Schnikeys
Since: Oct, 2014
#152: Feb 5th 2021 at 8:07:47 PM
Another troper already edited it a smidge to be this, have at it:
- Cult: The Mandalorians of the enclave are so devoted to the old ways of Mandalore that they won't remove their helmets for any reason while in public and consider someone else attempting to remove it a grave insult. Not even Death Watch was that bad. In contrast to Death Watch, however, their traditions are focused on the preservation of their culture, as opposed to battle for the sake of it. Chapter 11 reveals that some other Mandalorians do not actually follow such extreme ideals as refusing to remove their helmets in public. Bo-Katan calls them the Children of the Watch, suggesting they were actually started by the remnants of Death Watch. Alternatively, Mando's sect and Death Watch stem from a common ancestor splinter-faction of Mandalorians.
- Downplayed in that the customs of Mando's Tribe are completely practical in light of the very recent Great Purge. Due to Chapter 8, we know that the Empire (and subsequently the Imperial remnants) has access to the personal information of every Mandalorian registered on Mandalore at the time of the genocide — definitely including their names, since that's how Moff Gideon knew Mando's, and probably including their faces as well. Just about every other episode features someone either groping Mando's armor or outright trying to steal it off of his body: if you take off your armor, it'll probably be the last thing you do. Chapter 8 shows that a group of Mandalorians appearing in public together is enough to bring an Imperial pogrom down on the covert: of course they only appear one at a time. Tossing your name and/or face around is probably enough by itself to paint a big stormtrooper-shaped target on your back — you wouldn't be able to go back to a highly-confidential location where your persecuted minority is hiding your children after that kind of security breach. Add all of that to the fact that in Chapter 4, Mando is very clear about the fact that wearing the armor is a completely voluntary choice and that no one in his community is going to come after him for leaving their group, even though he's their primary provider... suddenly, the covert looks even more like refugees in a surveillance state than a cult.
VampireBuddha
Calendar enthusiast
from Ireland
(Wise, aged troper)
Relationship Status: Complex: I'm real, they are imaginary
Calendar enthusiast
#153: Feb 6th 2021 at 4:18:10 AM
I happened across NetworkDecay.Unique Situations. The examples below the folder are a bit wordier than usual but not terrible. As for what's in the folder, well...
Part 1
- If a channel can be given the title of "the MTV of the Internet Generation", that dubious honor would very likely belong to Cartoon Network, originally used as a showcase for animation owned by Ted Turner, including the classic Hanna-Barbera and Warner Brothers cartoons in addition to a few others. As time went on, the channel began to expand to include original productions, existing shows from other channels such as Fox Kids and Kids' WB!, and imports such as anime which helped fuel the anime boom at the turn of the century (thanks to Toonami and [adult swim]). The original intent of the network was generally summed up in its two slogans: "The best place for cartoons" and "a place where everybody gets their toons". In this period, year after year, the network aired cartoons, animations, and movies from at least eight different decades and multiple countries. By late 2000 Cartoon Network was considered the "crown jewel" of Turner Broadcastingnote and its' primetime line up, which featured both original productions and the most popular archive programs, often competed for top total viewers in cable. Not just one demographic, total viewers.
Complaints about Cartoon Network decaying came in two major waves that disagree with one another. One argues the seeds were planted in 2001 and bloomed in full in 2004. The second argues the first complaints were in 2004 and it really bloomed around 2007. Both of these periods mark important changes to how the network operated. To say there hasn't been considerable amounts of Fandom Rivalry between these two view points is an understatement — this is an argument where some refuse to admit the other opinion actually deserves to exist and some sites would have you believe the other side doesn't exist. This page will try its best to explain both and why they obviously will never see eye to eye.
To set the stage for our first view point, we must go back to explain how Cartoon Network was ran. From its inception, Betty Cohen ran Cartoon Network under Turner (Cohen had previously worked at MTV). In 1996. the Time Warner merger had Turner and Warner Bros become sister companies. At the time, Hanna-Barbera was Turner's animation studio, and Warner Bros. (Television) Animation was, well, Exactly What It Says on the Tin. Upon the merger, it was then decided Time Warner didn't need more than one animation studio and wanted to merge them into one another. As explained in more detail on the Hanna Barbera page, that didn't go as planned (mostly thanks to Time Warner's crippling case of Right Hand Vs Left Hand, which dogged the company almost from its' inception, and AT&T's buyout is still in the process of fixing). In 2001, multiple events took place that drastically altered Cartoon Network's direction for better or worse.
When it seemed Bill Hanna's death was imminent, Time Warner decided to abandon the multiple year effort to merge the two animation studios, instead taking a third option. Warner Bros. Animation was an animation studio with the WB, HB and MGM libraries under the Warner Bros. silo, and Cartoon Network Studios was an animation studio with the CN originals under the Turner silo. As a result of this separation, these two entities have had freedom from each other and, at times, allowed to have very different interests while being under the same corporate roof. Right before this, Time Warner officially became AOL Time Warner, and it was decided they wanted to merge The WB Television Network into Turner Broadcasting, and to speed up the process, appointed the WB's head honcho, Jamie Kellner to run Turner Broadcasting.note Now, Betty Cohen had to answer to Kellner, and the two had wildly different ideas on how to run a TV channel. Cohen was the proponent of the network's animation library aspect and she hated concepts that limited the audience to a channel. note This perspective was what allowed Cartoon Network to air so much diverse material and to be able to try more risky stunts. Cohen believed that they could try to find space on the network to get as many different viewers as they could. Kellner, however, saw a network more in the "business-by-the-books" approach. His main objective was to find a show that was a hit in a specific age range, and then use the good ratings to charge more of the advertisers at higher rates. Kellner viewed the Periphery Demographic as completely worthless. note In addition to this, Cohen and Kellner clashed on several other issues, among them the Kids WB version of Toonami which forced the CN version to shrink by an hour, the branding of the upcoming [adult swim] being exclusionary and, most infamously, the June Bugs incident: CN at one point had an annual tradition of airing Bugs Bunny cartoons in a 48 hour marathon, but for 2001, the plan was to air every single Bugs Bunny cartoon in chronological order. Simple, right? But when the media caught wind of the fact that the marathon included some of the more controversial shortsnote , Warner asked them to reconsider. Kellner decided to pass the buck entirely to Cohen, saying he would leave it up to her but expressed he wouldn't air them, ensuring that any criticism would be deflected to Cohen. Only a few weeks after this dust up, Cohen announced she would be leaving the network.
When Cohen left, Jim Samples took her position, and he had a philosophy similar to Jamie Kellner; the turmoil didn't end here, though, as Mike Lazzo was still head scheduler of the entire channel; he had been with the channel many years and was a proponent of Cohen's philosophy. This produced a tug-of-war effect on the schedule in this period as to what aired and what didn't. The first perspective argues this is where the decay was first crystallized. It argues the appeal of the network was its commitment to being an animation channel that tried to please a wide audience. During this tug-of-war period, much of the older material would be moved to graveyard time slots, or removed from the main channel (and in the case of Time Warner-owned programming, moved to spinoff Boomerang). Several of their top older programming (with Looney Tunes, Tom and Jerry, The Flintstones, and Scooby-Doo having the most consistent time slots) remained on the channel during this period, although less of their filmographies were in regular rotation. Toonzone back then had some inside connections that learned these spots that continued to be dropped were internally called "programming holes" and these were always filled with Cartoon Cartoons reruns. During this period (2001-2003), multiple other changes were made to how Cartoon Network had done business. Cartoon Network was no longer allowed to have an independent licensing division which had been an important part to their relations with third party shows. Cohen's requirement major employees had to have a decent knowledge of animation history was thrown out. There had actually been a test. Lastly many advertisers who used to buy on CN had become disillusioned with the network's new direction.note . 2003, though, marked two other important changes behind the scenes. Namely, Time Warner abandoned the idea of merging The WB into Turner and Kellner was shown the door. His replacement Phil Kent (and subsequent Heads of Turner) was far less hands on with the individual networks and as such doesn't really play into the history as much going forward. Mike Lazzo was Kicked Upstairs to only having control over the Adult Swim block (the quote above sums up how he took it). So from 2004 onward, Jim Samples controlled the direction of the network.
While all the above is true, the other point of view, however, argues all of these were necessary changes to the network and that the "animation library" aspect of the channel was never what was what made the channel important as instead that honor belonged to the original content. The decision to run with more original programming created what they see as the network's Golden Age as well as becoming a major contributor to the The Renaissance Age of Animation by becoming more than a rerun channel. They also cite it generated and continued the popular shows that pushed against the Animation Age Ghetto (like The Powerpuff Girls and Dexter's Laboratory) that deserved to supplant more of the timeslots that used to belong to older material and non-original material when they became "old hat". This side also points out that, in Samples' defense, when Cohen ran the network she had been under the impression the studios were still going to be unified. By the time Samples came in, he had one in-house studio and a sibling studio they didn't get along with, making it rather clear why he'd give one more preference than the other in certain decisions. This side also argued the channel didn't abandon it's purpose with this new philosophy and that the channel needed the change to grow. This was also the stance of the channel's press department.note To the network's credit it did survive this change and was able to stay a successful network without the original philosophy. However it is fair to point out that from then on the network only chased after hits in specific demographics according to Kellner and Samples' caring more for that. It was here that the channel's ability to gather strong total household numbers and compete to be top of cable stopped. All in all, the luster and respect from the cable world that lead to them being called a "crown jewel" dissipated and to this day has never returned to the network. note
For the second point of view, the real first shot to change the network was in 2004 when Cartoon Network changed its logo to the abbreviated "CN" and ended the Powerhouse era, a move that coincided with many of the original Cartoon Cartoons ending their runs, being replaced by shows like Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends and Camp Lazlo (the former being created by The Powerpuff Girls creator Craig McCracken and the latter being created by Nickelodeon's Joe Murray), which were well-received but couldn't match the impact of their predecessors. Nearly all the archive programming, with the exception of Tom and Jerry and some Scooby-Doo installments, no longer reran in prominence. Looney Tunes and the Boomerang block shared the 6am hour on weekends which were the only times they aired. Most of the Cartoon Cartoons that were no longer in production during this period were relegated to two installment series named The Cartoon Cartoon Show and Cartoon Cartoon Top 5 and the ones that aired separately mainly aired in early morning graveyard slots. The first group, however, saw this as a "what goes around, comes around" scenario. where now these shows that used to be the hot new things were now the old hats being replaced by the next generation of hot new shows as it echoed what happened to the earlier shows when the Cartoon Cartoons came in. However, a few months after CN City was introduced, the Boomerang slot as well as Looney Tunes note vanished without a trace which led to those shows solely airing on the Boomerang network. Another change that came in this period was in late 2005, when they began running a small amount of live-action movies without any animated elements. note Many of the fans of the second view believe these marked the crystallization of their decay where the network showed signs of betraying its roots. But one major event made it go through the roof.
Then, in early 2007, already a turbulent year for television due to tensions between studios and the WGA, a major executive change at the network occurred when then-current president Jim Samples resigned over the controversy of the Boston Bomb Scare
, with most of the network's execs becoming collateral damage (including Jay Bastian and Khaki Jones, the former being transferred to WB Animation). His new replacement was Stuart Snyder. Shortly thereafter, then-Vice President Jennifer Davidson passed away due to a sudden illness. Davidson had been a long time employee in the marketing division and had been given a major promotion to be a more hands on executive only a mere three months before her sudden death. This resulted in Robert Sorchernote being brought in to serve in the role Davidson was intended to be in.
Some fans hoped that Snyder would restore CN to what they considered to be the channel's peak years, but it soon became clear the changes would be going differently. Snyder kept some of the Kellner/Samples philosophies, as CN not only continued to phase out their older original series, including Ed, Edd n Eddy and The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy, but Snyder also wanted to run the network more like its competition; he was far more willing to try radical alterations, and then yank the rug out from under them if they underperformed. This new direction wound up causing considerable internal tension by imposing tie-in campaignsnote and constantly shuffling timeslots, the result being the defection of many creators, their shows being replaced with a large amount of imported animated shows (mostly from Canada), while original productions declined considerably note , possibly in response to rumored labor issues (apart from the imminent writers' strike, some people claiming to have worked for CN at the time have mentioned issues with either domestic or Asian animation teams). Before long, the network fell deeper and deeper into Network Hell as its executives tried to turn it into a generic boy-targeted network to compete with Nickelodeon and the Disney Channel (both of which had began to exclusively focus more on their Cash Cow Franchises as well as programming for "tween" girls). This included emphasizing action-oriented cartoons, especially Ben 10, which alienated those who preferred humor-oriented series, with only two original comedy cartoon shows running between late 2008 and early 2010 (Chowder and The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack). Toonami was scrapped to the horror of anime fans (as was its replacement, Miguzi), being replaced with more frequent showings of live-action films. The decay also forced [adult swim] and Boomerang to decay as well, to heavy disdain by their fanbases. This attempt to rebrand the network came to a head when CN Real, a block of live-action reality shows and scripted series, was created in 2009 (there is some dispute as to the direction of causality, with some claiming that the turn toward live action was prompted by losses of animators). To the surprise of nobody except the network higher-ups, CN Real tanked harder than anything the network had ever done before while the fledgling Disney XD channel became more successful with the pre-teen boys demographic the network had been after.note
The channel slowly began realizing a change was needed, they made an effort to return to their roots with reruns of Tom and Jerry, Looney Tunes and the like as part of their regular weekday morning lineup, and launching new animated series aimed at older audiences like Star Wars: The Clone Wars, Adventure Time, and Regular Show. Meanwhile the channel attempted to reboot older properties through shows like Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated and The Looney Tunes Show. CN also gradually phased out its live-action shows (which no longer carried the CN Real brand for obvious reasons, getting little to no advertising in stark contrast to the marketing CN Real initially got), to the point that all that remained of it was Hall of Game, an annual Kids Choice Awards-esque sports awards event which never got much attention and was effectively cancelled after the 2014 event (nevertheless, the channel still airs live-action movies like Diary of a Wimpy Kid on Saturday evenings and Sunday afternoons). The much-appreciated revivals of both Toonami and Cartoon Planet (the latter done as part of the network's 20th anniversary celebration) brought fans new hopes of Cartoon Network returning to its former glory.
On the other hand, Executive Meddling was still very prevalent, as evidenced by the network's constant timeslot-shifting shenanigans and swift cancellations, this time regarding action shows such as Sym-Bionic Titan and ThunderCats (2011) as well as DC Nation's Green Lantern: The Animated Series and Young Justice. Some of this can be blamed on the network keeping to the Kellner philosophy. The network greenlit most of these aiming at certain demographics, but ended up becoming more popular among other groups (for example, the DC Nation block was conceived and timed to attract pre- and young teens, but attracted a young adult audience that was severely hampered by the time slot and didn't extend much beyond the vocal internet following that praised it). The ever-present internal issues between Warner Bros. and Turner allowed many of the DC, Hanna Barbera and Looney Tunes fans to feel their new productions were often getting the shaft in scheduling whenever they fell out of favor with the network. Few of which have been able to say they stayed in a consistent airing pattern for their entire run.
Times however changed again after the departure of Stuart Snyder as CEO in March 2014, and Christina Miller became his replacement that September. Miller's era however became categorized by the network trying to find a show that was a major hit and spam it to points that would even make Scooby-Doo faint. (Some of this is a remnant Kellner's theory and in the process one of the only ways CN could keep up with its production pace in a declining cable sphere. The bigger the hit the more money they can charge for ads. Replay the show over as much of the schedule and thus increase the money you make). The main architect behind this was scheduler Vishnu Atreya, who'd come from CN's Asian outpost and had employed the same tactics in Asia with the Ben 10 franchise. One of his favorite shows for this cause was one exception from Warner Bros., aka Teen Titans Go!.
When Teen Titans Go! —an extremely divisive show that is also a ratings success— started to get more and more airtime on the networknote , older flagship shows such as Adventure Time and Regular Show stopped airing reruns completely, and it was announced that Steven Universe would have reduced reruns to make room for Teen Titans Go!, though in the latter case, the decision was rolled back after considerable backlash (Steven Universe now has reruns in special blocks themed around a certain character or concept). Many blamed Christina Miller and often accuse her of being a Moral Guardian who finds Adventure Time, Regular Show, and Steven Universe too violent and raunchy for kids, with a few as-of-yet unfounded conspiracy theories stating Miller was using Teen Titans Go! as a weapon to artificially manipulate ratings and justify cancelling anything with too many demographically inappropriate humour, gratuitous violence, or shows acquired from elswhere (namely Teletoon series and anime considered too kiddie for Toonami). With Uncle Grandpa unceremoniously cancelled, having its entire production crew laid off, and left to be burned off in a graveyard slot, Transformers: Robots in Disguise (2015) left to languish in another graveyard slot with no reruns, Regular Show and Adventure Time both wrapping up production for their shows and having aired their final seasons (the former ending on its seventh season in 2017, and the latter concluding on its tenth season in 2018), Pokémon, which aired on the network for a decade-and-a-half, channel hopping over to Disney XD with much success, Teen Titans Go! being renewed for a fourth and fifth season and getting a theatrical movie despite flagging ratings, and the base-breaking reboots of The Powerpuff Girls and Ben 10 that tried to copy the Teen Titans Go! formula of having bright colors, loud noises, sadist humor, and sad attempts to be hip and now (case-in-point: a particularly infamous scene in the Powerpuff Girls reboot where Blossom and Bubbles TWERK), it was uncertain whether the channel would continue as it was, with the network pushing people to watch episodes of their shows on the website or via apps (which has attracted criticism for not everyone has access to mobile devices or fast-enough internet connections for this to work). The Christmas 2017 week where TTG was the only thing to air besides two "new" episodes of Steven Universe (episodes that had been released on the app a month prior) also seemed to anger Cartoon Network purists, but that may have been the network's main option in a week where more kids are going to watch programs through the network's app away from home (see above), watching Christmas programming on Freeform or Hallmark (as late as 2013, Cartoon Network would still air the Christmas episodes of shows that had long left the schedule, including Johnny Bravo, The Powerpuff Girls, Ed, Edd n Eddy, and Courage the Cowardly Dog), or are doing other things besides zoning out to a loop of TTG reruns. Eventually, even the target audience of Teen Titans Go! got tired of watching the same show over and over again, and Cartoon Network found itself hemorrhaging viewers who jumped ship for Nickelodeon, Disney XD, and Hub Network/Discovery Family.
However, 2019 was a year of uncertainty — AT&T, having bought the entirety of TimeWarner (renaming it to WarnerMedia), has been busy reorganizing the company to increase synergy and decrease the constant feuding between divisions; for CN, however, this didn't translate into much at first other than CN being assigned directly under Warner Bros. CN spent most of 2019 burning off the large back catalog of shows CN had finished but not aired. As if the DC, HB, and LT fans didn't have enough to complain about, OK K.O.! Let's Be Heroes was canceled and out of production with its third season, when only half the second had even aired. Mighty Magiswords had been finished longer and only finished airing under this new period. The announcement of HBO Max, an all-encompassing streaming service featuring content from CN and its' various sister properties, also caused some doubt about if AT&T knows how to handle the channel, as some of CN's shows and projects that were in production before this are now HBO Max originals (such as Infinity Train) and HBO Max is strikingly similar to the philosophy that governed the Cohen era (meaning it will feature a diverse range of old and new content to attract a wide audience) causing speculation some of Kellner's philosophy may finally be exiting the channel. However, the new direction would be without Christina Miller and Mike Lazzo (the former leaving the network late in 2019 and the latter quietly retiring). As 2020 came about there was no official direction announced until AT&T began their major rearranging of the studios in August where it appeared they intended to merge many of the independent studios and streaming services into each other. Cartoon Network Studios was officially put under control of WB Animation's Sam Registernote , and Rob Sorcher departed for a creative job in the television division. The AT&T merger also caused other problems, such as pilots being rejected and fewer upcoming shows, with most of them being acquired or based on pre-existing properties. While the studios are still separate for now anyone who knows their history or read these pages knows that is exactly how the 1996 merger started. Regardless though the most symbolic move of the process being most of the executive power are new hires with no baggage in the WB vs Turner feud. The two people who have been given major promotions, Register and Ouweleen, are both veterans of the pre-Kellner CN. Outside of the presidents Sorcher was the biggest post-Kellner executive voice and now he is gone. The impression seems to be leaning that the culture that ruled the network since 2001 is being slowly rolled back. As of late 2020 it has become noticable both Adult Swim and Boomerang are showing more willigness to use their libraries and run more special events. Main Cartoon Network however doesn't seem to have been affected as much by comparison. It should be remembered as of now, Atreya is still in place as scheduler making him the only post-Kellner executive still with power for now.
