Knew I was going to see this one pretty early on. Despite my issues with previous Ryan Reynolds vehicles, his work in the first two Deadpool movies was great, and as the initial teasers started showing up, I started actively not watching any of the other trailers that were showing up everywhere online. (I’ve had this practice of nescience for a while, even though I haven’t named it until recently.) Arranged to see it with a few friends, and bought tickets ahead of time, though it was the into the second week of release before we caught it. I went in pretty much blind.
And really enjoyed it!
(There’s something to be said for actively avoiding the spoilers and the level of enjoyment of a given work.)
The movie lived up to the hype, a frenetic bundle of kinetic energy that only slowed down when it had to interact with the TVA HQ, in it’s studio mandated ties to “metaplot” and the wider MCU and streaming series (which perhaps says something about the issues with that part of the franchise, that it’s such an anchor that it can drag the momentum of Deadpool to a halt). But the jokes landed, the violence was cartoony (in the way of Warner Brothers, not Disney), the cameos were a genuine delightful surprise, and the 4th wall was repeatedly broken.
With a wink and a smile. 😉
Deadpool’s charm is that the character seems aware. I saw Deadpool with someone who hadn’t seen the previous films and had skipped most of the larger MCU, and they found Deadpool acting as their voice in the movie, asking the questions they wanted asked (what is Gambit saying?) and pointing out the absurdity of it (“til you’re 90!”). Deadpool’s superpower is being able to break the 4th wall, but that break goes both ways, bringing the audience into the film to enjoy the movie alongside him. And it’s that joy that is infectious, and makes the movie fun.
With Deadpool‘s success as the highest-grossing R-rated film ever (at the time I’m writing this), I fear we’ll see a slate of movies leaning onto the violence and profanity in the hopes of the chasing that same success. But in doing so they’ll be learning the wrong lessons from the film.
What have we learned?
Move fast
Have fun
Keep it short
Don’t worry about explaining the plot (too much – show don’t tell)
Lost in all the excitement of this new idea, I realize I forgot to actually show you what the curve looks like. Whoops. Let’s rectify that.
The first challenge is that the curve is still under development; this is all a work in progress, an act of thinking by writing, if you will. The second challenge is that my skills in data science and graphic design are somewhat lacking. (The overall website design should have been a hint). Nevertheless, we’ll try our best; though we’re currently stuck somewhere between MS Paint and R.
For the sake of example, we’ll use the Star Trek series released during the Streaming Era that we mentioned in our initial post as data points along the curve. The shape of the curve will depend on some choices we make. Let’s see what our options look like.
Curve 1: Nostalgia vs. Novelty
If we picture series (or media titles, generally) as containing elements that evoke either Nostalgia in the audience, then we can quantify* that in some form. This degree of nostalgia would exist along a continuum, where we can say something is more or less nostalgic relative to other titles in the brand. With the Star Trek Streaming Titles (ST:ST for short), that continuum might look something like this:
Star Trek is not unique in long-running media titles, in that they all trade in nostalgia to a degree, but here we see titles like Picard and Strange New Worlds leaning heavily on other characters, settings, and aesthetics to bring the audience on board, where as Discovery and Prodigy are further removed.
This is useful, but a more complete look at Nostalgia might contrast this with Novelty, where something new is introduced to the setting or the larger universe, and the traditional tropes and aesthetics of the universe are muted. Here we can see that Nostalgia isn’t absent with the more Novel titles, but their focus on Novelty moves them further along the curve.
However, this isn’t the only way we can picture the Curve, so it may be useful to lay out some alternative formulations.
Curve 2: Real vs Imagined
One way to think about Nostalgia is to think about the extent it is real or simply imagined, on the part of the audience. (I guess that creatives and other content producers can be part of this audience as well, as it’s not uncommon for the producers to be fans or marks for the product, but that’s an aside for a later date.)
Real nostalgia would be the fans longing for something that was actually produced (and published) in the past. It can be cited, looked at, enjoyed. Imagined nostalgia would be for something that the audience think they have seen, but never actually happened. For a more recent example, we could look deeper at some of the elements in Deadpool & Wolverine, like the yellow costume, or Gambit’s appearance in the film.
