How fan the­o­ries changed the way we watch movies and TV

Did you ever hear that real­ly cool fan the­o­ry that James Bond isn’t one man, but a code­name used by MI6 at any giv­en time for their cur­rent top agent? This explains how ​“Bond” changes faces and age con­stant­ly while also tying the whole series togeth­er, which is why it’s become so pop­u­lar with the fan­base. Except it doesn’t real­ly tie any­thing togeth­er since the con­ti­nu­ity still makes no sense. Why is Roger Moore seen mourn­ing George Lazenby’s wife, or why is actor Charles Grey a short-lived Bond ally in You Only Live Twice, and then Blofeld in Dia­monds are For­ev­er?

The sim­ple answer is that the code­name the­o­ry isn’t true, since the pro­duc­ers nev­er intend­ed this read­ing. It’s an intrigu­ing idea for sure, but despite being eas­i­ly debunked it refus­es to die. This is the pow­er of a good fan the­o­ry, one that lets you view a movie or tele­vi­sion show in a com­plete­ly new light, mak­ing you ques­tion and even rethink what you’ve seen. It often doesn’t even mat­ter if the sto­ry sup­ports it.

While fan the­o­ries exist­ed before the inter­net, they still feel like a rel­a­tive­ly mod­ern phe­nom­e­non. Lost is arguably the show that made them main­stream, with fans the world over eager­ly trad­ing the­o­ries about the real nature of the Island, or the ori­gin of the Smoke Mon­ster. While the show had like­able char­ac­ters and a com­pelling sto­ry, this extra piece of audi­ence par­tic­i­pa­tion is what turned it into a cul­tur­al smash.

Fast for­ward to the present day and fan the­o­ries have become their own sub-indus­try. When dis­cussing shows like Game of Thrones, The Walk­ing Dead or Stranger Things, you typ­i­cal­ly don’t have to wait long before hear­ing some­thing along the lines of, ​‘I bet Jaime will wind up killing Cer­sei!’ or, ​‘What if the Demogor­gon actu­al­ly came from with­in Eleven? It’s her anger in phys­i­cal form.’ These kinds of con­ver­sa­tions have become a big part of the TV view­ing expe­ri­ence, with fans brush­ing up on the lat­est the­o­ries in-between episodes.

Out­side of Game of Thrones, no oth­er recent show has ben­e­fit­ted – and in some ways, suf­fered – from ram­pant fan the­o­ries like West­world. This reboot of Michael Crichton’s cult sci-fi was laud­ed for its impres­sive cast­ing and mul­ti-lay­ered sto­ry, but audi­ences wast­ed no time decod­ing its many sur­pris­es. They quick­ly guessed that the William sto­ry­line was tak­ing place in a dif­fer­ent time­line, and that the char­ac­ter would evolve into Ed Har­ris’ Man in Black. This the­o­ry became so entrenched that when it was revealed in the final episode, the impact was dulled by the fact that many view­ers had had two months to absorb it.

The show still held many mys­ter­ies that were hard­er to pre­dict, but it felt like some fans treat­ed West­world like a com­pet­i­tive sport, almost try­ing to out­wit the show’s writ­ers. It was also hard to escape the var­i­ous plot pre­dic­tions that popped up online, which spoiled the enjoy­ment of those who just want­ed to come to it with a blank slate. These com­plaints aside, this spec­u­la­tion undoubt­ed­ly helped West­world to become a hit, with word of mouth lur­ing in casu­al view­ers who sud­den­ly want­ed to see if they could untan­gle the intri­cate plot for themselves.

It’s no sur­prise that JJ Abrams is linked to both Lost and West­world, since he has helped fos­ter fan engage­ment through so much of his out­put. What­ev­er his strengths and weak­ness as a screen­writer are, there’s no deny­ing he’s a great show­man. His 2007 TED talk became a text­book exam­ple of how to per­form one, with Abrams speak­ing pas­sion­ate­ly about the art of sto­ry­telling and the impor­tance of mys­tery. The term ​“Mys­tery Box”, refer­ring to a child­hood box of mag­ic tricks Abrams which nev­er opened due to fear of spoil­ing the mys­ter­ies with­in, soon entered the cul­tur­al lex­i­con. He applies this approach to his own projects, which in turn invites antic­i­pa­tion and hot debate.

The inbuilt prob­lem with this con­cept is that a sto­ry can’t sur­vive on mys­tery alone, and the even­tu­al res­o­lu­tion is rarely as sat­is­fy­ing as the buildup. Much of Abrams’ film and tele­vi­sion work has fall­en foul of this: the end­ing to Lost was derid­ed even by the most loy­al fans and the Khan reveal in Star Trek Into Dark­ness was seen by many as a major anti-cli­max. That said, this style has been incred­i­bly influ­en­tial, encour­ag­ing view­ers to dig deep­er into the nar­ra­tive. Soon oth­er stu­dios and film­mak­ers were fol­low­ing Abrams’ lead, result­ing in fan the­o­ries becom­ing a major dis­cus­sion point online.

Re-eval­u­at­ing clas­sic movies has also become a pop­u­lar pas­time, with in-depth arti­cles and videos con­stant­ly pop­ping up to explore poten­tial hid­den themes or secret con­nec­tions which view­ers may have missed. For every the­o­ry that has some degree of cred­i­bil­i­ty – the final scene of Taxi Dri­ver takes place in Travis Bickle’s head; Cobb is still dream­ing at the end of Incep­tion – there are count­less oth­ers which can be eas­i­ly picked apart by just pay­ing close atten­tion to the actu­al story.

Is Fury Road​’s ver­sion of Mad Max real­ly the Fer­al Kid from The Road War­rior? No, Tom Hardy’s Max Rock­atan­sky still has the limp and leg brace from the orig­i­nal tril­o­gy, not to men­tion the exact same back­sto­ry. (Plus, George Miller him­self dis­missed the notion.) Is Fer­ris Bueller a fig­ment of Cameron’s imag­i­na­tion? Nope, Fer­ris is seen inter­act­ing through­out with many oth­er char­ac­ters, even when Cameron isn’t in the room. (In fact, the entire movie makes no sense if Fer­ris isn’t real.) Was Jar Jar Binks a Sith Lord in dis­guise? (No, he’s just awful.)

That’s not to dis­miss fan the­o­ries out of hand. Gen­er­at­ing dis­cus­sion around movies and TV shows can be a healthy, reward­ing exer­cise, and if some­one wants to view a sto­ry from a cer­tain view­point – hey, maybe Alfred real­ly is Bruce Wayne’s father in The Dark Knight Tril­o­gy – then more pow­er to them. Some of these the­o­ries can even enrich the view­ing expe­ri­ence, so they should be sup­port­ed. More and more fan the­o­ries are com­ing to define how we dis­cuss and even con­sume major releas­es, but it’s always impor­tant to keep an open mind before buy­ing into them.