magnumtropus
Since: Aug, 2020
#102: Jan 23rd 2022 at 11:38:14 PM
People still like Depp, so I don't think he is truly fallen. Remember that Animaniacs controversy? And people calling out WB for firing Depp from Fantastic Beasts, but letting Heard stay in Aquaman 2?
Edited by magnumtropus on Jan 23rd 2022 at 11:39:55 PM
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
#103: Jan 24th 2022 at 1:35:29 PM
From the Radio folder:
- For years, favorite targets of Howard Stern's ridicule included the obscenely rich, extreme political activists, famous people coerced by their spouses into promoting their attempts at also being famous, those that remarried people much younger than them, other celebrities he perceived as lazy or undeserving of their fortune and fame, and entertainers that stayed in their chosen profession much longer than they should have. Now Howard is in his late 50s, has completed a 5-year 500 million dollar radio contract (only to be awarded another multi-year multi-hundred million dollar contract), and has a second wife (19 years his junior) who constantly promotes various silly animal charities and seems to be trying very hard to use Howard's fame to become a hostess, actress, or writer. Howard also seems less interested in the radio show and only works in the city of New York 3-4 days a week before running back to his home in the ritzy Hamptons in Long Island. Some of his fans are less than pleased with what he has become.
It would be great to reword "Now Howard is in his late 50s" as examples are not recent. Not just that, but that line was added in 2012.
Regarding the Blizzard Entertainment example in the Video games folder, should Microsoft's purchase of Blizzard be mentioned?
Edited by Nen_desharu on Mar 9th 2022 at 9:37:59 AM
Kirby is awesome.
HamburgerTime
Since: Apr, 2010
#104: Feb 1st 2022 at 6:07:36 PM
Another entry I think needs to go: Jeph Loeb. Or at the very least, it really needs a trim; it's a gigantic List of Transgressions clearly written at the height of his hatedom, ca. 2008-09 (none of his work later than his Incredible Hulk run from those years is mentioned, which incidentally also gives us a pretty good barometer for how long the page has been locked; wild.). And since he had a very understandable reason for his Creator Breakdown, I just don't feel comfortable dogpiling on him like that.
Would very much like to hear opinions on George Lucas, as well.
Edited by HamburgerTime on Feb 1st 2022 at 8:08:15 AM
#105: Feb 1st 2022 at 7:40:45 PM
So I mentioned earlier about separating directors and actors
Film - Directors
- When George Lucas started out his career, American Graffiti earned him critical success and several Oscar nominations for making such a groundbreaking film. Then, of course came Star Wars, which revitalized the science fiction genre and turned into a landmark film and franchise that, to this day, remains very near and dear to the hearts of many, as well as Oscar nominations for him personally and the movie. Despite a few missteps in the '80s, he made his mark again with Indiana Jones, another series of critical and fan darlings that still endure. However, much of his success during this period was the result of him getting a number of friends (including future critically-acclaimed filmmakers Francis Ford Coppola, Brian De Palma, and Steven Spielberg) to read them and offer advice concerning which ideas worked and which didn't. It's also been said that in the original Star Wars trilogy, especially A New Hope, bad lines were ad-libbed over by the actors (Harrison Ford is on record saying to Lucas while filming A New Hope that he "could type this shit... but you sure as hell can't say it"). As time went on, his works were rarely vetted by anyone other than himself, and seemed to borrow more from his own previously rejected ideas. The results of having nobody to cover up his weaknesses were predictable. Starting in The '90s, his prestige as a fandom idol began to take swift hits due to multiple different Star Wars recuts with some controversial changes, the mixed-reception to the Star Wars prequels that swiftly divided a once relatively united fanbase, and his long-delayed return to Indiana Jones receiving a lukewarm response at best (it was actually widely acclaimed by critics
, though the fan base is much more divided).Today, Lucas is just as likely to be reviled as he is to be praised. He still has no trouble finding an audience to see his movies (even the new Indy was a commercial success), but a sign of his decline is the usually negative reaction a Star Wars spin-off receives whenever his involvement is revealed and the likelihood that a review is going to start calling out the usual flaws in his work.
- Ivan Reitman used to be a well-respected Hollywood director that first broke out into fame by directing Meatballs and is best known for being the man behind Ghostbusters, as well as several successful comedies like Stripes, Twins, Kindergarten Cop, and Dave. However, after many huge flops following the release of Dave, his cred dropped considerably, to the point where even the critics began to openly dread his screen credit. My Super Ex-Girlfriend, for instance, had a critic in Newsday asking "... why was it made? ... And, most important, why is there 10 bucks missing from my pocket?" He did claw some respectability back in 2011 with No Strings Attached, which got decent reviews and topped the box office in its first weekend, but he still faces a lot of work if he's ever going to fully restore his reputation.
- Between the three of them, the trio of "Zucker Abrahams Zucker" (affectionately nicknamed "ZAZ") did The Kentucky Fried Movie, Airplane!, Police Squad!, and The Naked Gun. They started splitting up after the first Naked Gun film and separately, all three of them have declined into this trope. Jerry Zucker's last film was the critically panned and mostly forgotten Rat Race, after which he appears to have retired entirely, Jim Abrahams and David Zucker are stuck with Scary Movie 4, and David Zucker had the high-profile flop An American Carol (an Anvilicious parody whose protagonist was a Strawman Political Michael Moore expy). That last one notably tried to play up his earlier success from Airplane!, which caused the few critics that actually saw it (it wasn't screened for critics) to remark on how terrible it was in comparison to his earlier movies and how unfunny he has been since.
