Ruined Forever / Live-Action Films

aka: Film

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• The very concept of "nuking the fridge". This was coined barely a week after Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull came out. The thing was the coiners actually claimed they had found a "new" kind of Jumping the Shark, just for movies instead of TV (and even spammed YKTTW with it). Not only is "jumping the shark" not media-specific, but that term was coined years after the episode aired, not days. A larger amount of the hate came from the inclusion of aliens in the plot, mostly from viewers who forgot the other films featured similar supernatural or paranormal elements.
• Daniel Craig as James Bond. He's blonde! He can't drive a stick! He wore a freaking life-jacket on a boat to the press conference announcing he was Bond!. Oh, wait, Casino Royale (2006) was the best Bond movie in years. My bad. Can't wait for Quantum of Solace. Wait, Craig cut off part of his fingertips? Oh, dear god...
  • Epitomized by the website Daniel Craig Is Not Bond, which garnered some media coverage when even the press jumped on that bandwagon. Even when the press and most of the fans declared him a fine Bond and Casino Royale was profitable and well-received, the site never once gave him an inch. To the point where Daniel himself commented on it and said he wished they'd all just hurry up and decide if they liked him or not and quit their bitching.
    • The site has moderated its stance from its earlier ethos - it sticks to its basic idea but emphatically says it's NOT a Daniel Craig hate site, describing him as a talented actor who they simply feel was miscast and marketing itself as a refuge for those who buck the conventional wisdom that Craig is the best Bond ever and prefer the older movies and feel the that the current owners of the Bond franchise are pushing the Craig era by denigrating those earlier films.
  • Quantum of Solace is eerily similar to Licence to Kill in this respect. What these people do not realize, is that Craig's Bond is by far the one closest to the source material in Ian Fleming's literature. The same was true for the earlier films starring Timothy Dalton as Bond.
  • For the record, a significant portion of the people who don't like Craig as Bond feel that while Casino Royale (2006) was a fantastic movie, Craig's still a terrible Bond. Great action star, sure, but a bad James Bond. Skyfall changed a few minds, but dissers still exist.
  • The previous five Bonds out and said that Daniel Craig is a good/terrific Bond.
  • Now the outrage is directed towards the new 007 being played by Lashana Lynch, a Black woman in No Time to Die. Although the wording was to blame, given reports would mistakenly equate 007, the codename, with James Bond, the person (who is still Craig in the movie).
• Every single Star Wars film, novel, game, or any product that came after the original trilogy. Even The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi caused a few to have mild misgivings compared to the original Star Wars for different reasons, but the fandom generally liked all three. But after more than a decade and a few generations of fans growing up with the originals, starting with the release of the prequel trilogy all bets were off and the films became truly divisive. Find any large Star Wars message board at the time a new installment came out, one would witness hordes of fans screaming that Star Wars is ruined and that nothing can ever save it. In the pre-Disney era, this generally led to someone threatening to kill George Lucas- regardless of how much he was involved in the project.
  • The The Star Wars Holiday Special is probably the least divisive piece of media in the franchise, in the sense that everyone agrees it is an abomination. But try to imagine how fans thirsting for a new installment felt at the time...
  • Knights of the Old Republic managed to avoid this, except for the canonical gender of the Exile.
  • Star Wars: The Old Republic, though, suffers from this with too many examples to keep track of. Graphics, animation, combat, dialog, lore, all are being listed as ruining the game FOREVER. The true irony in this? People were saying this before the game was even released. Imagine that.
  • The Incredible Cross-Sections books are often accused of bringing in excessive Techno Babble and heavily lambasted by some fans for that reason.
  • Star Wars: The Clone Wars has probably gotten more than its fair share if only because it was a television production upgraded into a feature film, an entirely different medium. The series itself has gotten a lot more supporters because it is being looked at as a television show, not a film.
    • It still gets a lot of hate for contradicting previous canon (and occasionally fanon) when it would be very easily avoidable.
    • Fans of the series seem to be having this reaction with the recent cancellation... and then the revelation that not only will the bonus content be just two story arcs, but one of the cancelled story arcs was about Boba Fett. Later, it was revealed to be THREE story arcs (and an arc from Season 5 that didn't get to air to it exceeding the 22 episode cap).
