X Killer Cleanup

Too early, yes. Cut.

He also left Square Enix recently, so I don’t know what he plans to do after that.

Well, Naka said he was going to retire, so...if that isn't enough proof of Balan Wonderworld being a Creator Killer for Yuji Naka, I don't know what is.

I don't think that was really fair to cut the Balan Wonderworld entry. Besides, it's been 2.5 months since the game came out.

Edited by IvanovTroping97 on Jun 10th 2021 at 8:53:48 PM

Unless there was a better translation than the one I think everyone following the situation saw, all that was said was that he may retire. It's not locked in yet. Also, 2.5 months is barely any time on an industry scale.

This entry was added to CreatorKiller.Music yesterday, and something about it just isn't right to me:

• After successfully transitioning from country to mainstream pop music with hit songs such as "Constant Craving" and "Miss Chatelaine", Canadian singer k.d. lang torpedoed her career after journeying into the very polarizing animal rights movement and organizing a "Meat Stinks" campaign that caused radio stations in her native Alberta and several agriculture-heavy U.S. states to boycott playing her music. lang attempted comebacks in later years, but it was too little, too late. Arguably, lang is one of the few examples of association with PETA being the root of a Creator Killer moment, as many artists who support PETA (such as Paul McCartney, The B-52s and Carrie Underwood) have otherwise escaped association with the organization's behavior.

It's better served for Role-Ending Misdemeanor.

Bringing up a couple of examples from Spies in Disguise:

• Creator Killer: Probably not the direct reason, but the film’s financial underperformance couldn’t have helped in the decision to shutter Blue Sky.

• Stillborn Franchise: The semi-generic title clearly demanded a sequel, but the financial underperformance and as well as the death of Blue Sky assured otherwise to happen.

Found this on Trivia.Ice Age 5 Collision Course:

• Franchise Killer: This film more or less, caused a little History Repeats for Blue Sky's films.

And from FranchiseKiller.Film:

• The critical and commercial failure of Ice Age: Collision Course at the box office, as a result of being overshadowed by the vastly better-reviewed The Secret Life of Pets, resulted in no further Ice Age projects being made after 2016 (aside from a video game that was released in 2019), and may have resulted in a planned ice tour for the fifth movie being cancelled after only two stops. The franchise, now under the oversight of Disney, is now seeking to turn itself around via an animated series, revealed to be a new show starring the third film's Buck the Weasel (with Simon Pegg set to return for the part), though time will tell whether or not that gets off the ground. The shutdown of Blue Sky Studios in 2021 further dampened the prospect of a sixth entry being made.

Are these valid examples?

Edited by gjjones on Jun 21st 2021 at 11:51:20 AM

You can delete them both. The first admits it isn't an example, and the second is a stretch.

The first doesn't say that it killed the franchise, so it can be cut. The second can also be cut as the franchise is still going with a planned TV show.

Bringing up the following examples from GenreKiller.Film:

• Sleeping Beauty was received with indifference by critics and languished during a dismal time for the American box office, becoming unable to recoup the (at the time) huge costs of its decade-long production. The film's failure led the Disney studio to dramatically downsize its animation division and abandon more ambitious films for three decades. Similarly, 1000 Arabian Nights did badly enough to convince UPA to exit the theatrical business.
• The massive commercial failure and mixed reception of Disney's The Black Cauldron in 1985, including being beaten at the box office by The Care Bears Movie, killed any studio interest in PG-rated animated films^note except for The Transformers: The Movie the following year, which infamously had a "shit" added to bring it up to a PG rating, allegedly so parents would be in the theater to know what toys to buy until DreamWorks Animation's successes with Antz, The Prince of Egypt, and especially Shrek. Since then, it's become a standard to have animated films rated PG to allegedly increase their box office chances.
• Titan A.E. is often blamed for putting the era where more mature, artistic animation dominated much of the medium throughout the late 1980s to the 1990s to its coffin. Its inability to be defined as either a film for kids or a film for mature audiences, along with rampant Executive Meddling by Fox over budget and time constraints, led to the studio losing $100 million once the poor box office numbers came in. An immediate side-effect soon took place: studios began abandoning hand-drawn animation entirely in the years that followed, computer-generated imagery began receiving more investments and attention from said studios, and cartoons that were far more cheaper to produce than ever began dominating pipelines throughout the animation world, leading to The Millennium Age of Animation. Of course, Titan A.E. alone isn't solely to blame for the era's end; the success of Toy Story and the under-performance of Pocahontas five years earlier convinced studios that traditional animation was falling out of favor in the box office^note On a side note, traditional animation managed to stay afloat on TV as well as in foreign and indie markets, meaning that the era's legacy is still kicking.