- M. Night Shyamalan may be the fastest example of this happening in the history of film. After his exceedingly awesome debut, The Sixth Sense, his movies continued to rely on a thin pattern of obligatory but telegraphed twist endings and characters awkwardly bonding in forced situations. This might have not even done him in if not for his huge ego that constantly riled at his critics, and increasingly more important Self-Insert/Mary Sue parts for himself in each of his films. Once regarded as "the next Alfred Hitchcock", he's become a joke about twist endings and The Sixth Sense is generally regarded as a lucky fluke. While his works did not decline in quality immediately, as he later directed Unbreakable, which had good critical reviews, and Signs, which had lukewarm critical reviews but good box office numbers, he suffered one flop after another, leading to the self-indulgent mess of Lady in the Water and the widely loathed Film of the Series The Last Airbender. Shyamalan showed good promise years later with The Visit and Split, but his 2019 film, Glass, was released to poor reception.
- John Landis, the director of Animal House, The Blues Brothers, An American Werewolf in London, Trading Places and the video for Michael Jackson's "Thriller", suffered one of the grislier disgraces on this list. While he was filming a segment for the Twilight Zone: The Movie anthology movie, a Landis demanded the helicopter get closer in each shot against the advice of stunt men and actors alike. A crash killed actor Vic Morrow and two illegally employed child actors. Landis shook off criminal charges in a highly publicized court case, but the accident was a serious blow to Landis's career. In spite of this, he still made fairly successful movies for most of the '80s, and had a major hit with Coming to America. What really derailed his career totally was the over-budget, out of control production of Beverly Hills Cop III, and the subsequent flop of Blues Brothers 2000 confirmed the kill. He then retreated to documentaries, a field in which he hasn't declined yet (he won an Emmy in 2008 for Mr. Warmth: The Don Rickles Project), and is only now getting back into making feature films.
- Another writer-director who took a fall was Blake Edwards. He established himself in the late 1950s/early '60s with Breakfast at Tiffany's, Days of Wine and Roses, The Pink Panther series, etc. He hit rough waters later (the biggest flop of his being Darling Lili), but the Pink Panther series revival in 1975 brought him back around, and his non-Panther films (especially Ten and Victor/Victoria) were well-received too. He even managed to write and direct a thinly fictionalized Take That! to Hollywood (S.O.B.) for his earlier treatment during this period. Then Peter Sellers, who played Inspector Clouseau in the Panthers, died — and Edwards made Trail of... using outtakes and flashbacks of Sellers, and Curse of... using a Replacement Scrappy. Critics were appalled, Edwards and United Artists were sued by Sellers' widow over Trail, and both were box-office underachievers. Edwards made a lot of movies over the next ten years, but to diminishing returns, to the point that MST3K once made a joke where a "brainwashing" machine says "Blake Edwards makes a really good film..." He did receive an Honorary Oscar in 2004, though.
- Rob Reiner was a force to be reckoned with as a director in the 1980s-'90s: This is Spın̈al Tap, The Princess Bride, Stand by Me, When Harry Met Sally..., Misery, A Few Good Men... and then he made North in 1994, and its box-office and especially critical failure saw his reputation crater, with only 1995's The American President and 2007's The Bucket List being a comparable success since.
- Francis Ford Coppola. He brought the world The Godfather saga and Apocalypse Now in the 1970s. Then the disaster One from the Heart came along, and since then his filmography has largely been a big string of commercial and/or critical disappointments (one of the few bright spots is Bram Stoker's Dracula). He has admitted that he did Jack and several other of his later films simply to avoid bankruptcy.
- Michael Cimino went from The Deer Hunter, the Best Picture Oscar winner of 1978, to Heaven's Gate just two years later. Its failure was so catastrophic that, as noted at Genre Turning Point, it ruined United Artists as a stand-alone studio and turned Hollywood off the Western for a decade or more. A while later, Paramount signed Cimino to direct Footloose, but when filming was to have started he demanded more time and money from the producers, who fired him. He only made a handful of further films before his death in 2016.
- The career of William Friedkin, director of The French Connection and The Exorcist, never really recovered after Sorcerer, in spite of its positive reception from critics, flopped at the box office on release in 1977. (It didn't help that it was completely overshadowed by a little film which came out right around the same time...). Add his reputation as a Bad Boss Prima Donna Director...
- Hal Ashby, after creating classics such as Harold and Maude, Coming Home, Shampoo, and Being There, made a string of critical and commercial failures in the '80s, ruining his reputation, until he couldn't find work anymore. He was dogged by rumors that he'd become an unreliably eccentric drug casualty, but a biography (Being Hal Ashby by Nick Dawson) suggests that this was mostly malicious gossip spread in retaliation for his fighting back against Executive Meddling. Ashby smoked epic amounts of weed and loved his booze, but it was his workaholic and perfectionist tendencies and unwillingness to compromise that really hurt his reputation in Hollywood. He died from cancer in 1988 just as he was starting to make a comeback.
