Subverting Expectations

In recent years, there has been a rather obnoxious trend in movies and TV shows when it comes to established intellectual properties (IP). If you've read the title, you already know where I'm going with this. The trend is for writers of these movies and TV shows wanting to subvert the expectations of the audience when they're writing the latest adaptation of an existing property, whether it be a movie, TV show, or book series.

More often than not, that subversion ends up involving the established characters doing things that they wouldn't do, saying things that they wouldn't say, or changing entire elements of the property. It's defined as a narrative technique where a story deliberately leads the audience to anticipate a specific outcome, only to deliver a different, surprising, and often more profound result. It flips traditional tropes, genre conventions, or character patterns to keep content fresh, engaging, or to make a deeper thematic point. At least that's the best definition for when it's done properly. But that is seldom the case these days when it comes to established IP.

When an audience goes to see a movie or TV show that has adapted a beloved IP, whether that be a previous show/movie or a book, they're viewing it because they want to see the stories and characters that they love faithfully adapted in a new medium. They don't want to see them being used as a vehicle to deliver some sort of social or political message or function as some kind of self-insert therapy session for the writers to unload their personal emotional baggage onto the audience.

There used to be a pretty clear rule of thumb when it came to making movies, TV shows, games, and even books involving existing IP.

Give the audience what they want.

It seems pretty simple, doesn't it? The people who are going to be giving you their money or their time want to be entertained. They're not looking to be lectured. They're not looking to be the third wheel of someone's therapy. Of course, there's an argument that some writers are just trying to avoid being predictable, which is understandable to a degree. But when you're talking about established IP, where the entire universe of the story has already been built and thoroughly explored, there's a certain level of predictability that's to be expected. As the writer/s, you're going up against not just a casual audience, but diehard fans. People who live and breathe this IP WILL know more about it than you. That's to be expected. So if everything else that has already been done has laid down the groundwork that may lead the diehards to figure out some or even all of the plot points of your story, that's ok. Because what you're doing is giving the general audience an entertaining story, and giving the diehards an entertaining adaptation of what they wanted to see, along with that added satisfaction that they were right in their speculation. They will see that work and think, "The people making this clearly know this property well." It's a win-win.

You know what the audience doesn't want?

They don't want a room full of arrogant self-righteous turd nuggets sitting there, patting each other on the back, thinking that they're smarter than the audience because they think that they tricked them. If you start off by thinking that your audience is stupid and you're smarter than them, especially when it comes to an established IP, you're starting off on the wrong foot. It's adversarial. That's one of the reasons why many of the recent movies and TV shows based on established IPs have crashed and burned. People watching Star Wars want to watch Star Wars, not social/political commentary in a Star Wars wrapper. People watching Star Trek want to watch Star Trek, not some therapy session about how the writers didn't feel like they were part of the "in" crowd in high school, so they're sticking some self-insert characters into the show for some wish fulfillment fantasy. And if you're writing an adaptation of an established IP and you're new to that IP, you don't know more than the fans. These people were neck deep into the minutia of it before you even learned of its existence. They know it better than you ever will, and they WILL judge you for everything you get wrong.

I'm not saying that subverting expectations, as a general concept, is a bad thing. It's not. There are many instances where it works quite well. Mysteries and thrillers are good examples. Subversion of expectations thrives in those genres. It can also work out quite well in original content. You have that freedom there. But when we're talking about established properties, you don't play that kind of game unless you're absolutely sure that you're doing it in a way that you know will please the audience, including the diehard fans (Think the Thanos reveal in The Avengers, for example). Otherwise, you're setting yourself up for failure.