Why old fans hate new things

As I’ve written many times on this blog, I love the Star Wars prequel trilogy. In 2021, that statement isn’t quite as controversial anymore as it used to be, but I remember a time when it would have been enough to get tossed out into the street and kicked in the kidneys by passers-by as you were writhing in pain in the mud. Today, the sequel trilogy has replaced it as the prime object of fan hatred and the prequels have come to be more accepted — grudgingly, I’ll admit, but give it another 10 years and they will be considered a beloved set of movies.

I love The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. It’s my second favorite game of all time (a very close second after Skyrim), but I remember a time when haughty Morrowind fans would scoff and turn up their noses at me for that. Oh, yes. I remember what the Bethesda forums were like when Oblivion came out. How it was mocked and reviled for being dumbed down, generic, too action-oriented and even “rotten to the core”. Today, Oblivion is considered a timeless classic and is held up as an example of how to do an open world RPG right (and I agree, of course).

I love The Hobbit trilogy, and for the moment, I know that many fans will scoff at me for that, but as time moves on and Amazon’s Middle-earth TV series is released, the brunt of the anger may move to that production (I personally suspect that it will) and then Peter Jackson’s Hobbit trilogy is sure to become as warmly embraced as The Lord of the Rings trilogy rightfully is.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not some drug-infused hippie who just “totally loves everything, man”. No, I hate some new things too — Disney’s Beauty and the Beast remake, for example. Or The Last Jedi. I even got really upset when the Hercule Poirot TV series was updated to become much more cinematic, serious and mature. I vastly preferred the charm of the old episodes where Captain Hastings would sigh “I say” every five seconds and the same saxophone melody would play over every scene.

Of course, I’m inclined to believe that I have legitimate reasons for my opinions, whereas those other people are all just mindless bandwagon-hoppers. Then again, if I were mindless myself, I wouldn’t know it, would I? My dislike for the Star Wars sequel trilogy could be far less rational and objective than I think it is and mostly the result of the entirely subjective criteria by which I judged the films. Why would I be above that?

I will definitely keep on defending the prequels, The Hobbit and Oblivion to the bitter end, but I do wonder why these works received such backlash from their respective fanbases when I found so much to love about them. Is it really as simple as the bandwagon phenomenon? Even if that is the case, why did the bandwagon take off in the first place? There must be reasons why old fans tend to hate new things.

I think there are, and here are my theories.

Contempt for the familiar

Humans are fickle and irrational beings. Our appreciation for others’ achievements is very dependent on external factors. When I was 19 years old, I was deeply in love with a girl who ended up rejecting me and so I was in a sad, dejected state when I went to see The Mummy Returns — and I loved it. It was a big, stupid, loud movie full of creatures and special effects and that was precisely what I needed at that moment to feel better. Watching it again a year or two later in a far more rational state of mind, I was amused to find this time around that it was actually an extremely messy, confusing movie and the special effects had some major issues. But… I’d be lying if I didn’t say that The Mummy Returns helped me far more that one heartbroken night than Schindler’s List would have. And I’m quite sure it wasn’t the movie’s inherent quality that influenced my initial judgment so much as my very subjective state of mind.

In other words: anything that comes surrounded by pleasant emotions will be forgiven for its flaws.

This is why Hollywood makes nothing but sequels, remakes and adaptations of beloved novels anymore. It’s far easier to get an audience excited about a new movie when there is something about it that conjures up nice memories. That was the genius behind the movie Joker, which is nothing like a Batman comic at all. It’s just a dark, realistic drama but it managed to draw in a huge audience simply through its connection to the Batman lore.

People love the familiar; it’s what keeps them from rejecting new things out of hand. But at the same time, they don’t respect the familiar, because they are fickle and irrational beings. They want things to be the same, but they aren’t impressed by things that are the same — at the same time. Having been wowed by the amazing artistic and technical achievements of one trilogy, they shrug when a new trilogy performs feats of a similar nature and caliber. With The Hobbit, Peter Jackson pushed the technical envelope just as much as he did with The Lord of the Rings when it came out. He achieved this by filming in high frame rate with 3D cameras, using real-time digital sets and raising the bar for motion capture technology. On the design end, there is a phenomenal level of detail and thought behind every decision. Just watch the documentaries on the extended edition blu-ray discs for The Hobbit and you’ll see the passion, insight and creativity behind the designs for every environment, building, costume and creature. When The Lord of the Rings came out, everyone was raving about those aspects of the adaptation, but with The Hobbit, they were quite simply taken for granted. Instead, most of the attention went to what were perceived to be the films’ flaws. And to be perfectly honest, a lot of those complaints sound to me like they came from people who were really looking for something to complain about.

The “positive qualities” blind spot

This leads into the second reason why I believe old fans often don’t appreciate new installments in their favorite franchises. Having built a strong attachment to the IP, we usually hold strong opinions on what its core values are and what a new movie/book/game in the series should be like. This may cause devoted fans to turn into nitpickers who can’t help but see flaws and mistakes everywhere. And that’s perfectly understandable, but I find it causes us to miss out almost entirely on the positive qualities of new installments.

