The other day I came across the official Facebook page for Ridley Scott’s Prometheus. It features an album displaying Prometheus fan art, such as:
These are nice posters, and of course we’ve seen such work (alternative posters for films we haven’t yet seen) before. But the fact that this was called “fan art” suddenly struck me as odd. I mean, it clearly is fan art, so it’s not a misnomer, but it had never occurred to me before to wonder:
Can you be a fan of a film or TV show you haven’t yet seen?
We often see these explosions of fan interest and fan creativity in connection with existing franchises with existing fanbases, which is certainly the case here: the Alien films are well known and well loved. Yet there’s no small chance that, in this example, Prometheus will dissatisfy, and those who are “fans” now won’t be once they see the film. So, is investing so much into a film still unseen potentially setting oneself up for disappointment?
What do you think?
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