in 2006, Quantum of Solace came out in 2008 – but that was met with a large array of dislikes from fans. Skyfall came out in 2012, and Spectre came out in 2015. Only one film was pretty much unanimously agreed to be the worst one. I’ve finally found an example that I can use to explain that sometimes it’s good to put quality ahead of quantity… But that’s just one example though and therefore doesn’t hold as much weight as I would like it to, and if I look at other franchises such as Harry Potter, which only got better with each film; DC, which is met with many mixed feelings; Mission: Impossible, which isn’t getting any worse as it continues, instead it’s exploring bigger and better avenues and succeeding; I’m just left scratching my head wondering why I even bothered asking that question in the first place.

So why are fan-fiction short films, movies, and videos considered better by the public than the actual films themselves? It doesn’t make any sense and is essentially slightly contradicting people’s opinions. Is it because of the prefix fan-fiction that changes people’s perspective just before viewing the completed project? It does make sense to think that in a way – a feature length film has been made by what people do consider as professionals and therefore it’s almost expected the finished project to be the best it can be: If it’s good – “awesome.”, but if it’s bad – “they are professionals and therefore it shouldn’t be this bad.” When it comes to fan-fiction, however, I believe there’s that automatic leeway we give to the people behind it: If it’s bad – “then they are only fans after all and they aren’t doing this as their full time job, but what they did create was good nonetheless”, but if it’s good – “this was created by a fan… why aren’t the bigger studios hiring this guy/these people.” And we also apply this train of thought with the time between releases. There will always be those that are wanting more right this very moment, but the majority of people understand that it takes time to create such masterwork, because they are only fans after all.

So maybe that’s my answer as to whether the film industry should consider the concept of quality over quantity: they are big studios, so they have a lot of people and resources to put into any one project at any one time, to make it the best film it can possibly be. Whilst the differences between fans and large studios is apparent and deserves a large list to explain fully, the main is there is only a finite amount of resources that be utilised within the given budget and within the set deadlines. Fans – whilst they do have their own set budget and their resources may not be as much as they would have liked, they don’t have an uncontrollable deadlines and therefore can use those resources to make any project they sink their teeth into the best it can possibly be. If certain fan-fiction creators are hired by major studios, they will also be confined to their ways and may not be able to create the same outstanding pieces of work that they have created before – but they do deserve more recognition that they have already and hired by major studios in their respective fields.

Thanks for reading

Antony Hudson

(TonyHadNouns)