- Robert Altman began the 1970s with the success of M*A*S*H in 1970 and Nashville in 1975, two films which epitomised New Hollywood, and had influence far beyond their box office take. He then spent the rest of his directorial career falling and rising and falling again in twenty-year cycles. His work in the rest of the 1970s left the box office cold, and eventually turned off the critics; several of his films from the late 1970s and early 1980s remain unavailable on DVD. He began the '80s with a disastrous musical version of Popeye starring Robin Williams, and was forced to work in television for a while, until The Player and Short Cuts in 1992 and 1993 rehabilitated him; he threw it away with 1994's Pret-a-Porter, but seemed to be coming back into fashion when he died in 2006.
- Peter Bogdanovich was compared to Orson Welles with The Last Picture Show, and succeeded it with the successful comedy What's Up, Doc? and the equally acclaimed Paper Moon. It all went downhill from there, with the negative reception of Daisy Miller and Nickelodeon being the decisive points (1985's Mask being his sole bright spot afterwards).
- Writer/director John Hughes was the man who practically defined 1980s pop cinema. He hit it big right out of the gate with his teen-oriented smash-hits like Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, and Pretty in Pink. He hit a plateau with Planes, Trains and Automobiles and began a slow slide downward with mediocre but more dramatic films like Some Kind of Wonderful. He had his last major success with Home Alone and its sequel, before bombing with a string of lowbrow flops in the '90s, including Curly Sue, Baby's Day Out, the So Okay, It's Average Home Alone 3, and a major holiday flop with his Miracle on 34th Street remake; his biggest hits were the live-action 101 Dalmatians and Flubber, the remake of classic Disney film The Absent-Minded Professor. Flubber was a critical disaster, but still financially successful. After 2001, he wrote scripts for the direct-to-video Beethoven sequels and a couple minor hits (Maid in Manhattan and Drillbit Taylor) under the pseudonym of "Edmond Dantes" until his death in 2009.
- Stephen Herek established himself as a big name director during the 80's and early 90's. Among his big hits were Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure, The Mighty Ducks, and The Three Musketeers (1993). That all changed in 2005, however, when he directed Man Of The House. Slammed by critics and audiences alike, Herek has since been stuck to directing Direct to Video movies, such as the sequels to Into The Blue and The Cutting Edge.
- While Roman Polański is still generally acknowledged as a gifted artist, when he raped a thirteen year old girl and fled the country, a lot of people were appalled. It was, however, an extremely complex situation which also involved allegations of judicial misconduct, and there are many people who are going to reserve judgment until he actually comes back to America and faces the courts, as well as some die-hard fans who don't care. Even before the incident a lot of critics felt that Polanski had betrayed the promise of his earlier films and had been riding on his reputation for a while. While Chinatown was universally praised, Polanski only joined the project well into its development. His other early '70s movies (Macbeth, What?, The Tenant) were mostly commercial and critical flops.
- Fred Dekker directed two of the most well-known cult classics of the 1980s: The Monster Squad and Night of the Creeps. In 1991, he took on the job of writing the screenplay for and directing the much-maligned sequel RoboCop 3, effectively killing the RoboCop franchise in the U.S. for several years. Dekker stayed out of the limelight, and only stepped out of hiding more than a decade later to help produce the first season of Star Trek: Enterprise.
- Joel Schumacher had some acclaimed films in The '80s and The '90s, such as The Lost Boys, St. Elmo's Fire, and Falling Down. Yet when he's the director chosen by Warner Bros to turn Batman Lighter and Softer... while Batman Forever made some money while dividing people, the dreadful Batman & Robin led him to picking lower budget films, most of which were failures (the critically acclaimed Tigerland and the critical and commercial hit Phone Booth being exceptions). The next big-budget film he directed, The Phantom of the Opera, met with popular approval, but critics denounced it as overproduced and badly directed. (The film was nominated for three Academy Awards, but not for Best Director or Best Picture.)
- Director Tod Browning had a string of successful silent-film collaborations with Lon Chaney, and helmed the seminal talkie vampire film Dracula (1931), but after the initial disaster of Freaks, it was all downhill. However, Freaks has become Vindicated by History and is now considered an underrated classic.
- The Wachowskis have been lurching dangerously towards this status over the last few years. After a modest start with Bound (which didn't do all that well at the box office but performed pretty nicely in the VHS market, no doubt due to the volume of lesbianism it featured) they hit it big with The Matrix, which many acclaimed for "revolutionizing" the action genre. Since then, it's been a gradual downwards slope. The Matrix Reloaded did pretty well at the box office, but there was a nagging feeling among viewers that it should have been a lot better, and later that year The Matrix Revolutions was widely slammed as being nigh-incomprehensible as well as being a poor conclusion to the series, and did only moderately well at the box office. V for Vendetta saw a brief return to form (although they didn't direct it), but since then it's been downhill all the way, as they helped to produce a butchered re-edit of The Invasion, had a major money loser with Speed Racer, and their following production, Ninja Assassin sank without a trace at the box office.
- Roland Joffe received Best Director Oscar nominations for his first two movies, The Killing Fields and The Mission. It's all been downhill from there, leading to him directing widely-panned torture porn film Captivity (with Elisha Cuthbert) in 2007.
- Nicolas Roeg, director and cinematographer, was the guiding force behind sci-fi landmark The Man Who Fell to Earth, Walkabout), and Don't Look Now (also on the list and voted the eighteenth best film ever made by The Times). Yes indeed, The '70s were an amazing time for him. His films in the eighties were largely overlooked, and in The '90s he was making movies like the straight-to-cable, soft-core erotic film Full Body Massage with Mimi Rogers and Bryan Brown.
