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alt title(s): They Just Didnt Care 
Well, not many people have read the book!
Tell them about the painstaking struggle to bring the world your vision...you don't really care, do you?
So they didn't get it quite right. They honestly tried (or, at least, said they did) and failed to live up to...expectations. Perhaps they were moving something to another medium and found it a difficult process, especially for people who haven't been given anywhere near enough time to do more than glance over the source material. Or perhaps the production of the latest sequel changed hands late in production and was thrown into creative chaos. Or The Merch has fallen into the uncanny valley of being cheap enough to buy but too cheap to survive the trip home. Shit happens, and often enough the schedule is so tight that the ink on the contracts will still be wet when whatever-it-is hits shelves. You can't really blame everyone for screwing up when there are problems outside their control.
However, this trope covers the cases where they had no excuses — they had the time, they had the ability, they had the fans at their beck and call, they had every single opportunity to get it just right... and then they surgically removed everything cool about the original work, the tie-in show, or the very premise that was promised, and replaced it with suck concentrate.
Perhaps they made a Star Wars game about a band of secret agent Ewoks that intervened at the battle of Hoth. Perhaps they decided to break one or two of the explicitly stated golden rules of the franchise to simplify things. Perhaps they tossed the ever-important time line out the window for the Interquel so that they could have romantic involvement between two people who were never even alive at the same time. They may have done it to appeal to a new market, they may have done it because it wasn't " sexy" enough before, they may have done it because they "wanted to make it their own". However and why ever they screwed it up, it's filled with enough Wall Bangers that the fans will end up in trauma centers across the globe due to spontaneous concussions.
Which is not to say that it won't be popular or do well. It's just that, if you're a fan, you'll live with the knowledge of how incredible it might have been and the sadness of knowing what everyone else is missing out on. In fact, it doesn't even mean that it's bad, just that the creators threw the source material out the window.
Why do they do it? There are probably almost as many answers as examples, but one common reason is that the suits assume that the fanbase will be loyal no matter what they throw on the screen, so they tailor the product to the "target demographic" - in other words, the 18-25 white American male who's too cool for fandom. (It doesn't hurt that 18-25 males have been proven to be more susceptible to advertising than any other group, so advertisers are more willing to support a show that appeals to that group.) This is often combined with a complete lack of respect toward the fanbase, which might explain why the suits don't even pay attention when they're corrected - they think that taking the time to get everything right .
Please bear in mind that Unpleasable Fanbases exist, so sometimes this is not a legitimate complaint. These people will complain just as fervently about works that only somewhat deviate from their expectations and that are actually pretty good. These people will declare war on whoever made it, anybody who enjoyed it, and especially people who argue that the changes may be for the better.
However, the fact remains that day in and day out, the basic relationship between media and its viewers, is the former asking the latter to care: to care about the characters or plot enough to read the book, to watch the show, to sit through the commercials, to purchase the sponsor's product, to generally spend time and energy engaging in a work of art when one could be doing other things. When those same producers do something that proves that they don't care in return, expect the audience to be angry.
Compare The Problem With Licensed Games, Video Game Movies Suck, Dis Continuity, Macekre, Did Not Do The Research, Cowboy Bebop At His Computer and Dub Induced Plot Hole.
Consider They Changed It Now It Sucks, Fan Dumb, and Unpleasable Fanbase, though, and know that every opinion on this site was written by some person you don't even know.
The Trope Namer is a repeated phrase during the segment of MST 3 K Episode 418 - Attack Of The The Eye Creatures (sic), where Joel and the Bots give a point-by-point presentation to prove that the makers of the movie had little concern for the quality of the film. This include forgetting to adjust the camera to properly shoot day for night, giant zippers running up the back of the costumes for the People In Rubber Suits, and after running out of monster suits and monster boots for all the People In Rubber Suits, using the excess actors stomping around in their monster masks, black wool sweaters and sneakers.
Contrast Shown Their Work and Doing It For The Art.
Examples:
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- This troper doesn't even like Naruto, yet she cringes whenever she sees those banner ads on this wiki advertising a "Which Female Naruto Are You?" quiz.
- Well, there is that thing where he changes into several women himself via magical copying and and transformation... but I don't think that's what those people meant. Unless they had something like "you are clone #19".
- The quiz features Sakura, Ino, Tenten and Hinata as potential results; while the latter is trying to follow Naruto's example, neither Naruto's Sexy Jutsu nor Anko (whom Sakura once finds very similar to Naruto) are potential results. To be fair, though, the problem seems to have been with the ad banner, rather than with the quiz itself.
- Cringe though you might, the fact that the above correction appears on the wiki means that they got at least one person to click on the banner out of morbid curiosity. Maybe they're just smarter than you think....
- Nah, there are always stupid people on the internet who click on anything, and then people who follow things just for laughs. Getting those two groups to do something doesn't make this any less stupid.
- Although killed before it got out of the planning stages, the proposed Toon Makers Inc. remake of Sailor Moon ("Saban Moon") is known infamously across the fandom for such features as Power Rangers-style live action sequences in the high school, space windjammers, and a wheelchair-bound sailor senshi included just for the sake of having a Token Minority.
- An interesting example is Samurai X: Reflections, known in Japan as Rurouni Kenshin: Seisohen. The problem is not that it's spectacularly bad (though the character designs are pretty dire), it's that it goes against creator Nobuhiro Watsuki's firmly-held idea that Shonen series should have happy endings. Instead, Reflections has a Downer Ending full of Wangst, and most of the characters were written in such a way that greatly contradicted their personalities in the original.
- The Mahou Sensei Negima manga's main plot is that Negi is looking for his missing father, and the adventures that take place with his thirty-one cute students. The anime series were Merchandise Driven and instead concentrated on his students, half of which are best known by the Cast Herd they run in. As for Negi's father, he gets sucked into a black hole thing in the first series. The Kyoto arc which was three volumes and introduced two really important characters, and third minor character was completely butchered removing Kotarou completely. The actual battles are reduced to two episodes.
- The reboot of the anime is even worse. The manga is much better than either, luckily.
- SiN: The Movie
 . Based off the 1998 FPS of the same name, and funded completely by ADV Studios, this anime is an interesting, if cliched take on the original source material. Its most egregious error is killing off one of the lead characters in the opening minutes of the film, and having the main character (John Blade) murder his friend.