And from Trivia.Sleeping Beauty:

• Genre-Killer: The film's failure to earn back its exorbitant budget resulted in this twofold: it was not only the last animated film based on a fairy tale that Disney would make until The Little Mermaid in 1989, it also ended Disney's second run of lavish, expensive animated features that had been restarted with Cinderella in 1950; this inadvertently began The Dark Age of Animation, as Disney was the last studio in Hollywood who was willing to spend money on full animation.

From Trivia.The Black Cauldron:

• Genre-Killer: Its failure killed any studio interest in PG-rated animated films until DreamWorks Animation's successes with Antz, The Prince of Egypt, and especially Shrek.

From Trivia.Titan AE:

• Genre-Killer: Titan A.E. is widely considered to be the film that ended The Renaissance Age of Animation, as the next traditionally animated films that followed were all box office failures, except for Lilo & Stitch and Brother Bear. As a result, computer-animated technology, which found wide acceptance thanks to the release of Toy Story, became the norm for both film and television by the end of the decade.
  • It was also one of a series of flops in the early 2000s (others being Disney's Atlantis: The Lost Empire and Treasure Planet and Columbia Pictures's Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within) that temporarily put the idea of animated action/adventure movies aimed at teenage boys on ice. It wasn't until the success of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse in 2018 that such movies became successful again.

Sorry for the late response. All of those can be cut. "Localized killers" have been established before (I believe) as not counting for Genre-Killer, so Sleeping Beauty can go. "PG-rated animated films" also aren't a genre, so Black Cauldron can go.

As for Titan A.E., that film alone did not even come close to ending the Animation Renaissance of The '90s alone (there were a lot of factors that led to that one, ranging from the end of the Disney Renaissance to the rise of CGI to numerous other factors,) meaning that can be cut, and "animated action/adventure movies aimed at teenage boys on ice" isn't a genre either, so that sub-bullet can go.

Bringing up the following examples from GenreKiller.Film:

• Basic Instinct 2 in 2006, besides derailing Sharon Stone's career as an A-list leading lady (ironically while reprising her Star-Making Role), also (at least according to Den of Geek) served as the final nail in the coffin to the erotic thriller genre. Not even the financial success of the Fifty Shades trilogy changed studios' minds.
• In spite of doing well at the box office, the 2006 remake of 1974's Black Christmas got such horrible reviews that it convinced Hollywood not to give the Christmas Horror genre another chance for almost a decade. Director Glen Morgan blamed the studio for the poor critical reception, saying he was unhappy with Dimension Films ordering dozens of reshoots and script rewrites to the movie, though backlash from Moral Guardians regarding the film's content and release date (it was released on Christmas Day) could also be to blame. It wasn't until around 2015 when another Christmas Horror movie, Krampus, was released to theaters. Thankfully, Krampus was both favorably received and was an instant box office success, sparking hope that the genre may be headed back to Hollywood interest.
• The critical and commercial failure of 2006's Zoom: Academy for Superheroes killed the idea of a Superhero School film being commercially viable after the success of Sky High (2005); to add insult to injury, this may be part of the reason Disney chose not to work on sequels for the former (the other being the fact that the box-office returns weren't as high as they'd hoped). While the genre found success in other mediums (My Hero Academia, for example), no films in the genre have appeared since.

And from Trivia.Basic Instinct 2:

• Genre-Killer: The film, besides derailing Sharon Stone's career as an A-list leading lady (ironically while reprising her Star-Making Role), also (at least according to Den of Geek) served as the final nail in the coffin to the erotic thriller genre.

