What would be your top 3 biggest entertainment blunders in the last 15 years that had they done it better it would've made a lot more money?
Obviously without saying, the virus that is DEI/obsession with representation has ruined a lot of stuff, but here are my top 3.
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Not having Luke training Jedi students as one of the opening scenes of episode (could have easily had Han/Luke/Leia and maybe Lando reunite at the beginning, also you could've had Rey be one of his top students and the other Jedi provide an outlet for future stories)
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Not doing an inspirational Superman movie with Henry Cavill (speaks for itself)
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Marvel deciding to follow the All-New All Different crap instead of years of better source material for their movies. Why not do a Kirby inspired F4 or the X-Men, Silver Sable, Black Cat, actual Defenders, etc. But of course it makes more sense to push characters who are self inserts whose comic books keep getting cancelled like how they are really pushing Ms. Marvel to be the face of the company. (I know the comic book industry has had issues in the past, but to constantly push crappy female characters or race swapped characters that nobody asked for as well as telling actual comic book fans to piss off is beyond insanity)
Honorable mention: letting some moron showrunner be in charge of Wheel of Time when he cares more about girl power/lgbt representation.
Not sure it cost them money but not having Jon Snow fight the Night King was dumb or at least him and Ayra fight him together.
Lucasfilm not continuing the EU in it's own continuity instead of telling a group of very loyal fans to piss off.
What are yours?
Not having a cohesive and planned trilogy for Star Wars. They ended up pissing off almost everyone with the shifting story and tones.
Dark Universe. I get The Mummy sucked and you panicked but geez try a second movie at least. You could have cut cost and made a few movies to earn some shekels
The DC Snyderverse. Why did they put Snyder in charge of the DCEU? Did they think people wanted Superman to have the same energy as The Watchmen? And Batflek was awesome how did you dummies not get a solo flick of him?
I'm going to honorary mention the major sports leagues jumping off the apolitical train and embracing progressive politics full bore.
Old World of Darkness books probably did the Universal Movie Monster shared universe concept the best ....
You know how Airplane! killed airline disaster movies? Well, "Comedians meet the Universal Monster" movies probably killed that genre back before I was born.
Airplane was a parody of the movies like Airport right? I haven’t seen those but I love Airplane and can speak jive with the best of them
Yep.
All good ones. Like with the Last Jedi, why wasn't there an exec to say, "you know a lot of fans are really excited about seeing Luke and this is how you want to portray him?"
Baseball and Hockey didn't get too crazy. I honestly started watching hockey in 2018 due to the fact I got so sick of the NFL. I still watch my Cowboys but that is it. I used to watch a ton of ESPN shows and loved the Sports Reporters on Sunday morning and Around the Horn. Final straw for me was when Around the Horn closed the show with a rant about kids in cages. I discovered Clay Travis after that and read his book "Republicans buy Sneakers Too". Haven't really watched any NBA since Jordan retired.
Shit even if they wanted to go with the Rian Johnson subversiveness, do it coherently and give them a through line.
What sucks is that Luke goes through struggles and doubt during the EU and still chooses to do what’s right
The EU is dead, my friend. Forget the past kill it, if you have to.
None of the legacy characters were treated well. It's terrible how little care Disney put into Star Wars. It was just a way to make content.
Well in my mind nothing exists after Disney sale and I still have EU books and comics to read. I guess if they did continue it they would’ve ruined that too.
Everyone seemed to know the movie was shit except anyone involved in its production. When the review came out that dropped the phrase "this movie subverts expectations in amazing ways" as a backhanded code for 'disappoints and underwhelms' while still rating the movie A++, it confirmed that we were going to be in the shit over the franchise permanently going forward.
Yeah, I'll never understand buying a property that had a singular vision and then deciding to make three direct sequels with three different directors. I know after TLJ they fired Trevorrow and brought back JJ, but that wasn't planned.
A lot of good examples already, I'd add
Man in the High Castle character assassinating the best character and having a BLM movement swoop in during the last season
Netflix Witcher being run by women who hated the source material and wasted the perfect lead actor
Netflix Castlevania being about minorities and women instead of about kicking Dracula's ass in 1400s Wallachia.
I love the book Man in the High Castle and the show started off well but yes the unnecessary black power storyline was dumb and adding the gay stuff. Should’ve only been a few episodes since the book isn’t that long. The casting director for the Witcher said with Yennifer she didn’t want to perpetuate the idea that only white woken are beautiful so she cast someone totally different. Someone should’ve told her to make her own story. I heard about Castlevania
seriously, can Henry Cavill not catch a break? he's an s-tier actor who keeps getting roped into c-tier projects.
I heard that episode didn’t go hard enough at Disney but that meme has spread like wildfire
The decline, death, and downfall of the Sci-Fi channel.
That really hurt. A great channel that used to cater to nerds/people into sci-fi. I guess it got bought out by a corporation? I used to follow their website until they did a review of some fantasy books and crapped on Wheel of Time and Ice and Fire for being written by white men. Also mad because Rand had multiple women into him. Last straw was their Brightburn review which devolved into a diatribe about white supremacy
I don't remember the full history but if I recall it was one of the big companies hit from the fallout of the great recession, which is a big part of what led to the start of media companies getting hoovered up into giant media mega corporations.
Looked it up to rejog my memory. NBCUniversal got bought up around 2010 by Comcast, which included the Sci-Fi channel.