- In the late '80s and early '90s, Luc Besson was an internationally acclaimed filmmaker whose movies The Big Blue, La Femme Nikita, The Professional and The Fifth Element continue to be popular with audiences and critics alike. Then he started focusing more on producing and writing increasingly panned French action movies such as the Taxi franchise, as well as anglophone movies that, while enjoying a certain amount of success overseas, were either ignored or panned by French critics. In later times, in spite of his successes with the adaptations of his own Arthur and the Invisibles trilogy, he is dismissed by most French critics as a once-talented sellout who writes and produces loud, dumb and cliché-ridden action movies.
- John McTiernan was one of the biggest action directors of the late 1980s and early '90s with films such as Die Hard, Predator, and The Hunt for Red October. It was pretty hit or miss after that with Medicine Man and Last Action Hero both underperforming and getting mixed reviews. McTiernan made "good again" by returning to direct the third Die Hard film in 1995. Unfortunately, this was followed by the massive financial flop that was The 13th Warrior. The remake of The Thomas Crown Affair was McTiernan's last "real" hit. What followed was extremely harshly received (not only financially, but critically) remake of Rollerball. McTiernan's next film (and his final film to date), Basic, despite the presence of John Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson also received mostly negative reviews. After that, McTiernan was in the news more for his criminal conviction in the Anthony Pellicano wiretapping scandal than for his movies.
- Robert Zemeckis fell victim to this in early 2011 with the spectacular failure of Mars Needs Moms. It's too early to tell if it may grind the performance capture movies Zemeckis was a champion of to a temporary halt (October's The Adventures of Tintin was a big success critically and commercially), but in the meantime, it has led to the closure of his studio. At least, this may prompt him to return to "traditional" movies...
- Japanese directors Hideo Nakata and Takashi Shimizu were internationally acclaimed for their forays in the J-horror genre (Ringu for Nakata, Ju-on for Shimizu). Their acclaim was so good that they came to the United States to remake their own films. Nakata's The Ring Two made money but was critically panned (mostly for retreading the remake of the first film's events) and Nakata has struggled to gain back his momentum (an attempt at a comeback with Chatroom was a critical and commercial disaster). Shimizu's first American film The Grudge was a hit but its sequel was badly received and became a Creator Killer for him and its star, Amber Tamblyn. Nearly all of his post-The Grudge 2 projects have been complete disasters.
- John Singleton started his career out with a bang with Boyz n the Hood, which was a box office hit and got him Academy Award nominations for Best Original Screenplay and Best Director (he was the youngest to be nominated for the latter). After a number of acclaimed films in the 1990s, the changing box office climate in the 2000s made Singleton a dinosaur and forced him into making for-hire projects such as 2 Fast 2 Furious. One of the big reasons for his downfall was that Paramount apparently screwed him over after he made a deal with them for Hustle & Flow, basically they promised him two independent films, but they made it all but impossible for those films to get made. The bottom fell out in 2007 when he was in a car accident that caused him to accidentally kill a man (he was acquitted though), which led him to become a pariah in Hollywood. His first post-accident project was the critically mauled Abduction, and the other films he made before his death in 2019 similarly failed to re-capture the fame and glory of his early days.
Film - Actors
- Kevin Costner fell victim to this. His Academy Award for Dances with Wolves earned him immense critical acclaim for his directing and acting, and Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, The Untouchables, and The Bodyguard were big hits if not critical faves. However, a series of flops (or at least expensive underperformers), most famously Waterworld and The Postman, led to him not even receiving promotional billing on his films out of fear that just mentioning his involvement could doom a project. He has since recovered somewhat by focusing on more careful, lower-key projects such as The Guardian and the superb Mr. Brooks.
- Peter Sellers himself was this for a time. In 1964, he was an acclaimed actor with the success of The Mouse That Roared, The Pink Panther and Dr. Strangelove. But then he suffered a series of heart attacks. While his first post-attack film, What's New Pussycat?, was a hit, After the Fox was a disappointment, and his behavior on the set of Casino Royale (1967) was so infamous that the producer and Columbia Pictures blamed him for many, if not most, of its problems. His difficult nature and disappointing films made him almost Condemned by History (particularly with American studios) until the Pink Panther revival and Being There turned things around, an example of how the fallen can be redeemed. He looked to be on the verge of throwing it all away again with 1980's disastrous The Fiendish Plot of Dr. Fu Manchu, but in a piece of incredibly good timing, he died a month before it was released.
- Lindsay Lohan had a decent start to her film career with remakes of The Parent Trap and Freaky Friday (2003), and seemed poised to transition well to young adult stardom with Mean Girls and A Prairie Home Companion. Immediately afterward, her reputation tanked hard thanks to drug addiction and numerous car crashes, plus a publicized letter during the making of Georgia Rule about her frequently showing up late to the set thanks to going out partying the night before. After seeming to hit rock bottom with the universally panned I Know Who Killed Me, Lohan went through rehab and publicly stated that she let success go to her head and she would try to maintain a better public image from now on. Then came her recurring role on Ugly Betty, where she reportedly acted like such a diva on set that the storyline was heavily rewritten just to get rid of her, though there are conflicting reports that say she left the show due to Creative Differences over the way her character was handled. In 2012, she appeared on Saturday Night Live, and though many watched the episode, critics gave mixed-to-negative reviews, noting that she didn't play a big role in the sketches. Her attempted comeback in the role of Elizabeth Taylor in the Lifetime movie Liz & Dick that year was also poorly received.