In the end, Cartoon Network is one of the most intriguing examples of Network Decay, if only because of how much of a rollercoaster ride the network's ridden in regards to the trope and in how different generations interpret what the channel meant to them. For many, it is the channel where they first met a lot of the cartoon and anime characters that they love, and is an important part of their childhood memories. It remains a very sad story, as at the same time, the same channel that used to be in competition to be at the top of the cable networks in terms of total viewers, was being looked at with uncertainty and possibly apathy by AT&T. But that being said, the lights are still on and with a direction in mind might be able to glow once more. - Boomerang, Cartoon Network's classic animation channel, has a run in with this. Boomerang began as a block on Cartoon Network that would try to replicate a random year's saturday morning (with Retraux style and bumpers). Betty Cohen launched Boomerang as a separate channel with the intention of being an addition to the network. It was originally only programmed for eight hours, and those eight hours were then repeated three times each day. The idea was, when Cartoon Network couldn't air some older shows as often as they used to, those shows could be regularly shown on Boomerang, for those that preferred to watch them. It was still the intention to have the lineup on the channel and Cartoon Network's archive slots to rotate each month. However, after Cohen left, the main channel Boomerang became more of a retirement home for every show the main Cartoon Network had no interest in airing (with the Boomerang block itself eliminated in 2004).
As this continued, they added more contemporary fare from CN and Warner Bros. as well as acquired programming from then-recent years that they still had rights to. As time went on, more and more shows also began competing for the same limited airtime, even including reruns of shows still airing on the main channel in certain casesnote . Meanwhile, the remaining older programming Boomerang did use became subject to oddly selective programming choices, with some Hanna-Barbera shows and post-2000s WBA cartoons getting top priority over other cartoons in the network's available catalog. And we should note not everything that aired on the Cohen-era CN ever made it to Boomerang's channel and some of the shows that did haven't been shown in years.
Adding insult to injury was that only two types of commercials that were actually related to the network (the American one, anyway) were shown on the channel when CN's decay was in full effect: "Boomer-Royalty" and a random commercial about a show they air; all of the network's promotions were never updated, meaning a Powerpuff Girls promo from 2012 strangely had to coexist with a Huckleberry Hound ad which has been part of their promo loop since 2001. Everything else was promoting (mostly) live-action shows on Cartoon Network as well as action shows and kids' anime that the main channel has no interest in promoting, with Boomerang never promoting the airtime for shows that weren't on CN. Also not helping was the network's interest to only promote a handful of shows they actually air (mainly shows they've aired when the network launched, as well as a handful of additions to the lineup). And if there's a special event coming up on CN, commercials for the event would air between and after the show at least once or twice. The network has since changed their position to air advertisements for other products like other channels. Not helping was a lack of distribution outside of satellite providers, many cable systems, namely Xfinity, Spectrum, and Charter, still don't carry Boomerang (though in fairness, at least it survived, unlike CNN's spinoffs CNN/SI and CNNfn).
All feeds of the network worldwide got a international rebranding throughout 2014 and 2015 with a new focus towards younger viewers, the inclusion of paid advertisements, and the addition of newly-acquired animated series—all of which introduced a series of interesting changes. Their aformentioned commercial problem is long from gone which you can tell because a good portion of the clips on the Boomerang Theater promo are from movies that no longer air on the channel. Heck, they even aired a Be Cool, Scooby-Doo! ad (which is the same ad that was used since the program debuted on the channel) when the show wasn't even airing on the network. During the summer of 2015, through their "Pet of the Week" event, the block featured the return of Courage the Cowardly Dog and the network premiere of The Sylvester and Tweety Mysteries. Boomerang has also recently dabbled in new series dealing in classic characters and franchises, such as Wabbit: A Looney Tunes Production, Be Cool, Scooby-Doo! and Bunnicula (the former two were originally supposed to air on the main network, but were punted to Boomerang to make room for more Teen Titans Go! reruns), as well as airing new episodes of The Tom and Jerry Show and The Garfield Show. On a less popular side, the notorious Teen Titans Go! (as mentioned above), as well as The Amazing World of Gumball, also started airing on Boomerang, even leading to a stint of they shows running everyday by early 2016, though they didn't air as often as they did on the main Cartoon Network channel, with them only airing during the times the main channel was showing [adult swim] programming. Both shows were pulled from Boomerang's line-up in April 2017. The rebranding also resulted in the loss of the long-running vintage format of the original network (right down to the logo, which now looks like a tweaked version of the 2010 CN logo), as well as older cartoons that weren't Cash Cow Franchises (namely, Looney Tunes, Tom and Jerry, the latter of which includes Filmation's infamous 1980 series, The Smurfs, and Garfield and Friends, which hasn't aired on Boomerang in years, are the only holdovers of the old format) and/or popular with older CN viewers being dropped from the network, despite executives promising that classic cartoons would co-exist with the newer cartoons on the channel. While there were positives and negatives about the reboot at hand, things slowly started to look bright for the future.
However, this was shortly succeeded by the network launching a subscription VOD service under the Boomerang name. The major change was that this service was co-owned by the Turner and WB side marking for the first time since Kids WB ended Warner people had some say over how their shows and back catalog could air. The service was focused on classic cartoons, which has largely usurped the Boomerang channel's role on the remaining retro-based programming it had left. Aside from making available for viewing a large vault of Warner Bros. owned classic animation, the streaming service also gained exclusive dibs on broadcasting new content relating to the new classic-based series Boomerang was supposed to air.note This has left the channel as a rerun/dumping ground feed for a handful of former CN/WB shows and acquired shows that CN doesn't really hold in high regard, with Looney Tunes and Tom and Jerry shorts used to fill in roughly half of the schedule. (CN's lack of interest in the Boomerang network becomes pretty evident when one considers that out of all the television channels targeted towards kids/families available in US households, the Boomerang channel comes dead last in coverage by a large margin.)
Surprisingly for all, though, in January 2018, some found a new life in Boomerang, as Dexter's Laboratory, Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends, The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy, and Codename: Kids Next Door, which were dropped by Boomerang in April 2017, returned to the network's schedule, albeit only late at night at first. Then, Chowder returned to the network in March of that year, which was also when the network began airing an hour-long block where the five aforementioned classic Cartoon Network shows were aired during the day, with the block rotating which of those shows would air each week. This block was dropped the following month, but Boomerang reached the highest peak of its rebrand in the summer of 2018. In late May, Ed, Edd n Eddy and Johnny Bravo returned to Boomerang's line-up, making it the first time that they've aired on Boomerang since a few weeks prior to the rebrand note . Additionally, during May and June, Adventure Time, Regular Show, and Steven Universe began airing on Boomerang, to the excitement of viewers of those shows who felt like they were screwed over by the main Cartoon Network channel. Even better, the four Cartoon Network originals who returned to the schedule in January 2018 received daytime timeslots again (airing on weekends for an hour each). Unfortunately, the Eds and Johnny Bravo were taken off of the network only two weeks after originally returning, but the good news was that their replacement show was The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack, airing on Boomerang for the very first time note , along with the returning The New Scooby-Doo Movies, Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated, and the original Ben 10 series (making its first rebrand appearance), replacing the 2016 reboot. However, even that change didn't last very long, as Flapjack and the Scooby-Doo shows, as well as Steven, left the network in late July. Thankfully, though, those changes led to some Hanna-Barbera cartoons returning to the schedule, such as The Flintstones, The Jetsons, The Smurfs, A Pup Named Scooby-Doo, and Tom & Jerry Kids. At this point, though, it shouldn't be a surprise as to what happened to those shows (except for The Smurfs, which, surprisingly enough, still airs on Boomerang to this very day). The pint-sized Hanna-Barbera gang's two shows left the schedule in late September, followed by the prehistoric and futuristic families in mid-November. Then, the duos of Finn and Jake and Mordecai and Rigby left the network in February and April 2019, respectively note , with the Tennyson family following suit in March. The other five classic Cartoon Network shows still air on Boomerang, but only late at night again. Then, in late May 2019, the channel fell even further, with the classic Cartoon Network shows flat out disappearing from the channel. note The network's schedule now mirroring Cartoon Network's in terms of oversaturation as now all that airs is Looney Tunes (including New Looney Tunes and Baby Looney Tunes) and Tom and Jerry (including The Tom and Jerry Comedy Show (as a part of their daily Tom and Jerry blocks), The Tom And Jerry Show and Tom and Jerry Tales). The only shows that don't fall into this trap are Garfield and Friends, Care Bears: Unlock the Magic, Dorothy and the Wizard of Oz, DC Super Hero Girls, Bunnicula, and The Smurfs (each only getting around an hour or half hour of airtime a day with DC Super Hero Girls and Care Bears get a half hour of airtime on weekends only at 8AM and 7AM respectively). Not even Scooby-Doo has the presence he used to have on the channel, aside from airings of the movies, as the only Scooby-Doo series to air on the channel is Be Cool, Scooby-Doo! (which is the sole non-LT/T&J show to air more than an hour a day). To make matters worse, the network now mostly just airs a selected few episodes from those shows repeating them on an endless loop, and their daily movie block now only airs a handful of Scooby-Doo films (Such as The Mystery Begins or Stage Fright) and Tom and Jerry films (the DTV ones such as The Magic Ring or Meet Sherlock Holmes). It seemed that Cartoon Network was trying to bore the few remaining viewers of the channel so they can use the network's streaming service instead.
While this strategy may have worked at first, the launch of HBO Max (which featured many of the programs from Boomerang's pre-decay years) essentially rendered having Boomerang as a streaming service pointless, so as a last-ditch effort to save the network, the classic Cartoon Network shows returned to Boomerang's schedule on September 7, 2020, with Dexter's Laboratory, The Powerpuff Girls (1998), Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends, and Ed, Edd n Eddy airing for a half-hour each…from MIDNIGHT to 2 AM. Additionally, Clarence, another cancelled modern-day Cartoon Network Original, began airing re-runs on Boomerang for the very first time, and Uncle Grandpa (which was last seen on Boomerang on April 4, 2018) returned to the channel's schedule. All four of the retro Cartoon Network shows were taken off the line-up on October 1 and replaced with The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy, Courage the Cowardly Dog, Chowder, and The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack, but Dexter and classic Powerpuff Girls eventually returned once again on November 4, ironically taking the place of Chowder and Flapjack, the very two shows that replaced them on the October schedule. In addition, the formerly streaming exclusive Scooby-Doo and Guess Who? would make it's television premiere on the network that same month. However, this all pales in comparison to what Boomerang did on Thanksgiving weekend 2020: that entire weekend's schedule consisted of nothing but the classic Hanna-Barbera cartoons from the pre-decay days, with some Looney Tunes, Tom and Jerry, and Popeye and thrown in as well. This was the first time practically all of these shows (such as Yogi Bear, Magilla Gorilla, Jonny Quest, and more) have aired since before the rebrand, with some getting their first airings since 2012! Not only that, but all of the shows aired in good timeslots throughout the day with Tom and Jerry and Looney Tunes, ironically, getting kicked to the watershed slots for most of the weekend. They would continue with the classic cartoons from the pre-decay days in December, airing many Christmas Hanna-Barbera specials that have not aired on the network in years. Within months, Boomerang went from being a practically dead horse to actually starting to roll back the modern content that has plagued the network since 2014 in favor of more classic cartoons and old or less-popular CN originals. Will this strategy work and help keep the Boomerang brand alive in America? Well, it's anyone's guess. One confounding factor is that Warner Bros. has licensed broadcast rights to The Flintstones and their theatrical shorts to MeTV, who intend to run the cartoons weekly in anthologies reminiscent of the classic cartoon blocks of the past.
In comparison to Cartoon Network in the post AT&T buyout, Boomerang was slow to burn off it's remaining shows. For the WB Animation people the next generation of legacy properties will be the first to be ordered without any input of the old Turner management, as such leaves everything prior to this looking like lame ducks. In 2020 though people noticed that they began burning off the last seasons of The Tom and Jerry Show and Dorothy and the Wizard of Oz on the channel itself rather than the streaming service. Yabba Dabba Dinosaurs was cancelled before it even got a chance to air, while JellyStone and Looney Tunes Cartoons were sent off to HBO Max. While it is unlikely they will reboot Looney Tunes over this change given the reception they were given only from this new incarnation, but the chances the HB-RS-MGM legacy properties are in line for new no Turner management incarnations seems rather likely with Jellystone probably serving as the bridge between this change. Whether AT&T plans to use the Boomerang channel or service for this or if these all will be for HBO Max or Cartoon Network will just have to be waited on. - Asia’s Cartoon Network and Boomerang in the late 2000’s really had a problem in regards to where their programming was supposed to be placed, going to the point where all new shows premiere on Boomerang Asia while Cartoon Network Asia restricted itself to airing mostly old classic Hanna-Barbera cartoons and Ben 10, with an occasional mix-up every now and then. Eventually Boomerang Asia was canned and eventually replaced with an Asian equivalent of Toonami and focused its mission on action shows while Asia’s regular CN shifted towards animated comedy, though the shenanigans of Ben 10 and old HB cartoons still remain, even with Boomerang relaunching and running alongside Toonami and the main Cartoon Network channel as of 2015. At this point, Boomerang aired mostly third party programming alongside the occasional old cartoons, Toonami focusing on action shows and anime, and the main network airs animated comedy, old HB/DFE/WB cartoons, and Ben 10.
This is basically the entire history of American Cartoon Network, and runs to 7,465 words. WordCounter.net estimates it's written at a college graduate level, and would take just shy of half an hour to read. The Wikipedia article is 11,473 words long; thus, the first part of the folder is 65% as long as the Wikipedia article on the entire brand.
But we're not done!
Part 2
- Boomerang, Cartoon Network's classic animation channel, has a run in with this. Boomerang began as a block on Cartoon Network that would try to replicate a random year's saturday morning (with Retraux style and bumpers). Betty Cohen launched Boomerang as a separate channel with the intention of being an addition to the network. It was originally only programmed for eight hours, and those eight hours were then repeated three times each day. The idea was, when Cartoon Network couldn't air some older shows as often as they used to, those shows could be regularly shown on Boomerang, for those that preferred to watch them. It was still the intention to have the lineup on the channel and Cartoon Network's archive slots to rotate each month. However, after Cohen left, the main channel Boomerang became more of a retirement home for every show the main Cartoon Network had no interest in airing (with the Boomerang block itself eliminated in 2004).
As this continued, they added more contemporary fare from CN and Warner Bros. as well as acquired programming from then-recent years that they still had rights to. As time went on, more and more shows also began competing for the same limited airtime, even including reruns of shows still airing on the main channel in certain casesnote . Meanwhile, the remaining older programming Boomerang did use became subject to oddly selective programming choices, with some Hanna-Barbera shows and post-2000s WBA cartoons getting top priority over other cartoons in the network's available catalog. And we should note not everything that aired on the Cohen-era CN ever made it to Boomerang's channel and some of the shows that did haven't been shown in years.
Adding insult to injury was that only two types of commercials that were actually related to the network (the American one, anyway) were shown on the channel when CN's decay was in full effect: "Boomer-Royalty" and a random commercial about a show they air; all of the network's promotions were never updated, meaning a Powerpuff Girls promo from 2012 strangely had to coexist with a Huckleberry Hound ad which has been part of their promo loop since 2001. Everything else was promoting (mostly) live-action shows on Cartoon Network as well as action shows and kids' anime that the main channel has no interest in promoting, with Boomerang never promoting the airtime for shows that weren't on CN. Also not helping was the network's interest to only promote a handful of shows they actually air (mainly shows they've aired when the network launched, as well as a handful of additions to the lineup). And if there's a special event coming up on CN, commercials for the event would air between and after the show at least once or twice. The network has since changed their position to air advertisements for other products like other channels. Not helping was a lack of distribution outside of satellite providers, many cable systems, namely Xfinity, Spectrum, and Charter, still don't carry Boomerang (though in fairness, at least it survived, unlike CNN's spinoffs CNN/SI and CNNfn).
All feeds of the network worldwide got a international rebranding throughout 2014 and 2015 with a new focus towards younger viewers, the inclusion of paid advertisements, and the addition of newly-acquired animated series—all of which introduced a series of interesting changes. Their aformentioned commercial problem is long from gone which you can tell because a good portion of the clips on the Boomerang Theater promo are from movies that no longer air on the channel. Heck, they even aired a Be Cool, Scooby-Doo! ad (which is the same ad that was used since the program debuted on the channel) when the show wasn't even airing on the network. During the summer of 2015, through their "Pet of the Week" event, the block featured the return of Courage the Cowardly Dog and the network premiere of The Sylvester and Tweety Mysteries. Boomerang has also recently dabbled in new series dealing in classic characters and franchises, such as Wabbit: A Looney Tunes Production, Be Cool, Scooby-Doo! and Bunnicula (the former two were originally supposed to air on the main network, but were punted to Boomerang to make room for more Teen Titans Go! reruns), as well as airing new episodes of The Tom and Jerry Show and The Garfield Show. On a less popular side, the notorious Teen Titans Go! (as mentioned above), as well as The Amazing World of Gumball, also started airing on Boomerang, even leading to a stint of they shows running everyday by early 2016, though they didn't air as often as they did on the main Cartoon Network channel, with them only airing during the times the main channel was showing [adult swim] programming. Both shows were pulled from Boomerang's line-up in April 2017. The rebranding also resulted in the loss of the long-running vintage format of the original network (right down to the logo, which now looks like a tweaked version of the 2010 CN logo), as well as older cartoons that weren't Cash Cow Franchises (namely, Looney Tunes, Tom and Jerry, the latter of which includes Filmation's infamous 1980 series, The Smurfs, and Garfield and Friends, which hasn't aired on Boomerang in years, are the only holdovers of the old format) and/or popular with older CN viewers being dropped from the network, despite executives promising that classic cartoons would co-exist with the newer cartoons on the channel. While there were positives and negatives about the reboot at hand, things slowly started to look bright for the future.
However, this was shortly succeeded by the network launching a subscription VOD service under the Boomerang name. The major change was that this service was co-owned by the Turner and WB side marking for the first time since Kids WB ended Warner people had some say over how their shows and back catalog could air. The service was focused on classic cartoons, which has largely usurped the Boomerang channel's role on the remaining retro-based programming it had left. Aside from making available for viewing a large vault of Warner Bros. owned classic animation, the streaming service also gained exclusive dibs on broadcasting new content relating to the new classic-based series Boomerang was supposed to air.note This has left the channel as a rerun/dumping ground feed for a handful of former CN/WB shows and acquired shows that CN doesn't really hold in high regard, with Looney Tunes and Tom and Jerry shorts used to fill in roughly half of the schedule. (CN's lack of interest in the Boomerang network becomes pretty evident when one considers that out of all the television channels targeted towards kids/families available in US households, the Boomerang channel comes dead last in coverage by a large margin.)
