"New Sci-fi" Part Five, Stale Cookies

For a while, I considered calling this section of my lecture "Concessions and Uncomfortable Questions". When I first approached doing this series of posts there was a singular point to be made above all else, the audience hasn't become close minded. A couple of times, there were points where I started to graze close to the concept that the audience has become somehow disgruntled with the genres I've covered, but I stayed on message (as far as I know). But then I reached this point, there's one concession I thought I was going to have to make. After all, even with a surface analysis, you have to understand at least the surface, right? But even then, you might see things wrong.



The thing is, they had a point when at least one comment said "people aren't interested in space stories or robots anymore."

So I came across this one detail and I thought I was going to have to admit "yeah, okay, you're right about that." But after thinking about it, I became more and more sure that it wasn't a sign that people had become "cynical". After some thinking, I was sure I was onto something, but I had to figure out what exactly I could say to express just what exactly I mean without having it misunderstood. I knew what I wanted to say but not how to say it. Then, there was this thing that dawned on me about a week ago. You see, the answer lies in...cookies.



The cookie is the perfect analogy for what we're looking to cover. Cookies come in all shapes and sizes but still manage to keep that general name of cookie despite any number of differences. You've got the fortune cookie all the way to oreos and somehow they're all considered the same thing. This is essentially what we have with science fiction and fantasy too. As different as they all may be, they're still all cookies. And really, there's nothing wrong with being a cookie, some people are really quite fond of cookies.



Our blue friend here is probably the best example of what we want in a science fiction and fantasy fan. He's devoted to the cookies and he'll always come back to the cookies no matter what they try to change his diet with. He's a lifelong customer of the cookie machine. We have these in our community too, the ones who'll show up to a convention dressed as their favorite character, carry stacks of various books and comics that they want signed by people they've never actually seen before and will stand in line for a movie adaptation that they've been waiting for as if it were the second coming of their savior of choice.

But, you see, like the cookie monster, the science fiction and fantasy die hard fans aren't the only ones who are willing to "eat the cookie". The cookie monster will eat cookies all the time if he's allowed, but that doesn't mean that someone else wont eat a cookie too if you give it to them. This holds true for fiction genres too, you very rarely find someone who wont eat up a good story, regardless of genre. You'll find some resistance to the concept from time to time ("I'm on a diet", "I'm full", "diabetes"), but you'll always find at least a healthy portion of any group will still eat the cookie, even with a little hesitation.

You can get people to read science fiction and fantasy, but it has to be good science fiction and fantasy. But like cookies, these genres have a problem that will ruin many things...getting stale.

Too often, plots and settings in science fiction and fantasy get overused, sometimes to the point that you hardly see any difference from one story to the next or even find enough similarities between them that you could ask yourself if they might even be in the same collective "universe" with other stories. There's a dangerous lack of creativity in places that results not in the people deciding they suddenly don't like the "cookies" but rather that the ones they've been given have become stale.

In essence, it's not space or robots that are being rejected, but rather the same old story that's been around for 40 to 60 years with very little variance here and there. Cliches and tropes become common over time and find their way into almost every work, but the genres I speak of are almost the breeding grounds of cliche. So what do you get? People want to read science fiction and fantasy on some level, but everything they get somehow feels like it's gone past its expiration date or was never really "fresh" in the first place.

How do you make something like space "fresh"? You start asking the questions that have been ignored far too often. Every science fiction writer at some point has thrown in a story about first contact. First contact was a great story when it was first being written about because people were feeling the excitement that it may happen soon. But as I pointed out in a previous post, that feeling faded pretty fast when we realized just how hostile the universe is to life. Theories have cropped up over time that there may actually be a possibility that we are alone in the universe.

Faced with this kind of environment, you'd think that we'd take the hint and stop trying to present them with a 40 year old cookie and bake a new one. First contact has some charms to it, but the real potential for a great story has slowly shifted towards a more haunting notion...what if there really is nothing out there?

This is where the "uncomfortable questions" part came in. See, over the years, science fiction and fantasy has started to become formulaic enough that people can start pointing at certain plots and know that everyone has written a form of it for at least 3 generations. Writers have started to play it too safe at times and they avoid questions that are potentially disturbing or unnatural to them.

"What if we really are alone?"

"Did a place like Venus really become a hellhole because of the greenhouse effect? Could we be like that someday?"

"We always assume first contact would either be friendly or hostile, but what if it were apathetic instead?"

