The Power of Reboots and the Gravity of Nostalgia in Web3
The force and power we have through storytelling will forever change in the metaverse
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It seems that every year is marked by another Hollywood reboot-taken-blockbuster, or is that just me? Let’s see, this year the big one in my eyes would be The Lord of the Rings: the Rings of Power, which is not only being created 67 years after the original work was published, but is also well established as the most expensive television show that has ever been created. In my opinion, they might as well have named it “The Lord of the Rings: the Rings of Bezos” with the $715 million-dollar budget the show spent to make.
The thing is though, reestablishment of old intellectual property and reboots are not new and it really isn’t an unsuccessful strategy. From what I have gathered of the last 15 years in film and television, there have been over 120 famous franchises that have attempted a reboot/expansion of their current universe, including but not limited to:
Evil Dead
Star Wars
Blade Runner
Terminator
Predator
King Kong
Rocko's Modern Life
Walker Texas Ranger
Perry Mason
Powerpuff Girls
I could go on, there are sincerely so many that I could fill a spreadsheet with a list of them and I know it would never be entirely complete. And while you could argue some of these reboots are more successful than others, one thing remains clear: we love and care deeply about the stories that we grow up with.
Today I intend to talk about nostalgia as a mechanism of storytelling and developing narratives in web3, and also to suggest the tremendous potential it has to redefine reboots and storytelling in the greater metaverse. To be clear about this, we need to talk about how stories are built, and we need to talk about how reboots change stories before we talk about the incorporation of these mechanisms in web3 content.
First, we should start with the most basic elements of story creation: plot development. We won’t be using the term “plotline” in this article past this mention of it, because plots don’t live in a linear dimension. A plot is the creation of something bigger.
A Plot is a Microverse
The most successful stories are those that have been told over a long period of time. Media production companies that own franchises exercising these stories understand that there’s an entire culture developed around fandoms that worship these intellectual properties. Many of these stories build franchises that have books, games, toys, and other merchandise and media to expand upon its source material and add to the original universe’s narrative.
Why is this important in web3? Narrative is a massive pillar of success in creating microversal NFT collections, and strong and clear articulation of the plot is what drives development in the best of stories. Now when I say something is ‘microversal’, I mean something that is a part of what is called a microverse, which (for the sake of this article) we will define to be the universe where the narrative, products and culture developed around a story or franchise lives. While it sounds like a massive domain, we create one of these universes each time a new story is written or told, or each time we create a new character or imagine a new world. We can call a given member of this domain an asset to the microverse, and there are different ways that artists and companies can go about developing assets in their story's microverse:
One method for development is through the creation of what we’ll call natively-developed assets. These would be any asset developed for the microverse by its original creator in an effort to further the microverse’s overall central story. An example of this is The Otherside metaverse portal/game, which has been developed and marketed exclusively by the Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) creators’ company Yuga Labs and is integral to the development of their microverse. Yuga is actively teasing an overarching plot to their narrative and have done so through their NFTs, Easter-egg-riddled video games, and social media announcements since their story’s inception (Side Note: AX or ‘announcement experience’ is absolutely important in these web3 narratives, just ask tpan).
Another way a microverse can develop is through peripherally-developed assets. these would be any asset created by a secondary narrator as the consequence of a previously developed asset or narrative of the microverse. Often this incorporates elements of the main structure of the microverse, which we can call the canon, but it doesn’t necessarily have to. Using BAYC again as an example, Snoop Dogg and Eminem’s collaborative track developed under the guise of their Bored Ape NFTs is an example of a peripherally-developed asset.
Since Snoop and Slim gave their own names to their characters and are developing their own narrative for their respective apes, this would be considered a peripheral development to the greater narrative. Yuga and BAYC provide complete character rights along with their NFTs to allow holders of their collection complete control over their own character’s story. This feature of their NFTs allows secondary creators to make offshoot narratives entirely separate from BAYC’s central plot. The real brilliance in this primary/secondary creation strategy is that the source will always be the NFT asset provided by Yuga. This creates a tether, linking any and every peripherally-developed asset to the overarching plot to be used to make natively-developed assets should Yuga find a purpose for it in their canon.
As we see the greater metaverse develop, companies may choose to hybridize their approaches to these two kinds of development, and incorporate elements of their offshoots into the greater narrative. In fact, Yuga did just that recently with Snoop Dogg and Eminem by having their VMA performance partially staged in Yuga’s the Otherside metaverse game.
Snoop has independently marketed his ape, as has Eminem. Both have experience collaborating on music together and through the combined power of their followings they’ve developed their own narrative power in the BAYC microverse. Yuga recognized this immediately, and has capitalized on it within their own overarching narrative in this now viral performance.
So where does nostalgia fit into the idea of a microverse?