- The anime movie incarnation of Lensman begins with the main character looting his lens off an anonymous dying Lensman rather than getting it through the proper channels. However, the entire point of the lenses existence is that they serve as an absolutely fool-proof form of ID, that can't be imitated, transferred in any way, and can only be obtained by being judged worthy by some infallible, omniscient seers. Being able to steal one and still have it function is contrary to this fundamental premise of the Lensman world.
- The lens wasn't stolen. It forcibly attached itself to Kimball, informing him that he had been chosen by the Arisians. That's how a Green Lantern Ring behaves, though, not a lens.
- Please don't tell me that's the only thing you found wrong with this terrible, terrible movie. Nearly the entire film qualifies as Critical Research Failure, but I suspect that, as the trope says, they knew it was wrong and didn't care.
- The
Sci Fi Channel Syfy Channel's cuts of all their anime are pretty bad, but not in the typical fashion for anime. Instead of cutting sexual content and violence ala 4kids, Sy Fy pares episodes down to stack more commercials in. No other series on the network is more symptomatic of it then the second season of Gundam 00, which has completely removed any scenes after the credits...which are often the shocker cliffhangers of any episode. Sure in some cases these scenes were replayed at the beginning of the next episode...but some of these moments just leave people wondering..."Why the hell is Billy working for the ALAW's now?" "Why is Sestuna talking to some guy who looks like Lockon?" etc.
- The first season of Gundam00 had most of its epilogue cut in favor for the usual end-credits miniadverts. Yeah, they cut the bit that explains what happened to the characters, and sets up the Sequel Hook for its second season.
Comic Books
- The internet-based comic book of Re Boot advertised itself as being fan-friendly with comments of how the writers would even ask the advice of fans on issues such as "the colour of Bob's tongue". Would it have killed them to just watch the episodes of Re Boot for themselves if they really cared?
- The first year's worth of the original Gold Key Star Trek comic books, done by people in Europe who never saw the show yet were hired to draw and write the book.
- Ultimate Marvel books written by Mark Millar, who's default mode for his "re-envisioning" of Marvel characters involved making them unrepentant assholes.
- Brian Michael Bendis' Avengers. Made even worse when just about everyone, including the long-time fan-favorite editor of the book, Tom Brevoort, began to tell fans off for pointing out the massive plot holes, wholesale character assassination, and shitty writing in the book since Bendis took over.
- Countdown to Final Crisis. Done to cash in on the success of "52", and to build-up to Morrison's Final Crisis, since no one read "Seven Soldiers to Victory", which was supposed to set up "Final Crisis". This pissed off Grant Morrison, who wrote his scripts assuming DC would declare the New Gods off-limits, as opposed to declaring Seven Soldiers non-canon. Though the series ended strong and Morrison reluctantly agreed to the time-loop continuity patch to make both stories make sense, the series is widely panned by all save for Dan DiDio, who praised the book as "52 done right", simply because he was able to haphazardly trick people into buying other books that were made into tie-ins for the story.
- DC's editorial policy since 2004 can be considered to be They Just Didnt Care.
- Apparently, Didio really disliked 52 because he had so little editorial control over it. The fact that 52 was a very good book and Countdown was, well, Countdown might say something.
- All Hail Megatron. Basically, IDW wanted to bring in a new writer to write a new series in the established IDW continuaty. The result was All Hail Megatron, which deviates far enough from the previous comics to be an alternate universe due to inconsistencies (why are some using outdated vehicles for alt modes? Since when did the Decepticons have combiner technology?) and massive cases of Continuity Snarl. It's telling that the series got expanded with one-shot stories designed to cover over the holes-but have actually created several of their own.
Fan Fic
- Attack of (the) the Eye Creatures is the Trope Namer, but honestly, you can apply it to any of Larry Buchanan's films, especially any of the remakes of old AIP films like Invasion of the Saucer Men, or Zontar, Thing From Venus (It Conquered the World).
- Just about all are agreed when it comes to Joel Schumacher's Batman And Robin. For a brief list, Bane was portrayed as a henchman of Poison Ivy, an idiotic henchman who sounds like Strong Mad. And don't forget the Bat-Nipple Suit.
- The quote-unquote film version of Robert A Heinlein's Starship Troopers is a peculiar example, and shows some of the odd ways Hollywood works. The production originated as a vaguely similar film with a different name and plot; director Paul Verhoeven and scriptwriter Edward Neumeier didn't even know of the Heinlein novel until someone on the studio legal staff pointed out some potentially actionable similarities to the book. After getting the rights to adapt the novel and then reading only a few chapters into the book, they retouched the existing script to resemble the novel superficially, hoping to cash in on its popularity (and avoid a lawsuit from Heinlein's estate). Not that it was necessarily bad, mind you — it essentially takes the book's bugs-as-communists theme and extends it throughout the whole story, turning the entire movie into a satire of Cold War-era propaganda, to be judged on those merits — but it is really a very different work from the novel.
- An explanation: Starship Troopers is essentially a political essay in novel form about the duties of someone who has sovereign power, and what that means in a democracy. The Mobile Infantry are Super Soldiers in Power Armor that carries multiple A-Bombs; the original Space Marines. They undergo impossible training that would make Spartans cry, have superb discipline and morale, and are fighting a true Red Shirt Army. The combat power wielded in the story can crack a planet in half. Human civilization has entered a Mary Sue Topia with all the sexuality of a session of Parliament where only Veterans have the vote and apparently they don't abuse it. Now...take all that and flip the script 180 degrees for the movie. The Mobile Infantry uses horde tactics that would make Star Trek redshirts look competent and gear that can barely tickle their enemies. The society is a bunch of friendly fascists. The military is extraordinarily lax, and everyone has sex like bunnies. The political philosophy gets occasionally thrown in by menacing, unlikeable teachers while everything else is a black comedy. I don't know if Verhoeven didn't care; it would be hard to write much more of a send-up of Heinlein's work.
- The sexuality is suppressed in the novel because it was written as one of Heinlein's "juveniles." Reading between the lines you can gather hints that the protagonist has a sexual relationship with his high-school-crush-turned-pilot. The scene where he is "dancing" with "hostesses" while on leave is pretty suggestive too.