There are more questions like these to ask when approaching the tried and true. I already discussed earlier the idea that robots may not care for the same things we do. So often we've approached robots with a set of human standards and morals, but what if they really were as alien in thought to us as we are to ants? These are still the same plot devices and settings, but they've been changed to face new problems and not repeat the same old stories that have been around for decades. These are still cookies, they're just fresh cookies.

I think it's important to remember that. The suggestions I've seen about how to approach the problem tend to suggest that the best method is to simply stop making "cookies" and start presenting something else. They want to abandon the plot devices and settings that have been around for a relatively short time in literary history because they've grown stale for a time, never thinking that a batch made fresh today are preferable to a batch baked by our grandparents. But, failing to realize this, they've started to consider alternatives. These alternatives lead to another uncomfortable question.



There's nothing wrong with these alternatives, there's nothing wrong with fruit, but they simply aren't "cookies", they aren't the stories that the fans of the genre want to find. And while it can't hurt for these fans to be exposed to something different, we must always remember that without the "cookie", he'd simply be "the monster".



There's room for differences in works, in fact, it should be encouraged. But we cannot give up on potential new directions we could take with old ideas. Romance, adventure, mystery, comedy... all of these classic genres have existed for centuries and have survived growing pains over time where things have changed and reshaped themselves. Science fiction and the current form of "fantasy" are relatively young in comparison, still experiencing their growing pains. I'm sure that you all understand what I mean by science fiction because the earliest real examples of it came in the 1800s. But fantasy, as we know it today, was once just folklore, only recently (in historic terms) taking the form it has today.

And I'm sure people still wonder why it is I've repeatedly included fantasy into a talk clearly labeled "science fiction". It was once said quite accurately that any technology sufficiently advanced enough would appear as magic to someone who didn't understand. By the same token, any science fiction sufficiently soft or unexplained will appear as pure fantasy.



And with that, I think I'm done now.

"New Sci-fi" Part Four! Mental Problems (that we all have)

So I sit here being a bit insomniac and figure I might as well get something done in the meantime. By the time I finish this, I will likely be drooling on a pillow...or my desk. In the meantime, I would like to talk to you about your mental problems, there are many of them and they are quite troubling.



But for now, there's three I would like to cover that happen to be the cornerstone of why science fiction and high fantasy have a hard time breaking into the mainstream. Freud's analysis of your mother issues will have to wait for another day.

1. The Problem of Presumption
So, we've all been there at one time or another, you hear that a story is within a certain genre and the first thought in your head is "dear god, no". A typical guy hears "it's a romance story" and starts to internally groan, hoping to keep it bottled enough that he doesn't piss off the women in the room who happen to like it. Fortunately, not all women like romance stories and thus not all of them punish us on a daily basis, else the race of man should fall.

Still, it's a problem that means good things for some genres and bad things for others. If you happen to fall into certain genres, such as adventure, you tend to know that you'll at least hit a demographic of anyone with a sufficient amount of testosterone (btw, for those of you out there that aren't aware, that does include women too, just to a lesser extent). Romance and you'll get the other end of the scale while scaring off the first group. But where exactly do the genres I speak of happen to fall as far as that goes? Well....



...distinguished, well educated gentlemen with ample understanding of the essential infrastructure of modern society, of course.

Okay, fine, nerds. It lures in nerds! But why is that? Obviously, I've covered some of these reasons already. You've got the male fantasy issue combined with the cliche plot devices and you find yourself a nice box that you've stuck yourself in. Unfortunately, that box is hard to understand, a little abstract and may or may not have a cat in it. And if you understood that joke, you fall right into the target audience, so you know what I mean.



Unfortunately this means that we've created an assumed outcome in the minds of the general populace. If you tell anyone what the genre is, like any other genre, they've got an idea of whether they like it or not before even seeing the story. While this does happen to fall under the concept of "jaded" or "cynical" that I'm trying to fight, it's really more a nature of assumption. A jaded person would read the story and then decide they hated it for the reasons of just not buying the premise, a person with a prejudice wont even get that far.

So that means we're constantly in a battle between what we want people to think of when we say "science fiction" or "high fantasy"...



And what they actually think of...



