Crossover Compatibility
Crossover Compatibility
When two become one
I’ve always been a fan of crossovers, and their popularity has steadily increased over the years. The Marvel Cinematic Universe is currently one of the dominant media franchises and is built on regular crossovers, while the Super Smash Bros series can be relied on to sell new Nintendo systems.
Unfortunately, something can’t become popular without losing some nuance. To me, a crossover is interesting when it shows interactions between vastly different characters and worlds. Movies like Ready Player One simply ask you if you recognize this character and then move on, sometimes missing the point of the work they drew said character from in the process. Even the meeting of different heroes in the Marvel Cinematic Universe has gone from being seen as a cause for excitement to a burdensome and unintuitive list of required viewings.
Crossovers can be more than a game of ‘guess who’ or pointless power level debates. By creating a connection through two works of fiction, there is the chance to say something new about both, to expand on the themes and explore different nuances of familiar characters. A good crossover is transformative, presenting the works it draws on in a new light.
I find that examples work best for explaining something like this. So I would like to walk you through one process of coming up with a crossover.
To start with identifying a potentially interesting crossover, you have to pick a base component. In this case I’ve chosen Lord of the Rings. I’m going to go more high concept and focus on the interaction between different themes, rather than the characters or world. Lord of the Rings has a lot of themes at play, so I’ll start with one, the reverence for nature, the beauty of the natural world that’s being ruined by the forces of industrialization. And obviously the choice of other works is limited to what I’m familiar with. This would be most interesting if I pick an option that turns heads, which is why I decided on Pokémon.
While Pokémon is willing to touch on many ecological problems caused by humans in the Pokédex, it is ultimately positive about modern technology being able to exist alongside nature. This is a contrast to Lord of the Rings, where technological advancement is presented in an entirely negative light, associated only with the villains.
One way to demonstrate this is to compare Fortree City from the Hoenn games with Lothlorien. Both are/have major settlements located in the forest, with buildings up in the treetops and plenty of nature around them. But, while Fortree City is modern and just as technologically advanced as the rest of the world, Lothlorien is a place that’s beautiful precisely because it has no industrialization, and is set to fade alongside the elves who inhabit it with the dawn of the age of man. Their similarities only make it more clear that they represent completely different ideas about the relationship between a modern technological world and nature.
Putting these two contradictory beliefs about technology together can help add nuance to both. For Lord of the Rings this can help emphasize the portrayal of evil as fundamentally destructive, that technological progress can coexist with nature when done by good people, but when done by the likes of Sauron is only achieved by desecrating the world. Meanwhile, Pokémon’s focus on humans and Pokémon living alongside each other can be reinforced by having to more directly address the harm people cause to the natural world instead of leaving it in the Pokédex.
There are also ways the two can build off each other thematically without conflict between their themes. As one example, in Lord of the Rings it’s not the long lost descendant of the king who defeats Sauron, it’s a hobbit, a race that fell into obscurity through laziness, who ultimately brings Sauron’s end. To match that, the Pokémon featured in the crossover should be the Pokémon who rarely get the spotlight such as Spinda or Eelektross rather than the regular spotlight hoggers.
Some of the most interesting storytelling and worldbuilding in Pokémon happens through the Pokédex, and the Pokédex is a key element for making this crossover work. One often overlooked aspect of Lord of the Rings is that it’s a work of metafiction. Within the context of the book itself Tolkien is not the author, he is the translator of a large document that draws on many other documents, like Pippin’s treatise on pipeweed in the Shire. And the Pokédex too is a document written within the context of its story, Legends Arceus even has Professor Laventon write the entries himself.
If you combine the Pokédex with the metafiction element of Lord of the Rings, then the crossover can format itself as Lord of the Rings characters writing about Pokémon. This could take the approach of either Pokémon being something that appeared from another world or an alternate universe where they were always in the same world. The key point is that this structure is a meeting point between two works, clearly drawing from both of them.
I had another unexpected candidate for this crossover before I settled on Pokémon, Sonic the Hedgehog. While it shares a similar environmental theme to Pokémon, it lacks elements that can line up as neatly with the Lord of the Rings as something like the Pokédex could.
There were more reasons than just the Pokédex that Sonic the Hedgehog lost out to Pokémon for this crossover. One of those is pacing. Sonic the Hedgehog is a fast paced franchise, you admire the scenery as you’re blasting through it. Pokémon allows for a slower pace where you can stop to take in the scenery or pet your Pokémon. Pokémon is the one that comes off as more compatible with Lord of the Rings’s own pace here.
There’s also the theme of power as a corrupting force, an important element to Lord of the Rings. While both Sonic and Pokémon have a lot of focus on power, it’s again Pokémon that has an easier time meeting Lord of the Rings halfway. Sonic is a powerful character, and collecting the Chaos Emeralds to make him even more powerful tends to be required to reach a game’s true ending. While Pokémon has a lot of focus on raw power and gimmick power ups, it’s possible to clear the games with weak Pokémon that you prefer to the powerful ones.
Despite having the same contrasting approach to a nature versus technology conflict that Pokémon provides in the crossover, Sonic the Hedgehog is simply less compatible. That doesn’t mean a Sonic the Hedgehog and Lord of the Rings crossover would be impossible to do well, but it’d take more effort and experimenting.
Going to a level deeper than broad concepts in these examples would lead to me writing out an entire fanfic, and I have too many writing projects as it is. So I’ll end the exploration of my crossover conceptualization process here.
I hope that illustrating my way of thinking about what makes for an interesting crossover has helped show the potential that crossovers as a whole have.
What do you think could make for an interesting crossover? How would you handle a Lord of the Rings x Pokémon or Sonic the Hedgehog crossover? Is there something you’d like to bring up as a good or bad example of a crossover? If you have any answers to those questions I’d love to hear them.