Nostalgia is the Gravity of a Microverse
Nostalgia is powerful. Using it to revive intellectual property has been the bread and butter of media production companies and fandoms for decades, and developing microverse assets to further an existing story is not a new practice. The overwhelmingly popular video game Fortnite has been doing it for years now by incorporating popular revitalized characters into its battle royale mechanics while simultaneously developing content thematically to further their main plot. Their (frankly brilliant) strategy isn’t limited to just old stories either; the magnum opus of Epic Games also incorporates currently-active narratives played out across all kinds of media including anything from feature films to comic books.
Nostalgia requires an important aspect of memory to be present to actually happen: one has to be able to recollect a memory to make it work. It requires the listener/reader to recall elements of a story from the past in order to evoke a present feeling. We often recall nostalgic memories when we are reminded of them in our present circumstances, and that in essence is the “gravitational” power I am talking about when comparing nostalgia with the force of gravity: it’s a feeling of reattraction to the source material that is made when we feel nostalgia connecting us to people, things, or events throughout time. The very definition of the word nostalgia incorporates the term “longing” or “attraction” in it, aligning it perfectly with the physical force that holds us to this planet.
Now, some people would limit nostalgia’s potency to the past and say that what I just described is all that it’s good for: recall. But not only does our recall of nostalgic memories reinforce our value in what we remember, it also reinforces the very material that catalyzed your reflection in the first place. Gravity is only felt when one object interacts with another, and in this analogy, the thing remembered and the thing that caused the memory to be recalled now have weight. Context. Gravity between each other.
Look, I know there are diehard fans of this movie from the get go, but Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull was just…well, it had Shia LaBeouf swinging from trees with monkeys while strapped with a rapier to race Soviet Cate Blanchett to a hidden temple in South America. That’s a mouthful, and I won’t spoil the rest of the movie here, but let’s just say that the ending is just as superfluous as that scene I just described was.
Despite the horrible reception that film received initially, the franchise itself is iconic. Spanning decades in the making with many films (and a short lived Young Indiana Jones spinoff), it is widely considered a triumph of an action movie series and an incredible franchise. So, after watching that truly bizarre story unfold in Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, I felt compelled to watch every other movie all over again thanks to nostalgia.
And now, at some point every year, my addictively nostalgic brain cannot help but watch all 4 of those movies again and enjoy every single one of them. Viewing the series in its entirety not only revitalized my love for the old films, but it also increased my value in the new one. Its overall canonical story works and (arguably) fits and that satisfaction is exactly the evocative feeling nostalgia attracts us to things with. Nostalgia is gravity, and canon is Newton’s First Law. The best mechanisms that incorporate nostalgia are those that always calculate canon in their design.
We see now how plot elements and the recall of the past can power world building through nostalgia, but then what in the world is a reboot in this context?
Reboots are the Supernovas of a Microverse
I use the term ‘reboot’ somewhat loosely in this article because there’s many different mediums out there that have different definitions for reboots. Entire universes are rebooted perpetually in comic books during events in the microversal narrative called crossovers but they don’t necessarily rewrite entire source material. Rather, they expand upon it, often linking new elements of the plot to the overarching momentum that canon already calculated for them. I will always have a deep appreciation for comics as the mechanisms for creating some of the longest running plots in human history, and each of these crossover events always ends with a bang; an explosive reset of the relative plot to a place where a new story can be incorporated into the overall canon. A new character will be made. A new place will be discovered. A new star will be born.
That to me is the definition of a reboot: it is an event in a given narrative which provides the opportunity to develop new assets in the story’s microverse by invoking and then changing nostalgia. This doesn’t necessarily have to erase any existing content or create what is called a retcon (or a retroactive continuity), because reboots can often be expansions on the existing material and leave it alone. The laziest reboots are often retconned stories, and in my opinion the cleverest reboots know how to circumvent them entirely.
Take Animaniacs for example, an iconic Warner Brothers cartoon property which within the last couple of years has been rebooted on the streaming platform Hulu. The original show and its characters often comically caricatured celebrities and drowned current events in satire, and the rebooted show doesn’t skip a beat from the very start in making it plain they’ll continue the charade. The show goes so far as to even make fun of how it got rebooted in the introductory song, showing the troublesome toons literally rising from the grave and making fun of trolls who would call their new progressive joke repertoire a retcon.
These characters were literally created in their universe to comment on external events, so God help us all when these goofballs leave the limitations of the Warner movie lot and get to satirize web3 in the metaverse, or worse: they make it canon in their narrative.
You could argue with this definition that sequels and revivals are reboots. Sure, in a categorical sense I suppose I do mean to call some sequels and revivals reboots. Haven't you ever watched a movie or read a book and thought that it was enough? That “they didn’t need the sequel,” or that you felt a change in the nostalgic “feeling” evoked from the preceding work? A sequel in terms of story progression may have its own overarching purpose but the creation of a sequel is not always for the purpose of furthering the original story. Sometimes sequels are created to tell a different story, completely independent of the previous one but still possibly (but not necessarily) linked by characters or settings shared by the assets. Some sequels aren't even intended, which makes their happening all the more like a reboot; an attempt to revitalize an older story through the development of something that wasn’t even thought of when creating the original work.
