Horror fans have been questioning what the new Candyman movie—produced by Jordan Peele through his MonkeyPaw studio and directed by Nia DaCosta—could be about now that Chicago’s infamous Cabrini-Green housing projects (the setting for the original 1992 film) have been torn down, and now we seem to have our first small answer: Speaking at the Produced By conference (via Deadline), MonkeyPaw creative director Ian Cooper revealed that Peele wants to use Candyman to “address how toxic fandom has become.” He says that he and Peele “talk a lot about fans and the idea of appeasing fans,” specifically when to do it, how to do it, and when not to do it, and Candyman will apparently be “mischievous” in how it relates to Bernard Rose’s original.
He adds that he thinks fandom is “really problematic,” which Deadline takes as a reference to stuff like the Game Of Thrones petition or Star Wars’ Kelly Marie Tran getting harassed online (which was definitely about more than just “fandom,” but whatever). He wouldn’t really say how that will be reflected in Candyman, of course, but it sounds like Peele has some idea in mind that specifically plays with the expectations that a Candyman fan may have for a remake/reboot. This idea has apparently gone through tons of revisions, including some that “are so high concept they’re basically a Gus Van Sant film.”
Yahya Abdul-Mateen II is playing the new Candyman (a supernatural serial killer of sorts who comes to people and murders them when they say his name five times), and Cooper refused to say much of anything about whether or not original Candyman actor Tony Todd would be involved at all.
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A meta-narrative about fandom sounds like a fabulous concept. Now if I can find a way to view the original :/
Does it?It sounds to me like a desperate attempt to to distract people from the fact it’s another trash horror remake by shoehorning some vague ‘point’ into it.
Lol.
Is this irony?
Not a chance. Check post history. I deplore the word “troll,” but the AVCLUB is so replete with them, I guess …… :(This Site attracts more haters than even The Root, and I don’t understand why.
Liz_Lemon_eyeroll.gif
You don’t think the latest horror reboot of a cult classic will be trash?God speed, you optimistic bastard.
I suppose now’s a bad time to remind that horror is the genre that is most often pointed out for cases of remakes that were not only good, they managed to surpass their originals.
Not all do, but if there’s any genre that kind of disproves a remake isn’t automatically a bad thing, horror is it.
That’s possibly true, although I can only think of a few prominent late 70s/80s examples (Body Snatchers, The Fly, The Thing)Have we had anything approaching that in the last twenty years because what springs to my mind is Rob Zombie’s Halloween or the Nic Cage Wicker Man.
Sssshhh…. Zack Snyder’s Dawn Of The Dead….
Really?
I mean…it’s pretty good, I guess. It’s fine. It’s quite good. It’s a movie I have watched. I could watch it again, I guess? But I’d be wishing I was watching Romero’s the whole time.
But like, if that’s your best example from the past 20 years, you’re basically agreeing with me.
The 2012 remake of Maniac is generally also held in generally good regard (albeit, like its predecessor, it’s still seen as an acquired taste as a rule.)
In a new twist on the old story, the Candyman appears if you smash that reblog button five times.
But they subvert the usual formula fans are expecting, because instead of immediately getting to Candyman, there’s a feature-length ad, which you can’t skip, for a new Texas Chainsaw Massacre reboot.
I think I read somewhere if you say “marijuana” three to five times in the mirror Janis Joplin will appear; but I’m not sure if she kills you.
Mistaken joke premise: Joplin was a boozer, not a toker.
Yeah, I know that. I wondered why you didn’t say “Southern Comfort” or “China White”.
“WE’RE SUBVERTING EXPECTATIONS!” ~ Rian Johnson
That’s why she doesn’t kill you.
No, the bourbon and heroin kill you.
That’s if you say Jack Daniels.
Todd has said that he’s been told there’s a role for him.
The film opens on an empty sound stage. Tony Todd, dressed for an afternoon at the driving range, walks into frame, turns to the camera, and says, “I am not appearing in this Candyman reboot, because my absence will help ignite a debate about toxic fandom. Leave if you must, but please know—doing so will reveal you to be part of the problem. Enjoy the film.” Then we SMASH CUT to the opening credits, scored to this:
And you say this’ll fuel toxic fandom?Because I’m fairly certain that if they were do this, world peace would be the result.
I still haven’t clicked on that Game of Thrones petition, but the message boarders/freefolkers who made it say they intended it as a criticism of the series, not a serious attempt to make HBO spend $100 million dollars again. They have since redirected their efforts to fundraising for Emilia Clarke’s brain charity, which is pretty nice, and also good PR against the entitlement criticism. Fans find self-identity and self-expression in corporate entities, which inevitably betray them and the standards set up by the original hook of the intellectual property as money and time shreds rigor. Then they have few (corporate-sized) outlets to express their sense of frustrated identification, which the company encouraged when it benefited the company. So the fans turn to new avenues, like spending five minutes to create a online petition.
