I like films. I very much like films, and I like to watch films when I can. Just because I enjoy films, does this mean I enjoy every film ever created? No, it doesn't.
For example, take the film I spoke about as the other part of the assignment, Captain America: Civil War. I enjoyed this film very much, and I thought the film was incredibly well made and interesting. Just because I liked this film, does not mean I will like other films. Frozen was a film, and while I didn't hate the movie, it definitely wasn't my kind of movie. The same could be said about other things, like a large number of rom-coms, and horror films that take themselves too seriously. Even other Marvel films aren't safe from being disliked, as I very much did not like Age of Ultron.
Personally, I like a film that is able to hold my interest throughout the whole thing. This doesn't mean there needs to be constant action. I enjoy some films, like Die Hard, due to the amount of action present, but I can also appreciate non-action based films, such as, say, "Flight", starring Denzel Washington. The film had a small bit of action during the actual flight part of the movie, but the majority was about the character recovering from alcohol and drug related problems, yet it was able to keep me interested throughout the whole thing because I wanted to know what happened to him. This is a good example of what a film needs to keep me interested, and that's a film that tries it's hardest to keep me interested.
I was not a fan of Frozen, as the plot and characters weren't aimed at me and they weren't too interesting to me as I was out of the target audience and had little interest in the ability to make dresses out of ice. Yet I watched the whole film, because there was constantly things happening to keep me interested (except for that bit with the rock guys, I don't really remember what that was). The film kept my interest despite the fact I knew early on that I would not be a fan of the film, because it managed to keep me interested with the amount of content presented to me.
For the sake of avoiding talking about Civil War again, I'll dedicate this post to discussing a different film that I enjoy. I'm going to choose to talk about Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, a film I recommend everyone watch due to how surprisingly good you may find the film, and how simply weird and unusual it is as a film and in it's plot. Now, when I first saw this film, I thought it was simply a very crazy film with a strange sense of humour, and I said to myself that the film was very fun, and said that it had little reason to exist, but was very good in what it tried to do. I knew I had to find out more about the film, so I looked it up to see if there was anything I missed, and I read about the comics of it (I have yet to read them myself, hoping this summer will be a good time) and that some people saw the film as bad and unenjoyable. This was something I couldn't really understand, as I could see that the film was unusual but it fit my tastes of unusuality so well that it just came across as a movie that anyone should be able to enjoy as it never rests at being interesting to me.
What I had was a preferred reading. I saw the film and read it as a silly film that was intended to entertain with little purpose and to just spend time being strange and fun, while these people had an oppositional reading, expecting a more developed or serious comedy that obeyed a more strict set of rules. This is a difference between how people read and interpret a film. While these people may not have enjoyed a film I enjoyed, they may have enjoyed something I didn't, like Frozen.
The preferred reading for Frozen would be a light hearted adventure targeted at younger girls that was intended to entertain and possibly sell a product, where I was expecting a bit of a more mature kids film akin to Big Hero 6 or Wreck-It Ralph, something that sold a product while also just being a film that had a bit more going for it in terms of likable characters or an interesting plot, meaning I had an oppositional reading, while those who liked it and bought all their Olafs and Elsas would have taken a more preferred reading from the film.
Frozen was a mainstream success, with people talking about it online. Even now you'd be hard pressed to go on the internet without seeing something Frozen somewhere, as it had a massive online presence amongst a younger audience, with the song "Let It Go" becoming a massive hit on YouTube and the film being discussed regularly on many websites. On the other hand, Scott Pilgrim had a much smaller presence, only being relevant to people who were fans of the comics or those who had seen the film and wanted to just discuss what they'd seen. While I personally enjoyed Scott Pilgrim more, there was very little on the internet that really discussed much about it - occasionally you'd see something discussing whether they enjoyed the film or not, but there was a lack of fan content or any real talk about the plot and characters, unlike Frozen. This shows that a lot less people identified themselves as fans, and a lot of the fan content was created by much more hardcore fans of the film and/or its comics that loved and analysed every bit of Scott Pilgrim content readily available to them.
Arguably, when the fan community consists of such hardcore fans, it can be much harder to get involved in the community as they can be somewhat elite about who is able to participate in discussions or create fan content, while the sheer number of Frozen fans means that some will be much smaller fans than others and will therefore be readily available to discuss the film with anyone, giving it a more welcoming and larger fan base that will give a larger online presence.
Frozen did not interest me as a film or a genre, and I did not feel attracted to watch it, having only watched it months after release and simply because my brother had brought it around at Christmas. What also didn't help is that I watched Wreck-It Ralph just beforehand, and I couldn't be interested in a film that I saw as completely uninteresting in comparison to Ralph, and I had no attraction to be in the fan community or discuss it online, buy any products (I'm sure I'd suit an Elsa dress) or be tempted to watch the film again. It didn't attract my attention enough the first time around, and while I don't doubt that it's there for others, it's simply not there for me, as I'm sure would be the case with Scott Pilgrim, in that I saw it as a film I'd like to know more about, and others likely saw it as a weird film that they wanted nothing to do with it's craziness.
Would I have seen either film in cinema? Probably not, Frozen did not interest me from adverts, I only saw it on DVD release (I think so, anyway, it's entirely possible my brother had pirated it, I don't recall) and I only saw Scott Pilgrim when it was on TV. Neither film would have interested me when they first released, and I don't recall much advertisement for Scott Pilgrim before it's release that would have tempted me to go and watch the film in a cinema. To go back to Captain America: Civil War, a film that I watched in the cinemas, it was because of it's advertising. It made me excited, whereas I was not excited for either of these films coming out, and only discovered Scott Pilgrim years later, thoroughly enjoying it, but knowing that the lack of advertising hype and interest would not have ever tempted me to go to the cinemas for it.
Before watching both Scott Pilgrim and Frozen, I was not overly excited for the films, not expecting them to interest me, with my opinions changing during the watching, whereas with Civil War I went into it knowing it had a lot of things that'd likely interest me, meaning I went in with different expectations which set it up to be something I'd either really enjoy or really hate depending on whether or not it was good. While I wouldn't necessarily consider myself a fan of Civil War or Scott Pilgrim, I consider them good and am interested in the films and their creations, but I don't participate in the fandom of them because they do not interest me enough for me to want to be in a fandom of them. Disney has created a lot of people to become fans of their franchises, from Star Wars to Marvel to Frozen, many people are fans of Disney movies and will desire to interact with cast and crew, get autographs, participate in questioning the cast and finding out their thoughts and usually sharing their own opinions via social media. While I don't overly do this and don't participate in the fandoms, I consider myself a fan to the extent that I like the film and will openly discuss the fact that I like these films.
Scott Pilgrim and Civil War are examples of intertextuality, as well. Essentially where a piece of media (in this case a film) cross references another piece of media, like a book or comic that may be where it originated or something as a brand may be referenced. For example, Civil War stemmed from Marvel's Civil War comics, and was set as an established storyline in Marvel's comic universe that was largely used as inspiration for the films, as the Scott Pilgrim comics were for that film. Marvel also reference Star Wars during Civil War, making mention of the Empire Strikes Back during Spiderman's fight against Ant-Man, showing that the two films at least acknowledged each other in an intertextual way.
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