- Apparently, a review of the movie included the phrase "Based on the back cover of a novel by Robert Heinlein." Though honestly this seems less like the filmmakers didn't care and more like they actively hated Heinlein and went out of their way to make the tone of the movie as unlike the book as possible.
- Any movie by Uwe Boll. See here.
- The 2007 I Am Legend movie adaptation of Richard Matheson' classic post-apocalyptic book was an amazing example of this. The so-called plot has almost no relevance to the book and to top it off it has a God Told Me To massive plot hole filler. A true teeth-gnashing monster to watch if you've read the excellent book beforehand.
- Dragonball Evolution is this trope.
- His Dark Materials plushies. Yes, the marketing committee behind the film adaptation decided that children would love to snuggle with Proud Warrior Race Guy Iorek Byrnison. Short version: the film is fine for what it is, but
many people who actually read the series consider it shallow, heartlessly bowdlerized, and melodramatic. There's a pretty good list of "They Just Didn't Care" and "They Cared - But Not Enough" moments in this AV Club article.
- Demi Moore's version of The Scarlet Letter - in particular, her wonderful reaction to accusations that she completely missed the point of the original story, which very neatly sums up this trope: "Well, not many people have read the book!"
- Lawnmower Man, supposedly adapted from Stephen King's short story, shared only the title with the short.
- There is one five-minute scene that takes one of the ideas from the story... different use, different point, different characters, but the two policemen discussing what happened is line-for-line...
- Super Mario Bros- The Movie had little to do at all with the games. A particular example would be the film's mediocre original soundtrack, when they easily could have recycled the iconic "Overworld" piece from the first game for the title, and even more easily use the water level theme from the first game for the elevator dancing scene. To be fair, it was 1993 and the idea of plot in video games was just starting to be conceived. The Mario games are incoherent enough to be considered abstract, and most of the story was the result of Woolseyism that was only All There In The Manual.
- The worst part of it was that the original script actually hewed fairly close to the original games, but then some greedy execs decided to ruin it because they wanted to make it more "edgy" and "Adult oriented".
- The Film Of The Book of Eragon: The director ripped random pages out of the book, and said 'Let's film these!' This movie could've been called 'Joe and His Dragon Sally' and it would've been much better.
- One reviewer said "People have said it's not like the book, but if you think about it, there are some parts that are a lot like the original story..."
- A fairer analogy of the director's actions would be that he based the film off of a plot summary given by a brief review of the book.
- It's so bad, in parts, that it's clear that no-one actually bothered to watch the thing. At all. The dragon helm that the live actors show each other is a delicately-ornamented celtic thing, and is clearly meant as a full-face plate for the dragon. The CG dragon has what looks like a form-fitting, plain, simple metal plate attatched to its head. You'd think that the props and 3d folks would be speaking to each other.
- The American version of Godzilla changed the titular monster from a giant mutated dinosaur bent on destroying humanity (Well, Japan at least) for turning him into a monster into a giant mutated (and pregnant) iguana. Needless to say fans of the Japanese films were not impressed.
- Ironically, the American Godzilla still looks more like an actual dinosaur than the Japanese original (who is one)
- The Catwoman movie started out as a completely unrelated script. Warner Brothers wanted to make a DC Comics based superhero movie every summer and Batman Begins was simply taking too long. At the last minute, when it became clear that Begins wasn't going to be done in time, they grabbed a script about a woman who gains cat-like powers, changed some names around, and called it a Catwoman movie.
- "My city screams"? In the original Will Eisner comics, the Spirit's city doesn't "scream". It kind of chuckles, with a slow, sad smile. On a more serious note, the movie gives Denny Wolverine-style healing abilities that kind of take away from the whole idea of the Spirit as a relatively down-to-earth (though with occasional flights of fancy) mystery/adventure series starring a likable everyman. Also, they changed the Octopus's gimmick from being a criminal mastermind who has never shown his true face to wearing a series of bizarre costumes and having eight of everything.
- What makes the film's end result more inexplicable is that the comics work of its director Frank Miller was heavily influenced by Eisner (most obvious in Daredevil), and the two were good friends (a book was published transcribing some of their conversations). On that basis, we might have expected Miller to care a lot...
- After the obligatory crushed butterfly, A Sound of Thunder drops all pretense of following Ray Bradbury's original plot and instead turns into an action-thriller about people fighting off monkey-lizard creatures. The video game adaptation of the movie goes a step further, giving the hero time-controlling weaponry that isn't mentioned in either the movie or the book.
- The remake of The Wicker Man changes the setting from northern Scotland to AMERICA!, replaces the troubled Anti Hero with a smarmy Nicolas Cage, makes the little girl he's trying to rescue into his daughter, ditches all the mythopoeic symbolism and Celtic folklore theme in favour of a bunch of Straw Feminists, and has a scene in a bear suit, and some bees. And they ditched the songs. What's up with that?
- The Film Of The Book Ella Enchanted featured sheer butchery of the characters. It seemed as if the writers asked someone to write down character names, races, and a very basic plot and ignored the rest. The only redeeming feature of the film was Eric Idle doing the narration. Seriously, the singing and dancing elves, the Prince Char FANCLUB? Physics-defying obedience? Plus, one of the coolest things about the titular character in the book was her linguistic ability, which was totally left out!!
- This Troper was irritated by the way the production staff thought that they were actually making a high-fantasy version of Hair. Not all stories make good Civil Rights vehicles, ya bunch of hippies.
- Because this page is mostly devoted to So Bad Its Horrible works, it's worth noting that the movie was not So Bad Its Horrible. As with The Scarlet Letter above, it could have been called "good" if it weren't a bait and switch.
- The Film Of The Book of The Dark Is Rising series. Not only did the fanbase universally hate it, people who hadn't read the book rightly loathed it as well. Very much a case of In Name Only, the Stanton family was made American rather than English for no good reason, Will's age was bumped up from eleven to fourteen for the sole purpose of giving him hormones, and all the bits relating to Arthurian mythology were hacked out in favor of Christian allegory. And let's not even get started on the stupid and utterly ridiculous 'Will's long-lost twin' bit. Had they called it something else, it might have performed better, but as it was it was a resounding commercial and critical flop. Even Christopher Eccleston as the Dark Rider couldn't even begin to salvage it.