- In The '90s, Robin Williams (having built himself up from being just a stand-up comedian / sitcom star) was one of the most beloved comedic actors. He was doing it all: Adult comedies, kids' films, a few dramas here and there. And for one film in that last category, Good Will Hunting, he won an Oscar. And then he made Patch Adams, which wasn't even a bad movie, but many people were turned off by the combination of overly-zany humor and saccharine drama, and many also believed that the other doctors in the film were right. From then on, many television shows viewed him as a kind of walking punchline rather than the jokester. People started to focus on his less-than-stellar career choices like RV, License To Wed, and Old Dogs while ignoring his better output such as House Of D, The Big White and World's Greatest Dad (it doesn't help that the former three are major studio films while the latter three are from independent studios). The exceptions are films like Insomnia and One Hour Photo where he plays the villain. A series of well-received stand-up specials helped to restore some of his lost respect in the years leading up to his 2014 suicide.
- Molly Ringwald achieved success high school/teen films in the 1980s with Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club and Pretty in Pink. However, her relationship with writer/director John Hughes ended on a sour note when she turned down Lea Thompson's role in Some Kind of Wonderful. Also, by the end of the '80s and start of the 1990s, Ringwald turned down roles that would prove to be star making roles for Meg Ryan (When Harry Met Sally...), Julia Roberts (Pretty Woman), and fellow Brat Packer Demi Moore (Ghost). For a good share of the '90s, Ringwald spent time in France only resurfacing for the short-lived ABC sitcom Townies (co-starring a pre-Dharma & Greg Jenna Elfman and pre-Gilmore Girls Lauren Graham). Ringwald however, would poke fun at her iconic high school movie status with a cameo in the 2001 film Not Another Teen Movie. Ringwald is perhaps most known these days for her role on the considerably Anvilicious Narmfest on ABC Family called The Secret Life of the American Teenager.
- Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, Burt Reynolds was one of the biggest movie stars in the world. However, by the start of the 1990s, he seemed to be more in the news for his personal life (such as his messy divorce from Loni Anderson and having to file for bankruptcy) than for his acting. Around this period, Reynolds transitioned himself into being a television star with the B.L. Stryker TV movies for ABC and the sitcom Evening Shade for CBS. Reynolds would resurface in the critically bashed buddy movie Cop & a Half. It wasn't until Reynolds' Oscar nominated turn in Boogie Nights that Reynolds regained some respectability, but even that didn't last too long, and the remaining films he made before his death in 2018 mostly sank without trace.
- Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle was one of the top film comedian/director/producers in the beginning of The Golden Age of Hollywood. After a scandal in 1921 where a woman died of kidney failure at a party Arbuckle held, and (unsubstantiated) rumors kindled by the press formed that Arbuckle raped the girl while she was unconscious, crushing her under his weight, his good-guy image fell hard. Arbuckle, even while acquitted in court, had to resort to working under pseudonyms as a movie director for the rest of his life. Neither he nor his career ever fully recovered from the rumors (tragically, he had reportedly just signed a film contract with Warner Bros. that looked as though it might restore his reputation hours before his death in 1933), and the scandal was reportedly one of the catalysts of the passing of The Hays Code.
- Following her breakthrough role in When Harry Met Sally..., Meg Ryan starred in a string of successful romantic comedies and dramas over the course of the 1990s (perhaps most notably, her three films with Tom Hanks, the latter two, Sleepless in Seattle and You've Got Mail both grossed over $100 million at the domestic box office). However, Ryan's reported affair with her Proof of Life co-star Russell Crowe (while Ryan was still married to, albeit separated from, Dennis Quaid) did serious harm to Ryan's "good girl", "America's Sweetheart" image. Ryan gained further negative publicity while promoting the erotic thriller In the Cut on the UK talk show Parkinson. Ryan gave a few one-word answers, acknowledged that she wasn't comfortable with the interview, and stated she would "just wrap it up" if she were in his position. Parkinson later revealed to the press that he felt her behaviour to his earlier guests, What Not to Wear co-presenters Trinny Woodall and Susannah Constantine, whom she turned her back on, was "unforgivable". Ryan also commented that Parkinson was a "nut" and said that she was "offended" by him as he was like a "disapproving father" in his tone. Ryan's ill-advised cosmetic procedures (which further diminished her Girl Next Door appeal) also served as a major blow to her career. Following the 2004 boxing drama Against the Ropes (which flopped at the box office and was panned by critics for bearing too much of a resemblance to other boxing movies, such as the Rocky series), Ryan didn't appear in another movie for three years. Ryan would resurface in the independent movie In the Land of Women and the direct-to-DVD movies The Deal and Mom's New Boyfriend. Ryan's next major theatrically released film, 2008's The Women, received significant negative response from critics and holds only a 13% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Ryan herself would also be nominated for a Worst Actress Razzie for The Women, alongside co-stars Annette Bening, Eva Mendes, Jada Pinkett Smith, and Debra Messing.
