The Official Site of Fanboys

Discuss Fanboys on the boards!

The production of Fanboys has not been a pleasant one. What started out as a geeky road trip movie with a heart of gold has been reshot, edited, and delayed to a point where it’s almost unrecognizable. The film has always acted as a love note to Star Wars and friendship, but now, 2 months after the movie was supposed to come out, a new director has been brought on to trim major storylines and bring a balance to the force. While I’m sure the Wookie and Droid jokes will remain intact, the Fanboy in me worries they may have cut out a reason to care about the people telling them.

In the original version of the film, written by Ernie Cline and Adam Goldberg and directed by Kyle Newman, focused on a group of friends breaking into Skywalker Ranch to steal a copy of Episode I: The Phantom Menace before its release in 1999. The reasoning behind it is not because they’re insane, unbalanced fans of the series… ok, they are, but that’s not the reason they’re doing it. The reason they have to see the movie before it comes out is because one of the members of the group (min-Cusack Chris Marquette) won’t live long enough to see the release date. He has cancer and the only thing this group of friends wants is to share this ground breaking (hey, they hadn’t seen it yet. It could have been ground breaking) movie together.

Sweet right? Well The Weinstein Company didn’t think so, or they at least thought it was depressing enough to retool. They brought in director Steve Brill (Drillbit Taylor, Little Nicy) to get rid of the downer twist and steer the film in a new direction.

For some reason this was obviously a terrible idea to everyone except the people that actually get to decide. To me it’s really simple why this is bad - The reshoots remove the cancer storyline completely making the break-in attempt play less like a dying wish and more like a selfish stunt. A great adventure not of best friends with a purpose but jackass kids to good to wait it out like the rest of us.

The news of the changes sparked an uproar in the Star Wars fan community who had long been anticipating the movie that glorified them. Groups tried to get the attention of The Weinstein Company in anyway they could. Today’s comic came about as a result of a site called “Stop Darth Weinstien� who called for the boycott of Weinstein’s next major release Superhero Movie, which hits theaters this Friday.

The campaign and boycott let The Weinstein Company know that their target audience was not happy with their decision. An influx of e-mails prompted The Weinstein Company to release this statement:

While the message offers hope, it goes on to imply that both versions will be released, though not necessarily in theaters. The press release is worded very carefully. To me though, the message says we’ll get a cancer-free romp in theaters, and a courtesy release of both versions on DVD.

Here’s the thing – is either version of the movie really that good? I saw about 30 minutes of cancer-included footage last year at Comic Con and thought it looked awesome, but it was no guarantee that the film would work as a whole - cancer or no cancer. Is a movie we haven’t even seen worth fighting for? Fan reaction seems positive, but this from the same site that superimposed Harvey Weinstein‘s head on Darth Vader’s body. I don’t doubt that the movie is good but these folks may be a little biased.

What I do think is fighting for is the integrity of storytelling. While the concept of the adventure - the goofy twist that probably got the movie greenlit in the first place - remains intact, the heart behind it is lost. If you support this boycott, or this campaign in anyway, I hope you do so not just as a fan of Star Wars but as a fan of movies in general. Don’t make this about fans, make it about film.

Personally, I haven’t decided if I’m going to support the boycott or not. I thought that I would because… well it seemed like a good cause and I could always use another reason not to see Superhero Movie, which looks utterly miserable, but it was a DVD that turned me around. I was watching The Mist this weekend, a movie that made its way through the Weinstien machine and still managed to be a fantastic DVD release. It’s wonderfully produced and filled to the brim with really quality bonus features. It’s a beautiful DVD set in a market that rarely delivers more than what’s required. It made me realize that we maybe shouldn’t be taking it out our frustrations on movies that don’t deserve it. Maybe we should just boycott Fanboys when (if?) it hits theaters and then put our money where our mouths are when it comes time to choose which cut we want on DVD. If we’re being honest with each other though – This movie’s got Kristen Bell in a gold bikini … I might buy both versions.

Incoming director Steve Brill is not receiving a warm welcome as you might expect, and in this article from /film it looks like he’s not afraid to bite back.

My first instinct is to just feel bad for the guy. He was basically thrown into a no win situation where the fans would never really embrace anything he did. In reading some of his reactions though he’s making it real hard to want to root for him. It must be hard to put up with a bunch of hotheaded Internet fanboys. There’s no reason to reply like one though. It’s a shame, based on what I’ve read it seems like he’s a good guy that just can’t take criticism at all.

This strip is a little less than complimentary, but it’s all in good fun. I’m sure it’ll be pretty well organized and respectful, but you’re kidding yourself if you think you’re not going to see at least one fully dressed Storm Trooper at one of these protests. If you’re up for participating, or just gawking at the crowds, the two scheduled protests are at these locations:

I’m sure there will be plenty of pictures up on line come Monday and I wonder what they’ll look like stacked up next to Superhero movie’s weekend box office results.

As to the joke itself… I hope it works. It really relies on you knowing the Jedi mind trick and seeing that little wave in panel two. I tried to make it obvious but I’m afraid I may have failed. It’s a tough balance with something like that. You never want to over do it, even if it is the most important part of the comic.

I want to keep it short today but I did want to point you guys over to the First Official Boxcar JAM!. We put this together over the last couple weeks and plan to make it a regular event over at the newly revived Boxcar. We’re all really excited about this so... you know? Catch the fever.

That’s it for now, but thanks so much for reading and in the next couple days I’ll have a DVD review as well an update on one of this weekend’s major releases. I’m not sure which one though. It’s finally starting to get juicy again in theaters and I can’t decide which one I want to see first!