Well established characters ruined by new material

Risewild

Risewild

Antediluvian as Feck
Modder
Orderite
It's what the title says.
Post some well established characters that you think got ruined by new material. You can elaborate and debate why you think so with people who may disagree with you.

Try not to name call and just have fun.

I will start with Spiderman. This new Homecoming movie, while not being a horrible Super Hero movie ruins the character by making him be what he isn't in the well established universe.

I have to go and have lunch but I will come back later to elaborate.
 
Hannibal Lecter and Alien come to mind as ruined by new material. Both lost their mystery and dread of the character in their last installments Hannibal Rising and Alien Covenant (and for Alien I'm not even counting the "VS Predator" travesties).

Jack Sparrow was kind of fun in the first movie, but was old and overused in the second already.
 
Well regarding the Alien or the xenomorph, before Prometheus Ridley Scott said in an interview "that the beast is cooked", that is why he wanted to focus on expanding other parts of the universe.

I also had a discussion with a poster on NMA here on how disappointed I was in general in most of the Alien related material after Aliens. Not just movies but also comics and video games.
That poster suggested that the main problem with the Alien is that it is rather a one trick pony. We know it and its behavior to be afraid of its mystery, instead directors and writers try to make scared of what a killer it is.


My own entry is probably New Kirk from the new Star Trek movies who really the stereotype jock and womanizer the general audience always perceived the original Kirk to be.
The original Kirk actually quite a by-the-regulation-book student.
 
The Dutch Ghost said:
Well regarding the Alien or the xenomorph, before Prometheus Ridley Scott said in an interview "that the beast is cooked", that is why he wanted to focus on expanding other parts of the universe.
Click to expand...

I've always felt he did harm to the mystery of the Space Jockey by trying to explain its backstory. Not everything in a movie franchise needs explaining, sometimes using your own imagination is better.
 
I agree on that sentiment.
In fact I think a lot of popular mysteries in movies and televisions should never be answered. Not only does it ruin the excitement of the mysteries, in general most explanations writers have come up with tend to be major disappointments compared to what fans have been able to imagine.

I sort of imagined the pilots to be this race of unsympathetic giant scientists/engineers with a mindset as alien as any entity from Lovecraft's mythos, ruling the galaxy millennia ago until they destroyed their own civilization in a civil war.
Them being extinct is actually a good thing because if they would still be around when humanity started to explore the galaxy the pilots would either have exterminated humanity or transformed humanity into a modified slave species that only continues to exist to serve the pilots.

Another mystery I never want to be "answered" is the origins of the Borg Collective from Star Trek.
David Mack tried to do so in his Star Trek Destiny book and I absolutely hate his origin story for them. I so much hate his take on it that I am boycotting everything he has written, especially his Star Trek books.
 
Obligatory mention of Netflix's "Death Note" movie and how they turned Light Yagami, oh I mean, "Light Turner" into an average teenage kid who's essentially forced to do what he does either because of Ryuk or because he wants to get inside a certain girl's pants.
 
Netflix Death Note didn't ruin the characters because it was such a failure of a movie that it also failed to enter pop culture as anything other than a shitty anime adaptation better forgoten.

Marvel basically ruined Spiderman to thunderous applause and you are already seeing how his identitiy is being suplanted as Iron Man's Robin.

Nolan's Batman was a dumb brute that got outsmarted and outmatched by everyone. I was never fond of the Nolan Batman movies to begin with.

Godzilla was so hardcore ruined that the Japanese bought the rights to the american Godzilla and then killed it off in a movie as a gag. Some people still believe 1998 Godzilla was the original Godzilla. The new american Godzilla movie was also pretty bad in my opinion but at the very least they didn't ruin Godzilla, they just made a boring movie around it.
 
Sounds like fun.

Chris Redfield in Resident Evil 5 and beyond. They turned him into a roided up rage monster. It looked like he probably took some T-Virus derived steroid.
 
Commander Shepard in Mass Effect

It's hard to say anything about a player character being established, but the first game established that Shepard:
a) has a brain
b) knows how to use it (most of the time)
c) actually has some influence over the course of events

Second game kinda killed all of this. Third is just going with the flow.
 
Han Solo will burn in hell of dumb marketing board ideas in eternity. The dumb backstory movie will ruin this character forever.
 
TorontRayne said:
Not for the new generation. They will love it and we will hate them for it.
Click to expand...

We have become our own parents!

But in all seriousness, is it that difficult to make a Star Wars movie that both a new audience and the old audience can like without it requiring retcons and all kinds of cringe worthy stuff?
 
The Dutch Ghost said:
We have become our own parents!

But in all seriousness, is it that difficult to make a Star Wars movie that both a new audience and the old audience can like without it requiring retcons and all kinds of cringe worthy stuff?
Click to expand...

It is actually. The modern generation looks for different things. We actually have people on this site that think the original Star Wars was not that great.
 
Have they actually made retcons in the new movies? Those are so fearful of taking risks or deviating from anything from the first 3 movies that they just seem to be on a loop of the same events. What's gonna make the Han Solo movie bad it's because it's probably just be spinning it's wheels, being just fan service not doing anything interesting. Like Rogue One, or a Marvel movie.
 
Luke: Okay, Rey I am gonna teach you how to fight with a lightsaber, don't think fighting a Sith is gonna be easy!
Rey: Oh I O'lready fought a Sith mastah.
Luke: Did he hurt you?
Rey: No, I beat him, I did.
Luke: Well then let's practice force pushes and pulls.
Rey: Oh mastah, I already mastered it. I even wrestled my saber away from the main villain's hands!
Luke: Huh.... next you'll tell me you can do Jedi Mind tricks.
Rey: Well....
Luke: Why the fuck are you even here?
 
Still don't think that was the problem with the movie. Luke destroyed the Death Star without optics.
 
With a ship, after getting saved by Han Solo from getting blown up by Darth Vader. There is a difference between a character pulling a minor miracle at the end and just being a level 100 Jedi on the first movie for no reason. Also that move single handedly made the main villains seem like a Joke. I still can't help but laugh at Kylo Ren.

Edit: Also being an ace pilot that can pilot a two man ship by herself, fix it by herself, headshot moving targets on her first time using a gun, getting herself out of a prison, understanding Chewbacca, getting offered jobs by everyone and then being selected as the main agent to carry out a super secret mission by an organization she doesn't even belong to.

That's the structure of a bad fanfic. And believe me, having once been a weaboo teenager I know my fair share of bad fanfics.
 
Last edited:
Walpknut said:
Have they actually made retcons in the new movies? Those are so fearful of taking risks or deviating from anything from the first 3 movies that they just seem to be on a loop of the same events. What's gonna make the Han Solo movie bad it's because it's probably just be spinning it's wheels, being just fan service not doing anything interesting. Like Rogue One, or a Marvel movie.
Click to expand...


Well, they did cut the whole expanded universe thing. Not a retcon of films, but not a minor issue either.
But yeah, they're (re)playing it safe.

I kinda liked Rogue One tho. However, I have an easily attainable boner for Felicity Jones, so that could be a reason.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top