pdinosaur

there are certain movies that just seem to require fans to obsess over them.

there's the notion of canon thrown around with star wars.
with the matrix, there are books published about its religious implications or attempts to link the number of matrixes to the number of merovingian kings.
with star trek, well, one day klingon might be offered by your local high school as a foreign language.

what is it about these movies that leads to an insatiable desire for more and more?

why do people dress up as stormtroopers and not members of the breakfast club?

mllefoo

Stormtroopers are way cooler than Molly Ringworm. Duh.

Riddle me this: would you rather wear lipgloss and sweaters tied around your shoulders, or dress in full body armor toting a bfg?

Answer truthfully now.

I dress up in a Hogwarts uniform for Harry Potter release parties.

pdinosaur

lol.

to an extent, i realize that the difference between surviving star wars and surviving the breakfast club is that dressing up as ally sheedy or judd nelson isn't entirely noticeable. i'm sure aviator sunglasses enjoyed a nice boost from top gun and other fashions may have partially come from movies.

but there's conventions and/or midnight showings for movies like big lebowski, rocky horror, star wars, etc. some of these movies were wildly successful, others not so.

but there aren't conventions (to my knowledge) for movies like titanic, which is arguably the most successful movie ever made.

it can't be entirely about popularity, otherwise we'd be hounded by girls dressed as kate winslet demanding the be drawn in the nude.

DRG

But wouldn't that be "undressed as Kate Winslet"?

I think there's a certain "x factor" to it, and popularity is not really a factor. I think one factor is that the movies that have "expanded universe" possibilities, whether from pre-existing work (like Lord of the Rings or Sin City) or movie-spawned items (like Star Wars or Matrix).

It's not even really a genre thing. After all, you don't see a big Independence Day fanboy base, even though that movie was hugely successful AND a sci-fi film. So part of it maybe is that the film should take place in "another world", so to speak. he future, the past, a fantasy realm, a galaxy far far away, etc. But even that doesn't explain comic book movies, especially something like Spider-Man which takes place in a real city.

Or is it that it can be in the real world if the hero him/herself is larger than life? Of course, this still only works if the concensus is that the movie's good.

The Ferret

I'd take the lip gloss and a sweater, seriously.


I think for a movie to gain a fanboy following it has to have some of these qualities:

-Take place in another world
-Be a good movie
-Have interesting, imitable characters
-Be a super-hero movie
-Be a sci-fi/fantasy
..and most importantly appeal to the nerd crowd!

MartinBlank

To quote Chasing Amy, the definition of a fanboy: "Overweight and underweight guys who can't get laid."

DeltaSigChi4

E

E. Honda

RichC2

People like living out fantasy they'd otherwise never experience, even if that means putting on a funky outfit.

Go to detention? Yeah, not so hard to do.