And, unfortunately, it's hard to win the message war when no one's reading your message (then again, no one's likely reading this either). So we're stuck with an outcome that requires us to step around the problem rather than deal with it head on. Which leads us to something we have to deal with in order to "step around the problem"

2. Study Hall is never popular
One of the presumption about science fiction and high fantasy is that you have to understand either science or mythology to really grasp the plots. And, sadly, most of us just simply don't have that kind of education or intuitive grasp of these concepts. So, for starters, we need to make sure that we try to tone down the importance of understanding all of the details in order to get anything from the plot. Problem is, rarely does this actually happen and people end up having to figure out some details for themselves.

This leaves the reader feeling punished for not understanding. People read to relax and enjoy themselves, not be tested on their knowledge of relatively elite subjects. But they still end up getting tested on it, leaving them feeling either inadequate, frustrated or childish as they try to dig up the answers that they should have either had or not needed to be able to grasp the plot.



This is the flaw of what has come to be known as "hard science fiction" over the years. Back in the day, all science fiction and fantasy were primarily pulled from the rear of the person writing it. Tolkien created his entire world primarily from a background in linguistics and a familiarity with mythology that he promptly warped into six foot tall androgynous elf warriors. Meanwhile, it's long been known that Star Trek, the nerd nirvana, had long been written with placeholder words in the scripts for science consultants to later fill in with techno-babble. In essence, the writers made completely implausible bullshit plots and the scientists stepped in and made it seem presentable.



"Soft" science fiction and less traditional fantasy have the advantage of being accessible to everyone. Unfortunately, with that much hand waving and a lack of care for the finer details, most writers in these less demanding genres tend to not think their plot through with as much care and detail as their harder nosed brethren. The result? Hard science fiction is over-conceptualized, soft science fiction is half baked and the same goes for just about any high fantasy story in relation to how much mythology they pump into their works.

The answer to this is to reach a balancing act. A writer needs to think scientifically themselves but not require their reader to do the same. They need to make the plot as well thought out and defined as possible without pressuring the people who are trying to relax. This is not easy, especially since there's a third problem that looms behind the whole "believable plot" problem.

3. Suspension of belief
One of the other draw backs of the hard science fiction angle is that you tend to find yourself in a place where you've made your world too real. This isn't a bad thing in one sense, but it's a disaster in other senses.

Your reader doesn't live in the world you've constructed, the world you've constructed is a complete work of fiction, but you've placed enough rules on it that it might as well be a real world. What ends up happening? You end up breaking your own rules, throwing in a few Deus Ex Machina solutions and resurrecting your white wizard, Jesus allegory lion or Spock from their untimely death.

While it's natural in every person to want to play god to some extent along the way, you can't really afford to do it at a certain point. The more involved you get your readers into the work, your world and the characters, the less you can afford to screw with that world you've created.

Unfortunately, not many writers stop to consider this. So, in the end, you find yourself meeting with a problem of people saying that it simply isn't believable to them. This, once again, isn't a matter of the audience becoming cynical, but the writers failing to realize the limits of their ability to bend reality without breaking it.

So what conclusions do we reach? Well, we need to trick people into reading these genres again by presenting them as something that they haven't seen before and not hurting their brains in the process. This doesn't mean step back from the issues, but rather presenting stories that defy easy classification. This could mean paranormal romance, urban science fiction and fantasy or so on. But the same notion can also be applied to ideas that push so far past science fiction and high fantasy that the line between the two starts to blur. Blur the line, defy the genres and you may soon join Schrodinger's cat in that sweet spot of quantum immortality



...maybe.

"New Sci-fi" Part Three.... The Soulless Undead

This concept was going to be two different posts. But after sitting and thinking about it, I've realized they're much the same problem. So here I go, waxing poetic about zombies. Wish me luck.

There's one problem most prevalent even in the professional world that's led to the downward spiral of popularity for science fiction and high fantasy. Regardless of the quality of the works, a single lingering problem remains hovering above all else. It also leads to the problem of women equality in the previous post. It's almost the great unifying problem to all the others, really. So here it goes, and for those of you who are writers of these genres, this is going to hurt...

Science fiction and high fantasy are surprisingly shallow.

All literature, all art, at some level, touches an emotional response. If you haven't done that, you haven't done your job. This is why so many artistic types worry about just what kind of message they're getting across. Some of them are rational about it and are happy with any sort of message they can get, others...not so much. But the point remains that, for anyone trying to live off of artistic works, not getting an emotional response is akin to not existing.

This is why romance novels have lasted forever. Regardless of how good or bad they are, or even how derivative they all might be, they still manage to illicit some sort of emotional response (even if that may be shame for reading it from time to time).