When a fan is angry because a corporately-controlled “property” doesn’t do what the fan wants it to do, I think a little self-reflection would reveal at least some anger directed inward for spending so much time, energy, and often money caring about something so completely out of their control. It’s easier to change something about oneself than it is to change the producers at HBO, or Disney.
Good point. The only way to change them is to create publicity which hurts their bottom line, which I think this is an attempt at.
Well, it’s a good thing nobody’s ever been angry about the writing on a TV show here at the AV Club.
Well sure, and people take it way too far, but I don’t think it’s unreasonable for viewers who enjoyed the first six or seven seasons of GoT to be frustrated it made a half-assed dash to the finish line. I suspect part of it is the sense that everything is getting worse and everything you let your guard down and decide you like— a restaurant or food item, a cool and different band or TV show, a clothing label, whatever— is inevitably going to go corporate and become a shell of what you once liked about it.
I think a little self-reflection would reveal at least some anger directed inward for spending so much time, energy, and often money caring about something so completely out of their control.If people didn’t care about a TV show they wouldn’t watch it. Game of Thrones is something people are invested in, that’s known and expected, that’s how they get people to pay for HBO, merch, all that stuff. You can’t then be surprised when people are bothered that the thing they love is awful now.
In many cases it’s not even about “doing what a fan wants to do” and is about just how terribly made the product is. There’s this idea out there that fans simply couldn’t take the brutal, honest beauty of the end of Game of Thrones, or BSG, or Lost, or what have you (although there seemed to be far chest-puffing and superiority dances to criticism of those finales), when really, many just felt the end was shit. It reminds me of how many people got on high horses about the fans who simply couldn’t accept the “reality” or “honesty” of Sansa being raped and being told that rape is what makes women strong.
They have since redirected their efforts to fundraising for Emilia
Clarke’s brain charity…Sure, it looks like a good idea now, but God help us all once she gets hers transplanted in to that giant robot.
Nobody ring any bells!
I took the liberty of burning down Quasimodo’s house the other month to prevent this from happening. You’re welcome.
J’Accuse…!
Honestly, why doesn’t anyone get their brains transplanted into mid-sized robots? That sounds much more managable.
They don’t exist. They’re either giant robots or they can’t top the five foot barrier. There’s no other model. Sealab told us so.
>Fans find self-identity and self-expression in corporate entitiesFound the problem.
Maybe it can be like that Supernatural episode with Paris Hilton. Have a god transform into people’s idols and kill them.
The new Candyman is going to be about Game Of Thrones and Kelly Marie Tran? This is going to be some night at the cine-mah! (That’s how I say it now. You like it.)
Candyman (2019) – CastKelly Marie Tran – herselfSophie Turner – herself Jake Lloyd – Anakin Skywalker
Great, Sophie Turner can play “Tequila Slaps”.
While in general I like the idea of a film tackling toxic fandom, I am really trying to wrap my head around how that would work with a new Candyman film. Then again, I am not a creative genius, as everyone keeps reminding during my weekly pitch meetings, so I guess I shall have to wait to see it.
Hmmm…possibly something about the nature of how legends sometimes get reinterpreted over time, leading to either different camps or people trying to claim something they technically have no hold over?
Just brainstorming, admittedly. It’s a topic I would like to see horror dabble into more (the one other film that comes to mind that really goes into it is Perfect Blue, where Mr. Me-Mania is very literally the possessive entitled fanboy disgusted that his ‘perfect’ idol wants to get out of that contained and controlled lifestyle.)
They’re going to replace Tony Todd with a woman and just see what happens. The toxicity will develop naturally!
I’m getting kinda tired of The AV Club (of all places) lumping in the genuinely toxic racist and misogynistic response from some fanboys over The Last Jedi with the fan reaction to the final season of Game Of Thrones. The virulent response to TLJ was largely driven by a small subset of the fandom. The response to the final season of GoT, specifically the final two episodes, has been a much broader group of people arguing against a variety of issues that include progressive critiques.Also, the GoT petition’s author stated that he does not actually expect HBO to remake the season and literally says, “I didn’t make this petition to be an entitled, whiny fan. I made it because I was immensely disappointed and needed to vent.” (You can read it here.) He wasn’t trying to raise money to re-shoot the whole season or saying that he was going to do it himself in a manner akin to the Last Jedi petition.