Surprisingly for all, though, in January 2018, some found a new life in Boomerang, as Dexter's Laboratory, Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends, The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy, and Codename: Kids Next Door, which were dropped by Boomerang in April 2017, returned to the network's schedule, albeit only late at night at first. Then, Chowder returned to the network in March of that year, which was also when the network began airing an hour-long block where the five aforementioned classic Cartoon Network shows were aired during the day, with the block rotating which of those shows would air each week. This block was dropped the following month, but Boomerang reached the highest peak of its rebrand in the summer of 2018. In late May, Ed, Edd n Eddy and Johnny Bravo returned to Boomerang's line-up, making it the first time that they've aired on Boomerang since a few weeks prior to the rebrand note . Additionally, during May and June, Adventure Time, Regular Show, and Steven Universe began airing on Boomerang, to the excitement of viewers of those shows who felt like they were screwed over by the main Cartoon Network channel. Even better, the four Cartoon Network originals who returned to the schedule in January 2018 received daytime timeslots again (airing on weekends for an hour each). Unfortunately, the Eds and Johnny Bravo were taken off of the network only two weeks after originally returning, but the good news was that their replacement show was The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack, airing on Boomerang for the very first time note , along with the returning The New Scooby-Doo Movies, Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated, and the original Ben 10 series (making its first rebrand appearance), replacing the 2016 reboot. However, even that change didn't last very long, as Flapjack and the Scooby-Doo shows, as well as Steven, left the network in late July. Thankfully, though, those changes led to some Hanna-Barbera cartoons returning to the schedule, such as The Flintstones, The Jetsons, The Smurfs, A Pup Named Scooby-Doo, and Tom & Jerry Kids. At this point, though, it shouldn't be a surprise as to what happened to those shows (except for The Smurfs, which, surprisingly enough, still airs on Boomerang to this very day). The pint-sized Hanna-Barbera gang's two shows left the schedule in late September, followed by the prehistoric and futuristic families in mid-November. Then, the duos of Finn and Jake and Mordecai and Rigby left the network in February and April 2019, respectively note , with the Tennyson family following suit in March. The other five classic Cartoon Network shows still air on Boomerang, but only late at night again. Then, in late May 2019, the channel fell even further, with the classic Cartoon Network shows flat out disappearing from the channel. note The network's schedule now mirroring Cartoon Network's in terms of oversaturation as now all that airs is Looney Tunes (including New Looney Tunes and Baby Looney Tunes) and Tom and Jerry (including The Tom and Jerry Comedy Show (as a part of their daily Tom and Jerry blocks), The Tom And Jerry Show and Tom and Jerry Tales). The only shows that don't fall into this trap are Garfield and Friends, Care Bears: Unlock the Magic, Dorothy and the Wizard of Oz, DC Super Hero Girls, Bunnicula, and The Smurfs (each only getting around an hour or half hour of airtime a day with DC Super Hero Girls and Care Bears get a half hour of airtime on weekends only at 8AM and 7AM respectively). Not even Scooby-Doo has the presence he used to have on the channel, aside from airings of the movies, as the only Scooby-Doo series to air on the channel is Be Cool, Scooby-Doo! (which is the sole non-LT/T&J show to air more than an hour a day). To make matters worse, the network now mostly just airs a selected few episodes from those shows repeating them on an endless loop, and their daily movie block now only airs a handful of Scooby-Doo films (Such as The Mystery Begins or Stage Fright) and Tom and Jerry films (the DTV ones such as The Magic Ring or Meet Sherlock Holmes). It seemed that Cartoon Network was trying to bore the few remaining viewers of the channel so they can use the network's streaming service instead.
While this strategy may have worked at first, the launch of HBO Max (which featured many of the programs from Boomerang's pre-decay years) essentially rendered having Boomerang as a streaming service pointless, so as a last-ditch effort to save the network, the classic Cartoon Network shows returned to Boomerang's schedule on September 7, 2020, with Dexter's Laboratory, The Powerpuff Girls (1998), Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends, and Ed, Edd n Eddy airing for a half-hour each…from MIDNIGHT to 2 AM. Additionally, Clarence, another cancelled modern-day Cartoon Network Original, began airing re-runs on Boomerang for the very first time, and Uncle Grandpa (which was last seen on Boomerang on April 4, 2018) returned to the channel's schedule. All four of the retro Cartoon Network shows were taken off the line-up on October 1 and replaced with The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy, Courage the Cowardly Dog, Chowder, and The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack, but Dexter and classic Powerpuff Girls eventually returned once again on November 4, ironically taking the place of Chowder and Flapjack, the very two shows that replaced them on the October schedule. In addition, the formerly streaming exclusive Scooby-Doo and Guess Who? would make it's television premiere on the network that same month. However, this all pales in comparison to what Boomerang did on Thanksgiving weekend 2020: that entire weekend's schedule consisted of nothing but the classic Hanna-Barbera cartoons from the pre-decay days, with some Looney Tunes, Tom and Jerry, and Popeye and thrown in as well. This was the first time practically all of these shows (such as Yogi Bear, Magilla Gorilla, Jonny Quest, and more) have aired since before the rebrand, with some getting their first airings since 2012! Not only that, but all of the shows aired in good timeslots throughout the day with Tom and Jerry and Looney Tunes, ironically, getting kicked to the watershed slots for most of the weekend. They would continue with the classic cartoons from the pre-decay days in December, airing many Christmas Hanna-Barbera specials that have not aired on the network in years. Within months, Boomerang went from being a practically dead horse to actually starting to roll back the modern content that has plagued the network since 2014 in favor of more classic cartoons and old or less-popular CN originals. Will this strategy work and help keep the Boomerang brand alive in America? Well, it's anyone's guess. One confounding factor is that Warner Bros. has licensed broadcast rights to The Flintstones and their theatrical shorts to MeTV, who intend to run the cartoons weekly in anthologies reminiscent of the classic cartoon blocks of the past.
In comparison to Cartoon Network in the post AT&T buyout, Boomerang was slow to burn off it's remaining shows. For the WB Animation people the next generation of legacy properties will be the first to be ordered without any input of the old Turner management, as such leaves everything prior to this looking like lame ducks. In 2020 though people noticed that they began burning off the last seasons of The Tom and Jerry Show and Dorothy and the Wizard of Oz on the channel itself rather than the streaming service. Yabba Dabba Dinosaurs was cancelled before it even got a chance to air, while JellyStone and Looney Tunes Cartoons were sent off to HBO Max. While it is unlikely they will reboot Looney Tunes over this change given the reception they were given only from this new incarnation, but the chances the HB-RS-MGM legacy properties are in line for new no Turner management incarnations seems rather likely with Jellystone probably serving as the bridge between this change. Whether AT&T plans to use the Boomerang channel or service for this or if these all will be for HBO Max or Cartoon Network will just have to be waited on.
This goes into the whole history of Boomerang. clocking in at 2,530 words. The Wikipedia article is 6,167 words, meaning that TVTropes takes 41% the length of Wikipedia's general article to describe how Boomerang fell down.
Part 3
- Asia’s Cartoon Network and Boomerang in the late 2000’s really had a problem in regards to where their programming was supposed to be placed, going to the point where all new shows premiere on Boomerang Asia while Cartoon Network Asia restricted itself to airing mostly old classic Hanna-Barbera cartoons and Ben 10, with an occasional mix-up every now and then. Eventually Boomerang Asia was canned and eventually replaced with an Asian equivalent of Toonami and focused its mission on action shows while Asia’s regular CN shifted towards animated comedy, though the shenanigans of Ben 10 and old HB cartoons still remain, even with Boomerang relaunching and running alongside Toonami and the main Cartoon Network channel as of 2015. At this point, Boomerang aired mostly third party programming alongside the occasional old cartoons, Toonami focusing on action shows and anime, and the main network airs animated comedy, old HB/DFE/WB cartoons, and Ben 10.
Not too bad, but rambly and not entirely coherent. This clocks in at 154 words.
It's OK, Mr. Frodo. We're almost there.
Part 4
- Although Cartoon Network eventually started returned to its roots in the USA (although depending on whom you ask, it could be teetering the line between the two more recently), it's hardly like this in Latin America, and is flip-flopping between this and Slipped. During their earlier years, the channel was simply a Spanish-language near-simulcast of its parent channel in the U.S. (it was launched a mere six months after it), but by the end of The '90s they started to branch out on their programming choices, with the Latin American premieres of Pokémon, Cardcaptor Sakura, Rurouni Kenshin, and others before they added Toonami in 2002, airing shows also seen in the U.S. block like Dragon Ball Z, Inuyasha and Mobile Suit Gundam Wing.
It's quite debatable when exactly the channel dipped into Network Decay. For fans of classic animation it was right when the channel added anime, for otaku it was right when anime started disappearing, and for others it was when Ben 10 got literally all the channel's attention.
It should be noted that the Latin American subsidiary has four different signal feeds: one for Mexico, one for Argentina, one for Brazil, and one for the rest of Latin America. Around late 2003, in Mexico, all of Toonami's anime moved into a midnight timeslot due to complaints from parents that the series aired were too violent for their children. Not only that, the Mexican sponsors had a good regulation and patrol of this block, so rumors say that they were the ones who mandated to change the block's timeslot. In late 2004, the rest of the Latin American signals followed suit. Toonami itself was cancelled in March 2007, although its former timeslot still aired anime (in part due to their promise to air every single episode of Dragon Ball, from the original to GT, including the movies and special episodes), which depending on the feed, lasted until December 2008.
In 2005, it was obvious that they were rapidly losing anime licenses, especially since Animax had just premiered. Around late 2005, CNLA announced that they were going to add [adult swim] into their weekend's late programming to fill the "dead" hours of Saturday and Sunday. However, it also started some debates in internet sites and forums when people started it to compare with the American version (that was still showing anime). Of course, the guys behind the Latin American AS went into their way to mock this and people didn't like it. However, this ended badly when the block was censored by some cable operators, and even separated from its own channel, in countries like Argentina and Chile. This was mainly because parents were letting kids stay up so late to see AS when the programming was obviously not directed at them. Eventually the block was moved to sister channel Isat in early 2008, and disappeared completely from there in January 2011, returning to that channel from 2015 until May 2020, when sister network Warner Channel picked it up.
When Ben 10 premiered in 2006, it was extremely well-received so they went out of their way to focus on it. This had a few unfortunate side-effects, as the Grand Finales of Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends and Codename: Kids Next Door, as well as the 10th anniversary special of The Powerpuff Girls were glossed over. Even worse, the remains of Toonami were pushed even further into overnight slots, with shows like One Piece and Ashita no Nadja that were clearly not meant for a 3 AM timeslot airing at said time. Eventually, Pokémon and Naruto were the last remaining anime on the channel.
By 2008, the channel was inheriting the American network's Network Decay in the States, and though it had CN's original series and late-night showings of classic Looney Tunes, Ben 10 was still Adored by the Network, at almost 10 showings a day. Then they started showing live-action movies - to be fair though, the movies were where most of the live action was. Live-action shows like Kamen Rider Dragon Knight and Unnatural History were the first to premiere in the Latin American channel, as former CN Real shows like Destroy Build Destroy and Dude, What Would Happen? would not be added until FOUR years after premiering in America, and they vanished swiftly after premiering. In the same year, the channel adopted a new slogan that perfectly summed up their programming choices for the majority of CN viewers: Hacemos lo que queremos (literally "We do what we want to").
At the time the channel passed into their own Noods era in 2010 (Toonix) and a little bit before the Check It one (the LA signals were the LAST ones to get into it), the programming schedules were at least somewhat stabilized with Adventure Time and Regular Show... and then the channel started to be beaten up in ratings by Disney Channel and Nickelodeon. A controversial decision was also to add, in late 2010, reruns of the Mexican classic series El Chapulín Colorado and El Chavo del ocho, which many CN fans did not like due to the fact both series have reran constantly for decades in other channels (they did not last much in CNLA, however, and were later moved to Boomerang and then to the LA version of TBS). CNLA then tried to beat Nick and Disney at their own game with new live action like Level Up and the original Latin American co-production with Televisa entitled La CQ, basically a mix-up of every U.S. sitcom aimed at teens that takes place in middle/high school (its name is the Spanish spelling of secu, abbreviation of secundaria, Spanish for middle school or high school depending on the region), and which got much criticism among the channel's older viewers up until it ended in 2014 and was removed from the channel in early 2015. CNLA also began censoring content on several of its programs, most notably on Regular Show, and for unknown reasons, it began to speed up or cut the opening and closing credits for most of their programs. Not only that, the commercial breaks started to become longer than usual, as the channel's series began airing for blocks of 15 minutes with some animated shorts playing between them.
By 2017, the channel has been really in a rollercoaster, and it still got criticism for the censoring done to several programs and for having most timeslots dominated by CN's current animated lineup (Adventure Time, Regular Show, The Amazing World of Gumball, Steven Universe, Uncle Grandpa, Teen Titans Go!, Clarence, We Bare Bears and The Powerpuff Girls (2016)) to the expense of everything else. Thankfully, unlike the U.S. channel, it had not been outright invaded by Teen Titans Go!, however, by 2019 that series now occupied a great part of the schedule along with Gumball, Unikitty and Steven Universe, with the remaining shows being either moved to dead timeslots or completely removed. Outside of Power Rangers Megaforce (which got transferred from Nickelodeon as they were not interested in any further series after airing Samurai) and some movies, however, the live-action content is thankfully now nonexistent. In regards to anime, besides Pokemon, which has never stopped airing (unlike in the U.S., where it switched over to Disney XD), the only series they have aired since the decay are Bakugan Battle Brawlers, Dragon Ball Z Kai,note , Digimon Xros Warsnote , Dragon Ball Super, and the 2018 Captain Tsubasa series. Compared to the U.S. channel, it seems that they aren't going to come out of their own Dork Age yet. As it was the case with Stuart Snyder and Christina Miller in the U.S., many people blame the current manager of CNLA, Pablo Zuccarino, for the decay (it doesn't help he has publicly said his objective is to make CNLA a channel completely appropriate for all children). In September 2020, CNLA allied with Crunchyroll to revive the Toonami block in Latin America with the joint broadcast of Dragon Ball Super and Mob Psycho 100, time will tell if the block can consolidate as its American counterpart.
Latin America also had Boomerang's situation worse during the late 2000s/early 2010s. In 2006, its original format was changed to an equivalent of India's Turner-owned channel POGO, first aimed at a family audience and mostly consisting of animated shows ranging from preschool to teen that had previously aired on CNLA or were exclusive to Boomerang, as well as Australian and British live-action series, family movies and the classic cartoons during overnights. In September 2007, the channel began airing reruns of the then-extremely popular Mexican teen soap opera Rebelde, which was followed months later by reruns of the similarly highly-popular Venezuelan production Somos tu y yo, and the success of those led the channel to change its profile to be now aimed at stereotypical teenage girls, quickly reducing non-teen content until it dissappeared completely in October 2008. Boomerang's new programming included CN Real shows, many MTV shows like Parental Control and Date My Mom, as well as series that had no place in what was originally a children's channel such as Gilmore Girls, The Secret Life of the American Teenager (you know, a series that deals with Teen Pregnancy), and The Carrie Diaries (a prequel to the very adult Sex and the City), though, strangely, advertising directed at kids continued as it did previous to the change. On December 2008, Turner LA created Tooncast, which fulfilled Boomerang's original purpose. By 2011, the channel was firmly in the Total Abandonment section, as by that time they had no animated shows at all, making the name an Artifact Title. Then, on April 1, 2014, Boomerang L.A. suddenly rearranged their programming grill to get animation and classic shows back (in a move seemingly induced to homogenize the international feeds) and moved all their live action shows to the late night-early morning slot, to the happiness of almost everybody but the teens who followed Pretty Little Liars. The live-action shows were finally dropped in 2015. Currently, it is little more than a rerun farm of shows that had previously aired on CNLA, much like the U.S. channel.
And this is the entire history of Mexican Cartoon Network, clocking in at 1,755 words.
Skimming over them because I can't bring myself to read all 9,172 words (half a novella!), this doesn't seem to describe Network Decay so much as a brand having some ups and downs over time.
Edited by VampireBuddha on Feb 6th 2021 at 12:19:08 PM
Ukrainian Red Cross
#154: Feb 6th 2021 at 5:48:47 AM
Found this on Puella Magi Madoka Magica. This is way too long.
- Hate Sink: The seemingly harmless Kyubey, actually the Incubators, is the Overarching Villain of the series behind every individual Big Bad. Seeking to save the universe from heat death, Kyubey creates the Magical Girl system, in which it manipulates human females into making contracts with it, granting them magical powers to fight creatures called witches, and any one wish they desire. What Kyubey doesn't say is that their wish is designed to backfire and ruin their lives in some way, and that their soul will darken until they themselves are turned into witches. Since humanity's beginnings, Kyubey has used this system to turn innocent girls into Child Soldiers who undergo psychological torture and eventually become mass-murdering monsters, in order to use humanity's despair as an energy source for the universe. In the main series, Kyubey makes a contract with Homura, a shy girl desperate to save Madoka, and grants her Time Travel powers, intending to use her tampering to transform Madoka into the most powerful witch of them all, and trying to bring their friends to despair to aid the process. In the timelines where it succeeds, it leaves humanity at her mercy while declaring that it no longer needs them. Within the last timeline, it manipulates Sayaka into becoming a witch, forcing Kyoko to Mercy Kill her. Whenever Kyubey is confronted about their atrocities, they always resort to victim-blaming to dodge responsibility. Even after being thwarted by Madoka, they refuse to give up. In Rebellion, Kyubey rejects Goddess Madoka's new, humane system, intending to restore the witch one because it is more efficient. Kyubey rebels against her through an experiment to turn the lonely Homura into an unborn witch, using her to lure Madoka into a trap, and succeeding in transforming her into a demon that proceeds to overthrow Madoka. Finally, when this begins to backfire and the demon turns on them, they attempt to escape again. Despite having a noble goal, Kyubey mainly cares for self-benefit. Utterly sociopathic and stoic to the point of deriding individuality and emotion as diseases to be purged, Kyubey is completely uncaring of how many people, species, and planets are destroyed in the pursuit of their mission, and stands out as the series' only truly hatable villain.
The point on Rebellion isn't necessary as that has its own seperate page, but even then it'll be too long.
Edited by ReynTime250 on Feb 6th 2021 at 1:49:24 PM
Very Spooky
#155: Feb 6th 2021 at 7:53:25 AM
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
That looks like somebody tried to imitate the writing style of a Complete Monster entry (and even if it were one, it'd still be far too bloated).