- Well the reasoning behind the family being made American was so that the main character felt even more isolated. Not like there wasn't enough of that already. Not to mention the fact that apparently they cut a character actually from the book but still found room to shoehorn in a Love Interest which made absolutely no sense (again, rationalized to show the character's insecurities, etc).
- In Urban Legend: Final Cut it's explained to us that the main character is so talented a filmmaking student, her student film will net her a "three picture deal," in Hollywood. This is shown happening at the end. But no Hollywood studio would ever offer that deal to someone because their first time ever in the director's seat went well, when they haven't even put it on the market yet and have no measure of its success, and especially not when they're a goddamn student. They'd be lucky to get a one picture deal. This becomes They Just Didnt Care instead of Did Not Do The Research because the people behind this movie would have known exactly how ludicrous this was - being in the industry and all - but did it anyway.
- Hackers had Eric "Emmanuel Goldstein" Corley, the editor of 2600 magazine, as a consultant during the development of the film. Given how the film turned out, it's no wonder he decided not to be credited on the actual film...
- I, Robot, the Will Smith movie version. Making an original script? Fine. Not tying it in at all to the plot of I, Robot and its successors? Not so good, but it could've still been a good movie. Making it directly contradictory to Isaac Asimov's fundamental beliefs about robotics and encouraging technophobia and the "Frankenstein Complex" that the book itself was written to combat? Bad move.
- On the other hand, it was a decent exploration of the "Zeroth Law" Asimov's robots developed later in his books, and some of the problems that would come of it. Asimov himself eventually wound up Frankensteining his creations.
- Except that the zeroth law robots were all heroes - they tried to guide humanity, and were still only capable of harming humans in extreme circumstances. Asimov's one real "I can write one if I want to" Frankenstein take on his robots came when the robots began to think of themselves as human.
- If you actually think about it, Giskard killed millions of people(which is why his brain imploded).
- Though this is another example like Ella Enchanted or The Scarlet Letter— it's actually a very good film if you don't go in expecting anything related to Asimov.
- The movie version of Dead Like Me. When the closest thing the misbegotten waste of film had to a climax depended on casually ignoring a major premise of the series, there are problems.
- Highlander explicitly stated that nobody knew how immortals gained their powers (Ramirez simply states "Why does the sun come up? or are the stars just pinholes in the curtain of night? who knows?"). Evidently he'd forgot to add (as was revealed in Highlander 2) "Though it may have something to do with the fact that we're all aliens."
- After the relative box-office disappointment of On Her Majesty's Secret Service, the James Bond franchise lured Sean Connery back for Diamonds Are Forever, ensuring a better gross - maybe that's why they let some things slide:
-Secondary character Plenty O'Toole is tossed out of Bond's hotel room, she later shows up drowned at Tiffany's house with no explanation. Unused footage shows she'd gotten the address when she sneaked back into the hotel room but they dropped it, because They Just Didn't Care.
-Bond drives a Mustang up onto its two right wheels to fit through a narrow alleyway, and it comes out the alley on its two left wheels! They spotted this minor error and added a quick shot indicating he changed wheels in the middle of the alley, but it's clear that They Just Didn't Care.
-The big blow-everything-up climax has Blofeld in his mini-sub attached to a crane, used by Bond to smash into the side of the command center structure, making it blow up more, but we don't see Blofeld either dying or implausibly getting away - I guess They Just Didn't Care.
- Sean Connery, tired of shoots overrunning, had a very hefty clause in his contract penalizing the producers if they went over a certain number of weeks. So, they probably just didn't have time to care.
- Cheaper By the Dozen was basically just a case of stealing a title from a book about a family with twelve kids to make a movie about a family with twelve kids. There are no other resemblances whatsoever.
- Which one? The one from the 50s, or the one with Steve Martin?
- The Steve Martin one. The 1950's film was in fact based on the book.
- In 1979, Disney came out with an adaptation of Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court called Unidentified Flying Oddball. The Yankee became a NASA scientist (and his robot twin), who cannot be burnt at the stake because of his space suit. They should have burnt the negative instead.
- Everyone thinks they can "update" Connecticut Yankee and make it into a good movie. Every one of them is horribly wrong; the way to make it into a good movie would be to leave the story, written by possibly the greatest humor writer of all time, alone and film it with as few changes as possible.
- Then again, this was during Disney's Dork Age, when the studio was floundering around and turning out a lot of burn-the-negative schlock. Unidentified Flying Oddball was actually one of the more watchable movies from that period...
- This troper has watched a version of the movie Hancock, where the censorship board cut out all scenes with profanity in it. This has the unintended effect of showing that Hancock tossing a kid up into the sky without provocation, among other such scenes.
- Friday The13th: Hell Lake. It has a part where a welding helmet wearing Jason Voorhees teleports into a prison with his gang of henchmen and shoots up the place with a machine gun. The book also had various instances of Critical Research Failure, like a guy who gets his brain "fried" by a novelty laser pointer.
- In a children's book adaptation of Disney's Aladdin, the book immediately describes Agrabah as an "oasis" city full of palmtrees and flowing water. Apparently, the person writing this never actually saw the movie: Agrabah was a dry desert city - the only palmtrees and flowing water you were likely to see were those on the palace grounds.
- In the novelization of the Teen Titans episode "Sisters", the dialogue was often different in the book than in the episode. This was particularly infuriating when an improperly copied word changed the entire tone of the scene, such as when the Centauri police had arrested Starfire, and Robin snarled, "Nobody's taking her away." The author carelessly rewrote it as, "Nobody's taking my friend away."
Live Action TV
- The Sci-Fi Channel adaptation of the Earthsea series was widely panned for making the protagonist Caucasian, turning the novels' Wizarding School into a Harry Potter ripoff, and making the protagonist's best friend into a Magical Negro. Not to mention that the priestesses who worship the Nameless were changed to priestesses who protected the seal that kept the Nameless out. And turned the protagonist's mystical name into his public name, and decided that only wizards got mystical True Names at all... Ursula K. LeGuin went so far as to write this essay decrying the adaptation.
- Arguably, the Wizarding School in Harry Potter was a ripoff of Earthsea, not the other way around.
- LeGuin had a more charitable reaction to the equally unrelated anime adaptation of the Earthsea series, informing the director (the son of legendary Hayao Miyazaki) that it was a good film, but did not in any way represent her books.
