You're right about how easy it is to create a potential franchise like
Star Wars. You set your story in an imaginary setting and then flesh it out. A good trick is to be fairly open-ended in its initial establishment. For instance, if you say your story is in a sector of the galaxy with three inhabitable worlds and it takes too damn long for anyone to travel outside that sector to consider the possibility of going to
other worlds, then those three worlds will be it for the duration of your story. Mind you, if you put your imagination to it, you could do a
hell of a lot with three worlds... but I'm just using it as an example here.
Moving back to the idea of creating your saga with its endless potential, it's a pretty simple process. Once you've established your imaginary setting, you can then flesh it out as much as you want to. The only thing you have to bear in mind as you do this is the need to watch out for inconsistencies. For example, if you've written about some large galactic war involving all the major powerhouses, then you can't later introduce another powerhouse that wasn't involved and say something like "they played an integral part in every major galactic war for the last two hundred years... I... er... just neglected to mention them when I was writing about the last one." The careful reader will pick up on such little things.
However, if you keep these simple things in mind and then write about your imaginary setting
as if it were real, then very soon, you'll have a fully realised world/galaxy/universe at your fingertips. Actually, doing this is a really worthwhile thing even if no-one reads it but you. The best thing is that you can write stories that
you want to read. However, whether you want to try to get published or not... I'd leave that up to you. Personally, life's too short to go down that road of insanity. I don't have the patience or perseverence for it but to each their own. If sending in a synopsis to an agent and waiting six months just to find out if they'd like to actually
read the manuscript* sounds like your cup of tea, then I don't want to stop you.
*And then there'd be another long wait to see if they like it.... and another long wait as they send it to a publisher to see if they like it... I feel freakin' exhausted just thinking about it.Anyway, I digress. Yes, I think there are many stories out there that have all the right ingredients to be a cultural phenomenon. However, I think the reason why it's difficult to recreate something like
Star Wars is that our interests are so diverse these days and there's so much stuff out there competing for our attention. Back when
Star Wars came out (I wasn't born then so I'm hypothesizing here), I imagine going to the cinema would have been a much bigger deal, more of a day out than something you just did at the spur of the moment because you happened to be walking past a Multiplex after stepping out of Burger King. Also, at that time, there really hadn't been anything like it. Here was a science fiction movie with incredible visual effects, a rollicking storyline (not like one of those dragging 1950s numbers), that was just an absolute feast for both the eyes and the ears which probably made more people want to be pilots than
Top Gun ever would... and that's not even mentioning the sweeping orchestra soundtrack, which is still one of the greatest soundtracks ever. Even now, I get a tingle down my spine when I hear the opening fanfare.
I don't think it's possible to recreate the conditions of A.) having very little to distract the public's attention and B.) creating something that is completely unlike anything people have seen before.
The only real way you could compensate for this would be through the power of mass marketing. However, you can see that while this gets people's attention in the short run, it can't keep something in their hearts and minds indefinitely. I'll use your example of
The Titanic from your subheading in this thread. When that came out, it was the highest grossing film ever. I seriously didn't think it deserved that attention. It was essentially a lavish soap opera set on a boat with characters who seemed more like two dimensional plot devices than actual people. However, this didn't seem to matter. The marketing machine told people that they had to like it, and just like it was with the Emperor's new clothes, nobody seemed to want to be the person to point out it sucked. Yours truly however played the role of the young boy who raised the objection, I'm pleased to say.
Now, while that was big in its day, I really don't hear people talk about it that much. I don't see great promotional displays for it in DVD shops. I don't hear people talking about renting it or buying it. As far as I'm aware, there are no Titanic video games to speak of. So for all that marketing, it's hardly become a cultural phenomenon, has it?
As for
Halo, I think it's probably pretty cool if you're into the X-Box. I'm not, to be perfecly honest, but I've heard it's a really great game in many people's minds. However, I think if the creators of
Halo even want to
think about the possibility of their baby becoming a cultural phenomenon like
Star Wars, then they've got to make a movie. Games are big, I agree, but not big enough. Despite what the developers think, there are a lot of people out there who would say "
Halo? What's that?" However, you'd have to look pretty long and hard to find someone who had never heard of
Star Wars.
This post has been edited by Just your average movie goer: 04 February 2009 - 06:03 AM