51 GREATEST FICTIONAL BAD GUYS
#30. ANNIE WILKES from MISERY
When I briefly worked as the assistant to the executive producer of the BATTLESTAR GALACTICA reboot, I asked my boss if the fans of the original series mattered. His language, as colorfully laced as it was, was a big fat “no”.
Filmmakers and studios walk a razor thin line. They are in the business nowadays of brand building, which is a nice term for “appropriating and selling old shit over-and-over again”. They do this because there is a fan-base baked in already, easy money. The tightrope walk is then appeasing those fans while making something fresh. And nowadays, if a guy in Duluth sees that Superman’s symbol isn’t the same proportions as it was in Action Comics #868, then Zack Snyder’s got some serious ‘splainin to do.
Fans are the lifeblood of any creative endeavor. Without them, there is nobody keeping the machine running. They valiantly force a project to survive the tides of time. Sometimes successfully (STAR TREK), sometimes not so much (DREDD). Ownership becomes an issue. In the modern world, the corporation legally owns the property, the creator (hopefully) owns its destiny. The fans believe they own its soul, and god help the corporation and creator if they betray it.
Take George Lucas for example. The man created our generation’s defining mythology. There’s no doubt he was STAR WARS and STAR WARS was him. He never owed any of us anything: he’s not an elected official and we never crowned him pope. But see what us fans put him through after the prequels (or even as something as dumb as the “who shot first” debate (it was Han, you fools, it was always Han)).
The man gave us an actual religion, and the last mental picture I have of him is sitting in a food court picking at some egg foo young. We took a hammer to his legs. Annie Wilkes is all us fans made personified. Anytime we over-obsess about a narrative, we’re her, standing there with a sledgehammer (or ax if you prefer the book) ready to lay down the law. I bet in George Lucas’ wildest fantasies, he holds all of us down, stuffing melted Han Solo figures into our mouths, screaming “you want it? You want it?! Eat it till ya choke, you sick, twisted fucks!”
Annie: “I thought you were good Paul… but you’re not good. You’re just another lying ol’ dirty birdie.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pO20qU-VwgA
