This week on the Major Spoilers Podcast, the crew is sitting down to discuss what’s good and bad about the fan film.
Who would swing off a six-story building for a homemade Spider-Man movie? Why would newlyweds spend $20,000 on a Star Wars film from which they can never profit? How did three nobodies blow Steven Spielberg’s mind with an Indiana Jones flick they made as teens in the Eighties?
They’re all part of the Fan Film revolution–an underground movement where backyard filmmakers are breaking the law to create unauthorized movies starring Batman, James Bond, Captain Kirk, Harry Potter and other classic characters. Regular people are making movies that the fans want to see–and which copyrights and common sense would never allow.
To help out with the discussion, the crew is welcoming Dr. Peter Coogan back to the show, as well as author Clive Young, who’s written Homemade Hollywood, a book all about fans behind the camera.
You’ve probably seen films like Batman: Dead End, a Kevin Rubio’s Troops, but what about Grayson, Ryan vs. Dorkman, or the hundreds of other fan flicks floating about on YouTube? What do you like or hate about fan films?
As always, the Major Spoilers Podcast is nothing without comments from great readers and listeners like you. You can use the comment section below, drop us a voice mail by calling (785) 727-1939, or record your comments and send it as an MP3 file in an email to podcast@majorspoilers.com.
We really want to include a lot of voice mails in our episodes. Here’s your chance to be heard on the show! Give us a shout out about fan films, the state of the comic book industry, or anything else that might be on your mind. Only the most awesome comments (good or bad) make it on the show, so get your stuff to us right away!
We record the new show Tuesday night, so make sure you have your contribution to us by 5:00 PM CST Tuesday evening.
6 Comments
ever since the coming of the internet i watched those things. at the beginning it was fun because they were hard to find and there was not too many of them. today, you could spend an entire lifetime just watching those fan films.
quality is another thing. it varies from the low budget crap-fest, to the low budget awesome fest to the high-quality-guy-knows-what-he’s-doing-and-have-a-little-money-to-do-it-fest.
batman: dead end was one of the best, Grayson was awesome. and Rubio’s Troops was the best and probably the one that really started it all. quality, timing and talent were all there.
speaking of Rubio, you should read his Star Wars comic with Tag & Bink. fun al around.
You guys might want to check out the “Lobo Paramilitary Xmas” fanfilm. The costuming is outstanding, and the production quality and acting is great too. All around a good time. Should be somewhere on YouTube.
What does it say about the movie industry when fan made products are better than the $200 million dollar project. The Dark Knight is a rarity in comic movies, and I think every Star Wars fan thinks they could have written the prequels better than Lucas.
Are we that far off from the fan base taking over for the so called ‘professionals’? Or is the answer that the studio should have absolutely no say when it comes to content of the film? Because the reason these fan films are great are because it doesn’t have to go through the giant Hollywood machine before they’re released.
D.C. Elseworlds available on Youtube rocks. 3 Parts of this stunning tale where Mr. Terrific leads rebel heroes against Green Lantern John Stewart and his media controlling forces.
The story is very mysterious surrounding the murder of a man named Kingston Cleary. While the story is very mysterious with a lot of loose ends, It is compelling enough for multiple returns. The special effects are quite good from Mr. Terrific’s T-spheres to Green Lantern opening a bottle of Red Stripe with his ring.
I give this fan film series 4 stars. While I like the mix of characters, and storyline, I do wish the segments were long and available more frequently. There is a teaser trailer for part 4, but if 4 is the last segment or not I have no idea. I highly reccomend these short fan films though. Very entertaining.
Although I don’t think it’s on Youtube, I hope you mention at least in passing, The Green Goblin’s Last Stand. It pre-dates the Raimi movies, and although there are some very low budget things going on, it was the best live action Spidey I had seen up to that point, and convinced me the movie could work. There is even some serendipity between filmmakers and both this film and Raimi’s first spider man destroyed Peter’s mask during the final battle so the actor could emote.
This is so cool, I had no idea fan movies could be this good, specialy the comic movies. While Troops was just too funny for words, Batman: Dead end was bad-ass and better the nany Alien Vs. Predator movie made to date I might add.
Talking about comic book movies, I had a horrible thought: we see Spectre and Owl get disentegrated by a nuke and we know there is no squid, so maybe in the Watchmen movie the good guys will actually stop Ozymandias. Kind of like the flip side of the comic, they win the fight but lose the world.