Rename: Cosmetically Advanced Prequel

I think we need to rename this article since most of the examples don't exactly follow the main premise of the trope, especially the Video Game examples. Also, it's more of a subjective trope than about continuity, and it doesn't just involves prequels, spin-offs can also be affected as well.

I was planning on renaming the title and adding more to the description by combining it with some of my ideas here. If that is alright, I'd like to hear what you guys have to say.

Tag fixed.

Wouldn't mind seeing a bigger picture. I'm the one that put that one up there, but it is kinda hard to make out I'll admit...

Your trope seems to be entirely a very subjective audience reaction of "tech I think looked better." I don't think we need it. It's not a trope, it's just an audience reaction and a reason to complain about changes in character design that you don't like.

The current trope is an objective trope of prequals that were made so far after their source material that they end up looking more modern and high tech than things that happened after them. This is a trope and it's a well documented phenomenon.

It seems to be two tropes.

The first is where where in-show technology is more advanced in the past than in works set after it. The second is where real-world technology makes the past look or control better than the future. Which is it supposed to be?

edited 19th Apr '11 3:29:25 PM by halfmillennium

But the aesthetics of technology is still pretty much a very subjective idea. If you see some of the examples on the trope (especially the Star Wars one), there's a lot of back-and-forth going on.

Besides, we should have a lot more examples if it's really well-documented.

edited 20th Apr '11 6:10:36 AM by Daisanji

The aesthetics of the technology are based on modern tech versus tech from decades ago. If you think we should split the aesthetics from the practical uses then that would be one thing.

The reason for the lack of examples is that it really doesn't happen all that much. It's rare for a prequel to be made so far after the original that the tech difference is hugely noticeable. This is a trope that takes at least a decade to really set up. Add in that prequels are far rarer than sequels and you get a relatively rare trope just based on numbers. Basically, the reason it doesn't have more examples is because there really just aren't a lot of instances of the trope, period. Doesn't mean that the ones that there are haven't been documented.

edited 20th Apr '11 10:49:29 AM by shimaspawn

Yeah this is pretty objective. The Sims is a good example.