From Trivia.Black Christmas 2006:

• Genre-Killer: The film's extremely negative reviews and lackluster box office killed off the Christmas Horror genre for nearly a decade. It took Krampus to resurrect to notion of the genre as theatrically viable - however, the underperformance of Black Christmas (2019) may have put it right back in jeopardy.

The first two seem to be good examples as the genres titles are fairly concise and were genuinely popular (Fifty Shades isn't a thriller though). I'm not sure about the third example because "Zoom" and "Sky High" are the only examples of that genre I can think of

Agreed with

Bringing up the following examples from GenreKiller.Film:

• Home on the Range was a Troubled Production beset by Executive Meddling amid the growing discontent acrimony between Michael Eisner and Disney's higher-ups and employees as the company failed to catch up with CGI movies in time (only after the ill-fated demise of Treasure Planet Disney announced the production of CG films), and its negative reception and box-office failure led Disney to announce an all-CGI schedule.
• The Fractured Fairy Tale replaced the Animated Musical as the go-to story genre during the 2000s thanks to the success of DreamWorks Animation's Shrek in 2001, resulting (as the Disney musical had in the 1990s) in numerous copycats. Unfortunately, the genre's reliance on crude humor, big-name celebrity voice talent, and dated pop culture jokes turned it stale within a few years. And by the time 2007's critically-panned Shrek the Third came out, the market had become overcrowded with them. Happily N'Ever After concluding that year with a thud and the next major DWA project, Kung Fu Panda, changing that studio's animation strategy, signaled the beginning of the end for the genre. The (perceived) financial disappointment of Shrek Forever After in 2010, a year that otherwise saw a rather successful resurgence of more traditional animated films (Toy Story 3, Tangled and DWA's own How to Train Your Dragon) and the arrival of Illumination Entertainment's Despicable Me, ended up turning other animation studios off of using the formula, and the box office failure of Hoodwinked! Too! Hood vs. Evil in 2011 killed the genre off for good.
• The failure of Mars Needs Moms resulted in the shut-down of Robert Zemeckis' Image Movers Digital studio and with it, the death of full-form motion-capture animation. However, Serkis Folk mo-cap animation for live-action features is still very much alive.
• The Plague Dogs is known for being one of the most depressing animated films ever made. The Western audience wasn't ready at all, so the concept of dark, almost entirely un-comedic animated feature films was shelved in the aftermath. It wasn't until the late 2000s until the concept found a revival with works such as Persepolis and Waltz with Bashir. Even these, however, were not widely released in the United States.

And from Trivia.Home On The Range:

• Genre-Killer: As far as 2D Disney animation goes it almost killed the franchise, until The Princess and the Frog redeemed it somewhat.

From Trivia.Happily N Ever After:

• Genre-Killer: This film's embarrassing failure and Shrek the Third doing worse than the previous two films in that series more or less made it clear the "Fractured Fairy Tale" genre was running its course and was about to expire; one of the major sources of fuel for this part of the animation medium, Disney CEO Michael Eisner (who had managed to turn himself into an enemy of nearly everyone in Hollywood), had been eliminated from the picture two years prior in a second shareholder revolt, which began the end of a major Dork Age for Disney and also didn't help the "Fractured Fairy Tale" genre's chances.

From Trivia.Shrek The Third:

• Genre-Killer: This film getting a lukewarm reception, the failure of Happily N'Ever After, and the loss of several sources of fuel for the "Fractured Fairy Tale" genre (one of which was Jeffrey Katzenberg's former boss Michael Eisner, who had been cast out of Disney a few years earlier) began a decline in the trend and led to the more traditional animated musical and adventure animation seeing a revival.

From Trivia.Mars Needs Moms:

• Genre-Killer: Its flopping spelt the end to Motion Capture animated films. This is one of the reasons why the sequels to The Adventures of Tintin, released shortly after, have yet to see the light of day as a result despite that film being relatively successful.

Sorry for the very, very late response, but here goes.

• Home on the Range can be deleted, per the "localized killers" not counting rule.