Probably the most impressive continuous microverses out there are kid-driven intellectual properties, like those owned by Nickelodeon, Disney and Cartoon Network. Generations have watched SpongeBob SquarePants and discovered nostalgia’s effect on them through the franchise, and likewise for many others such as Pokémon, Steven Universe, Barbie, and many other youth-targeted franchises which build their own microversal fandom young and expand with age. I grew up on Animaniacs, and the new reboot not only invokes my nostalgia to grow my love for the old show, it changes my feelings of appreciation for the show with every new joke that lands in perfect harmony with the old material. A verifiable engine of nostalgia.
So how does the metaverse fit into all of this?
The Metaverse is Beyond the Black Hole of Nostalgia
We’ve only been talking about microverses. With the exception of comic book crossover events, we’ve only ever defined mechanisms that drive the internal plot moved by the gravity of nostalgia and we’ve never left the microverse that the plot lives in. So how can we break out of our microverse’s gravity of nostalgia? Web3 and the metaverse is how.
Much like a black hole, a virtually infinite well of gravity so strong that no light can escape its pull, the metaverse has the truly incredible potential to handle every form of nostalgia, every single cherished story and plot we want to remember. Not only does it handle preserving nostalgia, it allows for plots and stories to connect that would have never connected before. That’s the exact reason so many enthusiasts compare it to the birth of the internet: it’s a ubiquitous force for memory preservation through the interlinking of knowledge unlike anything before it. I think those entities that can master the control and manipulation of nostalgia will be incredibly successful in this space.
Right now web3 content creator RECUR appears to be the most well known entity in the web3 ecosystem to capitalize on nostalgia’s power. Through their partnership with media giant Paramount, they’ve developed their own niche portal in the metaverse that includes NFT collections centered entirely on nostalgic franchises. Their list of IP to draw from in creating their digital collectables includes:
Nickelodeon (currently only the Rugrats and Hey Arnold! franchises have been used from this body of work, but other franchises and shows are being developed for their NFT marketplace)
Star Trek
Care Bears Forever
Hello Kitty
Top Gun: Maverick
They also have yet to include but have promised collections centered around properties such as:
The Godfather
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
Mean Girls
Ferris Bueller’s Day Off
It seems RECUR understands that nostalgia can be an immensely useful force in the web3 space. Offering NFT collections centered around characters or objects from these franchises, RECUR is slowly developing an internal marketplace of nostalgic work and an interactive microverse linking each of the microverses they’re developing for each franchise. Holders of RECUR Pass NFTs will have exclusive access to the entire list of every franchise owned and invoked by RECUR-developed assets, which I have no doubt will only get bigger and better as Paramount and their future partners offer more nostalgia for them to manipulate. Right now, they are the masters of this gravity, and others will have to play catch-up in order to compete, or else join RECUR’s black hole to enter the metaverse.
With all of this, what can we expect from the future of storytelling? More reboots? Possibly, but one thing is certain…
We’ve Glimpsed the Event Horizon
Nostalgia offers a natural expansive foundation for a company to build new content, but it also offers something truly precious on the internet: a natural continuity ripe with opportunity. An asset’s history and story will no longer be limited to just its own microverse, and it can be preserved without its own plot simply because it exists in the metaverse.
Just like in comic book continuity, as the metaverse expands and clarifies, each new story commingles and intersects with the others through the metaverse’s very own narrative. This offers us all kinds of new creative storytelling elements to bring from commingling stories potentially offering us new ways to circumvent retcon mechanisms and redefine the idea of characters being “canceled.” The metaverse lets us preserve the elements of franchises we hold deep nostalgic feelings for. Gone are the days of characters, settings, and easter eggs within stories limiting themselves to their own plot and microverse and with that comes an abundance of opportunity for interactive storytelling, choose your adventure opportunities, and the possibility of recognizing the comic book crossover as a major model for future narrative interaction between franchises.
We spend a lot of time critiquing the stories others invent, arguing over canonical facts that politicize fandoms and distance us from those we disagree with. If the metaverse offers us anything, it’s a domain where we can redefine what all of that means, and just appreciate that a story is unfolding presently, or that we feel nostalgia for stories we’ve heard and loved before. I can be as mindlessly critical of The Rings of Power and reboots like it as much as I want, but the deep truth of it is that it’s a remarkable fact that we are able to imaginatively expand a story, and the value of $715 million dollars pales in comparison to the value of our ability to evoke nostalgia from what we observe.
The metaverse is one great big crossover reboot, and it will absolutely be where the next greatest record of humanity will live. With each intellectual property, brand, story, idea added to the metaverse we redefine how we interact with the characters and franchises that we love, and I believe those who understand the gravity of that will lead the way in telling its story to the world.
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