    • There was a rumor going around about how this bonus content will be released: ONLY on Apple TV, with a "special" Star Wars app, for only a LIMITED time over the holiday season. Considering barely anyone even HAS Apple TV, imagine how fans of the show took this. This rumor turned out to be untrue, as later, it was announced that these episodes would air on Netflix along with the rest of the series. However, it doesn't stop some from complaining that it's so far announced only for the U.S. and Canada and leading to accusations of No Export for You.
    • Words that ruin Star Wars: The Clone Wars to some die hard fanatics: Anakin's apprentice.
  • Now that Star Wars Rebels exists (because of Disney; continue to scroll down for that entry), the hate that used to plague The Clone Wars earlier on migrated over to Rebels. Seems that Rebels is the Butt-Monkey entry, considering no one considers to bash the Sequel movies for the loss of their precious EU.
    • Our Darker and Edgier show got cancelled for this Disneyfied parody? WHAT AN EMBARASSMENT TO THE FRANCHISE!! RUINED FOREVER!! Ignoring that among other things, someone gets a lightsaber to the face and is subsequently blinded for life.
    • It's worth noting that The Clone Wars was canceled by Cartoon Network due to ratings, not because Disney bought the franchise.
    • An Asian Mandalorian girl that wears pink and likes art and hardly wears armor? HERESY!
  • Three words: HAN! SHOT! FIRST! Which, incidentally, is inaccurate, as this implies that Greedo got a shot off afterward, which he didn't. It should be "Greedo didn't shoot".
  • Pacifistic Mandalorians. LET THE CARNAGE BEGIN!!!
  • And now we have these clips from the Blu-ray re-releases. Lucas might as well go into hiding right now.
  • To say that Star Wars Kinect is a complete bastardization of everything good about Star Wars and the absolute worst part of the Star Wars Franchise to date just because of the dance-off mode alone is a HUGE understatement!
    • It helps that one of the dance moves in "I'm Han Solo" is called "Han Shot First".
  • By far the thing that most irreparably ruined Star Wars was Disney's purchase of it. The VERY FIRST THING Disney did was throw the entire EU in the crapper just to pave the way for JJ Abrams to regurgitate his fanfictions all over the big screen. But in Abrams' defense, he at least had a whole trilogy planned out from the beginning. That came to an end when he was taken off Episode 8 and Rian Johnson was brought in, and Rian put JJ's plans for episodes 8 and 9 through the paper shredder and wrote his own meandering, plotless abomination powered entirely by character assassination and Idiot Ball. And things got worse from there. Fans now pine for the days when the biggest problems the franchise suffered were Jar Jar Binks and midichlorians.
• New Buffy movie reboot... WITHOUT JOSS WHEDON?! BLASPHEMY!!!! (Admittedly, in this case; it's not so much that it's not Joss Whedon, it's that it is Fran and Kaz Kuzui, who own and "ruined" the first movie and had no actual creative input on anything past that.)
• The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie reboot kicked up a lot of fear over having Michael Bay as executive producer and Megan Fox as April.
  • Because nothing bad ever happened to the Ninja Turtles until Bay got involved. Never.
• The film version of Sex and the City is probably the only film ever to be accused of this in a newspaper review. By a critic who knows what "Jumped the Shark" means, no less.
  • The first film was generally very well received. However, the second film is what ruined it for most fans.
• The Amazing Spider-Man got hate for being made just so that Sony could retain the rights to the character.
• To say that fans' reaction to the fact that Zack Snyder's Superman project will not have John Williams's compositions is disappointment is an understatement.
• While the majority of reaction has been positive, to say the least there are at least a few fans (even Frank Oz held some degree of the sentiment) of The Muppets who are crying this after Fozzie Bear introduced "fart shoes." Even if the joke was making fun of lame humor.
• A Star Trek reboot with the origins of the characters and making a nerdy stalwart more accessible? Dammit, J. J. Abrams!!
  • In retrospect, Kurtzman taking the reins of the franchise from Rick Berman probably did more to damage the Star Trek franchise than anything else in its 50-year history, similarly to Disney taking over Star Wars.