- Kindred: The Embraced. A corruption of Vampire: The Masquerade which has so many things wrong with White Wolf's RPG that it's been nicknamed "Kindred: The Embarrassed" by fans. Listing everything they got wrong would take up too much space here... so we'll let Wikipedia do it.
- Many TV networks will cut out scenes from movies for time and content, but some cuts just boggle the mind:
- TBS is particularly bad at this, cutting whole scenes from a movie to save for time. Never mind if they are actually crucial to understanding the plot or not. In Demolition Man, for example, a fight scene near the climax was cut where Huxley, a future cop who has never been in a real fight before, ends up shooting someone. On its own, this isn't that big of a plotpoint, but TBS kept in the following scene, which includes Huxley going at length to rationalize her actions; actions that the viewer didn't see.
- Similarly, when Mystery Men was shown on the station, they cut, among other things, all the scenes between The Shoveler's big speech and the parodied Power Walk, which included three very plot relevant scenes. If this editor remembers correctly, they also cut a good chunk out of the ride over, too.
- One St. Patrick's day, one network (I believe it was Spike), showed The Boondock Saints. Not bad - St. Patrick's Day, set in Boston, Irish protagonists. But they removed the scene where the brothers are "baptized" while in their holding cell and decide to become vigilantes for God.
- This troper once saw a broadcast of Willy Wonka And the Chocolate Factory on... some station that cut various transition scenes, including, notably, the boat ride (sure, it may have been Nightmare Fuel, but c'mon, how do you do that?). This may not have been so bad, but it ended up making no sense how they got to a giant metal door in a concrete pipe-type place from a garden made entirely out of candy. If you hadn't seen the original, uncut version, you would get lost.
- Come on, have the boat go into the tunnel, toss the scary stuff, have the boat come out. Yup, They Just Didnt Care.
- Brazilian network Globo is also prone to removing parts of films to make their schedule work (i.e. not only violence and sex). In a recent broadcast of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, most of the scene where Indy meets his father, Indy saying Marcus Brody will blend in the crowd - followed by him lost, and all between Brody's capture and both Joneses tied and starting a fire were taken off.
- Some years ago, a Japanese television station wanted to show The Sound of Music, but needed to cut some parts of it for time. What did they cut? THE SONGS!
- Ah, that was Korea. The funny thing is that The Sound of Music numbers are now standard in Korean high school productions.
- In Private Benjamin, the titular character's newly-wed husband dies accidentally during the consummation of their marriage. Whether it was time constraints or being unable to show that before the watershed (the 'passing a joint around' scene was also omitted), a UK network broadcast cut straight from light petting to his funeral, with no explanation whatsoever.
- One broadcast version of the original Stargate movie attempted to cut out all mentions of suicide, child endangerment and arranged marriage. That's right - they chopped out O'Neill's entire character arc, not to mention all of the most touching scenes between Daniel and Sha'uri. The two biggest points in the movie and they completely missed it. Oy vey.
- An Italian television station aired Brokeback Mountain with the references to homosexuality removed. A heterosexual sex scene was left in, though, just in case the implications of this were not obvious. One would think it would be better not to air the movie than to bowdlerise the plot if they found the content offensive.
- In Stephen King's Christine, a pivotal moment is where Arnie first swears at his mother. I've seen it aired with the swearword cut - but the mother's reaction was left in: "WHAT did you say?" Er, well nothing, apparently...
- Some episodes of Scrubs in syndication will feature removals from a swear (Their Story) to THE ENTIRE FREAKING CLIMAX/AESOP (His Story).
- Syndicated showings of M*A*S*H are bad about this. Whole scenes will be cut for time that were either important to the plot or were referenced explicitly in uncut dialogue later in the episode. For instance, this troper remembers seeing the episode where Hawkeye bet BJ that he could go through a blitzkrieg of BJ's pranks and not get "gotten". He remembers being baffled continuously when BJ brings up "the kid with the cigar", because THE #$%@S CUT THAT OUT OF THE EPISODE FOR TIME IN SYNDICATION...
- While time has diluted the general hatred in the fandom towards the Doctor Who Made For TV Movie, there is little denying it is replete with this trope. Even aside from the Doctor being a Half Human Hybrid and kissing Grace for no discernible reason, there’s the Daleks allowing the Doctor on Skaro despite him being their eternal enemy (and despite his having destroyed Skaro in the original series...), the TARDIS’s chameleon circuit renamed a "cloaking device", resurrecting Grace and Chang by going back in time (the single "rule of time" the series didn't ignore arbitrarily), and the Master somehow able to fire acid semen from his mouth.
- The film's novelization was written by a longtime author of the series' spinoff books who valiantly tried to wrestle things into existing continuity, and was as a consequence unreadable fanwank.
- There are a number of easily-justifyable continuity "surprises" in the movie, and one or two Wall Banger adjustments, but Segal's movie really did care — every proposed script prior had been a total Reboot, introducing elements such as the Doctor being the son of Ulysses, the TARDIS being haunted by the spirit of the Doctor's grandfather, the Master being the creator of the Daleks, and the destruction of the Time Lords (Oh... right.). The movie that was actually filmed cared enough to go out of their way to faithfully reproduce the designs of the Tom Baker era TARDIS key and sonic screwdriver, which most fans could not have cared less about. Their hearts were in the right places, it's just that their heads were up their...
- This troper was impressed that, whilst there was no reason they had to employ Sylvester McCoy, they did anyway before the regeneration to Paul McGann.
- An inclusion which McCoy is nowadays quick to point out hurt the film.
- One episode of The Suite Life on Deck featured one of the twins offering an injured Mr. Moseby a quick game of an MMORPG they had previously played at the hotel from The Suite Life of Zack and Cody. In of Zack and Cody, it was called Medieval Magic Quest; in on Deck, they Did Not Do The Research and accidentally gave it the title of an actual series of RPGs.
- Sci-Fi’s version of The Dresden Files. The only thing the show had in common with the series of novels was that the titular character was a wizard named Harry Dresden.
- Though it was a good series despite this. Even Jim Butcher admitted they couldn't do a 100% perfect adaptation of his works and doesn't really mind the changes, as he views it as a separate universe to his own.
