SCI-FI FANS AND pop culture obsessives don’t get much respect, but there’s a little fan in all of us. Filmmakers tend to be the biggest fans of all, and their love of movies, in turn, shapes subsequent cinema. The cliffhanger serials of the 1930s and ’40s moved baby boomers like George Lucas and Stephen Spielberg to create the Star Wars and Indiana Jones franchises. Genre films of the 1970s, from kung fu movies to art house fare, inspired the likes of Quentin Tarantino and Kevin Smith to establish the 1990s indie movement.

This spring sees the release of two expressions of pure fandom, one high-profile and professional, the other more modest and superficially amateurish. The more prominent project is Grindhouse, a self-contained double-feature of loving, obsessive recreations of ’70s-style schlock by Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez. The trailer guarantees a wallow in the look and texture of exploitation flicks.

The other project flies below most people’s cultural radar but has more long-term significance. In March you’ll be able to download “World Enough and Time,” the newest episode of “Star Trek: New Voyages,” a surprisingly slick and sophisticated fan-made re-creation that takes up where NBC’s William Shatner series left off. Though technically an amateur venture, “New Voyages” features contributions from original “Star Trek” creators, from costume designers to “World Enough and Time’s” special guest star, George Takei, reprising his role as Sulu.

“We’re trying to get back a piece of something we grew up loving,” says James Cawley, executive producer who also plays Captain James T. Kirk in “New Voyages.” “People seem to be really enjoying the fact that we’ve got the guts to do the original series.”

In the first decade of the new millennia, fan films have grown exponentially in quantity and improved significantly in quality and ambition. When “real” filmmakers downplay original ideas for obsessive homages like Grindhouse and fans dare to stand toe-to-toe with Hollywood product, the distinctions between professional and amateur films grow increasingly blurry. Fan films tend to be scruffy works replete with inside jokes, but they’re unquestionably labors of love, and they’re available for free. So far.

Thanks to digital cameras, affordable editing software and online distribution, fan films have proliferated in the hundreds, if not thousands. The website FanFilms.net features more than 900 items, in categories ranging from Kiefer Sutherland’s “24” to How the Grinch Stole Christmas. The vast majority derive from the Star Wars universe, and arguably the first fan film was Hardware Wars, a short spoof from 1977 depicting toasters and egg-beaters fighting in space.

The contemporary fan film movement experienced a resurgence with the debut of “Troops,” a 1997 parody of “Cops,” with Imperial stormtroopers answering domestic disturbance calls on an alien planet. “Troops” proved that admirers and wannabes could make their own movies that weren’t just funny, but looked professional and sophisticated. This was a welcome disturbance in “the Force.”

When other fans began to make their own satires and mockumentaries, George Lucas did something surprisingly cool for the man who unleashed Jar-Jar Binks on an unsuspecting universe. Any film that uses someone else’s licensed property runs the risk of being shut down, and in earlier decades some corporations have been openly hostile to fan art as innocent as home-made costumes. But rather than come down with the wrath of the Death Star, Lucasfilm encouraged the efforts, as long as the creators didn’t profit from them.

Steve Sansweet, LucasFilm’s director of content management and fan relations, says the corporation has always tried to appreciate the creativity of the fans. “In the early days, that was mostly mimeographed fanzines and art. Today it is taped and digital fan films, which are all over the Internet.” LucasFilm established an annual award ceremony honoring non-commercial fan films in 2002, partnering with AtomFilms to screen and show them online. “Last year at Comic-Con we attracted nearly 4,000 people to the awards,” says Sansweet.

Fan films can play to more than just guys and gals in Jedi robes, however. John E. Hudgens, a multiple winner of the Official Star Wars Fan Film Awards, saw his first Star Wars parody, “Crazy Watto” (a TV pitch featuring an alien huckster from The Phantom Menace) go on to the 2005 Cannes Film Festival on a program of fan films presented in conjunction with the world premiere of Revenge of the Sith. “I was thrilled, although I wish they’d picked ‘The Jedi Hunter,’” admits Hudgens, who prefers his subsequent shot parodying bounty hunter Boba Fett as “The Crocodile Hunter.”