A good example is Fallout 4. I never played the old 2D Fallout games, but I did enjoy Fallout 3 quite a bit, even though I was never a super devoted fan. When Fallout 4 came out, this put me in a position where I could enjoy the game for what it was without obsessing over what it wasn’t. And what I found was a masterpiece of gameplay mechanics, environmental design and immersive visuals. Meanwhile, many hardcore fans seemed to find more reasons to be disappointed than happy. They bemoaned the things that were lost, like the old dialogue system, the depth of choice and consequence, and the far gloomier, more pessimistic feel of the world in its predecessor. I understand that, but what has me scratching my head a little is how so many fans didn’t seem to even notice or care about the many great things that Fallout 4 brought to the table, such as the far improved combat, the incredibly rich crafting (not just settlement building, but chems, armor, weapons…),  unforgettable followers such as Nick Valentine (a character on par with the best party members from Bioware) and the vastly improved armor system.

I don’t mean to say that fans’ gripes were immaterial, but the issues they found led many of them to abandon the game altogether when they could have discovered something really, really great (in my opinion, by far the most enjoyable entry in the Fallout franchise). After all, Fallout 3 and Fallout New Vegas already existed. Why couldn’t Fallout 4 be a different kind of game? It may be true that, as the popular criticism goes, the game is “a mile wide and an inch deep” (I disagree, but let’s just assume it’s true, just for the sake of argument). Well, even then there is still a lot to say for that “mile wide” experience and it’s a real pity so many chose to dismiss it.

The “bad qualities of the old” blind spot

Of course, this also works in reverse. And here I think there is no better example than the original Star Wars trilogy. That’s right, I’m going there. It’s been pointed out by others than I that many of the criticisms people have of the prequels could be leveled just as well at the originals: wooden dialogue, unrealistic acting, naïve storytelling — but I would call all of those things features, not bugs. They’re in the DNA of Star Wars and actually represent what the series was always meant to be like. George Lucas mentions this a few times: a lot of the inspiration for Star Wars comes from the old black & white Flash Gordon serials and the acting style is lifted from that era as well.

But let’s bracket those things for a moment. If you ask me, the original Star Wars trilogy suffers from a number flaws that are wholly its own. A New Hope has a rather lackluster pace if you watch it today and it really struggles to evoke any emotion whenever something tragic is supposed to happen. The murder of uncle Owen and aunt Beru? Shrug. The destruction of Alderaan, causing the deaths of billions of people? Yawn. I’m sorry, but it’s true — I never felt anything when I watched those scenes, except that the music was very beautiful. Then there is the fact that the environments look quite boring and mundane a lot of the time, and that is really bad for an escapist space fantasy. The Death Star doesn’t feel like a bastion of evil, but more like a dull office building occupied by Stormtroopers. This issue is amended somewhat in The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, fortunately. Still, almost nothing in the original trilogy offers the kind of vibrant exotic beauty (Naboo, Geonosis, Kamino) or horror (Mustafar) of the worlds we get to experience in the prequels. The only exceptions are Dagobah and Endor, which I thought were wonderful locations. But I don’t think that this is a small gripe. It’s a major issue for what is often described as the greatest achievement of escapist adventure in cinematic history. Especially when you come to realize that the world building offered in episodes 4 to 6 is really quite thin as well, especially compared to the prequels. And there are other problems. Return of the Jedi has some of the best moments of the trilogy in Luke’s confrontation with the Emperor, but it also suffers from a terribly disjointed screenplay, with an overlong first half (Jabba’s palace) that doesn’t really add enough to the overall story to earn its running time, and an awfully unimaginative plot device in the second Death Star. People also complain about the Ewoks, but I personally really liked them (I think Star Wars can be cute and fluffy).

So, don’t get me wrong, I love the original trilogy! None of the issues I have with it are dealbreakers. The point I’m trying to make is simply this: if you’re so inclined, you can complain about anything. Casablanca? You could call it naïve romantic tripe and say that Bogart’s character is inconsistent because his final decision doesn’t match his cynical personality. Ben-Hur? You could say it’s too long, the acting style is dated and the music is overblown. Citizen Kane? You could say the movie buries its plot in an overload of cinematic innovations or that it falls flat because it has an unlikable protagonist. Take any movie — any at all — and you could bash it if you want.

Proposing an alternative

Of course people are free to love or hate a work of entertainment as they interpret it. There is no reason why nostalgic fans should be forced to praise a new installment if they simply don’t like it. However, I believe we should all be a bit more open to the idea that perhaps our opinions are not as objective as we would like to think. After all, it’s almost impossible to be objective about these things.

I often hear things like “I enjoy that movie, but I know it’s not actually good” or “this book is my guilty pleasure”. I hate that. If you find value and enjoyment in a work of fiction, how can you badmouth it like that? I think we tend to say such things because we have an ill-defined notion of objective quality hovering in the back of our minds, where titles such as The Godfather and War and Peace roam around, and there can’t possibly be room for a Warhammer 40,000 novel there. But why couldn’t a novel about Space Marines be deep and insightful, or at least well-written?

While I do believe in objective standards of beauty and quality, I think we are almost always too close to the material to be able to judge it impartially. And do we really have to? Most of the time, I don’t think we do. It’s impossible for me to objectively judge The Dark Crystal for example, since that film was such an important influence on me even as a child. I’m sure it has flaws, but I’m incapable of seeing them because for me The Dark Crystal is a perfect, untouchable relic of my childhood. And to be perfectly honest, I like it that way. I don’t want to tarnish the experience I have every time I get to watch that movie. Perhaps future art historians will recognise it as a masterpiece, or perhaps they will completely ignore it, but is that really what matters most? The Dark Crystal inspired me and was one of the things that set me on the path of pursuing creative activities for the rest of my life. I think the value in that is incomparable.