A majority of the criticisms on r/freefolk and elsewhere are echoed in legitimate criticism by Maureen Ryan, Kelly Lawler, the critics roundtable at The Atlantic, The Ringer’s Alison Herman, Vox’s Aja Romano, and former AV Club TV Editor Emily Todd VanDerWerff.FYI 6 out of those 8 critics are women. So, no, this is definitely NOT the same group of people who hated The Last Jedi because Holdo and Rose and the “SJW agenda.” While there are some TLJ haters among the fans upset about GoT, the majority of fans opposed to GoT’s final season that I’ve read and encountered are more worried about Benioff & Weiss applying their worst tendencies to Star Wars and short-changing female and minority characters in what would probably be considered a “win” by the subset of racist and sexist TLJ detractors.
The list of objections to the finale of Game Of Thrones and the penultimate episode “The Bells” included poor storytelling, destroyed character arcs, questionable dialogue, and tired sexist tropes. The final two episodes ultimately served as a massive rebuff to anyone who thought GoT was going to subvert fantasy/historical fiction tropes by showing women in power being able to rule without going crazy despite inherited mental illness or armies made up of brown and black bodies not being savages bent on raping and pillaging.Then there’s the fridging of Missandei, the only female character of color with a speaking role. And that “Bran The Broken” ableist shit. And recently knighted Ser Brienne, survivor of the Battle Of Winterfell and the woman who bested The Hound, turning into a blubbery mess after getting the D for the first time and spending the final moments of her character arc writing about fuckboi Jaime. And Lena Headey’s Cersei, a complex female villain, being reduced to staring out windows with about 10 lines of dialogue the entire season until she’s Brickarys’d in the penultimate episode.
So, please tell me again how the sexist and racist response to The Last Jedi is in the same league as those critiquing sexist and racist tropes in Game Of Thrones. It’s lazy to call it toxic fandom and fan entitlement when the fan reaction to GoT mostly aligns with what progressive-minded critics argued were serious issues with those final two episodes.
Found the person this movie is about!
counterpoint: look how many paragraphs you just spewed into the void
“the genuinely toxic racist and misogynistic response from some fanboys over The Last Jedi”Show your work. AV Club published a clear trolling video some dude dropped on Reddit as if it was serious. Star Wars fans are fucked up, as are Game of Thrones fans. But none of it had to do with racism or misogyny. You’re just being lazy.
Now this definitely has to be irony. Is this you Jordan?
I have similar feelings towards the two different backlashes connected by the “subverting expectations” meme. I like the GoT backlash because it encourages writing analysis and character development. People complain, but they’re talking about why the storytelling doesn’t work when the production is good, and also why earlier seasons worked. (I think like any show eventually it will swing more positive, like how I think warmly of the better parts of Lost and BSG.) I dislike the TLJ backlash because as you said it seemed to lead less to a communal conversation about storytelling and more to political points I didn’t agree with.
Also, the GoT petition’s author stated that he does not actually expect HBO to remake the season and literally says, “I didn’t make this petition to be an entitled, whiny fan. I made it because I was immensely disappointed and needed to vent.”“Some of my best friends are corporate-produced media properties!”
LOL whine more
This is a lot of words to say “this movie is about me, specifically”.
TLJ criticism was mostly legit but they focused on a handful of toxic trolls on social media and painted everyone that hated that movie with that brush. Why they did that we don’t know. Ignorant bloggers just copying “news” from other tabloid blogs like a game of telephone and not actually fact checking, twisting news to creat controversy to get clicks/money, or trying to suppress criticism to get closer to Disney and keep getting invited to their press stuff as influences are my three guesses.Even sadder is the people that just believe everything these fake news blogs pump out, just look at the people they have approved to comment on this site that are commenting at you. No discussion, no knowledgeable comments, just stupid mocking to avoid any discussion because this blog network wants stupid people that are easy to control and cultivate such people with their comment system that revolves around heavy censorship to make these subhumans feel special.
lol
“I didn’t make this petition to be an entitled, whiny fan. I made it because I was immensely disappointed and needed to vent.” The lack of self-awareness in that sentence is a thing of beauty. “I’m not entitled and whiny, I’m just disappointed that I didn’t get what I feel I’m entitled to and came here to vent, which is a totally different thing to whining.”And just because the motivations behind the backlash to Game of Thrones may be different to the racist/sexist overtones of some of the Last Jedi critiques, doesn’t mean it’s not a different example of the same phenomenon, i.e. toxic fandom. The petitioner may not have seriously expected the final GoT season to be remade, but they chose that as the basis of the petition for a reason. It sends the message, “The creators were wrong because we wanted this and this and we didn’t get it. What they made was wrong and should be replaced.” That’s entitlement to an unhealthy degree. Even to suggest it mockingly says that art is not something the artist creates because it makes sense to them, but rather just a product that has to tick the right number of boxes in order to satisfy the amorphous crowd.