• The Fractured Fairy Tale example lists many killers, despite the fact that this trope requires just one killer be listed. Delete the example for now, unless it can be rewritten to be about a single killer for the genre.

• Motion-capture animation is not a genre. Cut.

• "Dark, almost entirely un-comedic animated feature films" are also not a genre. Cut.

This was recently added:

• The poor reception to the Habit Heroes ride at Epcot has effectively halted any further Disney Theme Parks attractions at Epcot not based on existing intellectual properties.

This doesn't even remotely sound like a genre. Cut?

Bringing up the following examples from GenreKiller.Film:

• The 40-Year-Old Virgin in 2005 and Superbad in 2007 are often credited with killing the teen Sex Comedy. On one hand, the success of The 40-Year-Old Virgin proved that sex comedies aimed squarely at grown adults (with teenagers playing only supporting roles) could be just as successful as teen-oriented films like American Pie. On the other, Superbad mocked and deconstructed the genre so viciously that viewers could no longer take it seriously, cementing the public view of teen sex comedies as being weird, pathetic, lowbrow schlock that toed the line between sexy and sexist. The rise of internet porn, allowing such films' target audience to easily access far more explicit material than what could be shown in an R-rated film, merely read the genre's obituary.
  • Adult-geared sex comedies remained wildly popular for the rest of the decade, stricter MPAA guidelines and changing mores post-2010 made it even harder to sneak more intense material. Subsequent attempts at reviving the genre, like Project X, have been widely reviled while 2011's Bad Teacher and the sequels to 2009's The Hangover were subject to greater scrutiny than previous works.
    While 2012's Ted gave the male-oriented adult comedy genre a shot in the arm by mostly relegating the sex content to the sidelines, followed by other R-rated comedies such as Bad Neighbors, the subgenre's reputation was affected in 2016 by Dirty Grandpa and Bad Moms. The former, while doing well at the box-office, received such an overwhelmingly negative response that subsequent attempts at the sub-genre in the same year (including Zoolander 2, Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping, The Nice Guys, Bad Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising, Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates, Rules Don't Apply, Bad Santa 2 and Why Him?) either became financial disappointments or outright flops^note Mike and Dave and Why Him? broke even by their impressive overseas performances, while the latter was aimed specifically at women and was more successful than all of the aforementioned films. Nearly every adult comedy made thereafter was either aimed at a female audience (Girls Trip, Rough Night) or both men and women (The House, Game Night, Blockers), but a lack of interest in humor from studios due to slipping box-office numbers (aside from lack of success outside the English-speaking world) pretty much reduced comedy films to direct-to-video/streaming material with the odd limited theatrical release.
• xXx: State of the Union in 2005 (according to Mathew "Film Brain" Buck in his Bad Movie Beatdown series) killed the early-mid '00s trend of fast, modern, teen-oriented action films centered on extreme sports (i.e. The Fast and the Furious, the original xXx, and their many copycats). While the Fast film series, which pioneered the trend, is still going strong today, later installments have focused more on straightforward action and car chases as opposed to the earlier, more extreme sports-centered installments.
• The works of Seltzer and Friedberg (starting with Date Movie in 2006) have been blamed for killing parody movies. Wile they were able to make a profit for many of their parodies despite low critic and audience ratings, mostly thanks to using a low production budget and being among the only game in town when it came to parodies, the deathblow to the genre came in the form of the lackluster reception of Disaster Movie, leading to audiences having become fed up with the usual formula and finding better parody material from independant creators online. Though their next movie, Vampires Sucks, was seen as a slightly better movie than most of their other work, mostly because they actually decided to watch the movies they were making fun of for once, the damage to the genre was already done. Even slightly better ones like Superhero Movie (probably not helped by being named in the same "<name of genre> Movie" style used by S&F) have been lumped in with their disasters. And making matters even worse was how far too many creators who were looking for a quick buck was able to easily replicate the Seltzer/Friedberg-formula to a T, oversaturating the market with failed shallow parodied that only caused further damage to the genre.

And from The 40-Year-Old Virgin:

• Genre-Killer: The success of this naturalistic, mostly improvised indie-style comedy ushered in a new trend of similar films which completely displaced the over-the-top, Totally Radical gross-out studio comedies of the previous decade.

