Needs Help: Parvum Opus

(This could equally fall under "Complaining", "Misuse", and "Not Tropeworthy", so I'll just opt for the default.)

Parvum Opus was created in November 2014 without going through YKTTW by an editor who hasn't edited the wiki since that month. The page may say that it's "not to just complain about a creator's work or criticize", but it's become something of a complaint magnet, with the recent kerfuffle over its addition to and re-deletion from YMMV.The Force Awakens being just one example. To borrow Fighteer's words from the ATT discussion that prompted this thread, "In the world of instant social media gratification, people are extraordinarily quick to throw up evaluations like "best EVAR" or "worst EVAR" the instant something goes online, not even considering that grand statements like Magnum Opus are administered only after a great deal of perspective." I'd say it's undergone trope decay, except I'm not even convinced there was much of a trope there to begin with.

The page also says each creator only has one Parvum Opus. And yet it's listed on YMMV.The Man With The Golden Gun, YMMV.Moonraker, and YMMV.A View To A Kill, all of which are claimed to be the weakest EON-produced James Bond film (with YMMV.Die Another Day trying to slide in with a claim as the worst Brosnan-era Bond film). The Disney Animated Canon has it even worse; it's listed on YMMV.Dumbo (because Walt himself was dissatisfied more with this film than with the other early animated films - there's an (incorrectly indented) entry for Magnum Opus immediately below it), YMMV.The Sword In The Stone, YMMV.The Aristocats, YMMV.Robin Hood, YMMV.The Black Cauldron, and YMMV.The Rescuers (for Down Under being a Box Office Bomb by the Disney Renaissance standards), as well as YMMV.The Hunchback Of Notre Dame and YMMV.Mulan II for the DTV sequels. In some cases, the entries effectively become inverse Overly Narrow Superlatives in an attempt to justify franchises having multiple entries. On a related note, Don Bluth apparently has not one but two, if YMMV.A Troll In Central Park and YMMV.The Pebble And The Penguin are anything to go on (the latter page even says the film is more highly regarded than Bluth's three previous films, immediately below the Parvum Opus entry - er, wha??).

There are apparently three "worst" episodes of Spongebob Squarepants according to YMMV.Spongebob Squarepants S 7 E 11 One Coarse Meal Gary In Love and YMMV.Spongebob Squarepants S 8 E 12 Barnacle Face Pet Sitter Pat (both pages mention "A Pal for Gary" as another "worst" contender). And yes, surprising no-one I'm sure, the ubiquitous My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic has two episodes with YMMV pages claiming the episode in question is the series' weakest: YMMV.My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic S 2 E 8 The Mysterious Mare Do Well and YMMV.My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic S 3 E 10 Spike At Your Service. (The redlinks here are probably caused by overly long page titles, but the pages do exist.)

It also has a Zero-Context Example problem. The entry at YMMV.ET The Extra Terrestrial simply says the Atari 2600 game is "one of the contenders" for the title, with no explanation for why. The entry at YMMV.Megaforce describes it as "one of the contenders" for Golden Harvest, along with the third Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles film, but doesn't say why it holds that "honour". YMMV.Shark Tale has an entry which says it's considered to be a representative of everything bad about DreamWorks Animation - and simply instructs the reader to read the rest of the page for an explanation. The entry at YMMV.Catwoman says only that it's a contender for worst DC adaptation alongside Superman IV: The Quest for Peace and Batman & Robin, with no further explanation of why.

And there does remain the question: is this a page the wiki even needs? Every career has ups and downs, and there's often no consensus over one "worst" (as the franchises with multiple entries amply prove). For example, YMMV.Topaz contains an entry describing the film as Alfred Hitchcock's weakest, but I've seen that label applied also to his adaptations of Juno and the Paycock and Jamaica Inn. (Having seen all three, I would personally vote for Juno and the Paycock, but that's beside the point.) Again, the page may purport not to be intended solely to complain, but it's hard to view it in any other light. The cynic in me thinks it was created without YKTTW precisely because it's the sort of complaint magnet that would likely never have passed YKTTW, and the creator hoped no-one would notice.

A few solutions have been proposed in ATT:

• Axe it entirely. (When it was brought up in the YKTTW Crash Rescue thread in November 2014, I voted in favour of this. Unfortunately, I was the only person who voted at all, and one person does not a consensus make.)
• Restrict it to in-universe examples only. (Are there enough depictions of fictional creators that the idea of a weakest work is well-represented?)
• Apply quality control by requiring that new examples must meet certain criteria, in the mould of Complete Monster or, perhaps more germane, Unfortunate Implications: there must be sufficient evidence provided to show that the book, film, television episode (or series), play, or video game in question was less well-received critically and/or commercially than the creator's other work.

And there may be other solutions. Personally, I was in favour of axing it then, I'm still in favour of axing it now, but I'm not ruling out the possibility that someone can offer a compelling reason to keep it and just clean it up a bit.

edited 6th Jan '16 12:41:57 PM by mlsmithca

Personally, I lean towards either axing this or keeping it with REALLY strict standards. But axing it is more likely to work right.

