Occasionally, I may have a post that really has no point except for me to ramble and share my thoughts. This might be one of those times. I was just thinking of different things I could write about and there really is quite a bit out there. It is like the golden age of geek right now. Everything geeky seems to be really successful, so everyone is getting in on it, creating more geeky products and media for us to obsess about – even geeky blogs like Flashback Comics & Games are starting to pop up more and more. Somewhere along the way, someone figured out that geek fans are the best fans because they go all out. We obsess about whatever we are into. The only fans in the world that compare to geeks in their fanliness are sports fans. In fact, thinking about it, geeks and sports fans have a lot in common. We both live and die with our obsession. If the local team has a big loss, the sports fan is down and out. If they have a win then they are elated, especially if they made a sports bet through a website like sbo-th.bet for Online Betting Thailand. It’s all as if they were on the field and a part of the action. The geek feels the same way after watching a Steven Moffat written episode of Doctor Who. Sports fans will buy their team’s merch from somewhere like the NRL Store, dress up in any manner of colorful clothing to support their team. They will dye their hair, paint their face, dress head to toe in their team’s colors. How is that any different from cosplay? I am a geek, and I enjoy sports. When I go to my support my team of choice, it’s in the appropriate attire. When I went to go see Captain America: Winter Soldier I had to buy a new Captain America shirt. Merchandisers and clothing makers and television studios have been making a lot of money off of sports fans for a very long time. Now, they have figured out that they can make a lot of money tapping into the geek market.
This is both good and bad. On the one hand, there are a lot of cool things happening as a result of this, including the combination of the geek and sports market. For example, you can sign up to play in a fantasy football league and create your own dfs draft lineup. It also seems like every recent blockbuster has had some tie to geek, whether it is superhero related, Fantasy related or SciFi, movie studios know that the money is there. And, a lot of the movies aren’t crap. The movie-making people have realized that the potential return is there, so it’s ok to invest a lot of money to make the movies not crap. They hire serious actors and directors and make good quality stuff. This leads to more things for us to buy, from t-shirts to bobbleheads to phone cases to prop replicas, we will buy it all, and it is all readily available like never before. It is awesome.
That’s the one hand. On the other hand, it seems like everything is soooo mainstream. Part of being a geek was being different. Nobody quite got you, you were kind of weird. This was hard growing up, but it built character and made it awesome when you met another geek, and you never had to question their sincerity, because no one pretended to be into that stuff. Now, everyone is into it, and that can be a little discomforting. It is weird to see a “jock” into Captain America. Part of you thinks “Wait, you already got all the girls in high school, now you’re taking my Cap too?” Maybe not, maybe that’s just me. But it is getting harder and harder to find a fandom untainted by the touch of the mainstream. Maybe this is why so many young men are flocking to the Brony side of life. Before, they would have just been nerds or geeks, into something *normal* like Star Wars or comics, but that has all become so mainstream, they have to find something quirky and weird. Hellllooo Ponies! Plus, because the studios and movie making people know we will buy anything, they also put out a lot of crap. Most of it is really good, but some of it is questionable. Take the new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie as an example. Will it be good? I don’t know, but it looks weird. And not in a Guardians of the Galaxy good kind of weird. Just weird and not right. Number one, the turtles have noses. That’s just creepy. Is this going to be a great re-boot of a cherished childhood memory, or just a big disappointment. My money is on the latter. Re-boots are like that, though. Some are ok and have some great nods to the originals and you can appreciate them. Some are not so great and you wish they would have just left them alone (Transformers, I’m looking at you). And what is not getting rebooted these days? Everything is. Many people have suspected that Hollywood ran out of original ideas a while ago. The recent influx of re-boots is a great indicator that might be true. And sometimes, the re-boots happen pretty rapidly. Next year we are getting a new Batman movie (I know, it’s Batman Vs. Superman, but c’mon, it’s a new Batman). We are re-booting a film franchise whose last film came out in 2012. There will be 3 years between the end of Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight Trilogy and the next Batman re-boot. That’s worse than Spider-Man.
But with all the bad comes a lot of good. There are a lot of fellow geeks out there making the movies and TV shows we love. People who, like us, love the source material with which they’re working. Studios may be trying to crank these things out , but they are funding them. And they’ll continue to as long as we keep helping them score big at the box office. Which we will. I keep wondering when it will all end. I used to be sure it would all end someday, sooner than later. Now, I’m not so sure. We are the most loyal fans. Fanlier than any other group of fans. As long as enough quality is there, we will buy tickets in droves, and as long as we do that, there will be films to buy tickets for. It really is a great time to be a geek.