From Seltzer and Friedberg:

• Genre-Killer: You could argue that the spoof genre would have died out in the late 2000s regardless, as audience tastes moved to "bromance" films, ensemble pieces and more intellectual comedies, not to mention the rise in popularity of quickly-produced (and, therefore, more topical) web-based comedy, but Seltzer and Friedberg helped completely drive the genre into the ground, with Disaster Movie being seen as the one that officially signified its death. These days, most spoof movies are relegated to Direct-To-Video or digital.

Alright, here goes.

• The first bullet I think can stay. It's a legit genre, there are legit killers, and there's even a source to back it up.
  • The sub-bullet doesn't seem to know what genre it is describing, and can be cut.
• The xXx example can go. "The early-mid '00s trend of fast, modern, teen-oriented action films centered on extreme sports" isn't a genre.
• The first Seltzer and Friedberg bullet can stay with a rewrite, as it is very complain-y (and a slight Wall of Text). S&F definitely did a number on the parody film genre.
• The example from YMMV.The Forty Year Old Virgin can go for once again not clearly describing which genre it killed.
• And finally, the bullet on Creator.Seltzer And Friedberg can be rewritten, as in its current form it violates Examples Are Not Arguable and claims the genre would have died anyway (I personally don't think it would have, though if there is disagreement from anyone go ahead and say so). Focus on the negative effect of the creators works on the genre specifically if rewriting.

The second bullet point has a misuse of i.e.

i.e. is used for clarification, not for examples.

See here: https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/ie-vs-eg-abbreviation-meaning-usage-difference

Edited by Nen_desharu on Jul 8th 2021 at 11:54:47 AM

Bringing up the following examples from GenreKiller.Film:

• School of Rock in 2003, being a send-up of inspirational teacher movies, basically killed that sub-genre and created a new type of sub-genre where the teachers are rather useless (such as Half Nelson and Bad Teacher). Attempts at reigniting the sub-genre (such as Freedom Writers and Larry Crowne) have been critical and box office disappointments. Some may argue that the genre's still alive in the form of "Inspirational Coach Movies" such as Coach Carter, Miracle, We Are Marshall, and The Blind Side.
• Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle and Lara Croft: Tomb Raider – The Cradle of Life in 2003, Catwoman (2004) in '04, and Elektra in '05 killed off the idea of the female action protagonist in Hollywood cinema for quite a long time, with writer David Hayter claiming that the Black Widow movie that was in the works at the time was shelved for this reason. Later big-budget Hollywood movies did have Action Girls, but usually in secondary roles as love interests or fanservice characters. Haywire and Salt both attempted to revive the genre and did moderately well, but not enough to create a critical mass in its favor. Since then, the massive success of The Hunger Games franchise, as well as the growing demand for superhero movies starring someone other than White Male Leads, led to WB finally releasing a Wonder Woman movie in 2017, with Marvel following suit with 2019's Captain Marvel. The critical and commercial success of Wonder Woman solidified the viability of female-led action/superhero films as major blockbusters (see below).
• The overwhelmingly negative reviews of 2004's one-two punch of Christmas with the Kranks and Surviving Christmas dried up interest in doing Yuletide comedies, which had been popular ever since Home Alone came out 14 years earlier, the only year two Christmas films have competed at the box office since was in 2006 with Deck the Halls and The Santa Clause 3, with both films being ravaged by critics, who have mostly shunned any attempts to do another holiday movie. During the second half of the 2010s however, Christmas-themed films aimed towards mature audiences such as A Madea Christmas, Krampus and A Bad Moms Christmas have become popular.

And from School of Rock:

• Genre-Killer: This movie more or less killed the Save Our Students sub-genre in favor of a variation of Adults Are Useless using teachers. Newer attempts at relaunching the genre (Freedom Writers, Larry Crowne) have failed in favor of films inspired by this (such as Bad Teacher).