If only so that nobody can say we didn’t explore every option, let’s think about what would need to be done to rehabilitate this. I think it would require a redefinition with some firmly defined criteria and a Long Term Projects thread a la Complete Monster or The Scrappy to enforce them by cleaning up existing misuse and preventing further misuse. I’d suggest:

• Examples are per creator, not per franchise or series or anything else. So George Lucas could have a Parvum Opus, but not Star Wars. Ideally, this creator would be recognized as an auteur with a great deal of creative control over their collected body of work.
• One example per creator. A Parvum Opus is the low point of a creator’s career. No multiples.
• The creator must be recognized, at least among their own audience, as having a reasonably consistent track record of high-quality work. A director or author known for delivering stinkers delivering one that’s especially stinky isn’t noteworthy.
• Examples must be at least ten years old to allow for sufficient perspective, and the creator must have a body of at least five major works to allow for a sufficient basis for comparison.
• Examples must reflect a general critical and fan consensus of poor quality. If it’s a case of Critical Dissonance or the subject of a Broken Base, then the example goes there, not here. Being disowned by Word of God is not sufficient: that's why Old Shame, Creator Backlash, and Magnum Opus Dissonance are things.
• Examples must represent a significant drop in quality from the creator’s other work. If there is significant disagreement over which of two or more works are the creator’s Parvum Opus, then the most likely answer is that the creator does not have one. A sustained low period in a creator’s output may fit under Dork Age, but it doesn’t fit here.

edited 6th Jan '16 3:00:14 PM by HighCrate

I'm absolutely behind cutting it. We could find a way to save it, but what would be the point? It's basically redundant with other complaining tropes, and it really looks like should never have been allowed to stay to begin with.

Execute it

Like I've mentioned in ATT, nuke it or apply strict standards.

But mostly nuke it.

IMHO, this trope & Magnum Opus would both be far better if they were citated to actual critics, not just vague statements like "The Alice and Bob Movie is widely considered to the worst film Alan Smithee has ever directed, due to the Idiot Ball plot & Mary Sue that is Alice, blah blah blah complain complain complain". Instead, it should be something like "Roger Ebert derided The Alice and Bob moive, saying, "Smithee used to be a talented director, with his debut film, TV Tropes, in 1999, being one of that year's best films. Where that talent went, I don't know, but he certainly doesn't show it in this ploddingly-paced movie.", only better written (I'm not Roger Ebert, after all ).

Magnum Opus is a joke in its current state...as for Parvum Opus, I'm fine with burning it to the ground.

Axe it. The misuse is crazy.

All really should link to aggregate sites like Rotten Tomatoes.

However I agree that killing this would be the best, it's just being used as bashing any movie that they didn't like.

^^^ I'd be all for applying stricter standards to Magnum Opus FWIW, but that's a matter for another TRS thread.

edited 6th Jan '16 2:06:02 PM by HighCrate

...do we even need a crowner at this point? EVERYONE who's chimed in this thread has said they do support hitting it with the +50 asteroid of smiting.

I'd be all for killing it with fire. Even if we call for each example to meet strict criteria, is it really worth the effort it would take to enforce? Considering the negative nature of the trope itself, I see no way in which a thread to examine whether or not an example counts (a la Complete Monster) wouldn't eventually and repeatedly derail into complaining about the works themselves.

At most, I'd say keep a locked page with a brief description of what Parvum Opus is, since it's bound to come up eventually in some discussions about the arts and creators. Or better yet, add a paragraph to the Magnum Opus page (which may also be misuse bait in need of some weeding, tbh).

edited 6th Jan '16 2:10:24 PM by Virodhi

One criteria that I think would help would be to only apply this trope to a creator or franchise with a set number of installments (e.g. no listing a series with less than five films). That would help eliminate entries for creators or franchises with only a handful of works.

I say make it citation-only, like Unfortunate Implications.

Ok, since there's some support for other than cut, I've gone ahead and set up a page action crowner here

I'd lean toward cutting it (for the record only became aware of the trope because of the Force Awakens kerfuffle).

The examples and definition are a mix between "less popular work by a creator" and "worst work by a creator" (and obviously the Force Awakens fits neither).

Like some works are ones that were bad so as to make someone a Fallen Creator, whereas in other cases, like with Disney or Hitchcock, you have a very prolific creator such that some of their works are comparably less popular/well known but would likely be considered at least okay taken on their own.

Cut.

Crowner hooked.

Burn and salt it.

Well, now that there's a crowner, I've formally cast my vote to cut it. I do agree that Magnum Opus needs work as well, but that's another subject for another thread.

edited 6th Jan '16 4:19:32 PM by mlsmithca

The only way I could see keeping this is if it's only allowed to be applied after a creator's body of work is complete — that is, they retire or die. Otherwise, cut for being worthless.

I'd say "limit to in-universe examples only", but I don't see any listed at present, so may as well cut.

I'm fine with keeping it as long as it is limited to one example per X (series, season, creator). If it need stricter criteria, I'm fine with it, but I'm not seeing anything that would say this trope is being abused or contested (any misuse is easily fixed).

As for Magnum Opus, I question if it applies to a person, company, series and/or genre. If there is a strict criteria for that, we should apply the same criteria here.

Am I the only one who is against everything suggested here?! The criteria already set for this trope has done an admirable job of keeping things from getting out of control like the troublesome tropes before it.