Neither of them actually happened before; they’re both adaptations of elements that have shown up previously in other media. Granted, the nature of transmedia storytelling necessarily means that there is going to be a lot of adaptation going around. The audience is doing a lot of the lifting here, getting something (close to) what they think they wanted.
Mapping real v. imagined nostalgia, this is what the ST:ST curve would look like:
Less of a curve, and more of a straight slope downhill. Hmm. But wait, in the previous post we also talked about the “incepted” nostalgia, that which was created by the content producers to evoke nostalgia. What does that look like for the ST:ST titles?
Curve 3: Organic vs. Manufactured
Organic nostalgia is that experienced by the audience on their own. It is somewhat inherent in the thing. Again, this can occur due to elements, aesthetics, and tropes of the shared universe, but it is on the audience. Organic nostalgia is also related to curve 2, as both real and imagined nostalgia could count as “organic”, having been experienced by the audience.
Manufactured nostalgia is that incepted form. Something brought in for the express purpose of pushing the audience’s nostalgia button. And Star Trek as a franchise pushes this button hard, with each series relying on it to some degree.
So much so that “series” may not be the right analytic unit for this. It may be worthwhile to go inter- or intra- series for the analysis, comparing the series on an episodic basis, or comparing the series versus other series for other franchises.
Current Examples
What is driving the current trend? The summer box office seems to be thriving on it. This series of posts was originally spawned by the release of Deadpool & Wolverine in late July 2024, and as I’m working on the next part Alien: Romulus has been released, drawing heavily on James Cameron’s (1986) Aliens, so much so that people are pointing out shot-for-shot scene comparisons where the A:R directly compares. This happened in D&W as well, with fight choreography coming directly from Sam Raimi’s (2002) Spider-Man, among many other elements.
And these movies are doing well, with positive word of mouth circulating about each film. So something is in the air. What else is pushing us along the Nostalgia Curve?
Watching Deadpool and Wolverine, and engaging with the discourse surrounding it after, (I notoriously skip trailers, spoilers, and all but the most superficial reviews and prefer walking into movies relatively open-minded), one of the recurring themes in those discussions is how much the movie trades on nostalgia.
And with the recent release of Deadpool & Wolverine, there’s a renewed look at how nostalgia is driving (or if not behind the wheel, definitely tucked in with the seatbelts on. To a degree, this is understandable, as Hollywood is fairly risk-averse (seriously, this is the reason why you’ll see 100 sequels or adaptations in a given year, and only rarely does an original property break through). Of course there is more than just track record that nostalgia trades in on. Witness how it was deployed in the recent Twin Peaks: The Return.
I think they’re right, in so far as nostalgia can act as a balm, so that often people want more of that thing that they liked, but this isn’t necessarily a point of critique. There’s nothing wrong with liking what you like, and asking for (and maybe even getting) more of that, when it is available.
Three Fandoms
I’m thinking the best way to illustrate this would be by looking at three (enduring) fandoms here: Star Trek, Pro-wrestling, and comic books, and how they relate to and engage with new material produced for them.
These fandoms aren’t exactly equivalent, but they’re more alike beneath the surface than is usually acknowledged. All three cater to niche fandoms, and have persisted long enough that most of the population had had the opportunity to engage with them at some point in their lives. The slipping in and out of the zeitgeist that comes with successive waves of popularity is a critical part of that, as nostalgic parents can introduce their children to the media (and by extent the fandoms) that they enjoyed when they were younger.
Both comic books and pro-wrestling live in this weird kinda Eternal Now, that can acknowledge (and play off) their history (often as a means of generating credibility or cache), but continually, inexorably, have to put out new product. Sometimes they’ll re-introduce old characters in a new way to play off that, either through legacy characters or children (or relatives) of past performers but the trends are largely the same.