- So going as far as to produce a pilot that was very close to the books, and getting the original author's approval for the changes they did make, means they "didn't care"?
- Torchwood 's recent miniseries seemed to consist of a healthy dose of not-caring coupled with author arrogance. Fans should have realized this was going to be the case when a fan asked the cast members and producer in a panel before the miniseries was released whether or not Jack 1000+ years buried alive would be addressed, both declared that it would not be. One could rant for paragraphs about the drastic amounts of characterization, subplots, and back stories that were either ignored or inexplicably changed. By the way guys, Jack has a daughter he never talked about and Ianto has newfound insecurities about what many fans thought was a well-established and accepted sexuality... oh, and Gwen is both competent and a good wife! Yeah, there were a good number of displeased fans.
- In the second season finale of Robin Hood Maid Marian was brutally murdered by Guy of Gisborne in a move that writer/creator Dominic Mingella described as an attempt to "rock the show" and "open up new storytelling possibilities." Translation: shock value. Interestingly enough, Mingella didn't stick around for the third series, being credited as a "creator" but contributing nothing to the script-writing or directing. The BBC obviously realised that the show had self-destructed, which led to a general attitude of "We Don't Care Anymore" for the broadcasting of the third season. There was very little publicity regarding the show (far less than previous seasons), the official website wasn't updated until a few days before the premiere, a "closed-mouth" policy seemed to be in place on the reasons behind Marian's death, it was given a terrible time-slot, detailed plot synopsises were released to the press which contained massive spoilers, and the premmature release of the DVD box set ensured that the final episode was leaked on You Tube a good three days before it aired on television (not that many people saw it on television anyway: the BBC pulled it in favour of the tennis and plonked it on a different channel only a few hours before it was scheduled to air).
- Furthermore, the new batch of writers brought in for the third season clearly didn't bother to watch the previous seasons. Fan speculation is that they were simply handed a note that said "Marian got killed", since this is the only major plot-line that is carried over from the past two seasons (and even that is more of an afterthought than any kind of sustained story-line). Even the actors appeared bored and unenthusiastic in the cast interviews (as here), and declined to appear on any episode commentaries for the DVD. They Just Didnt Care.
Professional Wrestling
Close Professional Wrestling
- Although it was popular, the version of the Threepenny Opera which won at the Tony Awards a few years ago was deeply at odds with Bertolt Brecht's authoral intent. Instead of the original's gloomy atmosphere and characterization of Macheath (Mack the Knife) as a typically conservative gangster with upper middle class ambitions, the production chose a "Studio 54" setting and turned Macheath's discarded mistress, Lucy, into a transvestite who flashes the audience.
- The history of upbeat adaptations of Die Dreigroschenoper is fairly long (and glamourous). First off, when Brecht and Weill wrote the musical Mr. Brecht was not as hardline a communist as he would become. In fact, Weill and Brecht broke off their working relationship due to Brecht's increasing extremism (which led to Brecht adapting the opera into the Author Tract The Threepenny Novel). The first major recording of (Marc Blitzstein's translation of) "Die Moritat von Mackie Messer" was Louis Armstrong's "Mack the Knife". He performed it in his usual loose, exuberant, improvisatory style. Generations of audiences and performers in America heard the Armstrong performance long before they saw the musical.
- Oh, and The Threepenny Opera is based on The Beggar's Opera that is based on the rivalry between two gangs of criminals.
- Way too many operas have been subjected to this treatment in recent decades, particularly in European productions, where many directors have decided that opera needs to get Darker And Edgier with over-the-top violence, gratuitous sex scenes, and Dead Baby Comedy. It doesn't matter if the action on stage tacitly or openly contradicts the words being sung. This article, describing the trend, cites one recent production of The Abduction of the Seraglio, explaining that "neither the streetwalkers nor the whippings, masturbation, and transvestite bondage are anywhere suggested in Mozart’s opera."
Video Games
- The rules of Shadowrun explicitly state that magic can never revive the dead. The Microsoft video game does exactly that, twenty seconds in. Further, the game tosses out the RPG's time line, the "unsexy" species, and any semblance of the game's stealth/tactical roots.
- The brutal oversimplification of the tabletop strategy game Battle Tech done by Microsoft for the Mechassault series (not to be confused with the Mech Warrior series which for the most part is pretty faithful). This included such things as force fields, a gun that shoots lava, magical glowing green piles of salvage that instantly repair damage, infinite ammo, and contact with the ground causing all mechs to explode violently.
- Mech Warrior 4 also added variable-damage weaponry in the form of the Bombast laser, and claimed that the vacuum of space provided improved cooling over air.
- Small Battle Tech note. A variable-damage weapon was later added to BT, but it was not the Bombast laser.
- As of the recent core book, Tactical Operations, there are two kinds weapons that can vary damage: Bombast Lasers and any PPC with a capacitor. Not counting Ultra and Rotary Autocannons, and range-variable weapons like Heavy Gauss Rifles and Snub-nosed PPCs.
- Interplay tried to cash in on its Fallout franchise by creating Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel, a knock-off of its successful Dark Alliance series. The gameplay bore no resemblance to the original Fallout roleplaying games and made only passing references to the Fallout world. At the same time, Interplay canceled the highly anticipated Fallout 3 game and jettisoned its entire Black Isle Studios division, which had masterminded the real Fallout series. Fans reacted in outrage before the game even released, prompting the developers to insert a snarky Take That into the credits. The fans had the last laugh, however, when the game performed poorly and the company folded soon afterward. Interplay did recover from that... by selling the Fallout franchise to Bethesda.
- The video game adaptations of Hunter: the Reckoning are infamous for turning a tabletop game that's (ostensibly) about gritty, high-strung monster hunting into a Gauntlet clone. It's especially egregious in the second game, Wayward, where one of the setting's biggest psychos becomes a player character.
- An unusual medium for an example is the Madden NFL franchise. It has had a bug for years on end that stops players in simulated games from getting tired, so the backups never play. This means that about five running backs break the all-time rushing record each season, and there are all sorts of other silly consequences. The makers cannot possibly be unaware of the bug, and they just don't care.
- That error is prevalent in a lot of sports games - backup goaltenders in hockey games and bench players in basketball and football don't play nearly as much in simmed games as in real life, because there's no such thing as a "day off" in the simmed version.
- Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks, a (re)telling of the events between the end of the original game and the end of Mortal Kombat II, derails so many characters and changes so many established events, one has to wonder if the development team are just sick of the series. In compensation, it did get praise for its gameplay, which is generally considered the best out of the recent MK games by critics and fans.
- However, Mortal Kombat Armageddon completely disregards the storyline established in Deadly Alliance and Deception in favor of a ridiculous Xanatos Roulette based around a one-off Joke Character, tossing in a bunch of nonsensical endings that read like bad Fan Fiction, and not even bothering adding in bios for the characters to explain why they're going after a flaming man on top of a pyramid. Adding to this was a tacked on create-a-fighter mode, characters sharing the same moves, and the fact that none of the characters had their iconic fatalities (in favor of a generic create-a-fatality mode).
- Mortal Kombat in general, following John Tobias's departure from the team. Given that he was the lead designer and he wrote the story and bios, it meant characters lost their edge, new characters became blander and character designs turned to the ludicrous, while at the same time the gameplay took a backseat to gimmickry, leading to controls becoming more and more unresponsive while programmers focused on making the most ridiculous stage fatalities they could.
- Silver Surfer for the NES. On one hand, it does have great graphics (for the NES era), music, and play control. But on the other hand, the gameplay is way, way different as it is difficult: Most of the game is the titular hero shooting up enemies like rubber ducks and ghosts (who take many, many hits to kill), and if Silver Surfer touches anything, he is dead. And weeps like a crybaby. It's obvious the developers had the talent and potential, but they didn't give two bleeps about it.
- The old Valis series was an epic tale of strong female Magic Warriors with swords. Unfortunately, its original publisher went under and sold the rights to a porn game company. The resulting Hentai enraged fans and left everyone else cold.
- The Dawn Of War: Soulstorm expansion. Outsourced to another company that closed down partway into development, and then released anyway. The result was "SPESS MEHREENS!", "We shall take away their metal boxes!", and a few Game Breaking Bugs including one that could result in infinite resources. In multiplayer. All this is understandable, if hilariously awful, but then there were things like having the only recurring character's voice actor still on staff and giving the role to someone else, then only having him grunt a few lines and leave. Or a backwater factory shipping out the oft-cited "tank so big its guns have smaller guns attached to them and is only produced on the most technologically advanced planets in the galaxy" by the hundred (it isn't just game mechanics either. At the start of the said mission it is mentioned that there is a company of the said tanks deployed on the planet. Actually, getting three would be considered extremely lucky). Or, y'know, any of the script writing. Our enemies hide in metal boxes! Of course, some have speculated that, because Iron Lore Entertainment - the company responsible - was closing down after all, they literally didn't care. Perhaps only the ex-staff know.
- The Dark Eldar have horrible, horrible voice acting.
- A superheavy company in 40k usually has three super heavy tanks in it. Lucky, wouldn't you say?
- No, it has between one and three super heavy tanks.
- Lord of the Rings Online: Mines of Moria. The inevitable formula of translating a detailed and reserved world into a video game will obviously lose or bend some things, but completely break them and acknowledge that you could've done otherwise is a whole different ballgame. Enter the Rune-Keeper, where you can play, out of the box, as a magic spell caster, something that was explicitly stated by Tolkien as not only highly improbable and rare, but also required a great deal of power to do so (much more to use in a violent matter). The powers of this class make Gandalf, one of the Istari, look like a conjurer of cheap tricks.
- People also cried foul on LOTR: Conquest for similiar reasons. Which raises the question: How did Pandemic go from caring about the Star Wars Expanded Universe with the Battlefront series to that?
- This is actually a case of Broken Base—the Rune-Keeper was intended to neatly dodge around canon rather than contradict it, and some people argue that it's a necessary addition to balance out the character types.
- Need for Speed: Most Wanted includes adrenaline pumping chases with the police, an important part of which is the dispatcher on whom you can listen in and who vectors the cop cars on your position (and so gives you clues on how to avoid them). She does so by calling out the direction you're going and the location you're currently at. When the material was recycled for NFS: Carbon, which takes place in a different city, the place names obviously couldn't be re-used. And so they simply aren't. Cops in Carbon are apparently psychic and can find you on no other information than your direction of travel.
- There's a reason why the Zelda C Di Games are not just Discontinuity but Canon Discontinuity... Oh, where to begin? Let's start with this: Ganon is a (off-model animated(?)) dog-pig-cross.
- While I haven't seen those games, that's at least a semi-reasonable description of his appearance in the original Zelda.
- ...Just watch a couple of the cutscenes on Youtube and you'll see what the problem is. They border on Nightmare Fuel.
- The plot of the Crash Bandicoot game Crash Tag Team Racing is very much this. Aside from making little sense by itself, the plotline has practically nothing to do with Crash aside from having several returning characters in it (most of whom are subject to Character Derailment). The plot also ignores some things previously established in the series by having several Talking Animal characters running around for no reason whereas all the animal characters in the series are supposed to have been experimented upon and mutated by Cortex and other scientists. Oddly, the game seems to inspire less They Changed It Now It Sucks complaints than Radical's later games, Crash of the Titans and Crash: Mind Over Mutant, which are in every way much more faithful to the series.
- The developers of Wild Arms: Alter Code F cared. The company that localized it in America, Agetec, did not. Agetec picked up the rights to localize the English version a few months after the game was released in Japan (November 2003), a move that was welcomed by fans considering their work publishing the Armored Core series, which included adding extras that weren't in the Japanese release. A year later, no one had heard a word about any work that had been done with the localization and absolutely no word of a release date. Small details trickled out through one insider, but even he expressed frustration when the game was finally released in America, in November 2005...without voices (the Japanese release had grunts and shouts in battle, and vocals in a few songs, all of which were cut out entirely without any replacement dub), without fixing the Game Breaking Bugs, without any extras (except a DVD of the first episode of the questionable-quality WA anime, Twilight Venom)...and worst of all, a Blind Idiot Translation that was barely any better than the original game, and certainly wasn't up to the standard of 2005 PS2 games. Agetec went mysteriously silent and didn't respond to any inquiries, even from the insider, as to how they managed to release a gutted version of the game after sitting on it for two years. Subsequent games in the series have had their localization handled by XSEED, who are widely agreed to be handling the process better.