But what emotions do science fiction and high fantasy draw on usually? Sadly, not many.

It doesn't really make much sense if you consider the very nature of these genres. As I said in "Impact!", these genres are the ones that should be the best utilized to study the human condition from angles that just can't be touched by other genres. This is also the chief argument for supporters of the genre for why it is legitimate. But when you really take a look at the examples we get of real human depth, they're few and far between. How the hell did that happen?

Back in the day, when science fiction was in its infancy, we writers found a fascinated audience that ate up these bizarre concepts we were scribbling down, anchored loosely in reality. High fantasy has always been popular in one way or another due to the fact it peers into another world that would never be. But science fiction? That peered into a world that -could- be and it excited people in a way that we didn't think possible. Then, as the genre grew and matured over the years, we found our niche, the place we were most welcomed in our society.

Unfortunately, this was a bad thing.

By finding our niche, we set up a base for us to build upon. We were able to start studying our market and understanding what worked, what didn't work and how well it would probably be received. When science fiction was first starting out, it was a game of roulette with the chances of being a complete failure from time to time (Brave New World flopped in the 30s, now considered a classic). But while we figured out what worked and what didn't work, we never really stopped to figure out why it worked.

Back at what could be called the height of science fiction, the space age was on everyone's mind. We were launching ships into orbit and the human race -knew- that we would find life somewhere else in the universe. We started to look to Mars for signs of life, listened to the stars for a chance to hear an alien civilization's greeting and watched the skies for objects that could confirm our hopes. So science fiction, perfectly suited to respond to this, started to write stories that captured the imagination of what could happen in the not too distant future.



Unfortunately, Mars is barren, the heavens are silent and that glowing object was probably a weather balloon or military flare. Reality quickly started to set in on the subject...



It started to become hard for the audience to remain excited about a subject that was less than what they'd hoped it would be. And, while it may seem like I'm repeating the argument that they've grown jaded, it is almost entirely our fault that the subject of space travel became so much less interesting. The same can be said for most subjects really.

Since the collective creative industry never seemed to have stopped to understand why things were working and being well received, when they stopped working, they didn't understand that either. A lot of theories started to bounce around, a little bit of what could probably be considered panic set in and people started to duplicate anything that was working and hoped for the best. You can see that today when you look at the success of Twilight and take note that all of a sudden True Blood and the Vampire Diaries have gotten TV series when they'd been practically ignored for years before that.

High fantasy and science fiction are plagued with this issue of reactive writing. A great deal of high fantasy stories in the modern day look like they were scraped off of the editing room floor of Lord of the Rings. Meanwhile, an equally large portion of science fiction can be said to have been scribbled down as the last words of Gene Roddenberry or Issac Asimov from their death beds. What doesn't fall into these categories is typically what can be called the "my blank are different" response. You don't have elves anymore, no, you have nymphs. Congratulations for your creativity.

Don't feel bad literary and television writers, you're not alone on this, game designers have the same issue, so it's obviously a flaw of almost all creative industries. When World of Warcraft was released and dominated the market, it started a trend for every massive multiplayer game on the market to in turn become a response to World of Warcraft. Either they were identical to it, or they were similar to it but did something slightly different to try to make themselves appear unique. These all failed...miserably.

But the thing that really gets to me is what I've come to call the "Fast Zombie Problem".



Since people haven't stopped to really figure out the problem and instead rely on the information obtained from watching what others are doing or saying, there's a tendency for writers to shuffle the deck chairs in response to a crisis. I don't say this out of some bitter, jaded impression that the good old days were the best and everything today sucks. Instead, I speak from the experience of sitting with what could essentially be called a writer's workshop/support group for the better part of...my adult life. What I notice is that, often, when trying to come up with a unique idea in fantasy and science fiction, people tend to start off from a template, what they know, and rearrange or alter the set pieces.

Character archetypes, settings and plot devices become things which people start to fine tune and alter. Rarely do they approach it from the concept of having a story to tell or a message to deliver. Rather, it's a concept, a novelty, which they hope to build a story around. This is fairly ass backwards and something that seems to be unique to the fringe genres. If you were to ever approach any other genre with that sort of mindset, you'd never get away with it. But you approach science fiction or fantasy with this sort of mindset, it strangely squeaks by.