A senior promotions producer at a Knoxville TV station, Hudgens and his friends make fan films every few years, and he also selects fan films posted online at TheForce.net. He can testify firsthand to their evolution in quality and ambition in recent years. “We’ve seen those two kids with robes in a forest banging away at each other with light sabers, and a couple of years ago, stuff like that was accepted in a minute. Now we want to see things that have never been done before.”

Fan films reached a new plateau in 2005 with “Star Wars: Revelations,” a 40-minute, straight-faced dramatic film directed by Shane Felux. At the time a graphic designer and part-time actor, Felux says that he’d never made a film before and that doing a fan film made it easier to enlist volunteers than if he’d done an unknown, original project. “If I say Star Wars, people volunteer their time, energy and equipment, because it’s their dream, too.”

“Star Wars: Revelations,” a tale of fugitive Jedi knights, took three years and cost Felux $20,000, which he raised through credit cards and a home equity loan, plus another $15,000 he spent on the premiere party. “After three years of busting ass and a lot of hard work, I decided to spend money to thank everyone, since I couldn’t pay them.”

Millions of curiosity-seekers downloaded “Revelations,” and its popularity flabbergasted Felux, who admits that he has trouble seeing anything but the film’s flaws. “I look at it and see every ugly aspect about it. Compared to a $200 million film, it’s a terrible film. But it is my first film.” Plus, it has a surprisingly large scope, a spiffy space battle scene and more well-rounded female characters in 40 minutes than the real Star Wars offered in six films.

“I like to think that ‘Revelations’ sets a bar. We did it, you can, too. Hopefully, you can do it better,” says Felux.

The self-deprecating introduction of “The $10 Fan Film,” the East Bay Star Wars Club’s satire of the fan-filmmaking process, sums up the democratization of the fan film: “These days, technology has put the art of the fan film in the hands of more and more people with less and less responsibility, and less and less talent as well.”

While the majority of fan films tend to be made by students in basements and backyards, that’s only part of the story. An increasing number are created by people already working in the film or television industries, motivated by a desire to show off their talent and hone their craft as the wish to pay tribute to their favorite hero. Two slick Batman-related fan films, “Batman: Dead End” and “Grayson,” span the professionalism spectrum.

An experienced special effects artist on such films as Dogma and The Arrival, Sandy Collora created “Batman: Dead End” partly to capture the Batman of the comic books, partly as a professional show reel. “Batman: Dead End” essentially presents an eight-minute sequence that begins on a rainy night with Batman capturing and confronting the Joker in a dark alley. The film segues into a wild fight scene with Batman taking on the monstrous stars of two sci-fi/horror movie franchises.

Filmed on a soundstage at a reported cost of more than $30,000, “Batman: Dead End” boasts top-notch narrative skill across the board, with cinematography, editing, design and fight choreography that matches any Hollywood production. It’s the most exciting and technically impressive fan film ever made.

John Fiorello’s “Grayson” offers an example of grassroots guerilla filmmaking. Fiorello envisions Dick Grayson (aka Batman’s sidekick Robin) as a grown dad coming out of retirement when the Caped Crusader is murdered. Fiorello says that as a kid, “Whenever we played Superfriends in the front yard, I always got stuck playing Robin, because I was the youngest. So to me, Robin was pretty cool.”

The 18-month production, composed of  10 months of shooting on weekends and spare time, cost just under $18,000. (For comparison, The Blair Witch Project cost about $35,000 to make, and Kevin Smith’s Clerks less than $30,000.) “Nearly all the exterior shots were filmed where I parked my car at my apartment complex,” he says. “Every shot at the funeral scene involves us trespassing on a different golf course.” Though clearly a low-budget effort, “Grayson” looks like a trailer for a real, two-hour feature film.

Fiorello holds out hope that he’ll one day be able to make a real full-length Grayson film, and plans to post the complete screenplay on his website this year.

“Grayson” and “Batman: Dead End” convey a more complete understanding of comic book iconography, and though made without official permission, prove more faithful than the over-produced train wreck Batman and Robin with George Clooney and Arnold Schwarzenegger. Instead of “fan films,” perhaps they should be called “unauthorized movies” since, at their best, they feel more authentic than the official productions.

