6 audacious fan films that could teach Hollywood a lesson

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Dawson and Starbuck in a gritty future war? Yes please. Photo: Adi Shankar/YouTube
A recent Power Rangers fan film created major excitement online. Photo: Adi Shankar/YouTube

Fan films are the ultimate way for devotees to pay tribute to the characters they love. They give fans the chance to show how the beloved heroes (and antiheroes) should be portrayed — without the creativity-sapping “benefit” of focus groups, hack screenwriters and overpaid producers.

With a war raging between the fans who make these productions and the rights-holders who argue they’re being damaged, Cult of Mac runs down six of the best fan-created short films doing the round on the interwebz.

Check out our picks below.

Power/Rangers

Producer Adi Shankar’s dark Power/Rangers does everything a fan film should do. It doesn’t slavishly re-create something simply for the sake of doing so, but instead takes an existing property and twists it to produce the kind of left-field project Hollywood would never green-light in a million years.

An R-rated re-imagining of the ’90s show, this short presents a possible future that comes about after a group of weaponized high schoolers are recruited to battle intergalactic baddies. It immediately make us interested in the Power Rangers franchise again, thanks to a little Mark Millar-style grit, while giving James Van Der Beek his best role since (guilty pleasure) Dawson’s Creek.

Batman: Dead End

In a post-Christopher Nolan world, the need for Batman: Dead End might not be as great as it was in 2003, when this short appeared like a breath of fresh air. Directed by Sandy Collora, it reminded Batman fans that it was entirely possible to make a gritty, comic book-style Dark Knight film without resorting to the campiness of Joel Schumacher.

The fact that this marks the first on-screen confrontation between the Alien and Predator also makes this a notable short. Sure, it’s short on sensible plotting, but it’s long on atmosphere — and that’s why it became a cult classic.

TROOPS: A Star Wars Fan Film

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LvswNDAAZCU

This COPS parody by Kevin Rubio kick-started the fan film phenomenon. TROOPS debuted at Comic-Con International in 1997 and subsequently became one of the Internet’s earliest viral videos.

Spoofing the long-running hit show that followed real police officers at work, TROOPS takes a similar approach to Imperial stormtroopers from the so-called Black Sheep Squadron as they patrol the Dune Sea on the planet Tatooine from A New Hope. The short is smart, funny and makes up for its low budget with plenty of inventiveness. An essential fan movie.

Dragon Ball Z: Light of Hope

A planned web series (!) rather than just a standalone film, Dragon Ball Z: Light of Hope is a tribute to Akira Toriyama’s renowned manga series as well as a live-action version of 1993 television special Dragon Ball Z: The History of Trunks.

“Our goal is to bring the Dragon Ball world to life in a way that’s never been done before, while staying true to the characters and story,” says production company Robot Underdog. “We want to use this episode as leverage to make more episodes for this web series and other projects.” It’s already a whole lot better than the rotten 2009 Dragonball Evolution movie.

The Punisher: Dirty Laundry

The only NSFW short on this list, The Punisher: Dirty Laundry lurks at the professional end of the fan-film spectrum. Produced by Power/Rangers creator Adi Shankar, this 2012 short stars Thomas Jane, reprising his role as Marvel Comics’ murderous vigilante in the 2004 Hollywood adaptation.

It’s a brutal, self-contained tale that plays out like the backup story to a pulp issue of The Punisher, but it works perfectly. Watching Frank Castle take out an entire gang using a single bottle is still the best Punisher moment seen on film.

Batman: City of Scars

With a budget of $27,000 and a running time of a half-hour, Aaron Schoenke’s fan film is more ambitious than most such undertakings. Arriving in 2010, between Nolan’s The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises, City of Scars impresses due to the high quality of its (amateur) acting as well as its ability to capture, in a longer narrative, what makes the Batman comics so compelling.

The story concerns a Joker/Batman confrontation. The Dark Knight hunts his longtime adversary all over Gotham before eventually confronting him at a carnival. It may not mess with or subvert the formula like some of the other fan films on this list, but it more than delivers on what it promises.

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