Anddrix
Since: Oct, 2014
#156: Feb 6th 2021 at 11:41:16 AM
Bringing up this example from Franchise Original Sin:
- Prehistoric Earth is largely agreed upon by readers (as well as by Nathanoraptor, one of the fic's own writers) to have entered a period of declining quality once original main writer Drew Luczynski introduced Creator's Pet Cynthia Night into the story and subsequently tried way too hard to force the readers to like her for the character's (and story's) own good. But as much as the readers and Nathanoraptor agree that Cynthia's introduction was the point where things started briefly going to Hell for the story, Luczynski had previously shown signs of the two biggest complaints against him and his handling of Cynthia (specifically, his willingness to lionize his personal favorite characters in the narrative at the unfair expense of others he comparatively didn't like as much and his seeming difficulty in handling female characters) long before this point. For on closer examination, Luczynski had previously shown signs of similar favoritism towards one character at the expense of other characters in his handling of the main protagonist named after him via having him express a trait similar to the writer's own Real Life personality that didn't match up with Nathanoraptor's planned personality and characterization for him, provide explicit assistance to a character for a problem that said character he helped logically should have been smart enough to take care of on her own, and take part in an activity that his planned personality should have made him a bad fit for despite the activity arguably making more sense to be done by one of two other characters already introduced in the story that would have been far better suited for it. And as far as Luczynski's questionable handling of female characters is concerned, he'd likewise first shown signs of this difficulty long before Cynthia's introduction by virtue of giving one especially important female character a personality trait in her earliest appearances in the story that didn't match up with Nathanoraptor's explicitly planned personality for her that she ended up having throughout the rest of the story, accidentally making another important female character seem pointless and of no importance in another earlier round of chapters, and causing a third one to drastically deviate from the personality that Nathanoraptor had explicitly told him she was supposed to have for the sake of his own desires. A lot of these mistakes seemed relatively excusable at the time due to them occurring fairly early on in the story, both Luczynski and Nathanoraptor still had a few growing pains to undergo in regard to handling large ensemble casts like the one planned for this story, and the female characters that Lucznsyki had messed up on all being characters that had been created by other authors for the sake of the story with he himself only approving for their inclusion rather than playing any direct part in their creation. However, it wasn't until after both his introduction of Cynthia (a female character created entirely by him) and his subsequent efforts at forcing her into a prominent role while also seemingly trying to prop up her and Drew's prominence at the expense of the vast majority of the other planned prominent characters in the ensemble that the readers and Nathanoraptor began to severely complain about his seemingly forcing aside and unfairly handling several genuinely interesting and likeable characters in favor of one character that was considered likable but not as interesting and another character that was considered unsympathetic and unlikable.
Nen_desharu
Nintendo Fanatic Extraordinaire
from Greater Smash Bros. Universe or Toronto
Since: Aug, 2020
Relationship Status: Who needs love when you have waffles?
Nintendo Fanatic Extraordinaire
#157: Feb 6th 2021 at 7:17:46 PM
There's even some grammatical errors such as "its' [sic] primetime lineup" in the last sentence of the first paragraph of Part 1.
The spelling of its' (with a hanging apostrophe) is never the correct spelling. It should be "its primetime lineup" (without the apostrophe).
When rewriting NetworkDecay.Unique Situations, it's always a good idea to do a spelling and grammar check as well.
Edited by Nen_desharu on Feb 6th 2021 at 10:21:23 AM
Kirby is awesome.
themayorofsimpleton
Now a lurker. Thanks for everything. | he/him
from Elsewhere
(Experienced, Not Yet Jaded)
Relationship Status: Abstaining
Now a lurker. Thanks for everything. | he/him
#158: Feb 6th 2021 at 8:31:22 PM
Good lord, its basically an essay! Absolutely chop it down, no entry should ever be that long.
dsneybuf
(Not-So-Newbie)
#159: Feb 6th 2021 at 8:57:01 PM
The He Really Can Act entry on YMMV.The Mandalorian looks like it dwarfs anything else on that page, even after hours of struggling to trim it:
- He Really Can Act: Though Pedro Pascal is a very capable actor, in early episode reviews, critics doubted that he could be a compelling protagonist without facial expressions. Mando's ability to display a variety of emotions with only body language and changes in tone became more evident as Season 1 progressed, but after Lucasfilm confirmed that Pascal didn't appear in every episode, some viewers decided to credit his body doubles with almost all of Mando's physicality. Before Season 2 premiered, Pascal announced that finishing King Lear and Wonder Woman 1984 allowed him to wear Mando's suit more often, an announcement later backed up by various pieces of behind-the-scenes material. Critics found Mando more expressive than ever, with his growing love for the Child allowing Pascal to both vocally and physically convey such qualities as compassion, pride, and separation anxiety; Pascal credited his years of acting on stage with helping him learn how to use his whole body and intonations to express himself. When Chapters 15 and 16 finally removed Mando's helmet for increments longer than a minute, Pascal convincingly depicted psychological effects someone like him would develop from hiding his face for decades, such as social anxiety.
themayorofsimpleton
Now a lurker. Thanks for everything. | he/him
from Elsewhere
(Experienced, Not Yet Jaded)
Relationship Status: Abstaining
Now a lurker. Thanks for everything. | he/him
#160: Feb 7th 2021 at 11:21:20 AM
Politics is a wall of text magnet. I brought up one entry from there before, but honestly the whole page needs a look. I also brought it up in the ROCEJ thread for being too contentious.
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Shadow8411
Since: Jul, 2019
#161: Feb 8th 2021 at 3:06:47 PM
The Simpsons episode The Itchy And Scratchy And Poochie Show has this:
- Truth in Television:
- The joke that the actor for the Road Runner would only be paid to say "Beep" once and then the clip would be doubled up in post isn't too far off from what happens in reality; The voice actor did record "Beep beep!", but afterwards the clip became a Stock Sound Effect that is reused for every Road Runner short to this day.
- Krusty the Clown wanting "Chinese cartoons for blingwads" at the time the episode aired is a sentiment that is not far off of his statement; TV stations were beginning to look into importing and airing anime series like Pokémon and Digimon, and even the Cartoon Network Toonami anime block was already getting in its first gear in 1997. This was due to how anime importation allowed for major payoffs with cheap licensing fees while merchandising profits offset the low production costs, while anime was miles ahead of western animation in providing entertainment that wasn't overtly restricted by censors and could provide more than just slapstick humor and morally simplistic superhero shows. Of course, even his racially ignorant sentiment nails it on the head that executives were only in for the money and admitted that they didn't "get" why their audience wanted their shows, The Simpsons's trademark of potshoting American shoddiness going well over their heads. It does help that The Simpsons's former network of FOX and their FOX Kids block did help introduce Power Rangers on national television, and by this time, was airing Digimon and importing anime.
- Updating old animated shows to be Totally Radical without respect to the source material did happen - and they did bomb, hard. Not only did it happen to Tom and Jerry, but also to The Pink Panther and Yogi Bear with Yo Yogi!, the lattermost being notorious for being a retooling of Yogi Bear with outdated late 1980s teenager stereotypes to be "hip and in" that were already out the backdoor in the world of youth trends, and by its release in 1991 no less, when the rise of interest in alternative media and bucking it to the mainstream as a result of the burnout of the excess of the over commercialized and over-glurged 1980s was already booming, a condition that also happened to spawn The Simpsons by this same time period. This caused NBC to shift away from Saturday Morning Cartoons to live action teenager fare with Saved by the Bell and other similar young adult aimed shows when Yo, Yogi! failed to capture the interest that they planned it to.
The first point about the Road Runner voice clip seems fine. The other two, however, seem a bit excessive.
Edit: I've trimmed down the third bullet point and removed the second one, since it's mostly natter.
Edited by Shadow8411 on Feb 11th 2021 at 3:14:16 AM
mightymewtron
Angry babby
from New New York
Since: Oct, 2012
Relationship Status: THIS CONCEPT OF 'WUV' CONFUSES AND INFURIATES US!
Angry babby
#162: Feb 8th 2021 at 3:35:59 PM
This entry on Distanced from Current Events seems a bit lengthy, and some of it might better fit Role-Ending Misdemeanor.
- A few things happened after Craig "Mini Ladd" Thompson, a former and frequent collaborator of Vanoss and his crew, admitted of sending inappropriate messages to underage fans in June 2020:
- He was supposed to release his first single on his music channel, but the project was shelved.
- Nobody wants to make video collaborations with Mini anymore, as he is now forced to make solo videos only.
- His subreddit was locked until further notice, and the same thing happened to his Discord server as well.
- About the live stream Meme Stream schedule? Well, so much for that.
- Remember in a video posted in 2017 that Mini Ladd had a stadium from his hometown, Derry, Northern Ireland, named after him? Well, the stadium retired his name a week after the allegations.
- Ty Widdas, Mini's editor, announced in September that he had quit working for him, as he was tired of getting constantly messaged about the situation. As a result, Mini Ladd edits his own videos now; however, as many people have pointed out, the editing has gotten progressively worse.
- He can no longer make any future deals and sponsorships. For example, when Mini uploaded a video sponsored by Kove Audio, a couple of days later, some people reached out Kove on Twitter, stating the stuff that the YouTuber confirmed earlier that year in June. Kove responded that they will no longer work with Mini Ladd, and therefore the video was removed.
- But perhaps, the hardest justified emotional blow that Mini had to endure; Mini Ladd partnered with the Thirst Project and raised over $150,000 for relief, and, in 2019, he became a member of the project's board of directors. But then, in June 2020, the allegations happened, and Mini was quietely removed from the position.
- He was supposed to release his first single on his music channel
Silverblade2
Since: Jan, 2013
#163: Feb 9th 2021 at 12:36:43 PM
From The Sacred Darkness
- Sadness in Inside Out; When 11-year-old Riley finds her world turned upside down by her family's move from Minnesota to San Francisco, Joy finds her position as the leader of Riley's five primary emotions challenged as Sadness finds herself compelled to touch the Core Memories, which would turn them permanently from yellow (joyful) to blue (sad). None of the emotions know Sadness' purpose, not even Sadness herself, and she is appropriately lacking in self-confidence but very considerate. Joy has tried from Riley's birth to keep Sadness away from the control panel in the misguided belief that Riley should always be happy, artly because Riley's Mom encourages her to stay happy for them during this stressful time. Joy takes this literally and it results in their accidental expulsion from Headquarters (with the Core Memories) to Long-Term Memory. In their efforts to return to Headquarters, Joy comes to a heel realization when it turns out that Sadness feels drawn to these memories, which want to be turned sad. Sadness is the only one of the emotions who implicitly understands that Riley is homesick and miserable about the move and therefore just doing her job to help Riley call for help. Joy does not understand this until she rewinds a core memory and finds that it was initially a sad memory that became joyful when Riley's parents and hockey team came to comfort her after she missed the winning shot in an important game; she realizes at last that Sadness is her equal and is essential to empathy. Finally seeing that she went too far in excluding Sadness, which has left Riley emotionally lopsided, unable to cope with her new surroundings, and almost makes Riley run away, Joy lets Sadness take the console and entrusts the Core Memories to her, knowing that it's what's best for Riley. Returning to her relieved parents after her aborted plan to run away, Riley finally breaks down and tells them how much she misses her old life in Minnesota; her parents comfort her, telling her that they also miss Minnesota.
Edited by Silverblade2 on Feb 9th 2021 at 9:37:12 PM
cute_heart
Boooo~~
from Valindria
Since: Aug, 2015
Relationship Status: RelationshipOutOfBoundsException: 1
Boooo~~
#164: Feb 9th 2021 at 1:57:05 PM
Is that example even valid? The Sacred Darkness is supposed to be about the dark side and Sadness is, well, an anthropomorphic emotion and has no connections to any darkness whatsoever.
themayorofsimpleton
Now a lurker. Thanks for everything. | he/him
from Elsewhere
(Experienced, Not Yet Jaded)
Relationship Status: Abstaining
Now a lurker. Thanks for everything. | he/him
#165: Feb 9th 2021 at 3:00:21 PM
Continuing from something I said I'd do on the complaining cleanup, here's a large entry from Genre Turning Point:
- In 1980, two albums came out that radically changed the landscape of not only Post-Punk and New Wave Music, but also popular music as a whole: Melt by Peter Gabriel and Remain in Light by Talking Heads. The albums earned considerable acclaim and public attention for their ability to both combine the seemingly disparate genres of rock and African folk music (South African in the case of Gabriel and Nigerian Afrobeat for Talking Heads) and demonstrate that this blend could produce artistically capable material on-par with previous western greats. Blending western and non-western music had been common for decades by this point, stretching as far back as The Beatles' use of Indian sounds in their works (and some might argue in favor of describing the even earlier exotica boom of the late 50's as an Ur-Example), but prior to 1980, this idea had been relegated to novelty appeal at best in the western world. Melt and Remain in Light meanwhile increased awareness and appreciation of nonwhite, non-Western music to such an extent that it prompted popular music to become looser and more open to "ethnic" influences, sparking the brief but influential worldbeat boom. This effect was particularly noticeable on New Wave Music, which transformed from mechanically rigid to looser and more free-form in the brief period of time before Synth-Pop took over.
- Conversely, the controversy surrounding the release of Paul Simon's Graceland in 1986 may have been the leading contributor to the end of the worldbeat boom. While initially lauded for its similar blend of Folk Rock and South African folk music, it quickly attracted controversy once it was learned that Simon had actively traveled to South Africa to work on the album— at the height of a United Nations-instituted media boycott against the nation in protest of apartheid (ironically, said boycott happened in part because of the highly effective Protest Song "Biko" that closed out Gabriel's Melt). The Unfortunate Implications of Simon's decision quickly became apparent, with him being accused of both supporting apartheid and perpetuating cultural appropriationnote , accusations he'd end up fighting for the remainder of his career. The controversy surrounding Graceland seemed to give worldbeat a bad taste in people's mouths; by 1990, worldbeat had been relegated to a fairly niche genre, with Talking Heads' 1988 album Naked being the last major breath of the boom, and Gabriel's 1989 soundtrack album Passion in turn gearing public attention more towards actual World Music rather than worldbeat. Both Gabriel and Talking Heads frontman David Byrne would downplay the World Music elements of their sound from the 90's onward, relegating it to a trimming at most; coincidentally, both artists also had the most success escaping the souring of public opinion towards worldbeat, in part because they were highly socially conscious artists and actively worked to give nonwhite, non-western artists more visibility through their own vanity labels and side-projects.
It seems legit, but it needs a good trimming. Maybe consolidate the two bullets into one smaller bullet?
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fragglelover
Since: Jun, 2012
#166: Feb 9th 2021 at 4:31:32 PM
This is on Disney Channel Live-Action Universe:
Broken Base: The whole idea of Girl Meets World now being included into the DCLAU, and in the process bringing a whole host of other shows, the vast majority not otherwise even remotely related to actual Disney Channel productions, along with it. The vast majority of people on the opposing side feels that this extremely loosely connected universe of random TV shows that exists primarily for hype and marketing purposes cheapens these shows, particularly Girl/Boy Meets World and other beloved TGIF classics. A small minority feels the other way - that GMW has essentially invited in a bunch of interlopers that has given critics (particularly those harsh to tween and teen entertainment in general) ammunition for even more snark material. Most people point out that Disney Channel as a whole and in itself is a Spiritual Successor to the old ABC TGIF block to begin with, and that these tween/teen shows are just continuing the same legacy of these old "family" shows (that were really primarily aimed at tweens and teens to begin with, before that age group began to really be looked at by networks as an independent demographic) and picking up exactly where TGIF left off when that block imploded (which incidentally was around the same time when Disney Channel started to get big into live-action programming).
10,000 grams of pure caffeine
#167: Feb 9th 2021 at 7:40:56 PM
Can this be shortened?
From YMMV.SCP Foundation:
- Darkness-Induced Audience Apathy: The SCP-Verse implies there's more than 5000 (and counting) anomalous objects out there, a good portion of which are lethal, some of them targeting only children. There's also implications hidden throughout some of the SCP entries that Earth is suffering an eternal Cosmic Horror Story, doomed to die regardless of what's done. There is an entire page dedicated to showcasing just how evil the villains of the SCP-verse can get and how powerful they are, and there's not a lot of leeway for the more sympathetic characters, given how much they've been mistreated on both ends. The reader can't even feel that the world is at least fine for now, because there are many articles that amount to "this object already caused the apocalypse, wanna know how?", most of them belonging to the 001 proposals. The existence of Negative Continuity and Unreliable Canon on the wiki hopes to alleviate at least most of this, allowing the reader to disregard any portion of the canon if they don't particularly like it, though it's still possible for the SCP-Verse to leave a rather bad taste to some people due to how a lot of the SCP items are dedicated to attempting to scare your pants off.
Anddrix
Since: Oct, 2014
#168: Feb 10th 2021 at 12:37:06 AM
Reposting from the previous page:
Found these on Another Life (2019):
- Unintentionally Sympathetic: Ian Yerxa's death by electrocution at Niko's hands is treated as a sort of Moral Event Horizon by the crew and by the narrative, and by Niko herself. This is somewhat confusing for several reasons. Yerxa comes off as a ticking, egotistical time-bomb resentful of Niko's position of command. He already staged a violent mutiny against her, which resulted in the exact scenario Niko was attempting to prevent by refusing his plan in the first place. She gives him a second chance, although she by all means have no good reason to, and, most forebodingly, he tells her he wouldn't have been so lenient if their positions were reversed. This leads to possibly the most important factor: Niko was clearly acting in self-defense when she ends up killing him, as he'd just approached her from behind with a screwdriver in his hand and was very blatantly about to stab her. Arguably, she didn't even mean to kill him; she didn't seem to deliberately aim for the broken equipment which electrocutes him, it just happened to be behind him when she kicked him. Yet the crew all treat her as if she's just looking for some excuse to kill them all, even after she saves their lives multiple times. Even William, who is explicitly loyal to Niko, can't comprehend why she killed the man who was about to shank her to death.
- It does serve as a perfect demonstration as to how unsuitable all crewmembers are to their jobs, something that comes up time and again throughout the series, but it seems doubtful that this was the writers' intent.
- What An Idiot: In Episode 5, half the crew apparently tries to outdo their counterparts on the Prometheus in sheer idiocy. They recently detected a pleasantly Earth-like planet with green forests, lakes and blue sky that also happens to host one of the alien crystal spires, so they touch down to stock up on supplies and have a look at the artifact.
You'd expect: The crew of trained astronauts to observe basic EVA safety protocols on their foray to an unknown world.
Instead: They act like stereotypical tourists arriving at an exotic location. The planet's air is breathable, so no-one but Bernie bothers wearing a sealed suit, and he gets ridiculed for it immediately until he takes it off like everyone else. Nevermind there might be countless unknown/undetectable pathogens in the atmosphere, plus the fact that only a few days before the crew had already had a run-in with a deadly alien virus that killed two of their number due to inefficient decontamination protocols. The group then splits up into three smaller groups, with Sasha attempting to establish First Contact with the alien artifact alone, Bernie and Zayn looking for edible plants, and Niko and Cas going off investigating an anomaly. Nobody notices the big-ass Worm Sign that appeared as soon as they landed, Bernie and Zayn quickly proceed to taste-test everything they find, and Niko and Cas end up in a forest thick with hallucinogenic spores that also act like a Truth Serum.
The result: Niko and Cas are so stoned by the spores that they hold nothing back from each other, which leads to some very awkward moments later on. Bernie and Zayn find out the hard way that nothing on the planet is edible to humans, that the world has very aggressive flora, and that there's a nasty breed of space bugs around. Sasha gets pulled into the artifact and develops a split personality of sorts, with the sinister half quickly taking over once they're back aboard. He also barely escapes being eaten by the monstrous critters responsible for the Worm Sign, and nobody notices that a smaller version of these bugs hitched a ride back up to the Salvare where it proceeds to wreak havoc on the ship's systems, nearly killing everyone and ultimately costing Michelle's life.
miraculous
Goku Black
(Apprentice)
Goku Black
#169: Feb 10th 2021 at 1:05:33 AM
Does It even count?
Theirs no continuity in SCP. These stories aren't actually linked
"That's right mortal. By channeling my divine rage into power, I have forged a new instrument in which to destroy you."
Very Spooky
#170: Feb 10th 2021 at 3:57:54 PM
I present to you all, a Wall of Text note (from Memes.US Politics 2016 Election Onward):
- The riot at the Capitol, in a very serious sense. Explanation
Edited by jandn2014 on Feb 10th 2021 at 6:58:16 AM
back lol
miraculous
Goku Black
(Apprentice)
Goku Black
#171: Feb 10th 2021 at 4:06:26 PM
What's the meme supposed to be ?