• Remakes, any kind, will always have this response. Double points if the remake is a PG-13 movie based on an R Rated movie. TRIPLE POINTS if the R rated film in question was a horror film.
  • At one point, MTV announced plans to remake The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Needless to say, the backlash was unanimous.
• Jason Bourne won't appear in The Bourne Legacy? RUINED!
• Depending on who you are, this starts with either the first, third, or sixth Harry Potter film. Either because the Film of the Book constantly sucks, because of Canon Defilement, or turning the film into a romance-centred disaster that cut out a great many important details to make way for romance. Kinda like the fanfiction people who hate the ending ships prefer.
• Older Than They Think: In the late-1960s, many believed movies were ruined forever once The Hays Code was discarded. Film directors, after decades of repression, soon began inserting excessive swearing, gratuitous sex, loads of violence, etc. in movies. And, thus, many film goers who were used to the limitations of the Hays Code were outraged and declared the moral fabric of cinema (and, thus, movies as a medium) to be Ruined FOREVER.
• The Film of the Book for World War Z isn't shot in documentary style, the zombies are fast, and there is a central character instead of a series of vignettes about the end of the world. RUINED FOREVER!
• The Thing (1982) is getting a prequel? Oh, nice. Wait, what? They're using CGI monsters instead of puppets, models and make-up? NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!
• Yeah! We got one of the most badass villains in Iron Man 3, the Mandarin, and he's going to kick as- Wait, he's not really the Mandarin and just a washed up drunken actor? YOU RUINED MARVEL MOVIES SHANE BLACK AND KEVIN FEIGE!
  • Luckily, it was later revealed that there actually was a real Mandarin and he's pretty much pissed at said actor. This was fixed further when it was confirmed that the true Mandarin will appear in Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings.
• The Disney studios themselves were declared Ruined FOREVER when they stopped animating traditionally in favor of CG in the 2010s.
• Now that Peter Sellers is dead The Pink Panther series is ruined.
• In any given discussion about the Terminator franchise, you can't swing a dead cat and not hit at least one person complaining that the entire series should have come to a complete stop after Terminator 2: Judgment Day, because Only the Creator Does It Right
• Of course, the Transformers Film Series, the film adaptations of the Trope Namer. Justified in that they were not well-liked among critics (both professional and online), and also the first experience that many people would have with the franchise, and therefore they permanently turned many potential fans away from a franchise that they might have otherwise enjoyed.
• The ENTIRETY of the DC Extended Universe, which mostly consists of films having potential that was ruined due to Executive Meddling (Suicide Squad (2016)), the wrong tone (Man of Steel), poorly-received characterizations (Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, Birds of Prey (2020)), or all of the above if you're really unlucky (Justice League (2017), Wonder Woman 1984).
  • Birds of Prey (2020). After decades of being shafted by DC, we finally get to see Cassandra Cain in live-action for the first time. Wait, she's an In Name Only counterpart? WTF, WARNER BROS!!???
  • THE Ruined Forever moment for the DCEU was undoubtedly (according to fans) Zack Snyder's withdrawal from the post-production of Justice League after his daughter's death. Then Joss Whedon handled it, which led to both a mess of a finished movie AND Snyder's permanent removal from control of the DCEU, which means that many of the setups in his movies won't have the payoffs in later movies that they were supposed to have... whether you like his movies or hate them, there was at least something resembling a consistent artistic vision running through them, and now that vision has turned into a train wreck. Even after the release of the much better non-botched version, the whole mess has left Warner Bros. unwilling to continue from there.
• Venom (2018)'s rating is PG-13? Meaning that it won't be rated R, despite the director's passionate claims about wanting to show us the black slimed, fanged beast in all of its bloody glory? DAMN IT, SONY! THIS IS THE EQUIVALENT OF CINEMATIC CASTRATION!
• There's gonna be a movie of The Banana Splits? Yay! It's gonna be so awes-wait, it's gonna be a horror movie with gore? We're not happy, Warner Bros. NOT. HAPPY.