- Vergil mode in Devil May Cry 3: Special Edition. While some may have been satisfied just to use him as a playable character, others were hoping for a complete deal - cutscenes showing Vergil's interactions with the bosses, fights against Dante, Vergil's own take on wielding the weapons Dante gains etc. Regrettably, the only cutscene we got made sense only as part of Dante's story, with no pre- or post-bossfight cutscenes or gaining the bosses weapons. The "Dante" fights were with a mere Palette Swap of Vergil, sometimes Fan Nicknamed "Vante". It's playable, yes, and there is a certain amount of Squee to using Vergil... but it isn't exactly an expected complete package.
- Lux Pain's English translation. So very much.
- Backyard Baseball 2007 and future games in the Backyard Sports series. The announcer now refers to everyone as "he" and the characters have no personality now. The series is basically now a Cash Cow for the affiliated sports leagues.
Western Animation
- 1992's Frosty Returns was clearly written by people who had never seen the original. Frosty himself is changed from a Gentle Giant with a childlike innocence and personality into a Large Ham who is somehow omniscient. It would have taken them twenty-two minutes to watch the first one, but apparently they decided that kids wouldn't notice the difference anyway.
- The creators of this movie cared so little that they ignored the fact that Frosty is only supposed to be alive because of his magic hat, instead allowing him take to it off with no negative side effects at all. It's honestly pretty insulting that they couldn't be bothered to pay attention to the entire plot of the first movie and the Christmas carol. How do you manage to deviate from a plot so small that it can be outlined in a single verse of a Christmas carol?
- In what this troper considers the true sequel (Frosty's Winter Wonderland), made in 1976 by the original studio, Frosty gains this ability because of the magic of a snow-crafted boutonniere made by his wife Crystal. It's a very sweet scene.
- Rumor has it that Walt Disney's instructions to his crew assigned with writing the script for The Jungle Book were, "The first thing I want you to do is not read the book." That would explain a lot...
- Despite this, judging by the behind the scenes features on the DVD, the original draft included more of Kipling's original plot elements, but the various "improvements" made by other scriptwriters whittled them away until...
- Disney had originally tried to follow the book but decided that the storyline was far too dark for American tastes of the time, so he gave those infamous instructions in regards to the rewrite of the film. The result may have not have anything to do with Kipling, but unlike many examples on this page, it is at least watchable.
- Stargate Infinity. Forget dragon-like Ancients: Apparently the animators thought Stargates have only eight chevrons. Yes, even the one found in Giza, as shown in the opening.
- Although in this case it's less a case of didn't care and more a case of falling behind, as Infinity was released before just about any information about the Ancients, and before the number of chevrons started to matter.
- Tom And Jerry: The Movie. Tom and Jerry are practically secondary characters. The plot was that a little girl was trying to find her father, and Tom and Jerry are practically a subplot. You could pretty much take most of their scenes and the movie would be more sensible. 2. There is very little of the slapstick that Tom and Jerry are famous for. 3. Tom and Jerry spend most of the movie as friends 4. More than a good half of the movie is simply That Reminds Me Of A Song. 5. The diabetes-flavoring would kill anyone who actually watches Tom & Jerry cartoons. 6. Tom & Jerry's lines and voices are rude and childish, while whenever Tom & Jerry talked in the actual cartoons, they talked like adults. In other words, it's a common-grade horrible low-budget straight-to-video kid's film with a sappy story and horrible knock-offs villains, with Tom & Jerry being slapped onto the project at the last moment. The movie was so bad, it got a 17% on Rotten Tomatoes. It's that bad.
- Ben 10 Alien Force. Combo Platter Powers? Check. Strangled By The Red String? Check. Retcons? Check, check and check. They Just Didnt Care? Boy, howdy.
- This should go with the poor TV editing, but EVERY time Cats Dont Dance is shown on Cartoon Network, there's a commercial break after the cue for, but before the beginning of the final musical number.
- Happens to a lot of movies, actually.
- After The Thief and the Cobbler, Richard Williams' labour of love, was taken from his hands, it was passed on to Majestic Films International, who finished it in a manner befitting this trope. Then Miramax got a hold of it.
- The only explanation for the "historical" segments on The Busy World Of Richard Scarry which have exceedingly little to do with the actual history (Michaelangelo painted the Sistine Chapel's ceiling to keep a meddling priest from messing with a mural he was painting on the wall?).
Other
- A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court was a novel written by Mark Twain. It used time travel as a mechanism to critique the feudal system and the Catholic church and is known for its acidic sense of humor. Nowadays there are no end of 'X in King Arthur's Court' movies or shows such as Martin Lawrence's Black Knight, which maintain the time travel angle but are usually childish and contain no thought-provoking material whatsoever.
- To be fair, Twain's crtitique was always somewhat crude and bigoted, even for his own day. His conclusion is frankly horrific. Although a serious re-examination of Twain's theme might well be in order, it seems not entirely fair to criticize every adaptation as TJDC. Though I will grant you Unidentified Flying Oddball.
- ...and then, we have A Kid In King Arthurs Court, which is so horribly off the source material it may as well be an entirely different movie. Which still doesn't even remotely explain how a CD player can zap someone in the eye with the laser while open... from the center of the player rather than the source of the laser. Not only did they not even care, they didn't even think.
- The first Nirvana album "Bleach" lists "Kurdt Kobain" on guitar and vocals.
Real Life
- This.
- This goes both ways as I have seen some very amusing uses of English in Asia.
- It's worse when it comes to tattoos. Imagine having "crazy diarrhea" or "cheap whore" tattooed on your arm. Permanently.
- This troper has heard a story about a Chinese-American tattoo artist who has a book of designs containing the hanzis for "stupid illiterate Westerner." If a prospective client asks what the characters mean, he will tell them; if, however, they just want the Cool Exotic Design put on their arms or lower backs and could care less what it means... then they get their wish.
- This troper has actually seen someone with "gaijin". So Yeah.
- There's an entire blog dedicated to nonsensical Chinese in tattoos.
- Shortly after Peter Sellers died, a local TV station honored him by playing The Wrong Box - an all-star ensemble comedy where he had a ten-minute two-scene role, which they announced as "Starring Peter Sellers". They then played the reels out of sequence, and left out the scenes with Sellers.
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