- After Signs, Mel Gibson decided to take a break from acting and focus on directing, eventually making the controversial but successful The Passion of the Christ and Apocalypto. But then his personal life made him a very hated person, with allegations of anti-Semitism and racism, and arrests for DUI and domestic violence. In 2010, he attempted an acting comeback with Edge of Darkness, which flopped. And then came the release of a series of recorded phone conversations with his ex-girlfriend, in which his lunatic behavior seems to have been cranked Up To Eleven. It's probably safe to say he'll never fully recover from this; he got kicked out of a cameo in The Hangover Part II after Zach Galifianakis raised holy hell, and The Beaver flopped despite being one of the most acclaimed unproduced scripts from the last couple decades. To make it worse, despite a promising trailer, his next movie, the domestic debut of his next movie, Get the Gringo, was not theatrical, but on DirecTV's video-on-demand.
Film - Other
- Woody Allen is a multi-talented actor, director, writer, and musician. (For example, he holds the record for most Academy Award nominations for Best Screenplay — fourteen.) First becoming famous as a stand-up comic in the 1960s, he went on to major film successes like Sleeper, Bananas, Annie Hall, Manhattan, and Hannah and Her Sisters (among others) in the '70s and '80s. His films began to decline in prestige and commercial success in the 1990s; in fact audiences favoring his "early, funny" films were already a problem for him in The '80s. Unfortunately, he also had a massive scandal in his personal life that overshadowed much of his earlier work — an affair with his long-time lover Mia Farrow's adopted daughter, Soon-Yi. Because he had known the girl since she was seven, it didn't matter very much that she was 22 at the time they married and that she was a legal adult when the relationship is believed to have begun, thus dogging him with jokes about pedophilia ever since. This ended his relationship with Farrow and also estranged him from one of their biological children in the aftermath. It didn't help that the real-life scandal caused audiences and critics to be more judgmental about his tendency to romantically pair his characters in films with ones played by very young actresses, although he's far from the only Hollywood offender there. Allen's films continued to decline, with several massive flops in the late '90s and 2000s, with minor bright spots in 2005's Match Point, 2008's Vicky Cristina Barcelona and 2011's Midnight in Paris. While he is prolific, with at least one new film each year since 1982, his glory days appear to be well behind him. It doesn't help that Woody Allen came out and supported Roman Polański after the famous director was arrested for drugging and raping a thirteen year-old girl.
- Former Disney CEO Michael Eisner was brought in by Roy E. Disney after the first "Save Disney" campaign in 1984. Eisner took Disney to the major market force that exists today — returning it to higher-budget films, creating the Touchstone division for adult-oriented material, and pushing for the much-lauded Disney Renaissance that revived animated films after the false start of The Black Cauldron. He believed in Who Framed Roger Rabbit and brought new interest to the golden age of animation, while getting Disney into television animation (resulting in Duck Tales, Darkwing Duck, TaleSpin, Gargoyles, etc.). But when Disney's president Frank Wells died in a helicopter crash just before the release of The Lion King in 1994, long-time studio chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg expected to be promoted to fill Wells's position. When Eisner refused and forced Katzenberg to resign, he left the studio to found Dreamworks, whose animation arm became a major competitor to Disney's. The promotion of Eisner's friend Michael Ovitz to the position was a disaster that upset most of the shareholders. Disney's new films, shows, and theme parks began to tank one after another in the late '90s and early 2000s — accused of becoming formulaic, obsessed with The Merch, and in the case of the parks outright lazy and cheap, while the old animated films were hit hard by Direct to Video Sequelitis. Eisner was also famous for being a control freak. He rejected the CSI franchise, hated Lost and Desperate Housewives which were immense hits for ABC, all while pushing his own project which was basically "Stacy's Mom" by Fountains of Wayne as a sitcom. Eisner burned enough bridges that even Pixar was ready to end their long partnership. In the wake of this, Roy E. Disney resigned from the board of directors and started a second "Save Disney" campaign to get rid of Eisner, who resigned under extreme pressure in 2005. Bob Iger, rebuilt the bridges with Pixar, among other things, and while his reign as CEO did face several criticisms (most notably the start of Disney Live-Action Remakes), the company as a whole became more financially successful than they had ever been. Eisner's guest-hosting stint on The Charlie Rose Show not long after his ouster led to him getting a regular talk-show on CNBC; he continues to expand into Internet production and he bought the Topps baseball company.
- National Lampoon made a name for itself as a humor magazine spun off from the Harvard Lampoon. Their first film, Animal House, was an American classic and a huge box office successnote . The National Lampoon name was a valuable commodity, and they licensed it out to other films. The success of the Vacation series only added to their clout. Then the magazine fell hard from its '70s peak, and they have since attached their name to a string of low-budget "teens behaving badly" productions: Senior Trip, Dorm Daze, and Van Wilder are relative highlights.
- Vincent Gallo. After making a career as a supporting actor in films like The Funeral, he made his acclaimed directorial debut Buffalo '66. Then he made his infamous follow up The Brown Bunny, which led him to an unsuccessful war of words with critic Roger Ebert, who had previously supported his career. Since then, he has mostly been in tabloids for his extremely bizarre behaviour (e.g. trying to put a hex on Ebert), his truly venomous personality (e.g. criticizing Christina Ricci for her weight, unprovoked four years after working with her), his own claims of genius, and his vitriolic verbal tirades (e.g. calling Francis Ford Coppola "a fat pig", Sofia Coppola "a parasite" and Martin Scorsese "an egomaniac has been, who hasn't made a good film in twenty-five years"). While he still has a sizeable fanbase, even his most ardent supporters have come to accept that he is an unfortunate case of talent undone by ego. Nowadays, he is more likely to be known for inspiring the character of pretentious jerkass Billy Walsh in Entourage.
