For this week’s screening we watched The Warriors and I really enjoyed this movie. I kinda figured I would enjoy the film based off the fact that other people liked it and that it has a huge cult following. I loved every minute of the film and I especially love how the film is treated like a comic book, which reminds me a bit of the film, Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse and the only reason is because the animation of that film is created to look like a comic book and the scene transitions of The Warriors was created to look like a comic book. I also enjoyed the readings, but there was one in particular that caught my attention the most and that was Fiske’s “The Cultural Economy of a Fandom” and it caught my attention for many different reasons.

The reason why I connected to Fiske’s piece the most is because I have seen many times the power of a fandom and how much a fandom can save or harm a franchise. I am also a part of many fandoms that range in various different sizes. To save a franchise part of a fandom, I have witnessed a few occasions where a fandom has saved a TV show from being canceled, and I am going to mention two that I was apart of. The two shows that I have witnessed being saved were Brooklyn 99 and Last Man Standing. Both of these shows were canceled by the stations that they were on, but because of how powerful fandoms are, the fans were able to get different stations to pick them up and now the shows are thriving on their new stations.

I have recently witnessed a fandom delay the release of a major movie. The story is that on Monday March 3rd, 2020 the founders of two of the most popular James Bond fan sites asked MGM and Universal to delay the release of the film due to the coronavirus. This ended up happening because on Wednesday the studios decided to change the release date of No Time To Die from its April release to a November release date. All of this because of the fans.

I have also witnessed fans bash on a movie of a particular franchise so much that it has basically divided the fan base in two. The movie that I am talking about is Star Wars: The Last Jedi and this film was able to divide the fan base basically in two. After the release of the film, many fans of Star Wars loved the film and even considered it the best in the franchise, while others called it the worst film in the franchise and that it destroyed Star Wars. The split in the fan base hit so much that the next film in the franchise, Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker, basically further divided the fandom. The next film split the franchise basically into people who thought Skywalker saved the trilogy, people who thought it was the worst conclusion of the franchise, people who thought that it erased everything from the Last Jedi and basically made the franchise better, and there was also people who thought that the film was ridiculous and that it made no sense. There are so many different fandoms that have been created because of The Last Jedi and they are all so different from one another. But there is one thing that unites all of these fandoms of Star Wars, and that is that they all have some sort of love for Star Wars. There is one thing that I find unique about these fandoms and that The Child, AKA Baby Yoda was able to unite all of the Star Wars fandom and find something in the franchise to love again.

So, I would say that the power of a fandom is very strong and that it can harm or hurt a franchise, for No Time To Die, I can’t tell if changing the release date will ultimately benefit the film or if it will harm the film as a whole. All I know is that fandoms are very strong and that there will always be some sort of fandom for a movie, no matter how bad or good the film is.