Amazing job writing at length in Comic Book Guy voice.
“How DARE you compare a bunch of crazy people who wanted Rian Johnson pre-emptively fired from future Star Wars projects to ME, a reasonable person who wants Benioff & Weiss pre-emptively fired from future Star Wars projects! Here’s a four page screed on why I’m the only sane person left allliiiiiiiiiiiive!!!”
*plays tiny violin*
“armies made up of brown and black bodies”
here’s your daily reminder that brown and black people are not sentient beings but just “bodies” like you find at a taxidermist’s.
If you spent half as much time working on your personality as you did writing this man baby rant, you would be a much happier person.
I’m one of the good toxic fans!
Nerd.
Not gonna try and dunk in you but you do realize that there are varying degrees of this whole toxic fandom. Just because the GoT fan backlash is not sexist or racist doesn’t mean that it’s not entitled and delusional
The new Candyman movie will apparently be about “toxic fandom”…Toxic Fan {typing}: “Mine mine mine!”[Candyman appears, mouthbees sting Toxic Fan to death]
What about Toxic Avenger Fans?
What, both of them?
Yup.
That’s Toxic Crusaders and you know it!
Also – Toxic Crusaders is my new name for the type of people this movie will supposedly be lambasting.
This seems like quite a rebuke to the rest of you jackasses
“or Star Wars’ Kelly Marie Tran getting harassed online (which was definitely about more than just “fandom,” but whatever)“It wasn’t. Facts be damned. But whatever.You can keep lazily throwing shit at a wall with zero to support it because you think it’ll grow your personal brand, but it doesn’t make you right.
The new Candyman movie will apparently be about “toxic fandom”
So, the important stuff.
I don’t think “toxic fandom” and the GoT petition fall into the same category. There’s being whiny and there’s concerted racist, homophobic, misogynistic harassment. They’re quite different. The disappointment in GoT’s rushed ending was something that was shared across all media and social circles. Some fans saying, “fix it,” obviously is entitled as all hell. What it isn’t is virulent harassers driving actors off of social media because they don’t think people of their race, gender or orientation should even appear in their sacred stories. That’s toxic fandom. Shit, the GoT petition has now swung into supporting Clarke’s charitable foundation.
Genuinely astonishing how many comments there are on this post with literally zero self-reflection.
people rarely see themselves
Toxic fandom can be expressed in a number of different ways. Sometimes it’s racism and harassment, sometimes it’s rampant entitlement.
There is always a great deal of entitlement in fandom. There always has been, from the earliest days. And many of those who bellyache about it (and conflate any criticism with entitlement) are secretly pleased, because it means they can feel morally superior, and, of course, get plenty of “likes” and pats on the head for how special they are.
so would you prefer just “shitty fandom” for the GoT whiners then? or “superduper cool extra fandom”? happy to work with you on a tag that helps separate the racists/sexists from the, like, obnoxiously over-obsessed.
Sammy approves.
Sad they’re ruining that movie too and basing it about some World Weekly News level fake news tabloids spew out. I loved Candyman when I was little.
Or as we’ve come to know it, fandom
Bingpot.
“I like Star Wars so much!”“Sure. So do I. Everybody likes Star Wars. Since 1977.” “No, I like Star Wars so much that I can tell you, in great detail, why all of the movies except four are fucking garbage that should be destroyed!”“Four?” “And two of those have multiple editions, most of which are fucking garbage that should be destroyed!”
“Toxic fandom” has moved from genuine criticisms of racism and sexism and harassment to huffing and puffing when writers and producers don’t get the parade they expected. It’s just yet another way that the industry, and clickbait writers, along with the morally superior brigades who are more interested in showing us how above those “other” fans, have made serious topics seem meaningless. And sites like this, or Deadline, which are positive about the idea, will likely be the first to give this movie a bad review and throw it in the trash, as the job has been done. Peele’s involvement makes me wonder how he feels about the complete indifference his Twilight Zone revival was greeted with. Did he interpret that as toxic fandom? Would AV Club see it that way? When does “toxic fandom” become “you’re not saying what I want to hear”?
So in your opinion, is this site’s problem is that it’s too doctrinaire (which you imply in your first paragraph) or not doctrinaire enough (which you imply in your second paragraph)?
Tony Todd should be in it, just to say “Candyman” only four times, then wink at the camera, because he’s not an idiot.
I’d comment on this article, but first I need to get surgery on my eye sockets to facilitate rolling my eyes further than hitherto possible.
Good fucking lord, taking a movie and story about how the US left huge swathes of the country to rot and all the attendant racism and violence against the working class and making it about entitled pop-culture fans is the very gentrification the movie was against. Incredible.