Audience-Alienating Premise cleanup

I referenced America: The Motion Picture’s critical reception because Netflix is rarely forthcoming with view count statistics. I find the premise eyebrow raising at best, and the critical and audience reception gives me more reason to think it’s valid, though it can always be removed if proven a big success in viewcount later. I’ll offer the following rewrite:

• Audience-Alienating Premise: An Alternate History irreverent comedy version of the American Revolution and founding that plays loose with history was a questionable recipe for wide-appeal. Patriotic Americans found it disrespectful, critics of America were alienated with its shamelessly silly ahistorical approach, and Non-Americans weren’t likely to be keen on yet another overtly American film.

Edited by DDRMASTERM on Jul 23rd 2021 at 8:10:29 AM

That looks much better.

Bringing up this example from Hercules (2014):

• Audience-Alienating Premise: This a movie about Hercules, where his exploits are hit with Demythification, resulting in a Hercules movie that has none of the events that made the character famous. Of course, none of the events that made him famous were in the original comic book, either (but since the movie omits the comic's subtitle Thracian Wars and makes no mention of it being based on a comic, the audience is left clueless).

According to Wikipedia it was a box-office success, making $244 million on a $100 million budget. Evidently most people were not alienated by the premise, so cut.

Agreed, it’s difficult to argue with those numbers.

Bringing up the following example from Gossip Girl (2021):

• Audience-Alienating Premise: For some, the idea that adults are running the Gossip Girl account to mess with their students was too off-putting of a premise to get behind.

Bringing up the following example from Ben-Hur (2016):

• Audience-Alienating Premise: The 1959 movie version is such a highly-regarded classic that audiences were generally unenthusiastic towards the 2016 remake.

The Ben-Hur (1959) example sounds more like Tough Act to Follow.

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For some examples from earlier in the thread, I think Metroid: Other M better fits under Uncertain Audience and The Shawshank Redemption is just a plain mainstream-unfriendly premise which isn't quite bad enough to be audience-alienating.

Bringing up the following example from For Love of Magic:

• Audience-Alienating Premise: Harry in this story grows into a religion hating sociopath. A completely admitted in-story description that can put many readers off the story.

Bringing up the following example from Dragonslayer:

• Audience-Alienating Premise: This is a very dark film with blood, murder, scary dragons, arguments over religion, partial nudity, as well as the blatant misogyny of women being sacrificed to dragons (showing viewers the messy results). It's also a "PG-rated film by Disney". Audiences looking for the former will be alienated by the latter, and vice versa.

Looking at Dragonslayer, the film was a Box Office Bomb.

I’m not sure about how this entry for Assassination Classroom.

On one hand the series did end up succeeding financially. On the other the series had a difficult time coming to the west due to it’s premise. Even if it stays it needs a rewrite (Gushing and the last part not being audience alienating as discrimination is a common conflict in the west).

Edited by TheLivingDrawing on Aug 25th 2021 at 10:54:18 AM

Why waste time when you can see the last sunset last?

Is it safe to remove Diabolik Lovers and Rance?

Both series are major cash cow franchises for their respective developers, with the latter being an acclaimed Long Runner. It does say the anime version of Dialovers tanked, but the original visual novels and drama C Ds are some of Rejet's most sucessful properties. The anime also managed to receive a dub, something Sentai only did for sub-only series that sold well enough to warrant it at the time, so the anime may have sold better in the west.

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Your case sounds compelling enough.

x5 I clarified the Dragonslayer example. In short, the premise was too dark for families and too tame for adults (and was a Box Office Bomb as a result), so it should stay.

(Edit) Those two examples can be removed. Long-Runners often are not audience-alienating by definition (except maybe for specific works or franchise killers, or if they are written for a very specific, tiny niche).

Edited by Coolnut on Aug 28th 2021 at 3:30:51 PM

Also bringing this up:

• The Gor novels. Not only do they present men enslaving women as a good and proper thing to do, but they also go on to advocate that slaves be treated "with great harshness and cruelty" and to show those harshly treated women as finding Happiness in Slavery.

While something that's not my (or the general public's) cup of tea to say the least, it appeared to be quite popular for its time (to the point it was a long-runner from the 1960s to the 1980s and spawned two movies) and the premise spawned a subculture that has a bit of a cult following even today. Should we keep, or no?

Edited by Coolnut on Aug 28th 2021 at 4:30:38 AM

I say remove it.

This is already on YMMV.The Prince 2021

• Audience-Alienating Premise: The idea of a show that depicts a real child as a crass, shallow, adult-voiced Stewie Griffin clone really didn't sit well with some people.

The Weasel Words don't help here.

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I personally wouldn’t call the premise tasteful, but I’m not sure if that’s an accurate summary of the premise. The premise of a royal family sitcom parody is potentially controversial particularly with that focus, but there probably is enough appeal potential to dismiss that example.

From YMMV.Super Duper Sumos.

• Audience-Alienating Premise: Literally any discussion about this show will boil down to how this managed to get made or who its target audience was.

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That sounds more like Uncertain Audience, but the show isn't well liked either, so it could be both. However, it's a ZCE either way. How about:

• Audience-Alienating Premise: A show about sumo wrestlers fighting with their giant butts proved to be a bit too strange, even for a demographic that typically enjoys Toilet Humor. As such, the show only received one season.

I do some cleanup and then I enjoy shows you probably think are cringe.

Bringing up the following example from Man of the Year:

• Audience-Alienating Premise: An Inversion. The film was marketed as a straight comedy and the premise itself seems to suggest it as such, but the movie itself is actually a much darker political drama that happens to have some comedy in it because the plot revolves around a comedian. The main heroine Eleanor is a lonely woman with mild mental health issues who by the end is near-fatally injured in an attempted murder orchestrated by her psychopathic bosses to cover up the computer glitch, events the Tom Dobbs character is unaware of and detached from; he instead spends most of the film worried and depressed that he is going to be elected President because he knows he isn't qualified yet feels pressured by everyone around him to make a go of it. The premise is already improbable to the point of ridiculousness, but the film spends less time on jokes and more on trying to make actual semi-serious points about the American political system and ultimately it isn't clear at all who this film is supposed to be aimed at.

Yeah, you can’t play with an audience reaction. It sounds more like Uncertain Audience to me but I’m not entirely sure.

Keep an eye out for The Activist. Not yet released but is receiving a ton of backlash for its premise already.