History Main / EightDeadlyWords

** He expresses a similar sentiment towards ''Legends of Chamberlain Heights'' for many of the same reasons, albeit to a greater extent; to the degree that he found the series ''worse'' than the above-mentioned ''Mr. Pickles'' on the grounds that every character was an unsympathetic and unlikable imbecile.

* ''Literature/WarandPeace'' can invoke this for some people, mostly due to SocietyMarchesOn. The main characters are universally vapid and obsessed with things that the modern audience could not care less about. Although their titles do actually grant power, this is not immediately obvious because their relationship with their underlings is not established until midway through the book (this is of course something that would have needed no explanation for the original readers). Modern readers can sometimes be left wondering why the author thinks they care what happens to these bratty rich kids. Tolstoy's original intention, of course, was to make these HateSink characters, so they have no redeeming qualities whatsoever. This problem is compounded by the fact that teachers tend to overstate the book's literary merits due to its historical significance (which student readers may not appreciate until much later in their schooling, thanks to poorly designed curricula). Due to the compactness of Russian versus English, and the flowery nature of 19th century prose, the translations inevitably come out thick and hard to follow. Older translations can feature enough instances of HaveaGayOldTime that it becomes downright impenetrable.

* ''Literature/WarandPeace'' can invoke this for some people, mostly due to [[Trope/SocietyMarchesOn]]. The main characters are universally vapid and obsessed with things that the modern audience could care less about. Although their titles do actually grant power, this is not immediately obvious because their relationship with their underlings is not established until midway through the book (this is of course something that would have needed no explanation for the original readers). Modern readers, can sometimes be left wondering why the author thinks they care what happens to these bratty rich kids. Tolstoy's original intention of course was to make these [[Trope/HateSink]] characters, so they have no redeeming qualities whatsoever. This problem is compounded by the fact that teachers tend to overstate the book's literary merits, due to it's historical significance (which student readers may not appreciate until much later in their schooling, thanks to poorly designed curricula). Due to the compactness of Russian versus English, and the flowery nature of 19th century prose, the translations inevitably come out thick and hard to follow. Older translations can feature enough instances of [[Trope/HaveaGayOldTime]] that it becomes downright impenetrable.

Many {{Horror}}/monster/{{Disaster Movie}}s try to avoid this by DevelopingDoomedCharacters, only to make the audience care ''less'' about the characters because they aren't getting [[JustHereForGodzilla the slaughter they came there to see]].

->''"You need characters that you care about, and you need emotional investment. And then the action and special effects and the slime and the aliens and the coolness is the icing on the cake. But you need 'a cake' to put icing on it. [[{{Metaphorgotten}} You can't just eat the frosting, or else, uh, it's too sugary and it's bad for you, and you get the diabetes]]."''

* The DVD Verdict critic who reviewed the ''WesternAnimation/MarsNeedsMoms'' Blu-Ray gave this as a reason why he felt the movie was classified as movies with a classification of "Bad", saying it's "Emotionally Uninvolving". The description was "Despite all the high-stakes life-or-death situations described here, the story never feels substantial enough to really make us care if anyone lives or dies. The movie certainly plays with rougher-than-usual emotional territory (the death of one little boy's mother may be upsetting for some kids) but none of it manages to stick." It didn't help that none of the characters were likable when they weren't threatening to cross the dreaded UncannyValley.

->''"You need characters that you care about, and you need emotional investment. And then the action and special effects and the slime and the aliens and the coolness is the icing on the cake. But you need 'a cake' to put icing on it. You can't just eat the frosting, or else, uh, it's too sugary and it's bad for you, and you get the diabetes."''

* ''Theatre/TheMusicalOfMusicalsTheMusical'' registers this complaint about the works of Creator/StephenSondheim ("Unlikable people with lives that are hollow / It's all food for thought, but a bit hard to swallow...")

* The original version of ''{{Disney/Zootopia}}'' was a much darker story, where Zootopia was a hellish, racist dystopia that put shock collars on predators because they were "dangerous", even if that predator was a ''child''. Even beyond the collars it was still heavily discriminatory against them. The movie's director Byron Howard said that, in a positive example of ExecutiveMeddling, a Disney executive said that no one would ''want'' the city to survive the movie's conflict because it's an awful place. Thankfully the change turned out to be a positive one, and Zootopia was a critically acclaimed hit.

* ''WebOriginal/AtopTheFourthWall'': Linkara cites this as one of the reasons he dislikes the works created or inspired by Creator/RobLiefeld. None of the grizzled [[NinetiesAntiHero nineties antiheroes]] are anything more than props that fire massive guns and spew one-liners. He doesn't know who hardly any of the characters are, what they like or dislike, what their hobbies are, or whether or not they like pina coladas. And they only seem capable of displaying one emotion: pissed off. They're all so interchangeable that Linkara makes a running joke of referring to individual early Image comics as any of the other, similar early Image comics by "mistake".

* The original version of ''Disney/Zootopia'' was a much darker story, where Zootopia was a hellish, racist dystopia that put shock collars on predators because they were "dangerous", even if that predator was a ''child''. Even beyond the collars it was still heavily discriminatory against them. The movie's director Byron Howard said that, in a positive example of ExecutiveMeddling, a Disney executive said that no one would ''want'' the city to survive the movie's conflict because it's an awful place. Thankfully the change turned out to be a positive one, and Zootopia was a critically acclaimed hit.