"My story is about zombies."
"Oh? What's your story about?"
"Well they're zombies, so it's a zombie story, but they're fast zombies!"
"Brilliant!"



"My story is about an orphan."
"Oh? What's your story about?"
"Well it's a story about orphans, but they're Chinese orphans!"
"And?"
"That's all I've got."



And when you really look at the suggestion "the audience is jaded so we need to start rolling back the settings and plot devices they don't like anymore" it's really a much broader version of this concept. They really haven't found a solution, they've decided that the deck chairs they're shuffling take up too much space so they'll throw them overboard. The audience didn't become jaded, they're as open and excited as they ever were, we just failed to mature and grow with them.

So are we doomed? No, we'll get the hang of it and get our footing again. But we need to start thinking about the story we're telling more than the elements within it. It's not enough anymore to simply try to coast by on the novelty of concepts that long ago loss their novel nature. But is the solution really to pull back everything that existed? No, I think that we need to start pushing it again. We need to stop working within the boxes that were structured before most of us were even born and need to start figuring out just where we can take it. We need to start expanding and giving depth rather than move the set pieces from one end of the stage to the other. We are writing, creating visions and expressing ourselves to the rest of the world. We are not practicing our Feng Shui.

And sometimes, you can get a result worth looking at because you stopped worrying about what's already been done and started worrying about what you wanted to do. When film makers started to forget about what did or didn't happen in a George Romero movie, and instead about the story they wanted to tell we got the likes of [Rec]...



And Zombieland...



'Nuff said.

"New Sci-fi" Part Two! Women

Truthfully, I was going to leave this observation for last. I've got about 3 or 4 observations worth pointing out and this one I felt was the strongest one to go out on. But after some serious self reflection and some earnest words by the one I consider my second muse (Walnut Trees being my first), I've realized that this one really kind of leads into and ties the rest of them together.

If you look at some of the biggest successes in the last decade, you see that several of the authors have something that links them all: Two X Chromosomes. Think about it, aside from a couple of works from the likes of Dan Brown, most of the really popular books in the last 10 to 15 years have been written by women. Why is that?

After some comprehensive study, I've come upon the answer to this and have realized the key to this great mystery. I'll be honest, it was hard. Really, it was downright baffling. I spent many a day working this Rubik's Cube of society that I shall dub the "XX Factor" and came up with the answer..an amazing, shocking, completely groundbreaking discovery.

It turns out...women read books. No, seriously, I looked it up, it's totally true! Go figure, right?

Now, some of you reading this (and, considering the two people I know to read this are in fact female, all of you reading this) will look at that concept and figure it's a given. In a rational world, you two would be right. But I've realized over the last few weeks to months that the world is far from rational.

When I read one of the opinions that science fiction needed to abandon more abstract concepts to communicate with a more jaded audience, one of the examples given was "The Time Traveler's Wife". Now, as I stated in a previous post "Life's Too Short", Audrey Niffenegger sold a ton of those books and got a movie deal after being rejected over 25 times by agents and who knows how many different publishers before getting together with a smaller publisher out of San Francisco.

Is this unusual? Not really. A lot of the bigger successes have received staggering rejection before getting to print. But when you look at these you can generally find a reasoning behind the resistance to take a risk on it. Look at the likes of JK Rowling, the world's first billionaire author. She was rejected so many times she doesn't even keep track of how many times it happened. But when you look at the reasons why, you can at least understand it. She was trying to sell a 90,000 word manuscript for a children's novel without any attempt for crossover marketing at a time when it was believed children hate to read. This was like someone showing up and going, "You know what kids love? Vegetables."



So you start to ask, what was the reason? Was it because she was a first time author? Well that's the common wisdom. But we've seen in recent years that first time author doesn't necessarily mean blatant rejection if you have something people believe can sell. The Time Traveler's Wife got a $100,000 advance, SOMEONE had faith in it. And we know books that aren't quite as critically acclaimed have received as much if not more success. So, what was it?

Well, simple. It was a science fiction story geared towards women. Women (supposedly) don't read science fiction!

Do I have any direct proof of this being the reason? Not really. Do I have a lot of indirect observation that confirms the theory? You bet.

It's true that most science fiction and fantasy stories are driven in some way by a male fantasy of some sort. After all, women don't read science fiction or high fantasy as much as men, you should write to your target audience. On the other hand...


