This morning, I found out that the classic anime Saint Seiya, also known as Knights of the Zodiac, is getting a remake by Netflix. Though I know next to nothing about the franchise, I know that it is beloved by many a fan.
Then we learn that the producer turned one of the main cast, an effeminate male named Andromeda Shun, into a female to “modernize” the story, and it went over as badly as you’d expect with the trailer getting ratio’d. Bounding into Comics has the gory details.
This whole fiasco has me thinking of a video I saw once, comparing “fans of the franchise” to “fans of the brand.” Originally mentioned in the context of Star Wars fandom, Franchisers and Branders (my terminology) differ in how they engage with a given intellectual property.
As the video explains, fans of the franchise enjoy the IP itself, consuming the actual media and discussing their favored IP on a deep level. By contrast, fans of the brand latch on to an IP because it’s popular and only engage with it in a superficial fashion, like buying merchandise because it looks nice, caring very little for the underlying IP. Franchisers care about things like the lore and the themes, and can discuss these things amongst each other very easily, even if a given fan isn’t knowledgeable about every last thing. Branders, on the other hand, can have no meaningful conversation with Franchisers because the Branders don’t know the IP all too well and don’t really care — they just like the merchandise and keeping up with what’s hot.
So far, a string of “socially updated” remakes and sequels, from Ghostbusters in 2016 to She-Ra and the Princesses of Power today, to say nothing of The Last Jedi, all share a pattern: they take a popular IP and drastically change it to fulfill a political agenda, often ignoring or contradicting that franchise’s core themes. When longtime fans object to the changes, those fans are insulted as bigots and told that the new version isn’t for them, or they are told that the franchise they like is problematic and needs to be cleaned up for modern times. Interest in the reimagined IP then declines, with the most notable example being the flop of Solo: A Star Wars Story, the first flop in Star Wars history (it’s important to remember that for all the hate the prequels got, they did not flop.)
My belief is that such moves are driven by Branders who don’t really like the franchise, but do like the franchise’s social prestige.
That’s why Branders often radically alter a franchise once they get control of it — they don’t really enjoy it that much and simply want to use the name to prop up the project, or they want to take something that people like and twist it into something else because they can’t create anything on their own. They don’t like what the franchise is, they like what the franchise can give them, whether financially or socially.
This is why one common characteristic of these particular Branders is to insult audiences as much as possible: they want passive consumers who take what they’re given, not a passionate fanbase who might talk back or show disapproval with a franchise’s direction. It’s why the term “entitled fans” is common among this set — they believe they don’t owe a thing to the people actually paying money, and they disdain real fan engagement. The insults and rude behavior are intended to train customers not to talk back to the owners, and to show customers that they have no say at all over the franchise. It’s as if the owners want to say, “See this? I’m where you fanboys wish you could be. I control the IP, and you control nothing, so shut up.”
In other words, they want all fans to be superficial fans of the brand. They’re so much less troublesome, and they don’t mind lazy, uninspired work on the franchise itself. One can reduce all fan engagement to snarky tweets, then eat up the franchise’s good will until there’s none left.
Thus, one should consider Saint Seiya over, because the Netflix staff in charge will make it a point to ignore and belittle you. Once a franchise goes down this path, it never returns and must be abandoned.
This leads back to the question of what is the essential nature of a work of art, and how much can be changed while remaining true to the original spirit. It’s a surprisingly deep question, whether you are talking about a particular title or a genre.
I’ve learned over the years that something can have all the trappings of Science Fiction, say, starships and rayguns and whatnot, while not possessing any of the attributes that I, personally, enjoy about genre fiction. There is a lot of what I call “glue some gears on it” Science Fiction out there.
I expect that there are many who would agree with the Brand/Franchise distinction you posit, but would disagree with which is which.
It’s one of those things where you know it when you see it. If the new custodians of a work are changing things up because they find the original “problematic,” it’s a safe bet they don’t want to be true to the original.