"That's right mortal. By channeling my divine rage into power, I have forged a new instrument in which to destroy you."
10,000 grams of pure caffeine
#172: Feb 10th 2021 at 7:59:23 PM
This likely pertains to the outer-fandom/outsider perceptions of the SCP Wiki.
Anddrix
Since: Oct, 2014
#173: Feb 14th 2021 at 5:37:13 AM
As I mentioned on the previous page, but literally almost every example on FranchiseOriginalSin.Film is a Wall of Text:
- The disastrously Troubled Production on Apocalypse Now foreshadowed all the mounting problems of the New Hollywood era of filmmaking that would come to a head in the early '80s, including with Francis Ford Coppola's next film One from the Heart. Coppola himself compared the experience of making Apocalypse Now to the actual Vietnam War that it was set in, in the sense of it being a case of a bunch of people with more money than sense who went into a situation that they were woefully ill-equipped to handle, a story that would repeat with One from the Heart, Michael Cimino's Heaven's Gate, and several other films from the onetime darlings of Hollywood.note In hindsight, Apocalypse Now should've been a warning on the consequences of giving auteur filmmakers too much Protection from Editors, but against all odds, it was a box-office smash that was beloved by critics and audiences, and so it took a few more years for things to reach a breaking point — by which point they had gotten so bad that they sank an entire studio.
- In 2005, the independent studio The Asylum released a Direct to Video adaptation of H. G. Wells' The War of the Worlds. It was generally faithful to the source material and made with mostly good intentions... and because its release coincided with that of Steven Spielberg's far more lavish adaptation, video rental stores bought the film in bulk in order to lure in people who might mistake it for the Spielberg version. (Blockbuster Video alone is known to have purchased over 250,000 copies.) From there, dollar signs emerged in the eyes of The Asylum's executives, and the studio would quickly become notorious for making low-budget mockbusters of contemporary blockbusters.
- Many fans of action films have blamed The Bourne Supremacy for popularizing Jitter Cam, with Tom Breiman of The AV Club describing it as "a great movie [with] a lot to answer for." Director Paul Greengrass, however, used the sort of handheld camera work specifically to convey chaos and confusion on screen, in keeping with a Spy Fiction story about not knowing who to trust, while also remembering to keep the action coherent and flowing. In the one scene where the action was hard to follow, the Moscow car chase, it was done specifically to show that Jason Bourne was injured and unable to fully process what was happening. Many of the films copying The Bourne Supremacy's aesthetic took the surface-level chaos of its Jitter Cam style without any of the justification or coherence, leading to a Dork Age for the action genre that saw a decade's worth of films where it was nigh-on impossible to tell what was happening during action scenes. This video goes into more detail, comparing clips from The Bourne Series and their many imitators to illustrate where Greengrass succeeded and so many others failed.
- The 2013 adaptation of Carrie got criticism for casting Chloë Grace Moretz as the eponymous heroine, with many fans feeling that she was far too conventionally pretty to convincingly play such a beaten-down social outcast. Except that the 1976 film also gave Carrie a heavy dose of Adaptational Attractiveness in its casting of Sissy Spacek, who had been voted Homecoming Queen in her own high school. It's just that Spacek wasn't as well known beforehand, meaning that her performance as Carrie was most people's first experience of her, whereas Moretz had been a child star beforehand and had a prominent public persona. And the 2002 remake had cast Angela Bettis, who used Beauty Inversion to make herself believable as Carrie, whereas Moretz was Hollywood Homely at best. (That said, some still feel that her performance makes up for her beauty, making it believable that she could be a social outcast.)
- Cats:
- Despite criticisms that Jennifer Hudson is too young to play the elderly Grizabella at 37, the first actresses to play her on stage (Elaine Paige in London, Betty Buckley in New York) were actually younger at only 33 and 34 respectively. The make-up on stage conveyed the White-Dwarf Starlet look fine and the suspension of disbelief is easier to take on stage. In the film, it's just Jennifer Hudson's very youthful face on a normal cat's body, making the Adaptational Attractiveness all the more apparent.
- The stage musical is similarly divisive upon opening because of how strange and bizarre it is, but the experience of seeing it in theater made the spectacle worth watching. However, the film tries so hard at realism that it falls into the Uncanny Valley. The actors are scaled down to miniature and their faces on realistic cat fur in contrast to the make-up and choreography that is more evocative than literal.
- Lindsey Ellis claims that certain controversial creative decisions can already be seen in Les Misérables (2012):
- Tom Hooper defends his choice of making the titular cats more realistic. While this decision worked for Les Miserables which is a fairly grounded musical to begin with, Cats is one of the gaudiest and most surreal musicals and any attempts at realism misses the point of the play and plunges it into the Uncanny Valley.
- The All-Star Cast of Les Miserables is meant to be replicated but whereas Les Miserables has a constantly rotating cast which can allow for many big names to appear, in Cats every character is on stage for the duration of the entire play. This forced Hooper to turn Macavity into a more solid antagonist to get the A-Listers out of the way, as many of them have busy schedules that prohibit them from being on set for long periods of time in addition to large demanding salaries. In addition, said celebrities wanted to perform group numbers solo, thus lowering their quality.
- Die Hard:
- Later films are criticized for turning John McClane into an invincible Hollywood Action Hero, even though, in the first three films, he was simply a Badass Normal cop who subverted many of the tropes of the action heroes of the '80s. Truth is, the original film also had plenty of moments where John should've straight-up died from the injuries he'd sustained, such as the elevator shaft explosion or getting kicked in the throat. Honest Trailers even analyzed the films with a medical doctor, and found that there really weren't that many more No One Could Survive That! moments in the later sequels than in the original trilogy, with Die Hard 2 actually being the only installment where a normal person in John's position could realistically survive the entire film. The difference was, in the first three films (especially the first), John's injuries were shown as taking a serious physical toll on him; by the end of each film, he's a bloody mess who's barely standing and in dire need of medical attention. The later sequels ignored this, making the damage John sustains come across as much less serious than it should be, especially given that, unlike the first three films where John was in his thirties, the fourth and fifth films heavily played up John's advancing age and the fact that he wasn't getting any younger.
- As noted in this video by Rossatron, the third film, Die Hard with a Vengeance, changed the formula from "Die Hard" on an X — a lone cop in the wrong place at the wrong time serving as the Spanner in the Works for a bunch of criminals/terrorists within a Closed Circle — to something more akin to a Buddy Cop Show, pairing John McClane up with Zeus Carver and taking place across New York. It worked in this film because Bruce Willis and Samuel L. Jackson had great buddy chemistry and John McTiernan (returning from the first film) is a pro at shooting great action scenes, but at the same time, it made John feel less trapped and gave him fewer opportunities to reflect on his course of action, thus making the action feel less personal and more driven by spectacle. Later films copied the formula of With a Vengeance to diminishing returns, with John feeling increasingly out of place — which they outright lampshaded in Live Free or Die Hard, and which culminated in him being a Supporting Protagonist to his son Jack in A Good Day to Die Hard.
- Later films are criticized for turning John McClane into an invincible Hollywood Action Hero, even though, in the first three films, he was simply a Badass Normal cop who subverted many of the tropes of the action heroes of the '80s. Truth is, the original film also had plenty of moments where John should've straight-up died from the injuries he'd sustained, such as the elevator shaft explosion or getting kicked in the throat. Honest Trailers even analyzed
- Disney Live-Action Remakes:
- The films have gotten criticism for their occasional instances of Stunt Casting from the very beginning, but it didn't lead to major backlash until a few years down the road. In The Jungle Book (2016), many critics felt that Bill Murray's performance as Baloo was the weak link in an otherwise strong film — partly because Murray had minimal experience in singing and voice-acting, and partly because Baloo's personality (as a laid-back wiseass) was mostly just a riff on Murray's actual public persona. Most of them were willing to forgive it, though, since newcomer Neel Sethi's acclaimed performance as Mowgli largely made up for it. Beauty and the Beast (2017) similarly got some flack for casting Emma Watson as Belle, since Watson had minimal experience in singing, making her a questionable choice for a character with so many musical numbers. While her acting was widely praised, critics generally felt that her singing was one of the weakest parts of the film, which was all the more glaring since she was the protagonist. But when Aladdin (2019) cast Will Smith in the role of the Genie, the choice proved so unpopular that it was already generating bad publicity long before the film actually came out. Not only was Smith such an instantly recognizable public figure that his presence came off as distracting, many critics and viewers felt that his distinctively contemporary style of comedy was horribly ill-suited to an epic period fantasy. It didn't help that the Genie was a far more iconic character than either Baloo or Belle — and unlike them, he was already permanently associated with an iconic performance by a completely different actor. Taken alongside the films' previous casting choices, Smith's performance has led to the accusation that the filmmakers care more about snagging big-name actors for publicity's sake than appropriately casting characters.
- Beauty and the Beast (2017) and The Lion King (2019) proved to be highly divisive films, in part for making changes to the movies they were adapted from that many fans saw as unnecessary. While those changes wouldn't necessarily be bad by themselves, some saw them as gratuitous pandering to "bad-faith critics" who had trivial complaints about the originals. note To a degree, this was also true of Cinderella (2015) and The Jungle Book (2016), which were much more widely acclaimed. Among other things, Cinderella gave Lady Tremaine additional backstory to explain her hatred of Ella (which not everyone liked), and The Jungle Book changed King Louie into a Gigantopithecus to placate people who complained about an orangutan being in India. But even if those small changes weren't exactly necessary, they were easier to tolerate because they were mostly overshadowed by larger changes that actually made for stronger stories: Cinderella gave the Prince, previously a Flat Character, considerable Character Development to make his relationship with Ella more meaningful, while The Jungle Book added a great deal of actual drama to a story that was originally pretty light on emotion. Furthermore, both Cinderella and Jungle Book were released nearly 50 years after the original animated movies debuted, so the numerous changes made sense to keep up with modern tastes and societal changes. Beauty and the Beast and The Lion King's changes, on the other hand, mostly just added additional weight to the movies rather than actually making them better, since the originals already had well-paced stories with rich themes and strong characters, and there wasn't a lot of room for improvement.
- The Lion King (2019) was criticized for its over-realism sucking out the movie's emotions and soul. The use of hyper-realistic CGI can be traced back to The Jungle Book (2016) (both films being directed by Jon Favreau). However, this wasn't viewed as a problem in The Jungle Book because the animators gave the characters facial expressions that conveyed emotions, which, alongside the amount of changes to the story compared to the original, gave it some degree of its own magic. The Lion King, on the other hand, was mostly a Shot-for-Shot Remake where the characters had very little emotions in their facial expressions, sending the animals down the Uncanny Valley in the process of them seeming empty.
- The adding of feminist subtext to the originals started with Cinderella, which there amounted to developing Ella's romance with the prince a little more and incorporating the themes of emotional abuse into the story. Beauty and the Beast amps up the feminist themes to the point of parody, turning Belle into an Adaptational Badass and giving her a scene where she tries to escape the castle alongside making her essentially the smartest person in the film to emphasize how amazing she is (although this ends up causing her to run into the remake's version of the wolf encounter). The Lion King amped up Nala and Shenzi's roles, culminating in a Designated Girl Fight, while Aladdin makes Jasmine's motivation to become the ruler of Agrabah, whilst also providing an Author's Saving Throw to her role in the original's climax by having her actually take part in the remake's climax. All of these felt like excessive pandering to appease feminist critiques of the originals (that weren't really criticisms), which made it where many of the intended audience felt it was missing the point, while others disliked being beaten over the head with the message. While this feminism was also in Cinderella, it wasn't viewed as a problem there because the movie provided a different interpretation of a familiar character while also expanding on the original in a way that still kept the spirit of the original film without coming across as pandering.
- The controversy surrounding Clint Eastwood's Richard Jewell, which played a major role in why it became a Box Office Bomb, has a clear predecessor in a previous Eastwood film, Sully. Both films are biopics accused of giving Historical Villain Upgrades for the sake of creating drama. In the case of Sully, people were at least able to overlook the vilification of the National Transportation Safety Board investigators for a few reasons: it is an organization rather than a specific individual, many NTSB workers who had been involved with the investigation of US Airways Flight 1549 were around to offer their side of the story, and their portrayal was at least consistent within the film's narrative. Richard Jewell portrayed Atlanta Journal-Constitution reporter Kathy Scruggs as an Immoral Journalist who sleeps with FBI agents for information, something there is zero evidence for in reality. This ended up creating far more controversy than Sully: Kathy was a specific person, she had long since passed away and so was unable to defend her side of the story, and most damningly, her portrayal muddled the film's intended message on how the media can manipulate information to slander individuals and made it ring hypocritical.
- For all the hay that is made of Ghostbusters (2016) treating its male characters as bumbling fools, it would be wise to remember that most of the non-Ghostbuster and non-Mayor male characters in Ghostbusters (1984) did this. Mr. Delacorte at the library is a weedy milquetoast, Dean Yeager is a prissy bastard who takes sadistic delight in getting rid of these guys, Louis would probably get into deep trouble if he weren't so charming, and Peck is an outright Hate Sink. That being said, it was originally a genre convention of Animal House, Caddyshack, and Stripes, to name a few; it's simply that this convention becomes a bit more visible when the emphasis is changed from Slobs Versus Snobs to "girl power".
- Return to Halloweentown, the fourth and final film in the Halloweentown series of Disney Channel Original Movies, is treated by most fans as having never happened, largely for marking the series' final slide into the Girl-Show Ghetto at the height of the Disney Channel's Teen Idol era. The protagonist Marnie was recast, Lucas Grabeel got an expanded role now that High School Musical had made him one of the Disney Channel's biggest stars, the main villains were an obnoxious Girl Posse while The Dominion, the evil witches they worked for, were treated as The Man Behind the Man, Debbie Reynolds was demoted to a "Special Appearance By" credit, and the setting of "Witch University" forbade students from using magic on campus, leaving very few opportunities for the film to show off the magic that was previously integral to the series. All of these problems were there in the prior film, Halloweentown High, which marked the franchise's transition from family comedy to teen comedy. In that film, many characters from the first two films were either Put on a Bus or had much smaller roles in order to focus on the new cast of teenage characters, including Lucas Grabeel's character, and the more overtly fantastical elements were heavily toned down, including very few scenes set in the titular Halloweentown itself. The thing was, the move to teen comedy made sense given that the main characters were now older, and the main plot still revolved around the monster kids trying to fit in at a human high school, so the supernatural elements were still a major source of the film's humor. Plus, it still had the most important members of the original cast. As such, even though it produces a Broken Base, Halloweentown High doesn't get nearly the hostile reception from fans that Return to Halloweentown does.
- How the Grinch Stole Christmas! featured needless Adaptation Expansion, confused morals that make the originally-simple message a lot less coherent, an emphasis on big sets over good writing, some problematic and unfitting jokes, and a few creepy makeup jobs. However, it was saved by Jim Carrey, who was at the height of his popularity and perfectly cast as the protagonist, topped off with an Academy Award-winning look. When the same people made The Cat in the Hat, they cast Mike Myers right when he was starting to slide off the radar, and shoved him into a costume that mostly just looked creepy, leaving the bawdy jokes, confused morals, and mindless spectacle in the spotlight.
- How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days has been described by Caroline Siede of The AV Club as this for the Romantic Comedy genre as a whole. She argues that, while it didn't invent the formulaic tropes (shallow characters, regressive gender politics, forced Cringe Comedy, a focus on High Concept hooks over an interesting story) that would plague and eventually destroy the genre over the course of the 2000s, it gathered them all in one place and, by virtue of its box-office success, had a massive impact on the genre going forward as other filmmakers and studios sought to replicate it. The thing was, it did that formula well, in large part thanks to the outstanding chemistry of its lead actors Matthew McConaughey and Kate Hudson, as well as a self-awareness of the formula and how goofy it is. The romantic comedies that came in its wake did not have this going for them.
- As explained here by Maven of the Eventide, a lot of what went wrong with the film adaptation of Queen of the Damned can be traced back to its much better predecessor, Interview with the Vampire. In Interview, Lestat was a vivacious, lively character who mocked his brooding counterparts, yet those "tortured souls" still came off as sympathetic characters due to their development over the course of the story. Unfortunately, the makers of Queen mistook that as "brooding = sexy and cool".
- James Bond:
- All the problems with the Roger Moore and Pierce Brosnan-era movies — the over-the-top gadgets, the bad puns, the overly-elaborate villain plans and death traps — are visible in Goldfinger, where they were still reasonably in check. That these elements were not necessary to the franchise was demonstrated by the 2006 reboot Casino Royale. The caveat to this, though, is that Royale and its immediate followup, Quantum of Solace, have been criticized for feeling less like Bond films and more like a reskinning of Bourne with all of the Bond names.
- Roger Moore received increasing complaints that he was getting too old for the role (something which he concured with), culminating in the embarrassing realization that he was older than his A View to a Kill co-star Tanya Roberts's mother. But even in his very first outing, Live and Let Die, Moore was more than twenty years older than all three of the actresses playing Bond's paramours. (It didn't help that, despite being Connery's successor in the role, Moore was almost three years older than him.)
- The Daniel Craig Bond films have also gone through two noticeable up-and-down periods that both started with a deconstructive period followed by a period of Revisiting the Roots, in that order. To elaborate:
- Casino Royale (2006) got rave reviews for its Darker and Edgier reinvention of 007, and it was widely hailed as a breath of fresh air. Thing is, though, in spite of its grittier tone and minimalistic storytelling, the movie also had enough spectacle to keep the audience engaged (in the famous construction site chase, for instance), and the Big Bad Le Chiffre still retained enough of the classic Bond villain flavor to keep the movie anchored in the world of Tuxedo and Martini fiction; he didn't have a supervillain lair or an arsenal of elaborate gadgets, but he was a genuinely scary Soft-Spoken Sadist who wept tears of blood. For the follow-up, Quantum of Solace, the filmmakers tried to maintain that stripped-down approach, but wound up stripping out most of the spectacle that made Casino Royale work. In trying to do a "realistic" evil industrialist as a villain, they ended up with Dominic Greene, generally considered one of the most boring Bond villains in the series' history; and in trying to tell a simpler story, they wound up with a largely by-the-numbers revenge story with a subplot about hoarding a country's water thrown in.
- Skyfall got similarly rave reviews for managing to bring much of the fun of 1960s-era Bond to The New '10s, balancing out some of the grittier elements of Craig's previous outings by resurrecting some old series favorites. The return of the original Aston Martin DB5, complete with machine guns and ejector seat, was widely applauded by fans, as was the return of Q and Moneypenny. But in spite of its homages to the series' past, it also wasn't afraid to shake up the status quo by killing off M and exploring Bond's childhood with the visit to Skyfall manor. Its followup, Spectre, kept those same trends going, but it was widely criticized for sloppily handling the return of the SPECTRE organization, and its attempt to reintroduce Ernst Stavro Blofeld as Bond's evil stepbrother has proven to be much more divisive. While Skyfall's odes to the past were seen as a good way to complement a genuinely interesting story with a strong antagonist, Spectre has been accused of leaning too strongly on them to round out a weak plot hinging almost entirely on old faces.