A perennial sci-fi scenario sends characters back in time to correct some catastrophic flaw in the past. Fandom frequently reveals a similar impulse to re-write history. The “Star Trek” movement began when its loyal viewers kept the show on the air for a third season in 1968, then lobbied Hollywood and kept interest alive until the franchise returned on film and television. Fan films could be called “Fandom: The Next Generation” as cultists, rather than trying to prod a studio into bringing back a show, simply revive it on their own.

Age need not be an impediment, either. Emma-Paige Langley, an Australian high school student and ardent admirer of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” watched the show’s final episode and, within hours, began writing a script for an episode in a new, but nonexistent, eighth season. She began writing at age 14 and three years later directed herself and her youthful cast, who all took language lessons to suppress their Australian accents.

“When I finally decided to film the story, it was mainly because I wanted to see these characters live on,” says Langley. “As geeky as it may sound, just because a show goes off the air, it doesn’t mean that these characters, relationships and situations just die.”

Despite feeling intimidated by the prospect of filling Sarah Michelle Gellar’s shoes as Buffy, Langley filmed her own episode, “Forgotten Memories,” in 2006. Langley says that she’s gotten positive feedback from some of “Buffy’s” “real” actors at fan conventions, although fan feelings tend to be split.

“A little bit more than half love it to pieces and want to see another one,” says Lankley. “The remaining ones hate it with every fiber of their being and think that it shouldn’t be allowed to be put online—because it’s that bad.”

Langley’s parents primarily backed her $20,000 project, while “Star Trek: New Voyages” is funded from a more memorable source. Cawley, the show’s Kirk, provides most of its backing from the proceeds of his 18-year career as a professional Elvis impersonator. While touring as Elvis for nearly two decades, Cawley amassed a huge collection of “Star Trek” sets and props, and he eventually teamed with Jack Marshall and other like-minded Trekkies to relaunch the original series.

Cawley says that the cast and crew of “New Voyages” come from numerous states of the union as well as overseas, requiring careful advance planning. “We plan that we’ll shoot the episodes over a 10-day period once a year. Our sets are in a former car dealership in upstate New York.” He acknowledges that it’s “incredibly expensive,” estimating that they cost $100,000 per episode, and that’s not counting what people donate for free, like CGI effects from a “Babylon 5” alumnus. “If we had to pay for everything that people donate for free, in labor and services, it would cost in the millions.”

Next they’re adapting a revised “Next Generation” script that was cancelled out of fear of controversy over its plot involving homosexuality and an AIDS-like illness. “It’s touching; it’s timely; it’s ‘Star Trek’ at its very best. The franchise just got too safe, and that’s why it went away,” says Cawley, exuding the kind of self-assurance you’d expect from someone who plays Captain Kirk. Or Elvis, for that matter.

Cawley asserts that they’ll keep doing “New Voyages” as long as they’re enthusiastic about it, but fiscal and practical realities inevitably bring most fan filmmakers back down to Earth.

“You can only get your friends to do so many projects. Eventually you have to start paying people—including yourself,” says Felux, who adds that he’s still paying down the debt he incurred for “Star Wars: Revelations.”

But the exposure of fan films has brought some filmmakers unexpected rewards. Hudgens says that because AtomFilms posts the Star Wars fan films, they’re eligible for royalties, and that he earned back his expenses for his most recent effort, “Sith Apprentice” (about $1,000) with his first royalty check. He’s also working on an as-yet-unannounced Star Wars project, although acknowledges that he got the job as much for his other design work as the fan films.

The “calling card” nature of fan films paid off for Felux. He currently has a development deal with Disney to make an original short sci-fi action film to be released on broadband—with the hopes of bottling the same lightning that made “Star Wars: Revelations” an online hit.

Most fan films will remain, inevitably, sophomoric efforts, with homemade costumes, bad acting and self-conscious inside jokes. Fan films have a lot of heart, a gut-level love of genre and an innate understanding of the brave new Internet-driven entertainment world. Soulless commercial fare may have commandeered the local Cineplex, but fan films just might represent a new hope.