- In film scoring, Hans Zimmer protege Klaus Badelt was a rising star in film scoring with his work in action films such as The Time Machine (2002) and Equilibrium, with his high point being the score in Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl. Then a pair of high-profile flops (Catwoman2004 and Poseidon) combined with the reveal that the majority of the Pirates of the Caribbean was really the work of Zimmer (Badelt simply taking credit) irreparably destroyed his career. He's still around but as a lower-tier composer in Zimmer's canon, scoring mostly little-seen indies and straight-to-DVD films.
- Warren Beatty was once a renowned actor/director, but that all changed when he made Town And Country which was both a Box Office Bomb and a flop with critics, the behind-the-scenes drama of the film (Beatty insisting on doing re-shoots of almost every scene, causing the film's budget to swell from $40 million to $80 million, quite a large amount for a romantic comedy) didn't help him either. He didn't make another film for a decade and a half, and said film, Rules Don't Apply, was similarly mostly ignored by critics and audiences. Ironically, at the start of the 1990s, Beatty had somewhat of a Career Resurrection with Dick Tracy (the most commercially successful film of his career) after the previous biggest flop of his career in 1987's Ishtar.
Multimedia
- Ben Elton
- He was a leading figure of alternative comedy in the eighties and, among other things, co-wrote The Young Ones and Blackadder (which he helped grow its literal beard). Several less popular shows, novels, and West End productions plus a perceived shift in politics later, his name is more or less code for "talentless hack." For many critics and fans, The Thin Blue Line was the turning point, as on the basis of The Young Ones and Blackadder many people were expecting it to be a vicious black comedy about police incompetence, corruption, brutality and racism. What they got was a more traditional sitcom in the vein of Dad's Army. In 2011 Elton wrote and presented a stand-up/sketch comedy variety show in Australia, Ben Elton Live From Planet Earth, which was heavily promoted as something of a comeback and intended to be a flagship for the Nine Network, the station it was airing on. Unfortunately for him, viewers and critics largely agreed that it was actually a contender for one of the worst shows of the year; it was widely pilloried as dated, unfunny and hackneyed, and hemorrhaged from 805,000 viewers to 233,000 over the first episode alone. It was eventually cancelled after three episodes, and it looks unlikely that Elton's going to be returning to the screen any time soon.
- Elton was at one point doing well as a novelist, Popcorn and Dead Famous in particular being both bestsellers and critically well-received; but he hit a low point in 2005 with The First Casualty which not only did not sell well and was panned in reviews, but also earned him a "Bad Sex Awards" nomination for the worst sex scene in fiction that year. None of his subsequent books have recovered his former success.
- Kevin Smith is almost permanently in danger of heading this way since the mid-2000s in spite of his rather rabid fanbase. After a mostly succesful ten-year career making indie comedies, his attempts to make movies outside of The View Askewniverse have usually been met with mixed-to-negative reactions. Jersey Girl was loathed even by his die-hard fans (his statements that the film wasn't for critics didn't help either). Then Clerks II, another View Askew work, made the fans happy again for a while. And despite the again-lackluster box office returns, Zack and Miri Make a Porno was critically well-received. However, Cop Out, the first film which he directed but did not write, was critically panned and is only remembered for the documented Hostility on the Set with Bruce Willis. Red State, a religious horror film outside of Smith's usual forte, was once again well-received, especially because of Michael Parks' performance as Pastor Abin Cooper. His subsequent films, Tusk and Yoga Hosers have again been met with either disinterest or derision. He's also attracted some negative attention due to his poor handling of an incident with Southwest Airlines and a bizarre self-adulating stunt over the distribution rights to Red State.
- His occasional comic book writing for both DC and Marvel has also generated criticism for his controversial handling of several different characters (Marvel editors have since admitted that they didn't rein in Smith like they would've for other writers) and Schedule Slip.
Edited by randomtroper89 on Feb 11th 2022 at 3:19:05 AM
despoa
Since: Aug, 2012
#106: Feb 2nd 2022 at 12:12:45 AM
@Hamburger Time Jeph Loeb was still part of the Marvel Television department before Marvel Studios took over, where he was accused of being biased against Asians and meddling in stories where Asian characters would have been the focus. We could point Ultimatum to nobody putting a leash on Loeb's depression ruled writing, but he still wrote the story that ultimately led to the literal destruction of the Ultimate Universe.
As for George Lucas, he's still a lousy writer with many good ideas as many people have noted. Yes, people regard the prequel trilogy higher than the sequel trilogy these days, but it's still definitely held as inferior to the original trilogy. Also, every work George Lucas had a story credit in after the Prequel Trilogy flopped.
Fighteer
Lost in Space
from The Time Vortex
(Time Abyss)
Relationship Status: TV Tropes ruined my love life
Lost in Space
#107: Feb 4th 2022 at 7:04:24 AM
I noticed an entry under Fallen Creator for Team17, the folks behind the Worms video game franchise, while I was searching for an actual creator article (that doesn't exist).