- While Craig's films have gotten plenty of acclaim, their attempt to give Bond a definitive Origin Story has always been one of the most divisive things about them. Detractors of Casino Royale (2006) argued that it was an unnecessary Continuity Reboot in a series known for its very loose continuity, detractors of Quantum of Solace argued that it was needlessly weighed down by Bond's angst over losing Vesper Lynd, and a few people argued that Skyfall stripped Bond of much of his mystique by showing us his childhood home and introducing us to the man who raised him after his parents' death. In spite of all that, the movies generally had strong enough original plots that they could still stand on their own, and Bond remained as badass as ever (his relative inexperience was something of an Informed Attribute). But when Spectre tried to give the same Origin Story treatment to Ernst Stavro Blofeld—"explaining" that he and Bond grew up together, and that his hatred of Bond was a twisted case of Sibling Rivalry—detractors accused it of being an embarrassing case of Villain Decay that made it all but impossible to take the story seriously.
- Jaws:
- The original film, together with Star Wars two years later, has often been held by many old-guard (or at least highbrow) film critics with ushering in The Blockbuster Age Of Hollywood and all of its worst excesses, killing off the New Hollywood era in the process. The makers of both films, Steven Spielberg and George Lucas respectively, both came from the same "film school geek" background that many of their New Hollywood contemporaries came from, but their films were made with a far more populist orientation, telling simple plots of "men vs. shark" or "plucky resistance vs. The Empire". The difference was in the artistry they put into telling those seemingly simple stories, elevating them into classic tales that still garner the respect of those who watch them. Years later, even Spielberg and Lucas themselves had grown disillusioned with the trends that their films had kicked off, predicting that they would lead in time to Hollywood's downfall.
- The original film used some pretty heavy Artistic License regarding shark behavior in the name of Rule of Scary, portraying the Great White Shark as lurking in the shallows of a heavily populated beach town and repeatedly preying on humans—even though real sharks find humans unappetizing because of their low fat-to-muscle ratio, and a large Great White would find such shallow waters far too confining.note The end result made for a highly effective horror film, but it relied on portraying the shark as more of an ethereal monster than a realistic predatory animal.note The sequels took that idea to its logical conclusion. Jaws 2 introduced the idea of a shark taking revenge against Martin Brody and his family for killing the original shark, though to the film's credit, it's quickly dismissed by a scientist who tells Brody that "Sharks don't take things personally." Then Jaws: The Revenge treated the idea dead seriously, stretching Willing Suspension of Disbelief to the breaking point.
- The original film, together with Star Wars two years later, has often been held by many old-guard (or at least highbrow) film critics with ushering in The Blockbuster Age Of Hollywood and all of its worst excesses, killing off the New Hollywood era in the process. The makers of both films, Steven Spielberg and George Lucas respectively, both came from the same "film school geek" background that many of their New Hollywood contemporaries came from, but their films were made with a far more populist orientation, telling simple plots of "men vs. shark" or "plucky resistance vs. The Empire". The difference was in the artistry they put into telling those seemingly simple stories, elevating them into classic tales that still garner the respect of those who watch them. Years later, even Spielberg and Lucas themselves had grown disillusioned
- George A. Romero's Living Dead Series.
- The series has, as one of its recurring themes, the idea that Humans Are the Real Monsters, and it delivers that message with all of the subtlety of a shotgun blast to a zombie's face. According to Word of God, it was unintentional in Night of the Living Dead,note but from Dawn of the Dead onward Romero was very conscious about using his films to deliver messages, with Dawn explicitly satirizing consumerism and Day of the Dead satirizing militarism. In fact, Dario Argento's European cut of Dawn outright removed a lot of Romero's more satirical tone and made it a straightforward horror movie, and fans still debate over which version of the film is the best. However, in Night, Dawn, and Day, these themes and messages were used in the service of well-written survival stories whose Downer Endings flowed logically from the characters' decisions, and Romero's influence helped make social commentary a hallmark of zombie cinema. It was only after he returned to the genre in the 2000s that it seemed to many critics that Romero was more interested in preaching (about capitalism and the rich in Land of the Dead, about the media in Diary of the Dead) than storytelling. Survival of the Dead was the point at which many fans and critics believe the message hit rock bottom: the protagonists are a group of AWOL soldiers who abandoned their post to become violent looters, and the Wacky Wayside Tribe that is most important to the plot is a pair of Feuding Families that are willing to keep trying to kill each other even when zombies are chewing on them both. Darkness-Induced Audience Apathy ensued, and Survival was a Box Office Bomb that marked the last film Romero ever made.
- From a special effects standpoint, Survival wasn't the first Living Dead film to be criticized for very obvious CGI, as both Land and Diary also used CGI. Those films, however, still utilized mostly practical effects and only used CGI sparingly (and Diary used a found-footage style, helping cover up some of the flaws in the CGI), so it was more forgivable when it did pop up. Survival used more CGI than ever before, and given its much lower budget, it was much more noticeable by comparison.
- The Lord of the Rings:
- After Peter Jackson's trilogy debuted, the general consensus of them were that they were the best potential LOTR adaptations that the books were likely to get. Some criticism was directed at the overly long ending(s), but they were mostly joked about than harshly derided. When Jackson's King Kong (2005) came around, consensus also was that it was great, but that Jackson might have overdone the homage to the original a tad, resulting in the film being much longer and more padded than it should be. Then when Jackson returned to Middle-earth with The Hobbit, enthusiasm for them dipped upon the announcement that it would be split into three films, despite the book being shorter than any of the Lord of the Rings books. The resulting films have been highly divisive, with many criticisms directed at the over-length of the story being stuffed full of unnecessary padding, most of which was designed to connect the films even closer to The Lord of the Rings than before.
- In Lord of the Rings, Jackson notably played up the roles of Arwen and Eowyn and put some more focus on romance. Though not everyone liked it, it did help give the films a strong Periphery Demographic among girls and women. Their success was likely the inspiration behind Tauriel being created wholecloth for The Hobbit, and the addition of a Love Triangle between her, Kili, and Legolas (who himself isn't in the book). Said love triangle became one of the film's most criticized aspects.
- It was fairly evident in The Lord of the Rings that Jackson was more interested in the story of the War of the Ring than in Frodo's journey as the Ringbearer, which had the side effect of playing up the violent spectacle and making Frodo noticeably more passive. But for the most part, it was just a question of focusing on stuff that was already there, and it's easy to understand why one would think epic fantasy battles would be more crowdpleasing than some hobbits wandering around. Fundamentally, Lord of the Rings is half about an epic war permanently affecting the world's status quo and half about a personal journey and the accompanying struggles, so showing off the battles made perfect sense for a blockbuster movie approach. In The Hobbit, though, they were adapting something that was in no way a war story and almost entirely a personal journey, but still tried to give it the same level of action as its predecessor. Consequently, battles and events that took up a few sentences or happened offscreen get expanded into significant chunks of the film, to the point of adding in new characters just to partake in ridiculous action scenes. The result almost completely compromises both the narrative of the original and most of the agency and screentime of the story's actual main characters. It reaches the point of the titular character being given almost nothing to do in the last film, to the point that he barely even fights in the titular battle—in both versions, he gets knocked out and misses most of the Battle of the Five Armies, but in the book, it's about three pages long, while in the film, it's essentially the entire last half.
- The expanding and lionizing of elven characters started in Lord of the Rings, with an entire plotline being added involving an intervention at Helm's Deep that wasn't in the book, and Legolas being given a few over-the-top action setpieces. This got some grumbling from purists, but it was largely under control and never overshadowed the actual narrative. The latter two Hobbit films, though, went so far as to add in multiple elven main characters and elf-focused plotlines and scenes, in a narrative where the elves were originally nowhere near as important, turning them into a massive Spotlight-Stealing Squad that somehow still felt completely pointless.
- One of the criticism about the Hobbit films is that not only is a lot of action added, but much of it involves cartoonishly over the top stunts. LOTR indulged in a bit of this too, like when Legolas surfed on a shield in battle. However, The Hobbit had entire "toon physics" action sequences that were quite long and went far past what LOTR did: most notably, the barrel-riding scene, where the dwarves bounce around in barrels like they're made of rubber and seem to be impervious to all damage. While nobody was exactly asking for historical realism with these films (because you know, they're fantasy), it's hard to take a bunch of dwarves floating down a river in barrels while fighting off orcs with said barrels seriously, especially when the movie then tries to do gritty war drama. Even the more cartoonish stuff would be reasonable in light of the book, which did have a fairly comedic and lighthearted tone, but it clashes horribly when, for instance, the end of that barrel scene involves Kili getting shot by an arrow, being crippled for the rest of the film by it, and almost dying in melodramatic fashion.
- Mad Max:
- Mad Max: Fury Road was a smash hit that was acclaimed as one of the best action movies of the 2010s, but it also caught flak from people asking "why is this even a Mad Max film?" and complaining about the fact that Max was just there to put on the poster for what was essentially Furiosa's story. But Max being a Supporting Protagonist was actually a tradition that started in Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior, where Max was just a hired hand in a story about a tribe of wastelanders and a gang of raiders. Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome was literally a Dolled-Up Installment, and likewise more about the orphans than it was about Max. But in Fury Road, there was a single individual, Furiosa, who clearly had better claim to the protagonist slot than Max, and that led to the complaints of Max "just being there." Furthermore, previous films were about Max showing up and helping someone else's struggle, with him still indisputably the main character, while in Fury Road, Max is helpless and doesn't actually accomplish anything until the second act. What's also odd is that his first actual active role in the movie is getting into a brutal fight with Furiosa, who then inexplicably trusts him to save all of her charges like she recognizes he's a protagonist too.
- The fact that at the time Furiosa was played by a more famous celebrity than the one playing Max may explain why the spotlight was also taken away from him. But this had already happened in Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome, with Auntie played by a bigger celebrity than the actor playing Max (at the time of filming, at least), and one who was famous in a field different from acting, at that. Granted, Beyond Thunderdome is also considered a divisive film in the series.
- Going beyond just the series, Fury Road can also be looked at as the start of the trend of recent Hollywood reboots to go for a much more feminist approach, which many have criticized as being Anvilicious and overtly pandering to potential female audiences at the exclusion of the original fanbases (with even several female viewers taking issue at this). At the time, it was highly acclaimed for portraying a staunchly feminist message in a film franchise primarily aimed at a male audience, showcasing strong female protagonists not defined by their relationship to male leads, taking down what can be read as an allegory for a toxic patriarchy, and having a female heroine be the one who truly drives the plot. Thing is though, the film's feminist themes were kept in the background, merely serving as window dressing for a relatively simply action film (George Miller has even stated that he didn't intend to make a feminist film, just a story about survivors escaping a dystopic regime). And while the main characters were predominately female, with the main villains all being men, the movie still included two well-done male heroes in Max and Nux who also contributed greatly to the story and action setpieces (to the point that one can argue that they are the cause for the heroines getting their well deserved happy ending), alongside showing the villains' way of life as being just as detrimental to the men in the society as it was to the women, so it never felt one-sided towards a particular group, and still satisfied the male fans in the audience. When later films such as Ghostbusters (2016), Ocean's 8, Terminator: Dark Fate, Charlie's Angels (2019), and Black Christmas (2019) tried to do similar things, they were widely accused of going too far with their feminist overtones to the detriment of the story, not helped by the male characters in the series being portrayed as bumbling or outright toxic compared to the heroines (or in the case of Dark Fate, having the previous male protagonist, John Connor, killed off to make way for a female named Dani Ramos to take the place of his role as a revolutionary leader in a Bad Future).
- The Matrix:
- The original film is still widely cited as one of the greatest science-fiction movies ever made, but it also suffers from some inconsistencies in its lore and concepts, which sometimes flit between science-fiction and fantasy with little rhyme or reason. It's ostensibly a hard cyberpunk film about Virtual Reality and Artificial Intelligence, and the characters' "superpowers" are supposedly justified by the fact that they can bend the rules of the Matrix by manipulating its code—but the story also plays The Chosen One trope completely straight, with Neo supposedly being a reincarnation of a legendary Messianic Archetype with genuine mystical abilities; not to mention that "The Oracle" is apparently a computer program who can accurately predict the future, and the movie ends with Neo returning to life after being shot to death. Many of the plot points didn't really hold up under scrutiny, but the film was so tightly structured and well-acted that they never broke Willing Suspension of Disbelief, and the story still worked perfectly fine as a thrilling riff on The Hero's Journey.
In the sequels, though, it was a bit harder to overlook. This was partly because the fantastical elements were considerably more explicit: The Matrix Reloaded has Neo seeing visions of the future and telepathically shorting out Sentinels while in the real world, and The Matrix Revolutions features Agent Smith possessing a living human and Neo developing psychic sight after being blinded. They weren't exactly less plausible than anything in the first movie—but since many of them happened in the real world, it was harder to Hand Wave them by saying "That's just how the Matrix works!" It also didn't help that the story became a lot denser and less emotionally engaging, making the inconsistent mythology stick out much more. - Josh Friedman, creator of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, alleged that The Matrix also had this effect on cinematic and television science fiction as a whole, producing a greater focus on action and special effects at the expense of story and characterization. Daniel Dockery of Cracked has voiced similar opinionsnote , in particular blaming it for the proliferation of bad Wire Fu and CGI stuntwork in Hollywood action movies in the early '00s. Whereas The Wachowskis went out of their way to get it right, hiring legendary Hong Kong fight choreographer Yuen Woo-Ping to do the fight scenes and having the cast train with him for four months, many Matrix imitators simply settled for putting actors with no martial arts experience into wire harnesses and having them do physics-defying stunts, which inevitably looked goofy.
- The original film is still widely cited as one of the greatest science-fiction movies ever made, but it also suffers from some inconsistencies in its lore and concepts, which sometimes flit between science-fiction and fantasy with little rhyme or reason. It's ostensibly a hard cyberpunk film about Virtual Reality and Artificial Intelligence, and the characters' "superpowers" are supposedly justified by the fact that they can bend the rules of the Matrix by manipulating its code—but the story also plays The Chosen One trope completely straight, with Neo supposedly being a reincarnation of a legendary Messianic Archetype with genuine mystical abilities; not to mention that "The Oracle" is apparently a computer program who can accurately predict the future, and the movie ends with Neo returning to life after being shot to death. Many of the plot points didn't really hold up under scrutiny, but the film was so tightly structured and well-acted that they never broke Willing Suspension of Disbelief, and the story still worked perfectly fine as a thrilling riff on The Hero's Journey.
- The rise of Miramax Films is often cited as a major contributor to the much-maligned advent of Oscar Bait at the Turn of the Millennium, but some of the warning signs for the trend could be seen even back in the studio's glory days in the 1990s. Back then, cinephiles praised Bob and Harvey Weinstein for supporting promising independent filmmakers like Kevin Smith, Quentin Tarantino, and Steven Soderbergh, who gave us beloved '90s Cult Classics like Clerks, Pulp Fiction, and sex, lies, and videotape. However, even though those films were widely praised for their originality and experimentation, they could be thrilling, funny, and irreverent at the same time, and dipped into action and comedy as often as they dipped into drama.
Unfortunately, their success also planted the idea that having a film win critical acclaim and clean house at awards shows could rake in just as much money as having it open big at #1 its first weekend. The Weinsteins would essentially build their entire business model on that premise, with some very controversial behind-the-scenes efforts devoted to ensuring that their films got recognized at the Academy Awards. The English Patient and Shakespeare in Love ended up winning Best Picture over Fargo and Saving Private Ryan thanks to those efforts, resulting in two of the most controversial Award Snubs in the history of the Oscars. To make matters worse, plenty of other studios proved eager to beat Miramax at its own game, producing a slew of depressing, ambitious, and self-consciously "weighty" dramas during the winter months designed to pander to the tastes of film critics and Academy voters (specifically, the "old guard" whose formative cinematic experiences came in the '60s and '70s), which often wound up just as hollow and formulaic as the crowd-pleasing blockbusters released during the summer months. In the modern age of the Oscars, "genre" films are all but excluded from upper-tier awards for Directing, Writing, and Acting, and you can nearly always tell when a studio is banking on an Oscar by watching for the obligatory scenes devoted to showing off an actor's range.
Lindsay Ellis puts the origin of Oscar bait further back, citing The Deer Hunter as the first film to use its award success to fuel its financial success rather than the other way around. It pioneered the release tactic employed by many later Oscar bait films (a limited release in Los Angeles to meet the barest minimum requirements for nomination, then opening in wide release after it had the hype of an Oscar nod behind it), giving a big boost to a critically-acclaimed yet difficult-to-market film, one that other studios took notice of in the years to come.
- A Nightmare on Elm Street:
- By the time of its self-destruction with the sixth film, Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare, the series had fallen into almost literal Self-Parody, with Freddy Krueger a comedian first and a killer second, while the kills lacked any real sense of tension or fear in favor of serving as special-effects showcases. The overarching plot had also become needlessly complex, with Freddy developing a backstory that stripped away his mystique.note All of these elements can be traced back to the third film in the series, Dream Warriors, generally regarded as the best of the Nightmare sequels and even a rival to the original by some fans. Here, Freddy first began to take on his jokester persona, but he was still Faux Affably Evil, his twisted sense of humor only getting under his victims' — and the viewers' — skin that much more. The kills were amped up compared to the first two films, but if anything, this served to demonstrate just how powerful Freddy was, emphasizing that, within the dream world, he was practically a god who could bend reality to his whims. As for his developing backstory, well, "the bastard son of a hundred maniacs" is still an unforgettable line.
- Entertain the Elk identified another Original Sin in the fourth film, The Dream Master, the first entry in which Freddy's motivation was no longer to get revenge on the parents who killed him by going after their children. After killing off the last of the Elm Street children in the first act of The Dream Master, Freddy no longer had a clear goal beyond just killing for the sake of it, and so the plots and characters in the films became increasingly paper-thin, little more than excuses to get to the inventive kills and dream sequences. While The Dream Master is still remembered as a better film than the ones that followed, there's a reason why Nightmare fans debate whether it was the last good film in the series or the first bad one.
- While Freddy vs. Jason more or less met the approval of fans of both the Nightmare and Friday the 13th series, Nightmare fans have criticized it for the fact that Jason Voorhees racks up most of the kills, with Freddy only really coming into play in the third act while serving as The Man Behind the Man before then. (In fact, the reason Freddy gets angry at Jason to begin with is because Jason steals one of Freddy's kills.) This is simply a reflection of both franchises as a whole, where Jason often had much higher body counts whereas Freddy typically had fewer kills, but much more elaborate dream sequences and special effects.note Putting the two together turned out to be an asymmetrical battle owing to their radically different methods of killing their targets.
- While Pacific Rim was was widely acclaimed by fans of mecha and kaiju, some did criticize it for what was perceived as it taking excessive inspiration from Neon Genesis Evangelion. This mostly died out due to the fact that this inspiration was mostly used as homage, alongside references and homages to numerous other mecha anime and kaiju movies. The sequel Pacific Rim: Uprising, however, rested a bit more excessively on Evangelion: not only was its plot a multi-level mixture of the arcs of Bardiel, the Jet Alone, the Mass Produced EVA, and Ritsuko's brief rebellion, but its climax reveals that the Kaijus were trying to reach Tokyo to cause a disaster that would terminate humanity, just like the Third Impact plot point, a reveal that notably contradicts their established behavior in the previous film.
- One of the most common critiques of The Phantom of the Opera (2004) was the reveal of the Phantom's true face, which many found laughable due to the apparent Informed Deformity, comparing his freakish birth defect to a bad sunburn or possibly an allergic reaction. In truth, adaptations of the story had been giving him some level of Adaptational Attractiveness for a while (even Lon Chaney, generally seen as the standard for an "ugly" Phantom, wasn't quite as nightmarish as the character described in the book), and it was often remarked by fans that he seemed to be getting Progressively Prettier. The Broadway musical upon which the film is based also put a pretty hard cap on how deformed the Phantom could be. The iconic "half mask" (originally designed to not get in the way of the microphone) meant that at most, only about a third of the Phantom's face could be deformed, and that's before you take stage makeup budgets into account. The 2004 film was just the breaking point, because not only does The Reveal have a ton of buildup in-story, even featuring wild Dutch angles when it kicks in properly, but considering that this was a big Hollywood blockbuster, there was really no reason to not go all-out and give him a properly hideous face, especially when this would likely be many people's first exposure to the character—and they were treated to arguably the least terrifying Phantom in cinema history.
