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- 2018 · Documentary · 1h 37m
Jun 14, 2018 · United We Fan: Directed by Michael Sparaga. With Amy Acker, Scott Bakula, Adam Bartley, Donald P. Bellisario. Fans, stars, creators, and more come together to explore the dynamic history and evolution of save-our-show television fan campaigns from the letter-writing and product mail-in campaigns of yesterday to the social media and crowdfunding campaigns of today.
- (121)
- Documentary
- Michael Sparaga
- 2018-06-14
Watch United We Fan with a subscription on Prime Video, rent on Fandango at Home, or buy on Fandango at Home. Whether it's "Star Trek," "Designing Women" or "Veronica Mars," super-fans don't take ...
- (14)
- Documentary
- Michael Sparaga
Show all movies in the JustWatch Streaming Charts. Streaming charts last updated: 5:21:59 AM, 04/28/2024 . United We Fan is 17079 on the JustWatch Daily Streaming Charts today. The movie has moved up the charts by 12783 places since yesterday. In the United States, it is currently more popular than Sky High but less popular than Active Stealth.
- Michael Sparaga
- 97
- Documentary
- Self; Self; Self
- A closer look at the fans who saved your favorite shows.
- Every TV Show Canceled in 2018
- Verdict
By Jesse Schedeen
Updated: Dec 3, 2018 7:27 pm
Posted: Dec 3, 2018 7:18 pm
This is a spoiler-free review of United We Fan, which will be available on Digital HD on December 4.
For a hardcore TV watcher, few things are more frustrating than seeing one of your beloved shows die an untimely death because of cold, uncaring network executives. And few things are more rewarding than joining in on fan campaigns to save those shows and make the corporate bean counters realize their mistake. That's the thrust of United We Fan, director Michael Sparaga's deep dive into the small screen's most rabid and devoted fanbases.
United We Fan doesn't focus on any one group of fans or TV controversy, instead casting a wide net and exploring the evolution of fan campaigns from the '60s up until the present. Appropriately enough, the early parts of the film focus a lot on Bjo and John Trimble, the couple who rallied Star Trek fans to rescue the series from an early (well, earlier) cancellation and effectively paved the way for every fan campaign that followed. The film also shines a spotlight on Dorothy Swanson and other members of Viewers for Quality Television. That once thriving organization rose to prominence in the '80s by campaigning for the renewal of female-driven series like Cagney & Lacey and Designing Women.
It's both a compliment and a criticism of United We Fan to say that this documentary could easily have grown into a full-length series rather than a lone movie. Again, it offers a compelling look at the evolution of fan culture over the decades and some of the major and minor voices in the never-ending battle for higher quality entertainment.
At the same time, there's too much that the film either glosses over or ignores entirely. I would have liked to see a deeper exploration of the issue Nolan and others briefly touch on - that some especially passionate fans begin to feel a sense of ownership over the things they love. Particularly with toxic fan culture becoming so prevalent online in recent years, there's room to dig far deeper into the issue than United We Fan is able. Again, fodder for a documentary unto itself.
Less understandable is the way the documentary seems to ignore the importance of streaming services like Netflix in terms of breathing new life into struggling shows. The film acknowledges the importance of the Veronica Mars movie in terms of establishing crowd-funding as a viable new business model, but barely references services like Netflix and Hulu at all. It would have been nice to get input from the people involved in shows like Arrested Development, Community and The Killing - shows that were discarded by big networks and rescued by upstart streaming services. It's a big hole in an otherwise insightful documentary.
(Also in the interest of transparency, this documentary includes interview footage of former IGN editor Eric Goldman. Goldman's involvement had no bearing on the review's score.)
United We Fan is a brisk, enjoyable look at the way TV fan culture has evolved since the days when Star Trek first flirted with cancellation. The documentary is bolstered by some surprisingly candid interviews with both dedicated fans and the content creators themselves. It is sometimes guilty of glossing over or outright ignoring certain topics, b...
Emboldened by her success, Dorothy formed the fan advocacy group Viewers for Quality Television, whose dedicated members fought to save multiple other “quality” series over their 15-year history. Today, 26-year-old Kaily Russell has picked up the fan activism mantle in her fight for the recently axed CBS series Person of Interest.
- Michael Sparaga
- Amy Acker, Scott Bakula, Adam Bartley
Subtitles: English. Starring: Zachary Levi Amy Acker Scott Bakula Skeet Ulrich Nichelle Nichols Adam Bartley Rob Thomas Enrico Colantoni Donald P. Bellisario Tom Fontana Harry Thomason Bjo Trimble John Trimble Dorothy Swanson Kaily Russell. Directed by: Michael Sparaga. For superfans, TV shows represent a community that’s worth defending.
When married sci-fi fans Bjo and John Trimble organized their unprecedented letter-writing campaign to force NBC to renew the original Star Trek back in 1967, they couldn’t have known that they were also planting the seeds of television fan activism that would forever change the relationship between viewers and networks. Fast-forward to 1983, when Dorothy Swanson, a Michigan schoolteacher.