For one thing, the entry seems to be dated around 2011, which violates the principle that examples shouldn't be written for a specific timeframe. Second, I don't see how there is anything "fallen" here. Sure, Team17 isn't a huge name in gaming, but it has never been one of those mega publishers, and I recently learned that it has a lot of studios working under its label.
In other words, I'm not convinced that it ever rose high enough to have fallen to the point of qualifying for this trope. Certainly it hasn't ventured very far outside its comfort zone, but there's nothing wrong with that.
Edited by Fighteer on Feb 4th 2022 at 10:13:42 AM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
despoa
Since: Aug, 2012
#108: Feb 4th 2022 at 9:30:35 AM
Looking at their catalog, they have a lot of games I haven't even heard of. They're comparatively low profile and seem to be doing pretty well as far as I know. No scandals to speak of and a steady stream of decent titles. You can remove the entry if you want.
Fighteer
Lost in Space
from The Time Vortex
(Time Abyss)
Relationship Status: TV Tropes ruined my love life
#110: Feb 4th 2022 at 4:54:33 PM
I am just curious if anyone thinks splitting directors and actors is a good idea. The post above will show you how it looks like.
despoa
Since: Aug, 2012
#111: Feb 4th 2022 at 6:51:57 PM
Fine by me, though some people like Michael Eisner are not directors.
#112: Feb 5th 2022 at 12:19:59 AM
I put him in the other folder with acting directors, Klaus Badelt, and National Lampoon
EDIT: Maybe I should take out Mel Gibson, since he is more an actor then director
Edited by randomtroper89 on Feb 5th 2022 at 2:32:17 PM
miraculous
Goku Black
(Apprentice)
Goku Black
#113: Feb 5th 2022 at 1:47:53 AM
Could we like trimm some of these. They're legit massive and I'm not sure why there are multiple paragraphs for one person.
"That's right mortal. By channeling my divine rage into power, I have forged a new instrument in which to destroy you."
magnumtropus
Since: Aug, 2020
#114: Feb 5th 2022 at 2:12:43 AM
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
While you have it here, could you make some of the entries less... complainy? specifically Eisners
Albert3105
Since: Jun, 2013
#115: Feb 5th 2022 at 3:24:44 PM
Is Another Eden a sufficient Career Resurrection for Masato Kato (who is listed on Fallen Creator)? Another Eden seems to be universally praised and has lasted for 4 whole years so far.
Edited by Albert3105 on Feb 5th 2022 at 6:25:37 AM
#116: Feb 7th 2022 at 9:16:06 PM
His entry's not that convincing in the first place, TBH. "Guy did a bunch of beloved games in the 90s, then his subsequent work was forgettable" doesn't really read like Fallen Creator material to me.
Siegfried1337
Unofficial co-Wiki Curator for Magnificent Bastard
from the Ashes
Since: Sep, 2018
Relationship Status: A cockroach, nothing can kill it.
Unofficial co-Wiki Curator for Magnificent Bastard
#117: Feb 8th 2022 at 3:57:31 PM
Yep, it's convincing. Remove him from the list.
Albert3105
Since: Jun, 2013
#118: Feb 9th 2022 at 10:28:49 PM
Is it time for Yuji Naka to be added to Fallen Creator? Balan has damaged his reputation, painting him as out of touch with modern game design and deflating all the hype beforehand about him being one of fathers of the classic Sonic era.
Fellow once-celebrated Sonic designer Naoto Ohshima (who helped Naka make Balan) may also follow suit.
Edited by Albert3105 on Feb 9th 2022 at 1:37:18 PM
despoa
Since: Aug, 2012
#119: Feb 9th 2022 at 11:45:47 PM
Care to elaborate for both of them? I kind of see why for Yuji Naka but not the other one.
Albert3105
Since: Jun, 2013
#120: Feb 9th 2022 at 11:52:14 PM
I was also thinking of how Ohshima's companies Artoon and Arzest have a really bad reputation in the Mario fandom for producing lackluster Yoshi games.
Edited by Albert3105 on Feb 9th 2022 at 2:58:36 PM
despoa
Since: Aug, 2012
#121: Feb 11th 2022 at 12:45:05 AM
I took a look at the company's selection of games and they appear to be unremarkable all around. There's the Blinx Games and the Last Story which all came and went, but other than that there's nothing really to say about them that would deserve a Fallen Creator designation.
Albert3105
Since: Jun, 2013
#122: Feb 11th 2022 at 7:50:41 AM
Aye, will lay off on Arzest. However, Naka still qualifies?
despoa
Since: Aug, 2012
#123: Feb 11th 2022 at 2:44:21 PM
Can you explain why you think he is a Fallen creator?
Siegfried1337
Unofficial co-Wiki Curator for Magnificent Bastard
from the Ashes
Since: Sep, 2018
Relationship Status: A cockroach, nothing can kill it.
Unofficial co-Wiki Curator for Magnificent Bastard
#124: Mar 6th 2022 at 1:55:39 AM
Yeah, unless you have proof of why he qualifies as such (Being unable to produce any more good work, past works held in a more negative light, controversies, etc), you're probably going to list it under Creator Killer (which already has an entry btw).
#125: Mar 9th 2022 at 6:27:02 PM
Should we bring back the Fallen Creator Sandbox?
Total posts: 211
I've been thinking, should Johnny Depp be on the list. Yeah, we know about Amber Heard, but Depp seriously hasn't been in anything big for years now.