- While the final three The Pink Panther movies (not counting the 2006 remake and its sequel) are frequently criticized for their reliance on questionably funny Running Gags, outdated racial stereotypes, and over-the-top humor more suited to the Pink Panther cartoons than their live-action cousins. In actual fact, most of these began during 1978's Revenge of the Pink Panther, the last one generally regarded as being any good. As to why Revenge works and most of the subsequent ones didn't, most fans have one simple answer: Peter Sellers was still alive.
- Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl featured elements that hurt the sequels: Jack Sparrow stealing the show from Will and Elizabeth, the nominal leads; characters (well, Jack and Barbossa) double-crossing each other; a balance of light-hearted comedy and serious action and drama; a climax that even many fans felt lasted a few beats too long. In Black Pearl, these elements were well-integrated and added to the appeal. For Dead Man's Chest and especially At World's End, these elements were cranked Up To Eleven as the tone degenerated to full-on Mood Whiplash (say, juxtaposing Jack's slapstick antics with mass hangings and Davy Jones's undead crew), every character developed Chronic Backstabbing Disorder and the plot amounted to a colossal Gambit Pile Up that left many viewers without anyone to root for. Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides fixed the problem by embracing it, and reworking the franchise to focus on the pirates instead: Without an ostensibly clean-cut protagonist like Will or Elizabeth, the film could maintain a more consistent mood and characterization, and the backstabbing seemed much less obnoxious when the film was about Black-and-Gray Morality from the very beginning.
- Later films in the Predator franchise have been criticized for the Monster Threat Expiration given to the Predators, a trend that reached its nadir in Predators: two of the movie's three Predators die fairly quickly, despite having advantages the Jungle Hunter didn't such as "hunting hounds" and UAV surveillance, being more ruthless than him, and spending the movie hunting less competent and dangerous "quarry" (a random assembly of criminals and soldiers — some of them poorly-armed and one of whom has no combat background — who didn't trust each other rather than a mostly-cohesive group of elite mercenaries). This trend actually got its start in the second movie. Harrigan is an average and somewhat paunchy cop with no military experience who manages to kill the City Hunter in personal combat. This stands in stark contrast with Dutch, an experienced ex-special forces operative with a bodybuilder's physique who was clearly outmatched by the Jungle Hunter and only managed to kill him with his wits and well-placed booby traps. However, unlike later installments, the movie went to some lengths to justify this. The City Hunter was established to be more reckless and careless than the Jungle Hunter (with Word of God confirming that he was also significantly younger and less experienced), and it's implied he didn't do better because he'd already been shot multiple times by the time of the final confrontation as a consequence of said recklessness and carelessness. Moreover, he'd earlier managed to showcase his badass credentials by slaughtering multiple police officers and gangsters, so he didn't seem like a pushover even when the tables were turned against him. As for Harrigan, part of why he won was because he'd managed to turn one of the City Hunter's own weapons against him, and the area of the city he has to police is an Urban Hellscape that garners in-universe comparisons to a war zone, so his victory still seemed plausible enough.
- The excesses of the RoboCop sequels could be traced back to the original film. The original film was a dark satire of 1980s consumerism with graphic violencenote , goofy elements like a military-grade robot that can't go down stairs, and a scathing anti-capitalist message. However, it was still respected by many film critics for balancing its extremes with an existential examination of the titular character's humanity and maintaining moral ambiguity by painting the villainous corporate executives as fleshed-out characters instead of strawmen. However, the sequels doubled down on different aspects of the original while ignoring the nuances that made the first film so admirable. RoboCop 2 exaggerated the violence at the expense of the protagonist's humanity while also having children as violent drug dealers who end up getting brutally killed, RoboCop 3 added ninjas and had military machines that can be hacked by children, and the 2014 reboot had anvilicious jabs at right-wing politics, with Samuel L. Jackson playing an exaggerated caricature of a Fox News pundit. Needless to say, none of them lived up to the original film, as they only carried exaggerated superficial aspects of the first installment but none of its wit, humanity, or depth.
- The flaws that built to a fever pitch in Rocky IV (overuse of montages, implausible fight scenes, schmaltz, lionizing Rocky) were mostly present in earlier films. In particular, the first film featured a pretty believable fight (Rocky was lucky and determined, Apollo was playing, caught off-guard, and still won), which became less believable in the second film (Rocky was still injured, Apollo had been training for months), but it didn't seem impossible. In Rocky III, Clubber Lang losing to Rocky was seriously stretching it, given that Lang was younger, taller, heavier, and tougher than Apollo while Rocky was significantly older, but he at least had something resembling a character and was within the realm of possibility. By Rocky IV, the main villain has no personality and appears to be physically superhuman while Rocky had only gotten older, abandoning any semblance of down-to-earth realism as a thirty-nine-year-old goes fifteen rounds with a cartoonish muscleman who should be able to knock his head off his shoulders in a single punch, no matter how many trees he cuts down.
- Going beyond a franchise or even a genre, Saving Private Ryan has been blamed for the rampant abuse of color correction in Hollywood in the '00s and '10s, with filmmakers and editors washing the color out of their films for the sake of 'realism'. The thing is, Steven Spielberg used that type of desaturation in Saving Private Ryan not to make the film look more realistic, but conversely, to make it look more stylized — he was specifically angling for the look of old World War II newsreel footage, not real life. His gifts as a director, however, caused Saving Private Ryan to become the new standard for a gritty, realistic war movie, and its look was frequently copied over the years out of a misguided sense that Real Is Brown.
- As noted in this article, the first film in the Saw franchise had two Signature Scenes that, in hindsight, foreshadowed the problems that plagued the series in its later installments.
- The first was the 'reverse bear trap' scene. The Saw sequels' reputation as the Trope Codifier for Torture Porn is so infamous that few people realize just how light on blood the first film actually was, with many a Gory Discretion Shot instead of a gushing arterial spray. The Jigsaw killer's death traps were modest in scope, such as being forced to crawl through razor wire, walk barefoot over broken glass, or cut one's foot off in order to escape being locked away forever. The reverse bear trap was among the few exceptions, relying on intricate machinery to tear open the victim's jaw, but even then, it was a small contraption that a skilled engineer (like the Jigsaw killer, who was established as a Gadgeteer Genius through his creation of this device) could build in his spare time — and furthermore, the scene ended with the intended victim Amanda escaping from the trap rather than being subjected to its graphic punchline. There was also the 'drill chair' in the same film, but again, not only was the device a comparatively simple one and its intended victim rescued, but it was portrayed as an experimental design on Jigsaw's part, as he refers to the victim as a test subject.
Overall, the reverse bear trap scene didn't factor much into the plot (Amanda's importance came entirely in the sequels), but it was still a standout moment that was prominently featured on the posters◊, and so the sequels decided to up the ante. The Serial Escalation wasn't too bad in the second film, but by the third it had begun to stretch Willing Suspension of Disbelief as to just how a lone nutjob was able to build these overly-complicated clockwork monstrosities that often took up entire rooms, with the "angel trap" that ripped out a victim's ribcage being the tipping point for many. The fact that the new killers taking on the Jigsaw mantle after John Kramer's death weren't engineers like he was, instead being a recovering junkie, a police detective, and a medical doctor, only strained credibility further. Furthermore, the reverse bear trap was the first trap in the series where somebody had to die, as the only way for Amanda to escape was to cut open another person's stomach to retrieve the key. Jigsaw's original motivation (punishing people he deemed to be wasting their lives, but also giving them a chance to survive and redeem themselves) was lost as later films had far more traps that were either inescapable, required one of the participants to kill the other to survive, or left the victims with no agency and required somebody else to save them. The inescapable traps were initially justified by the new killers deviating from the original plan and seeking to outright murder those they judged unworthy, but even this motivation was eventually abandoned as Amanda was killed off and Hoffman became a proper apprentice of John Kramer's. By the fourth film, it was well-established that the reason people saw these movies wasn't to be scared, but rather, to be amazed at what twisted death traps they'd come up with next.
- The second was the Twist Ending. The Reveal that the seemingly dead man in the middle of the room was not only still alive, but was in fact the Jigsaw killer didn't really have much of an effect on the plot once you thought about it, especially given the more important reveal in that scene concerning Zepp, but it worked at its intended goal of shocking the audience, and when paired with Charlie Clouser's downright epic "Hello Zepp" theme, it became another great moment. The plot twists in the second and third films were better-integrated into their stories, but they also gave the series a reputation for a complex, overarching storyline. Once Lionsgate elected to keep the series going over the wishes of its creators (who wanted to end the series at #3), the Myth Arc went from complex to convoluted as new twists and killers were piled on in the sequels, while the original motive of the Jigsaw killer was slowly forgotten. Perhaps the increasing levels of gorn were an attempt to compensate for The Chris Carter Effect...
- The first was the 'reverse bear trap' scene. The Saw sequels' reputation as the Trope Codifier for Torture Porn is so infamous that few people realize just how light on blood the first film actually was, with many a Gory Discretion Shot instead of a gushing arterial spray. The Jigsaw killer's death traps were modest in scope, such as being forced to crawl through razor wire, walk barefoot over broken glass, or cut one's foot off in order to escape being locked away forever. The reverse bear trap was among the few exceptions, relying on intricate machinery to tear open the victim's jaw, but even then, it was a small contraption that a skilled engineer (like the Jigsaw killer, who was established as a Gadgeteer Genius through his creation of this device) could build in his spare time — and furthermore, the scene ended with the intended victim Amanda escaping from the trap rather than being subjected to its graphic punchline. There was also the 'drill chair' in the same film, but again, not only was the device a comparatively simple one and its intended victim rescued, but it was portrayed as an experimental design on Jigsaw's part, as he refers to the victim as a test subject.
- The Scary Movie films were horror parodies that always had a problem with sticking to the "horror" part. The first film had scenes spoofing The Matrix, The Usual Suspects, and Budweiser's "whassup?" ads, while the second had gags riffing on Charlie's Angels (2000), the Mission: Impossible films, and an ad campaign for Nike sneakers. In those films, however, these were only minor gags that had little bearing on the films' actual plots; the first was clearly a parody of the teen slasher movies of the late '90s, while the second was just as clearly a parody of supernatural horror. The third film, on the other hand, had a whole subplot that served as a parody of 8 Mile, and the targets of mockery were drawn more from pop culture as a whole than from horror movies specifically. Diminishing returns set in quick.
- Twins was this for Arnold Schwarzenegger. Dropping the Hollywood Action Hero into a PG-rated buddy comedy turned out to be a stroke of genius that earned him the biggest payday of his career, putting him on a Lighter and Softer track that would lead to a similar hit in Kindergarten Cop and to Terminator 2: Judgment Day pairing him with John Connor as a Tagalong Kid sidekick. As the movies were still good, it was okay, especially giving that he was playing Straight Man roles that sent up his superhuman screen persona. Before long, however, it would lead to Last Action Hero, Junior, Jingle All the Way, and Batman & Robin, which gave the action icon a serious case of Badass Decay and made it much harder for audiences to take him seriously.
- In addition to its post-modern parody of slasher movies, the Scream series was also known for having a surprisingly strong focus on characterization for the genre it was in. Everybody had their own backstories and motivations, all the better to create red herrings and make viewers question who the killer was. In the third film, however, this turned against the series in a number of important ways.
- The first problem was in how it tied everything back to the series' heroine Sidney. In the first two films, the lead killer out of the Big Bad Duumvirate had some personal connection to Sidney, but writer Kevin Williamson made sure to tie it to information that had already been revealed or otherwise implied in the story. In the first film, it was so heavily hinted that one particular character was the killer that the fact that they weren't a Red Herring was a twist in its own right, while in the second, the killer was never seen with anybody who might recognize them. Furthermore, the backstory was secondary to the whodunit mystery at the center of the film; the most important question in both films always concerned Ghostface's identity. The third film's plot, on the other hand, revolved entirely around Sidney's family backstory, and the killer's motivation hinged on familial relations that weren't even hinted at for that character before The Reveal. Many fans blame new writer Ehren Kruger, who had a very different understanding of the characters, for the third film's sequelitis, as well as a Troubled Production that saw substantial rewrites, including a different killer.
- Related to the above, Ghostface's identity was often played as a Plot Twist, especially when concerning the lead killer. The third film used similar tricks to the first two films to disguise the killer's identity and shock the audience, but it was widely criticized for using a Shocking Swerve for The Reveal.
- A criticism of the third film's lead killer was how he faked his own death to avoid suspicion by the protagonists and the audience. Not only does this criticism apply to the first film as well, said film was praised for using this twist. The difference was that the first film had the subsequent revelation that there were two killers, which answered the question of how the killer managed to pull that trick off. In addition, none of the protagonists ever checked Billy's "dead" body in the first film, unlike the third film, in which Gale checked Roman's "corpse" and confirmed that the body was in fact dead.note Thus, when the third film revealed that Roman wasn't actually dead and was the sole Ghostface, many viewers felt cheated.
- As mentioned before, most viewers criticized the killer's secret familial connection to Sidney, a criticism that also applied to Scream 2, where the killer had a secret familial connection to the first film's killer and was operating under a disguise. Nevertheless, the reveal was more acceptable for several reasons. For one, Mrs. Loomis was a mentioned albeit unseen character in the first film, whereas the killer's relationship with Sidney in the third film was a retcon. Furthermore, the second film hinted multiple times that Billy's mother was one of the killers, meaning that savvy viewers would be on the lookout for a middle-aged woman, a description under which "Debbie Salt" fell, not to mention that Gale did recognize Debbie Salt as a familiar face upon first glance. While the third film hinted similarly that Sidney's half-sibling was the killer, said description was unhelpful in identifying the killer, and the film never gave clues that Roman was the half-sibling in question, which then led to accusations of a Shocking Swerve upon the unmasking.
- Finally, there was the specific plot element of the murder of Maureen Prescott, Sidney's mother who had been killed a year prior to the events of the original film over her promiscuous and adulterous ways. Even many fans regard this aspect of the backstory as carrying a strong tinge of Slut-Shaming, though it's generally agreed that the quality of The Reveal helped temper the Unfortunate Implications, particularly with how the lead killer was portrayed as a complete and utter psychopath who was just using Maureen as an excuse to kill people. The third film made Maureen the focus of most of the plot, and with that film's drop in quality, it was a lot harder to ignore, even with Sidney's immensely gratifying Shut Up, Hannibal! moment during The Reveal.
- As for the TV adaptation, that show returning to the well of relying on the Final Girl's family backstory likewise became one of its most highly criticized aspects. While the Brandon James storyline in season 1 lacked the Unfortunate Implications of the Maureen Prescott storyline from the films, it was still seen as a retread of many of the most unpopular plot elements of Scream 3, this time without even a decent performance from the actor playing the killer. This may be why, despite season 2 ending on a cliffhanger, season 3, titled Scream: Resurrection, was a full Continuity Reboot with a new cast and show runners.
- Many of Aaron Seltzer and Jason Friedberg's trademark writing traits (shallow, narrow parodies depending more on references and audience recognition than actually making fun of the target, regardless of how well the reference works with the movie itself) are fully visible in their earlier, funnier movies, Spy Hard (which was barely saved by some of its clever bits, including its theme song by "Weird Al" Yankovic) and Scary Movie (which was saved by having four other writers, including the Wayans Brothers at the height of their careers). Then the duo dived headfirst into directing their own movies, with every problem that plagued the last two movies amped Up To Eleven. Worse, the box-office success of their movies caused other parody films to start copying their style, plunging the entire genre into a Dork Age in the '00s and eventual near-extinction in the '10s.
- At the time of The Sixth Sense, M. Night Shyamalan didn't have any reputation to speak of, so nobody saw the film's Twist Ending coming. The problem came when Shyamalan started relying on twist endings in his films, a problem that first became apparent with Signs, generally considered the last film of his that's any good. By the time of The Village, viewers had learned to see it coming, and his reputation and the quality of his films suffered for it.
- Shyamalan's early films were characterized by slow pacing, restrained and unemotional acting, a greater emphasis on creating rarefied atmospheres, and dialogue that often felt unnatural. That worked since they were suspense and horror films, however when he was commissioned to direct The Last Airbender, a fantasy and adventure film that stands out for its humor and spectacular fights, those features became serious defects.
- One of the principal reasons Spider-Man 3 is the least liked in the original Spider-Man Trilogy is because it was too goofy (the most commonly cited moment being the "Emo Dancing Peter" sequence), but the trilogy had always been pretty goofy: outsized and hammy personalities, cheesy action sequences, and a lot of moments that were deliberately going full Bathos. While there were a lot of heartfelt and emotional dramatic beats, the overall tone was very much "comic book come to life." However, the advertisements for the film very much played up the Darker and Edgier imagery and seemed to be promising a hefty amount of angst, which made the goofy bits stick out a lot harder. Furthermore, Spider-Man 3's plot ended up being notoriously cluttered due to featuring three villains with independent character arcs, Peter and MJ's relationship going south again, and the issues with the black suit—consequently, many of those moments ended up underserved, the dramatic beats didn't stick, and the audience only remembered Emo Dancing Peter.
- Superman:
- Superman: The Movie and its sequels suffered from this with Superman II noticeably adding more campiness and more New Powers as the Plot Demands, the third one just made it worse, and then the fourth one... happened and broke the Willing Suspension of Disbelief.
- One major critique of Batman v Superman is that Superman ends up coming off as a Pinball Protagonist; his role in the story is very reactive, his motivations are undefined and underexplored, and he has significantly less dialogue or development than Batman or Luthor. These complaints could be found in the somewhat less controversial Man of Steel, where most of Superman's pivotal choices are either things he has to do (killing Zod) or effectively made for him (Jor-El makes the costume for him and gives him his mission), he's largely silent for big chunks of the movie, and his actual reason for being a hero is pretty messily-established. It can even in turn can be traced to the first third of Superman: The Movie, where Clark is instinctively drawn to the Artic by a Kryptonian crystal and generates the Fortress of Solitude with it, with a hologram of Jor-El giving him his mission and training him mentally for over a decade, after which he first appears in costume.note It just wasn't as obvious an issue in Superman: The Movie or Man of Steel because Superman was still the undisputed protagonist and therefore had to be given stuff to do or choices to make, rather than having to actively fight for room against Batman.
- The at-best controversial reception of Zod's death in Man of Steel goes back to Superman II, where Superman also (in most cuts, anyway) kills Zod. If anything, it was less defensible there, since the Man of Steel Zod was still dangerous and it was the only way to stop him, while the Superman II Zod was depowered and already defeated, and Superman is clearly horrified and disgusted by what he's done in the former and triumphantly smiling in the latter. Plenty of Superman fans would argue it didn't work back then, either (Superman's frequent jerkishness in that film is easily the most common complaint about it), but it didn't end up being as infamous because while the original Zod death was a Disney Villain Death (to the point that it's ambiguous if he even died or just fell somewhere to be imprisoned, as in some cuts), the Man of Steel Zod was killed by a Neck Snap with considerably more focus placed on it, meaning it left far more of an impression and made Superman himself come off as brutal, despite the fact that it was the only way to save the innocent family Zod nearly killed with heat vision. The far grittier tone of Man of Steel didn't help, either.
