Fallen Creator cleanup

I've been thinking Keith Olbermann might merit an entry. He was initially very popular during the Bush Administration as the main progressive voice on MSNBC, but he became more openly biased and unprofessional until being dismissed, and never achieved mainstream success again, lasting only a year at Current TV, with a mutual lawsuit revealing he was abusive toward his staff, throwing a glass at one of them and on two occasions asking for people on set to be murdered when they screwed up. His current podcast seems relatively obscure with a fairly small audience and he's been called out for him making more and more radical statements, such as claiming Covid deaths under Trump constituted mass murder and calling for Trump to be put to death for it. I've seen many people (even on the left) disowning him and saying he's become too extreme and narcissistic, so I think he may count.

Edited by Javertshark13 on Feb 13th 2024 at 7:22:34 AM

I think Butch counts. It's been long enough to say he's probably not making any kind of triumphant return.

• When George Lucas started out his career, American Graffiti earned him critical success and several Oscar nominations for making such a groundbreaking film. Then, of course came Star Wars, which revitalized the science fiction genre and turned into a landmark film and franchise that, to this day, remains very near and dear to the hearts of many, as well as Oscar nominations for him personally and the movie. Despite a few missteps in the '80s, he made his mark again with Indiana Jones, another series of critical and fan darlings that still endure. However, much of his success during this period was the result of him getting a number of friends (including future critically-acclaimed filmmakers Francis Ford Coppola, Brian De Palma, and Steven Spielberg) to read them and offer advice concerning which ideas worked and which didn't. It's also been said that in the original Star Wars trilogy, especially A New Hope, bad lines were ad-libbed over by the actors (Harrison Ford is on record saying to Lucas while filming A New Hope that he "could type this shit... but you sure as hell can't say it"). As time went on, his works were rarely vetted by anyone other than himself, and seemed to borrow more from his own previously rejected ideas. The results of having nobody to cover up his weaknesses were predictable. Starting in The '90s, his prestige as a fandom idol began to take swift hits due to multiple different Star Wars recuts with some controversial changes, the mixed-reception to the Star Wars prequels that swiftly divided a once relatively united fanbase, and his long-delayed return to Indiana Jones receiving a lukewarm response at best (it was actually widely acclaimed by critics, though the fan base is much more divided). Today, Lucas is just as likely to be reviled as he is to be praised. He still has no trouble finding an audience to see his movies, but a sign of his decline is the usually negative reaction a Star Wars spin-off receives whenever his involvement is revealed and the likelihood that a review is going to start calling out the usual flaws in his work.

While he got A LOT of backlash back in the day, I am honestly not sure if George Lucas qualifies anymore because of his work on the Clone Wars, a gradual positive reevaluation of the prequels with many noting that it did right in multiple areas, all of which was spurred in part with the Sequel trilogy. And oh, this entry is extremely out of date.

If we keep this entry, it should be rewritten to be more in line with what we did with disco with Condemned by History, kept purely for historical context regarding the backlash against Lucas in the late 90s and 2000s because it was at the very least quite big and noteworthy, with the note that it is no longer an example anymore due to various factors.

Edited by xie323 on Mar 5th 2024 at 7:22:54 AM

Speaking of which I am wondering if The Fairly OddParents: Fairly Odder could be added to the Hartmann entry, given that it was built up but failed to be his triumphant return.

Edited by randomtroper89 on Mar 22nd 2024 at 11:45:51 AM

Bumping the thread to ask if this sentence can be added to the end of the Butch Hartman entry

In February 2021, Hartman returned to Nickelodeon as a producer for The Fairly OddParents: Fairly Odder which lasted for a single season before it was removed from streaming services on January 31st, 2023.

RE: Keith Olbermann, I'm not sure if political commentators like him qualify, but if they do I'd say he counts. The biggest sign for me is that even the liberal progressive audience he always catered to doesn't want anything to do with him anymore.

I'm going to say no. Creators of fiction are the most important to the site, and reviewers of fiction could count; the only non-fiction authors we should count are historians, since history is used as a source for fiction.

Political commentary doesn't seem likely.

Edited by Tomodachi on Apr 10th 2024 at 6:13:54 AM

xie223: At the height of prequel hate in the late 2000s-early 2010s (coinciding with Mr. Plinkett Reviews and the documentary The People Vs. George Lucas), he would have counted, but nowadays Lucas is far more of a Broken Base. I agree, this should probably be more like a Condemned by History-type entry, with some of the complaining removed too.

Edited by CanuckMcDuck1 on Apr 11th 2024 at 8:29:43 AM

I'd argue that he wouldn't count even back then. The Prequels always had plenty of defenders.

Edited by SharkToast on Apr 12th 2024 at 1:43:27 AM

I remember it as Lucas being incredibly disliked during that era. Not trying to exaggerate, but I don't remember seeing anyone defending the prequels back then.

How do we get clarity?

Fallen Creator seems like an odd duck to me. Either the trope should be re-written to be more nuanced, or then a lot of creators in it should go.

A lot of examples are:

1) Creators who have been disgraced by controversy, basically. This is Overshadowed by Controversy, Role-Ending Misdemeanor, etc.

2) Creators who suffer from "I don't care for any of their new stuff". This is very common, actually. Some creators are blessed to produce acclaimed works their whole lives. But many creators have 10-15 years of hits, and then the magic ends, for one reason or another.

I guess the gist of my disagreement with how Fallen Creator is written and discussed pertaining to type 2 creators, is that the text of Fallen Creator implies these guys are despised or hated.

Most times, they're not. They may have been hated in the years right after their "fall", but this rarely lasts. When enough time passes, it's more and more likely that people will only remember the glory years.

There is a ton of New Hollywood directors listed. Their films still get listed in the top movies of all time lists, and serious cinema fans know these guys made history. Is Nicolas Roeg really a "fallen creator" or a director of several classics from The '70s that failed to have a consistent career afterwards?

Chris Claremont on TV Tropes is listed as both a Fallen Creator and a Worshipped Creator! What happens is that his old stuff is still beloved, warts and all, it's voted into the top positions in the Top 100 comic book runs of all time in the Comic Book Resources website every single time. It's just that only a small niche of fans are enthusiastic about any of his post-1991 stuff.

It's less that they are despised, it's more like Audience-Alienating Era. They got 10-15 years of glory, and everything after is Audience-Alienating Era.

Edited by renenarciso2 on Apr 19th 2024 at 2:31:10 AM