From Catwoman (2004):

• Genre-Killer:
  • The failure of both Catwoman and Elektra was a major reason that studios became so skittish about female superhero movies. Of course, this has resulted in numerous accusations that it was just being used as a cheap excuse, acting like them both being such awful movies couldn't be a factor in no one wanting to see them. It took the DC Extended Universe's Wonder Woman more than a decade later to eventually prove that a female-led superhero movie can succeed critically and financially.
  • Likewise, the failure of this film was also one of the reasons for which studios became unwilling to do any more superhero movies focused on villains. Another superhero film centered on a villain would not be made until Sony Pictures released Venom fourteen years later, which was negatively received as well, yet audiences mostly loved it. In the end, it wasn't until the next year that Warner Bros. released Joker to universal acclaim, effectively redeeming themselves from the disaster Catwoman was and demonstrating that bad guys have a possibility of shining on the big screen.

From Elektra:

• Genre-Killer: The failure of this and the previous year's Catwoman (2004) put an end to female-led action movies for several years, until The Hunger Games and Divergent franchises came along. It's widely thought that this is also the reason Black Widow did not get a solo movie in the Marvel Cinematic Universe until 2021, as well as other female superheroes having to be introduced as secondary characters in other movies. It took the DC Extended Universe's Wonder Woman to eventually prove that a female-led superhero movie can succeed critically and financially.

From Christmas with the Kranks:

• Genre-Killer: The film's negative reception ended the trend for Christmas family movies kick-started almost 15 years earlier with Home Alone. Ironically, Chris Columbus was involved with both films.

Check out this mess of an entry:

Trivia.North

• Creator Killer: Surprisingly, Rob Reiner's career as a director recovered from this cinematic fiasco the following year with The American President; that said, the film derailed Reiner’s critical hot streak that he’d had since This is Spın̈al Tap, and he has not had a critical hit since President (and only one box office hit with The Bucket List). The only careers this film might have permanently destroyed are that of writers Alan Zweibel (who had some words on the matter) and Andrew Scheinman, the former of whom also did not do another film until the end of the 90's (in Scheinman's case, it didn't help that 1994 also saw his directorial debut, the even bigger flop Little Big League).

Edited by PlasmaPower on Jul 10th 2021 at 9:22:39 AM

Cut. If his commercial career survived the film, it can stay.

Here goes.

• Cut School of Rock on both pages. Inspirational teacher movies are a trend, not a genre. (Although if anyone disagrees say so.)
• "The female action protagonist" isn't a genre. That entry can go. (Neither are "superhero movies focused on villains," for the record, so that can also go.)
• What the hell are "Yuletide comedies"? That entry can also go. ("Christmas family comedies" is similarly vague, and can go as well.)

I think Yuletide Comedies work as a genre. They are comedies set around Christmas, and include the likes of Home Alone, Elf, Bad Santa, Deck the Halls, Christmas with The Kranks, etc.

Regarding Rob Reiner, I don't think An American President is as iconic as his pre-North output. His entry should be reworded, not cut, because that movie did do legitimate damage to his career

On an unrelated note, I have been on this thread since it was created, and an astounding number of Genre-Killer entries have been cut for being "trends" rather than "genres". Makes me think that there should be a page for "Trend Killer". I know that people would point out to Discredited Trope, but that is for when a trope stops being used due to technological or sociological changes. "Trend Killer" is when a popular trend loses steam because works that tried to cash in on it started bombing.

I also think that Genre Killer is applicable if recent attempts to revive it bomb (Animated Shock Comedy, which actually sounds like a genre), or if the sole surviving example is a case of Grandfather Clause (like Saw for Torture Porn Horror)

Edited by magnumtropus on Jul 10th 2021 at 7:45:08 AM

Trivia.Stitchs Great Escape

• Franchise Killer: The poor reception of this attraction, the continued misplaced grudge that a number of American Disney Parks fans have against Stitch because of this ride replacing the ExtraTERRORestrial Alien Encounter and the character's then-overmarketing, and the franchise's loss of American popularity—which the ride actually marked the beginning of—killed off any prospects of another Lilo & Stitch attraction or show ever running in the United States,^note besides the incredibly short-lived Stitch's Supersonic Celebration in 2009 including any chances of an American port of the better-received Stitch Encounter.

Is this even a franchise? I don't think so.