AS Film The Fault in Our Stars

Fraser McKean

AS Film Studies Induction

How did The Fault in Our Stars become a box office success?

 

The Fault in Our Stars, a romantic-drama film based on the novel by John Green of the same name, became a huge success due to the film being widely watched by the teen culture.

 

The film revolves around two loved up teenagers struggling with cancer. Even with the burden of this dreadful disease, the protagonists of the film maintain what many couples with call the perfect relationship and therefore can relate to many teenagers that strive for or may have their own idea of the perfect relationship. While teenagers can particularly relate to this, the main focus is that it gives an insight into the circumstances of others, in this case, adolescents coping with the fact they will not live a full life that the audience may have.

 

A similar response was given to My Sister's Keeper (2009) which was also based around a character that suffered with cancer; one might wonder whether this is a strong contributing factor into the popularity of this film.

The characters are relatable in the sense of how almost every audience member has had a struggle with cancer, either having it personally or losing a cherished one to it, this allows the audience to understand the pain and struggle that the protagonists are going through, as well as the sacrifice of entering a relationship knowing that it cannot last a lifetime.

 

Many story lines of this genre do not follow this path due to how tackling a story with cancer can be very precarious as if handled in a way that could offend the audience, the aftermath can be catastrophic. For this reason alone is one of my theories of why this film did so well in the box-office, because there was not any story lines present that could handle it so beautifully.

 

Another reason that I think this film did so well in the box-office is due to the promotion of the film, before the film was even released there were thousands of Tumblr, Instagram, Twitter etc. Posts about how perfect the book was followed the Game of Thrones mentality, where if you had not heard or read the book, you needed to watch the film. By promoting this way through the audience, the public were more relaxed with trusting their own social group with the praise of this film rather than the film's marketing team trying to convince the public that it was a great film, the entire process was proof that the Two Step Flow Theory clearly worked within this argument, no matter how much of a negative outlook on this film one may have, the audience will take up arms and fight their opinion.

 

My overall thoughts of how The Fault in Our Stars became a box office success are that due to the promotion of the film by avid fans of the book, the film gained critical acclaim before the first screening of the film. This combined with the fact that the story of two teenagers that are suffering with cancer finding love, is a story that can touch any person's heart whether they had enjoyed the film or otherwise.