* The DVD Verdict critic who reviewed the MarsNeedsMoms Blu-Ray gave this as a reason why he felt the movie was classified as movies with a classification of "Bad", saying it's "Emotionally Uninvolving". The description was "Despite all the high-stakes life-or-death situations described here, the story never feels substantial enough to really make us care if anyone lives or dies. The movie certainly plays with rougher-than-usual emotional territory (the death of one little boy's mother may be upsetting for some kids) but none of it manages to stick." It didn't help that none of the characters were likable when they weren't threatening to cross the dreaded UncannyValley.

* Ross Scott had this problem in his AprilFoolsDay [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4LaR1C6Xds review]] video of ''VideoGame/Wolfenstein2009'' in ''WebVideo/RosssGameDungeon'', saying that that nobody is really ''reacting'' to or treating any sense of urgency to the horrors around them, which fails to invest him in the characters, which in turn fails to invest him in the game itself. It was bad enough that he couldn't bring himself to finish the game, a first for the series.

The DVD Verdict critic who reviewed the MarsNeedsMoms Blu-Ray gave this as a reason why he felt the movie was classified as movies with a classification of "Bad", saying it's "Emotionally Uninvolving". The description was "Despite all the high-stakes life-or-death situations described here, the story never feels substantial enough to really make us care if anyone lives or dies. The movie certainly plays with rougher-than-usual emotional territory (the death of one little boy's mother may be upsetting for some kids) but none of it manages to stick." It didn't help that none of the characters were likable when they weren't threatening to cross the dreaded UncannyValley.

---> Yes, a lot of epics have big talks and complicated storylines, but the story of King Arthur works because we see our flaws and strengths in the character. Star Wars works because we like these people and want to see them get through alive. Thus, we’re with them when they’re thrown in these complex and dangerous worlds. Here, you don’t care about anybody, so you don’t care about the backstories or the made-up worlds. It attempts instead to sound big instead of feel big. It tries too hard in lesser areas and not hard enough in the ones that really matter. If there is one thing that’s epic in this film, it’s what an epic disaster it gave us in the end. It really is the Valhalla of botched epic stories.

[[folder:Comic Books]]

* ''Blog/JohnKStuff'': Creator/JohnKricfalusi reviews Creator/BobClampett's b&w cartoons with animator Milt Gray, [[http://johnkstuff.blogspot.com/2008/06/milt-grey-on-clampetts-black-and-white.html focusing on Porky Pig]]. He claimed the titular character to ''WesternAnimation/PorkyPig'' was basically a [[FlatCharacter boring prop character]] in the hands of Creator/TexAvery and Creator/FrankTashlin, and that Bob best understood how to make the character truly likable and sympathetic.

A phrase coined by Dorothy Jones Heydt in a science-fiction based Website/{{Usenet}} group in 1991 to describe an AudienceReaction to a work of fiction where the characters are either so universally bland and unengaging or so unlikable and unsympathetic that the reader simply loses interest in their fate and, by extension, the work as a whole. This can happen with or without the presence of [[BadWritingIndex more objective shortcomings]], but the most interesting examples tend to be those where this is a critic's main complaint, single-handedly dragging an otherwise well-made story down to where it's unenjoyable.

Many {{Horror}}/monster/{{Disaster Movie}}s try to avoid this by DevelopingDoomedCharacters, only to make the audience hate the characters ''more'' for getting in the way of [[JustHereForGodzilla the slaughter they came there to see]].

* [[http://www.hitfix.com/monkeys-as-critics/sons-of-anarchy-season-six-finale-recap-a-mothers-work At least one critic]] hit this with the season six finale of ''Series/SonsOfAnarchy'', due to it being a standout example of IdiotPlot.

* ''WebVideo/CinemaSins''' 130th sin about ''Film/{{Lucy}}''.
-->''"This movie should be f*cking OVER. Lucy wins and becomes air. I don't f*cking care what happens, except that what's actually happening is ludicrous.''

** George Romero's ''Film/DayOfTheDead1985'' received [[http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19850830/REVIEWS/508300302/1023 one and a half stars]] in part because much of the movie consists of "unpleasant, violent, insane" or ridiculously noble characters shouting at each other. And while he doesn't utter the eight words out right, he does say that in Romero's [[Film/NightOfTheLivingDead1968 previous]] [[Film/DawnOfTheDead1978 movies]] "we cared about the characters."

[[folder:Web Comics]]
* Max-Vader, veteran of the the Project A.F.T.E.R. forum and sometimes co-host of ''Podcast/TheOtherSide'' has this as one of his main reasons why he hates ''Webcomic/SugarBits'' by Creator/{{Bleedman}}.
-->''"I could forgive a bad story or clichéd writing if only the characters were likable and interesting. You see, in order to give a shit about the story, we need someone we can relate to — a protagonist with human character traits. A good example would be [[Franchise/StarWars Luke Skywalker]]. In the beginning we get to know him, learn about his hopes and dreams, and start to care about him. I can't stress this enough: Be sloppy with your writing when it comes to your protagonist, and you can kiss the slightest hope for quality storytelling goodbye. Bleedman doesn't give a shit. [[{{Wangst}} Emotional baggage]], [[DarkAndTroubledPast "tragic" pasts]] or JerkAss behavior do not make a likable, deep or interesting character."''
[[/folder]]

** Other times though, they'll say the eight deadly words almost verbatim. Such as in ''[[Recap/MysteryScienceTheater3000S11E02CryWilderness Cry Wilderness]]''
--> '''Jonah:''' Now there's a cougar, and I have stopped caring what happens to Paul, completely.