• There will be a Ghostbusters remake? Ehhhh-wait, it's gonna have a all-female team? NOOOOOO! THE GHOSTBUSTERS ARE FOR MEN, SHOULD BE MEN, AND MEN ONLY! (Take note that Janine Melnitz occasionally donned a jumpsuit and proton pack in The Real Ghostbusters, and there was a permanent female Ghostbuster, Kylie, in Extreme Ghostbusters) Though there were other objections to the 2016 reboot as well: the mere fact that it was a reboot instead of a sequel after fans had waited many years for Ghostbusters III, the unfortunate and/or questionable timing of it getting made/coming out so soon after Harold Ramis (Egon) died, the fact that it was written and directed by people with no involvement in the first two movies, the adlib-heavy direction and Denser and Wackier tone not working well with the franchise's general formula, etc. This one even led Honest Trailers to disable the commentary section for their take on the film, something they hardly ever do, with the Epic Voice Guy saying "Are we sure you wanna do this one? Fine. We'll do it, but we're turning off the comments. You did this to yourself, Internet."
• Cats was RUINED FOREVER according to fans and critics thanks to its film adaptation, which some deemed to be a Franchise Killer for Cats.
• Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer is getting a new logo? That's cool, but what's this? Leo the Lion is not gonna be live-action anymore, but rather, CGI?! ANIMAL RIGHTS ACTIVISTS AND GROUPS HAVE FINALLY COME FOR THE GOLDEN LION OF HOLLYWOOD!!! AND ALL IN ANTICIPATION OF AMAZON'S ACQUISITION OF THE COMPANY, TOO!!!
• This happens In-Universe in Scream (2022). Many fans of the Stab franchise believe that it was Ruined Forever by Stab 8, which was made by "the Knives Out guy" (a reference to the bitterly divided reaction to The Last Jedi) and took an "elevated horror" approach to the series, while also introducing elements like Ghostface wielding a flamethrower and wearing a chrome mask. The Meta Gal Mindy tells a girl who liked the film that she has no taste in horror, and Richie is seen watching a YouTube commentary video whose hosts (played by James A. Janisse and Chelsea Rebecca in a cameo) go over all the ways in which Stab 8 ruined the franchise. The latter is, in fact, foreshadowing his motive as a killer: he and Amber are Loony Fans who want to stage a new killing spree to serve as inspiration for a Stab "re-quel" that would wash away the stench of Stab 8.
• Serenity is thought by some fans to have ruined the Firefly franchise by killing two much loved characters. Particularly when Wash pulled off a hair-raising powerless crash landing and it seemed like everyone except Shepherd Book was going to make it and then... wait, what just happened? He got speared through the chest clear through the ship's hull? No, Wash can't be dead! What do you mean "he ain't coming?" They'll find him still alive afterward, right? Right? NOOO!
• Jurassic Park
  • First started with Jurassic Park III because it was weaker than the first two films (and wasn't based on a Michael Crichton novel like the first two movies^note Though The Lost World (1995) was written for the sole purpose of adapting it into a film) and the T. rex was defeated by the Spinosaurus.
  • Jurassic World: The dinosaurs will all be CGI and still won't have feathers? Ruined!!
  • Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom was basically JP3 redux as far as fans saying the franchise was ruined because it was seen as a weaker followup to the first JW film.
• There's gonna be a film adaptation of Jem? That's truly out- wait, they changed a lot of the elements to make it hip with the kids and changed the personalities of the characters? CURSE YOU BLUMHOUSE!!! YOU'VE RUINED JEM FOREVER!!!
• Now that Winnie the Pooh is in the public domain in most countries, I wonder which companies are going to be putting out their own interpretations of the beloved charac- what's this, a horror film with gore that depicts Pooh and Piglet as murderers? WINNIE THE POOH IS RUINED FOREVER!
• There's going to be another Black Christmas remake? Sounds cool- wait a minute, it's a PG-13-rated dramedy with a feminist aesop? RUINED FOREVER!
• The Exorcist:
  • Exorcist II: The Heretic is said by many fans and critics to have ruined the franchise, since director John Boorman (who hated the first film to begin with) decided the film would have a more surrealist sci-fi tone (with the scenes with Kokumo dressed in a locust costume being met with a lot of scorn, even though they were just dream sequences) than the original.

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