- The depiction of Lex Luthor in Batman v Superman was roundly panned, with many fans in particular claiming that Jesse Eisenberg's jokey Large Ham portrayal of the character was ill-fitting and more suitable for someone like The Riddler or The Joker. This is yet another element that can be traced back to the Christopher Reeve films, where Gene Hackman very much played Lex as a jokester and could be quite campy at times. The main difference is that the Reeve movies were lighthearted enough that Hackman's performance didn't seem out of place, and the first two installments were so well-liked by critics and audiences that even those who didn't care for Luthor were more forgiving. Furthermore, Hackman seemed to be channeling James Bond villains with his performance, Hollywood's go-to reference point for the kind of comic book supervillain that Lex Luthor is, and not only was it easy for audiences to picture a Bond villain as a Worthy Opponent for Superman, but Hackman's performance stacked up well by that measure. By contrast, the extremely dark and bleak tone of Batman v Superman just highlighted how odd Eisenberg's performance was, with many finding it quite jarring and irritating — the revelation that he pees in jars even became something of a memetic counterpoint to those who claimed the film as mature and philosophical. The fact that Eisenberg seemed to be channeling Heath Ledger's performance as the Joker in The Dark Knight also invited unwelcome comparisons to that film, especially since his Luthor had little in common with the Joker otherwise. Finally, the Reeve films came out decades before Superman: The Animated Series, Lois & Clark, and Smallville, all of which helped cement the popular image of Luthor as a cunning and charismatic businessman and a scientific Übermensch who would probably have fit better into the story that Zack Snyder was trying to tell.
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2014) often gets flack for making April the focus of the story, though the film still centers around the turtles. The Turtles' personalities are well done, but they don't get much character development. Lacking Casey Jonesnote and putting in a villain (Eric Sacks) who had nothing to do with any of the comics or cartoons prior to that point was a mitigating factor too. The thing is that this problem can be found all the way back in the 1990 original. As pointed out by CinemaSins, Raphael is the only turtle who gets a character arc of some sort, Leo gets some, and Donnie and Mikey don't get any at all. Plus, Danny, a minor character, had a sub-plot that while it did not take over the whole film, was an odd decision. The reason why it wasn't noticeable back then was due to it being the Turtles' first film, the hype surrounding it, and a well written story with great practical effects and action scenes. The sequel, Secret of the Ooze, tried to fix the character development issue by putting the focus on Donnie's arc note , but it never really goes anywhere. Turtles III and TMNT (2007) both featured villains that had nothing to do with the comics or cartoons, albeit, the latter had Karai with hints of Shredder returning in a sequel that was never made. As Karai had yet to debut in the comics when the first two films were made, Tatsu was created to be Shredder's right-hand man. Ooze had Tokka and Rahzar as expies for Bebop and Rocksteady, because Peter Laird and Kevin Eastman did not want them in the film. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows, the sequel to the 2014 movie, attempted to fix that by dropping the Eric Sacks character entirely, adding in Bebop, Rocksteady, and Baxter Stockman (villains that have appeared in the cartoons or comics), and focusing on the Turtles themselves. Said sequel, while better than the previous film, still received a Rotten score and became a Box Office Bomb, so while the improvements helped it out, the upcoming reboot may have a lot to improve on.
- Mark Harris' GQ article "The Day the Movies Died", while noting how many critics have blamed the aforementioned Jaws and Star Wars for the rise of the Lowest Common Denominator Summer Blockbuster, pegs its origin instead on Top Gun. The success of that film, he argues, paved the way for the PG-13 action flick aimed at teenage boys and young men to become the default "blockbuster" template, causing other genres that had produced blockbuster films in years past (horror, romance, non-action science fiction, smaller-scale family films) to be crowded out. As the studios hyper-focused on the stereotypical "young male" (i.e. a stereotypical fratbro) to the exclusion of everybody else, television was left with an open field to march in and claim all the women and older viewers who had found themselves abandoned by Hollywood marketers.
- Transformers:
- The main character, Sam Witwicky, was never a particularly well-liked character, but his use in the first film is generally seen as the only one where he was tolerable. While he had a lot of This Loser Is You traits, this was counterbalanced by the fact that he had some attempt at a character arc and even a few sincere moments that implied those traits were a passing thing. Later films not only kept those traits, but seemingly had him get worse, and gave him nowhere near as much as a clear arc in favor of him being a Pinball Protagonist, putting his increasingly unlikable personality in the spotlight. Eventually the later films got the hint, and he wound up disappearing after the third film, replaced as protagonist from the fourth film onward by Cade Yeager, and implied in a photograph cameo in the fifth film to have been Killed Offscreen.
- Optimus Prime in the first film was involved in a few surprisingly brutal action scenes, including driving a sword through Bonecrusher's head, but these moments were fairly brief and mostly counterbalanced by his many thoughtful speeches that gave the impression that he wasn't just a killer. By the second film, though, said speeches are a lot rarer and seemingly every fight Prime gets in has at least one person having their head ripped apart while delivering lines that make it clear that he is revelling in it. The series didn't exactly improve in that respect from there, to the point that Prime has become the biggest Memetic Psychopath in the franchise.
Optimus Prime: Give me your face!- The Transformers film series has gained a reputation as Lowest Common Denominator blockbuster for its shallow characters, gratuitous fanservice, and recycled story. However, while the first installment had these problems, audiences and critics were able to ignore them since the film did offer spectacle on an unseen scale that successfully masked most complaints. However, as the series progressed, the film's creators did nothing to improve the film's reputation and the spectacle proved less effective when newer films, most notably the Marvel Cinematic Universe, offered similar types of bombastic action while also providing better writing and characterization.
- The films have been criticized for its needlessly sexualized portrayal of women most notably through Bay's use of the Male Gaze. However, although the female sexualization started with the first film's female lead Mikaela, most audiences were more forgiving since she is an actual character. As noted by Lindsay Ellis, Mikaela was written sympathetically with actual character depth as a Wrench Wench trying to atone for her criminal history, while also contributing to the plot. In contrast, the other female characters are depicted as eye candy for male viewers yet have none of Mikaela's charisma or Hidden Depths. Tessa from Age of Extinction is particularly hated by fans for being a whiny, bratty teen who doesn't actually contribute to the plot.
- The films of Zack Snyder:
- When 300 was released in 2007, it proved to be a huge hit with audiences, in large part because it pushed the use of uniquely stylized CGI like few movies before it ever had. It used computer animation to craft everything from environments to action sequences from the bottom up, creating a melodramatic spectacle that practically seemed to pop off the screen, evocative of both the art of the original graphic novel and the larger-than-life Greek epic poems that informed such. And even though it had many detractors at the time who criticized Snyder's Signature Style for being shallow and over-the-top, most people agreed that it was at least well-suited to a violent Sword and Sandal epic. note Audiences weren't so forgiving when he applied largely the same style to his movie adaptation of Alan Moore's Watchmen, a graphic novel that's about as far from 300 on the Sliding Scale of Realistic vs. Fantastic as it's possible to be. Where 300 was an escapist war epic tinged with mythic fantasy, Watchmen is a nuanced, intergenerational drama with a cast of complex, morally ambiguous characters defined by their human frailties. Paired with a story like that, the flaws that were so easy to overlook in 300 — the unnecessary CGI environments, the distracting costumes and makeup, the gratuitous slow-motion, and the elaborate action sequences occasionally sidelining the plot — just become even more glaring, making it a lot harder to forgive Snyder for burying the novel's complex themes under a thick layer of flashy melodrama. It's also been argued that many of the elements that would later prove controversial during his tenure in the DCEU, such as the morally dubious (and sometimes outright unlikable) protagonists, bleak tone and upsetting acts of violence, can also be traced back to 300. The difference, again, largely stems from 300 being a bloody, gory historical war film where those things were to be expected, while a great many viewers did not appreciate those same elements when they were applied to DC's beloved stable of heroes.
- And in turn, it can be argued (as it was by Bob Chipman) that the problems with Watchmen foreshadowed the problems with Snyder's work in the DC Extended Universe, particularly Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. While Snyder was able to preserve most of Moore's themes and ideas by making a literal adaptation, some of the changes that he did make heavily softened the themes and politics of the comic (namely making the fight scenes look cool rather than ugly and toning down the more unsavory character flaws like Rorschach's bigotry), and when added together, the changes made it seem as though Snyder questioned the intended message of the comic in favor of embracing the Darker and Edgier version of superheroes that it presented. note Snyder's DCEU films, meanwhile, were widely criticized for just that, portraying an emotionally aloof Superman who doesn't seem to care about humanity and a Batman who uses guns and murders criminals (either straight-up or by proxy), and seeming to many critics and fans like the worst excesses of The Dark Age Of Comic Books brought to life in big-budget blockbusters. Batman v. Superman in particular was criticized for borrowing the superficial elements of The Dark Knight Returns like Superman's exaggerated physique and Batman's absurd Bat-armor and playing everything straight in a dead serious light without capturing the satirical commentary of the original source material.
- Disney Animated Canon:
- Many of Disney's films from the second half of the 90's were criticized for not being faithful to the source material they were adapted from. However, if you go through the earlier entries in the Disney Animated Canon (including the earlier films of the Disney Renaissance), you'll find that most of the films that are adaptations play fast and loose with the source material, often employing Disneyfication. For example, The Little Mermaid (the film that started the Disney Renaissance) gave the original Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale a happy ending and turned the Sea Witch character into a villain, and Beauty and the Beast (the film considered by many to be the best film of the Renaissance) invented Gaston and turned the Beast into a hot-tempered antihero.note The difference is that most of the earlier films were adaptations of stories that had been adapted and/or retold many times before, which made most people more forgiving of how loosely the source material was played with. Whereas the main flaw in this was applying said approach to actual history as well as more well known mythology and literature. For instance, Hercules received the most criticism in Greece where people are most familiar with the original myths, due to the disneyfication toning down the morally ambiguous natures of the Greek society and especially the Greek gods in favor of them being nicer, and using Adaptational Villainy on Hades, a more sympathetic Greek god by modern standards, to make him become a Satan-like character.
- One could blame Aladdin for the Stunt Casting famous comedians as comedic side characters in Disney animated movies. Many at the time attributed Aladdin's financial success to the casting of Robin Williams as the Genie, which managed to attract mainstream audiences who would otherwise be indifferent toward animation.note While some, including Williams himself, were frustrated with Disney overmarketing and overhyping the Genie, Williams's performance worked because the character was tailored specifically for the actor and the Genie's comedic schtick suited the film's light-hearted fantastical tone. However, Disney and other animation studios became seemed obsessed with the comic relief sidekick voiced by famous celebrity to the detriment of their films. Most notably, many criticized the casting of Jason Alexander as the gargoyle Hugo in The Hunchback of Notre Dame, feeling that Alexander's performance as kid-friendly comic relief sidekick was an annoying distraction in a more serious movie involving hellfire and sexual imagery. Subsequently, several animation fans felt that this fad led to celebrities taking away roles away from professional voice actors and contributed to the stigma of animation being too childish and commercial.
- The earliest of the Disney DTV sequels, Aladdin: The Return of Jafar, didn't get much hate upon its release - not because it was especially better than its later counterparts, but because it wasn't advertised as a true followup to Aladdin. It was more or less just a pilot for Aladdin: The Series, and seen as pretty good by the standards of a TV pilot. When Disney began churning out similar projects of even lesser quality, and then advertised them as the canon sequels for their most famous and beloved films (even releasing a handful of them in theaters), then the entire enterprise was condemned as an exercise in Sequelitis. Also many sequels suffered from poorer animation, which would be more forgivable in a pilot to a series with a smaller budget, but in the sequels was more noticeable. These came to an end for good when John Lasseter became the head of Disney and cancelled most of the sequels that weren't too far along in development, leaving only those that were nearing their release intact.
- Many movies in the Disney Revival era, like Frozen (2013), Big Hero 6, and Zootopia are often criticized for overusing the premise of a Hidden Villain, with the The Reveal at the climax revolving around unmasking them. But when Wreck-It Ralph was the first movie to use it, it was one of the most praised aspects of the film at the time, as many longtime fans saw King Candy as a refreshing change of pace from past Card Carrying Villains in the Disney Animated Canon. The main reason Wreck It-Ralph was able to pull it off was because of several things it did that the other films didn't. First, it was pretty clear from the start that King Candy is not someone to be trusted. Second, there was subtle, but effective foreshadowing for the twist. Third, the twist centered on his identity and motivations, not the mere fact that he was a villain. And finally, The Reveal served a clear purpose in the narrative by revealing King Candy's true identity, Turbo, as an Evil Counterpart to Ralph. By contrast, Frozen (2013) has the Big Bad revealed near the end in such a way that makes his entire character do a 180 with barely any hintsnote that his actions were going to be leading to this, and it happens so late that the only villainous thing he successfully does in the entire film is lock Anna in a room. Big Hero 6 and Zootopia have it more noticeable, as Rob Callaghan and Dawn Bellwether repeat the same story beats as Turbo: they are the Evil Counterparts, respectively, of Hiro Hamada (if he gave in to revenge) and Judy Hopps (if she gave into her prejudices), as he was for Ralph.
- This trend went back to Pixar, whose Toy Story 2 and Monsters, Inc. had Hidden Villains in Stinky Pete and Henry J. Waternoose III. What saved those two was that there were other villains to pick up the slack (Al McWhiggin and Randall Boggs, respectively) and that their later villainous actions matched their established motives and characterization. Pixar also used the Hidden Villain in The Incredibles, Toy Story 3, and Up, but this was mitigated for the former two movies by having Syndrome and Lotso reveal their villainy about halfway through their movies, whereas with the latter movie Charles Muntz was not "hidden" so much as he was the only possible candidate for the villain if the story were to logically progress.
- This trend went back
- Dreamworks Animation first showed signs of their eventual 1st Dork Age in the mid 2000s in arguably their biggest success at the time Shrek, as it contained a lot of the elements that would end up reaching a fever pitch in their later pre-Kung Fu Panda films to their detriment (overusage of celebrity voice actors, massive amounts of contemporary pop culture references, and crude humor). However, these same elements worked in Shrek because, when combined together alongside a surprisingly strong and emotionally heartwarming story that also contained likeable and endearing characters worth rooting for, allowed it to work as a then brilliant parody of the kind of films that the Disney Animated Canon had been making serious money on at the time. Unfortunately, things started going downhill for them when they tried to take those same comparatively lesser elements that had worked so well with Shrek and apply them to films like Shark Tale that didn't have nearly as strong or emotionally resonant of a story or nearly as likeable or strong characters amongst their casts, the same elements that had served as descent background decoration for Shrek only proved distracting and irritating and stereotyped the studio in all the years that have since followed.
- One of the most common criticisms of Hollywood in The New '10s is that movie studios increasingly tend to rely on profitable Cash Cow Franchises at the expense of supporting original standalone films that can work on their own, to the point that some movie critics have called the decade "The Franchise Era of Hollywood". In fact, many of the worst excesses of the so-called "Franchise Era" can be traced back to several successful movie franchises from the Turn of the Millennium that are still quite fondly remembered by many moviegoers today—in particular, New Line Cinema's The Lord of the Rings movies, 20th Century Fox's Star Wars prequels, and The Matrix trilogy and the Harry Potter films from Warner Bros.. Notably, all of those series were more-or-less planned as series from the very beginning, many of them had several sequels that went into production at the same time, and all of them (except The Matrix) were either big-budget movie adaptations or big-budget follow-ups to previous films; the Harry Potter films even featured a Grand Finale that was long enough to be stretched into two movies—a fairly rare move at the time, which made for a pretty high-profile motion picture event.
But in the 2000s, such major movie franchises attracted buzz because they were fairly rare occurrences, and movie studios only really gave the "franchise treatment" to intellectual properties that could be justifiably seen as deserving several Epic Films. The Lord of the Rings was based on a trilogy of beloved fantasy novels that had been popular for nearly 50 years before they were made into movies, the Star Wars prequels were follow-ups to the most popular film saga in cinematic history, the Harry Potter films were based on one of the most massively popular book series of the 20th century, and The Matrix didn't get its two sequels greenlit until film critics started hailing it as one of the best American science-fiction films since Star Wars. And even when they did support movie franchises, studios generally knew when to stop, and only did as many movies as it took to tell a story.
In the 2010s, some moviegoers are understandably wary of franchise films when they account for around three-fourths of the films at the box office, when studios occasionally try to keep franchises going indefinitely, and when they fill movies with obvious padding to justify stretching one movie into several parts. Compare those aforementioned films to franchises like Twilight, The Hunger Games and The Hobbit, which got much more divisive receptions when they tried to stretch their final installments into bloated two-part epics—or, in the case of The Hobbit, tried to stretch a fairly short novel into a trilogy of films that ran nearly three hours apiece. Also compare those films to Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, which has faced some backlash for jumping straight into a Batman/Superman crossover before giving Man of Steel a proper sequel or even a solo movie for Batman, and for shoehorning Wonder Woman, Aquaman, The Flash, and Cyborg into the story just to make it easier to set up a future Justice League movie. Even the critically acclaimed Marvel Cinematic Universe has been criticized for trying to plan additional movies over a decade in advance, as if their movies couldn't possibly fall out of popularity before then. And while Star Wars: Episode VII — The Force Awakens was a big hit with audiences, Lucasfilm's decision to release at least one new Star Wars movie every year has been much more divisive, with cynical fans pointing out that the series can't possibly stay fresh forever, and indeed, the one-two punch of Solo and Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker showed how this approach could faulter both creatively (the first was a Troubled Production, the latter constantly rewritten) and financially (Disney didn't help Solo and the movie tanked, and even if Episode IX made money, audience reaction was mixed if not negative) and led to a hiatus in new movies.
themayorofsimpleton
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#174: Feb 14th 2021 at 5:47:12 AM
That trope is probably headed to TRS soon anyway for being a complaining magnet and not being particularly tropable, so just hang on.
mightymewtron
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#175: Feb 14th 2021 at 4:43:22 PM
Othello has this tangent in the description that starts off defending white depictions of the title character and then just...kind of rambles about 16th century races.
It's worth noting that in times past, it was usual for white actors to play Othello by way of Blackface, up to and past the 1960s, although Black actors have played the part occasionally since at least the 19th century. Thus, the early Othello movies have a white Othello. It is a case of post-facto Values Dissonance, but it does not make such portrayals inherently bad. As a Christian Moor, or part-Moor (as in, from Morocco, although that was a catch-all term to refer to any kind of African), Othello could have been anything from a fair-skinned and blonde-haired Kabyle to quite dark, the phenotypical diversity of Morocco being what it is— but he was most likely some light to medium shade of brown, like
◊ most
◊ Moroccans. We don't really know for sure. In his most recent portrayals he has been portrayed by very dark actors, and the "racism" angle—often using racial stereotypes as understood in the modern USA—has been played up considerably. This is even more severe of a Race Lift, as Morocco's predominantly Berber population (the most likely inspiration for Othello) is, in fact, caucasian, and someone in the Mediterranean Basin was unlikely to have ever even seen a Sub-Saharan African (bar Egypt's connection with modern Sudan) in the 16th century. What slaves there were in the 16th Century Mediterranean were predominantly Slavic peoples from eastern Europe, and if anyone was doing the slaving it was probably an Italian (specifically Genoan or Venetian), a Turk, or a Tatar. Racial characterisation of Sub-Saharan African peoples as inferior, the way we understand racism against them today, came after this period. A phenomenon largely, but not entirely, confined to the Americas it was a post-facto justification of sorts for the trans-Atlantic slave trade when it got going in earnest over a century later.
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This entry on Series.The Mandalorian was already a bit long but an editor just turned it into a certified wall of text (formatting error at the end not mine):