Star Trek is different (for the most part) as it has to continually create new stuff that is kinda like the old stuff, but still new and distinct enough that the fans will enjoy it. Witness the titles it has put out during the streaming era, with the dichotomy between Discovery, Picard, The Lower Decks, Prodigy, and Strange New Worlds, all coming out during roughly the same time period, and all engendering different reactions as they touch down on different points along that “nostalgia curve”.
Obviously, other properties play with the nostalgia curve at times too. Especially long running ones: Star Wars and Dr. Who come to mind; some gaming titles like Dungeons and Dragons, Magic:the Gathering, Pokemon, and Warhammer 40000 are getting old enough to test the waters as well.
So perhaps we should get to the point:
What is the Nostalgia Curve?
Maybe it’s best to think of the amount of nostalgia a given property evokes as existing along a gradient (maybe it can be a continuum, but we use that a lot. This time, we’re grading on the curve.) When something appears in a long-running piece of media, one with an inherent fandom, it can be a challenge to separate something from appearing for nostalgia purposes (i.e. marketing or whatever) and something existing just because it’s part of the setting)
Where you go “Hey look, it’s a wookie! they last showed up in Season 1 Episdoe 8 of the Acolyte! It’s been 20 years!” (says the viewer from the grimdark future of 2044).
(As unlikely as that scenario may be: Wookie’s Will Never Die; they’re the number one furry beast in my heart (behind Cookie Monster, and maybe Snuffleupagus. Wookies are top 5, is what I’m getting at.)
But back to the point I think I’m making is that the commodification of nostalgia, where whether or not a given movie or project even gets made depends on how much the perceived nostalgia factor is worth, is really the issue.
If the perceived value is enough, if you’re far enough along the nostalgia curve, then the movie can get made. And Hollywood being a place where money talks, it may be worth trying to create nostalgia for something that never existed in the first place. If you can create (or incept?) a “fake-thing-which-evokes-real-nostalgia” (actually name pending some focus groups), then you can commodify that in the same way that Deadpool did with Wolverine, and the “comic book accurate costume” that still isn’t 100%.
Nostalgic Memes
Nostalgia is representational (in a memetic way). Like earlier in the flick where Deadpool explicitly calls out the montage during a fourth wall break, and each scene in the montage is iconic within the comics, and instantly recognizable to a long-time fan, even though they never have occurred on screen at any point prior.
Every point of nostalgia is an assemblage (or container, or docker) for all the associations that accompany it. And these are all “shorthand” for everything else that is associated with those books. The time they were published, the creators (writers, artists, and editors), the events that they occurred during (“Age of Apocalypse” “Fall of the Mutants”, etc.).
Thus each and every nostalgic element packs in more and more, until a meta-textual movie like Deadpool & Wolverine can’t help but burst at the seams.
But in this case, it’s in a way that feels deserved. A recent IGN review of D&W lumped it in with the adaptation of Ready Player One, a film similarly stuffed to the brim with “Hey, I recognize that!” moments, and criticized it as being one of Steven Spielberg’s weakest films. Now, Senor Spielbergo may have forgotten more about making fantastic movies than most will ever know, so were the failures of RP1 Spielberg’s fault, or was he simply faithful to the source material?
(I’m asking as I found RP1 (The Book) execrable, and punted it at around the 20 page mark. I declined to watch the RP1 (The Movie.)
What we’re getting at here is that nostalgia is a hot commodity. It isn’t going away any time soon, and even though we all yearn for something fresh and new, and endlessly scrolling on our apps of choice to find it, we end up finding community and joy in our shared nostalgia for things we’re pretty sure we never saw, at least not the way we imagined them to be.
Wrote something down earlier today, and I wanted to capture it here:
Author John Shirley mentioned that a chess program he was playing had a rather chatty Deadpool bot making commentary on the game, and came up with this:
My reply:
Not ‘never again’ though. If #Deadpool is an exarch of #postmodern referentiality and Rortyian #ironism , then the way to recovery is through the #romance of just liking things for their own sake again.
(Or to quote Abed from #Community : ” I guess I just like liking things”)
(It’s how I broke bread with the #furries and #bronies They were ahead of the curve on this. We’re good now.)
And I think this is worth expanding on, but as I said last post, it’s crunch time
