Can pissing off the original fanbase of an existing property lead to a massive box office bomb?

Truly outrageous... Box office results.

Pan got... Well, panned.

In these past couple of months, Hollywood tried rebooting two very different franchises, albeit those with a devoted fan following. Both films ended up a disaster at the box office and killed any possible chance of a sequel or merchandise cash in. What the hell happened? Well, let's take a look at each film. The first is a "modern re-imagining," Jem and the Holograms, a popular science-fiction cartoon from the 80a and the other is the simply titled Pan, a first in a proposed series of prequels detailing the origin of Peter Pan and his feud with Captain Hook. The fanbase violently rejected both films and the rest of the potential audiences didn't see any interest in a rehash of an old fairy or a another vapid teen drama with no real star power dealing about the ups and downs of a girl band.

"Synergy," a powerful supercomputer capable of creating entire
virtual worlds was almost entirely dropped from the Jem movie
and turned into something drastically different.

So what happened? Simple. Both films managed to alienate their built-in fanbase before they even opened with trailers blatantly showing that the filmmakers completely thrown out the original materials and went into their own direction. Jem, at least the original version, was indeed about a girl band, but it also dealt with high staked globe trotting adventures, sci-fi whimsy, espionage, and everything else that made 80s cartoons so entertaining. The film version has none of that. Gone is the holographic supercomputer, along with Jem's secret identity, the orphanage she looks after, and her band's arch rivals The Misfits, known as one of few Saturday Morning Cartoon villains that actually flat out tried to murder the main characters, often on a weekly basis. Instead we are treated to a bland teen drama of four friends making it big on YouTube. Other aspects of the show are also scrambled, such as the main antagonist's gender and the remaining characters' roles and relationships. Let's just say most fans were not pleased and lost all incentive to head to the theaters on opening weekend, and the film ended up grossing only 2/5 of it's whopping $5 million dollar budget. Another, more personal issue that I have with Jem is that it seems that the Hollywood powers that be don't take "girl centric" properties seriously. Movies like Transformers, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and various superior films get lavish big budgets showered on them, but a movie like Jem has no opportunity to show up its original epic scale because of its paltry budget. That turns the whole affair into a self-fulfilling prophecy, that girl-centric big screen franchises always "suck." And that is the sad, depressing, gruesome tale of Jem. But at least it gave us this "jem" of a parody on YouTube:

Now on to Pan. Where to begin? Unlike Jem, it had a huge budget, star power, and dazzlingly amazing visuals in its trailer, yet it tanked even worse, possibly taking down the careers of the art-house darling director Joe Wright and star Hugh Jackman. So many things went wrong here, the least of which was Joe Wright channeling his aforementioned "art-house" roots and adding songs by Nirvana and the Ramones into what is supposed to be a whimsical children's film. Hugh Jackman's overly "glamorous" and "flamboyant" portrayal of Blackbeard, a real life persona that has literally no Peter Pan myth, also seemed off putting. Another alienating factor was casting white actors as the Native American tribe that lives in Neverland. Overall, the film just didn't feel like it was part of the Peter Pan universe, something that has been loved and adored by children of all ages for decades. Joe Wright's brightly colored "Rococo" style production design went over the intended audience's heads. As critics pointed out, this strange heady brew of deviation turned the film into a "something for nobody," it turned into a white elephant that no one really cared to see. And thus, a colossal bomb was created and only time will tell if it destroyed any of the people involved with the film and if Hollywood will go back to Neverland.

And now comes my opinion as to where both films coincide in terms of flopping. They are both origin stories. Dull, generic, by-the-numbers cliched origin stories. Ever since Batman Begins, studios have been tripping over themselves to create gritty and serious films about famous pop culture characters' humble beginnings. So far we had to endured various "explanatory" prequels for King Arthur, Robin Hood, Spider-Man (TWICE!), Wolverine, and Maleficent. I'm sure there are more that I'm forgetting. Oh, right, there's also that the first season of Netflix series Daredevil, which is almost a textbook example of an "origin prequel." We, the built-in fanbase and the audience already familiar with the subject, have to endure an entire film until the very end when the character we came to see actually becomes the character we came to see. Jem literally teased it with us by showing a fake trailer during the credits of everything we wanted to see (Synergy Supercomputer, epic adventures, the Misfits) for a proposed sequel, which of course now will never get made. Pan makes this even worse by setting up the ending to lead into yet another prequel film that doesn't even begin to scratch the eventual characterizations of Peter Pan and Captain Hook.

If there is one positive thing to co

me of these two flops is the end of the insipid "origin prequel."

~Evgueni.