Chicken, meet Egg

If we (male) writers don't really write something that women can read without being alienated, then how could we expect them not to be alienated? As my second muse pointed out, if a woman is involved in a sci-fi or fantasy story, regardless if it's a book, TV show or film, she typically falls in one of three categories:

1) Near-Useless Window Dressing

2) The Devil/General Evil

3) Object of Desire


Now, this isn't to say that you shouldn't have a female villain or someone that your male characters would desire, those two work regardless. But that first one...that's gotta be dealt with. Not to mention, it would be nice to have some variety to the roles so that you didn't JUST have those three options. It's not like men are incapable of understanding this concept. After all, these our our mothers...



Our caretakers...



The people who'll kill someone for a really nice pair of shoes...



Wait...scratch that last one.

Anyway, the point is, not enough (male) science fiction and fantasy writers stop to consider if women will like what they're doing. And the people who do consider the point of view of women happen to find success with what they do. We men can't be expected to do it perfectly, it's not like we can magically understand every aspect of them (they know it and enjoy taunting us with it). But the female reading audience isn't asking us to start throwing out the female villains or write every story from the perspective of a teenage girl. Really, all they're asking for is...



Sing it, sister!

"New Sci-fi" Part One! The "Huh?"

Okay, I'll be honest, I'm bad at this blog updating thing. Though I don't know of anyone who's really any good at it. I guess it's just hard for me to sit here and talk to myself and possibly one other person when I can just simply go and do that on a regular basis. I mean, I can talk to myself anytime I want to, usually do. And as for the idea of talking to one of the few people who even realizes this page exists, well that's just a message away.

Still, there are a few topics worth discussing here that I feel would be beating a dead horse if I kept talking about them to others on a regular basis... plus I kind of stopped listening to myself too. So I guess if the blog has a function at all it would be to vent the things that have built for a few days (or weeks, or months) and get them out in the open 100%. And what's boiling my butt this month? (aside from the sun)

"New Sci-Fi".

I've heard a lot about this lately. You see, it's no secret to anyone who pays attention to literature that genres have a tendency to rise and fall in popularity. You look at the books that succeeded from any period of time and you tend to see some thematic connection between them. Fantasy and Urban Fantasy have a pretty firm hold on things right now, "Paranormal Romance" is practically untouchable. And of course, watching these trends gives us an idea of just what does and doesn't sell, which is something to really keep an eye on for people like myself who want to actually sell something.

Currently, we see that sci-fi is on the fall while what could be called "fantasy" (specific sub-genres of fantasy more so than others) is on the rise. That, in itself, doesn't surprise me. But what has been starting to make me wonder as of late has been the tendency for people to decide that the reason for the fall of sci-fi is because the audience has become "jaded" and "cynical".

What?

I did just mention that "Paranormal Romance" is currently dominant, right? How can you call an audience that's devouring such cookie cutter stories with glee and a wide eyed wonder at the awesomeness of fictional characters "jaded" or "cynical"? If anything, there's some argument to be made that the audience is currently a little less discerning.

But no, I'm not going to be like most people in the industry (or hoping to be in the industry. Hi industry!). I'm not going to blame the audience for what's going on. Because I have a nagging need to study this stuff up close and interview people on their actual thoughts. Sure, sometimes they ask to be untied and let out of the closet, or ask for food, but overall it's a pretty beneficial relationship for me. And what I've found from my "subjects" has been fascinating.

But what I've found has given me insight that some of the things I've heard from people who are closer to the core of the industry might be a bit misguided. One of these is the concept that "New Sci-fi" means that we need to roll back the "Sci-fi" part of the concept to the point where it's more window dressing than anything. They look at examples of successful Sci-fi in the last few years and say that the common traits between them lie in the fact that they're mostly normal everyday stories with a sci-fi twist that makes them a little different.

That never sat right with me, because it seemed too simplistic. Not to mention, the conclusion that we should reduce sci-fi to the sci-fi equivalent of "Urban Fantasy" and -only- "Urban Fantasy" sounds like an executive level numbers based analysis. Not to say that all of these decisions are silly, but it was that sort of analysis that led Warner Bros. to push for "campier" movies for the Batman franchise since "Batman Returns sold fewer tickets than Batman Forever".

How'd that work out for them?



Ooooh...right.

So while from a surface level it seems like a great idea to follow the traits of a formula presented by a successful title. I think that overall, if you look at it too shallowly and don't consider the big picture of what happened with those successful titles, you can come away with a distorted and incorrect view of the picture.



See what I mean?