Well that explains it. It debuted when I was 11 and as a young nerd that channel was heaven for me growing up and I remember on Saturday mornings in the 90s they would have a show interviewing great sci fi writers
They should have picked up TVOntario's Prisoners of Gravity.
Mass Effect 3 Ending. Damn near killed the whole franchise until Andromeda buried it.
Dr. Who's slow and tragic murder by DIE. I suspect we may actually get the show taking another "decade" long break after what they've done.
Letting Ricky Gervais on at the Golden Globes. It's a blunder where we benefit, but my GOD did they fuck that up. They thought he would just be a funny ratings draw, and Ricky proceeded to murder their egos publicly, enough to damn near set the entirety of Hollywood off. They bounced back and forth with keeping him off and feeling the loss of money, followed by bringing him back on to do the same shit again, proving how much everyone hates them.
BONUS ROUND: Strong unionization efforts and anti-AI efforts. Hollywood might actually go under in the coming 5 years.
Gervais was hilarious. I love classic who. Can’t watch anything past first Capaldi season. Although I hear his Tennant ruined his character and then the ridiculous episode glorifying a delusional boy
People are still pretending there was a problem with the ending of the Mass Effect trilogy? If nothing else, I guess I have to admire the persistence.
The initial ending was not very good. The altered ending was a sufficient improvement. But the Citadel DLC was really an apology note that worked quite well.
I'm going to disagree with you on everyone would have loved it. I think it was a pure lose-lose no matter how they did and that's why they only did Golden Age every time. Because its the only one without large amounts of nudity and obscene horrific violence. Its only saved for the very end where its climactic. Its the same reason why Wyald is always cut from the adaptions as well.
Berserk is packed full of child torture/mutilation/death, violent rape/nudity, and lots of other extreme stuff. The kind that would get them a lot of terrible attention and pressure put on them to change it. But cutting any of it would kill a lot of callbacks and important motivations, as well as infuriate fans. Look at what happened when they cut Lost Children from one of them, despite that being basically impossible to animate without getting controversy.
Its just not a worthy risk, especially with something as sacred and held in high regard as Berserk where fucking it up will basically end your career. Especially now with Miura being dead.
stop, i can only get so erect
Redo of Healer was exactly what I thought of when writing that.
Its also downright tame compared just to background elements in Berserk. A violent rape is downright nothing compared to an army created from throwing pregnant women into a demonic soup so their babies can rip out of them. Redo was also barely watched for the "story." That's why the majority of its audience was female, it was entirely for porn because its nothing but "violent rape" over and over. Which is why the controversy to it didn't last long.
I read some of the manga years ago. The more "erotic" elements were massively turned up for the anime, clearly knowing the audience, while the more "brutal and extreme" parts were tuned down. At least for the bits I got through (I never got far passed meeting the bird girl).
Whereas anything from Lost Children or the Rape Horse or the Qilpoth section has nothing erotic to it nor any ability to "tune it down" to be less brutal, but is absolutely required for the story to progress.
Maybe I'm wrong, but its a consideration I can see being part of the reason why. Especially with a series as massive as Berserk, wherein trying to do more would be a decade+ commitment to get through all the 42 volumes. Considering the last two adaptations basically made no money, it would be near impossible to convince an investor to fund such a thing on pure passion.
I don't doubt the female audience is there. Griffith has to have fans somehow and the series is almost built for yaoi.
But Berserk itself isn't pornographic. The rare scenes of anything even approaching sex are barely dwelled on and lack any eroticism. The only two exceptions to that are in Golden Age. They'll watch it, but then they will move onto their fanfiction and shipping wars about it instead of watching certain scenes over and over for masturbation like Redo of Healer was made for.
And an OVA could work, but those are both more expensive to make due to distribution method and are more limited in terms of drawing a non-fandom audience, meaning making less money back on top of it. Which is a problem when you'd need something like 150 episodes to adapt all of Berserk proper, and the longest OVA by a margin was barely 110.
Its just not economically feasible for anyone but an ultra rich guy on a passion project. Especially after the last two adaptations bombed that hard and I curse whoever greenlit them for that reason.
And yet Made in Abyss exists, which is about as pedo as you can get, but somebody still agreed to animate that.
Which is synonymous with and more well known for its nude lolis and perversion than anything about the series, to the point where it actively keeps it from being more popular because few will admit to being a fan.
That's not a bad thing. I've never watched it for precisely the same reason.
It is if you are a fan of a thing and wanting it to succeed.
Its actually tragic for that series, because the art and "world" is phenomenal and one of the best I've seen period, as are the villains. Like, some of the spreads showing off the landscape are better than some mangakas do in their entire career and there is like one per chapter here.
But the main characters are just chronically nude children, which serves no purpose but "comedy" and it completely ruins the series.
It's like the saying goes. Build a thousand bridges and suck one dick...
There are some things that irrevocably taint a person's entire existence.
Regarding NGNL, I've always wondered if the source material sucks or flames out or something after the first season's worth of material. I've had the novels for a while but have yet to get around to reading them. Really hard to conceive of why they haven't continued it.
I remember when the movie came out back in like 2017 (how the fuck was that 6.5 years ago....) and momentarily revived the hype around the series. I was sure they'd follow it up with a season 2 within a year or two but no dice.
I've read the next story archs in the Light Novel, that could cover 2 13-ep seasons... It's solid. The fights against the other nation-states, the elaborate measures and plots, it's all done well enough to be a very well received anime.
One interesting thing is the Light Novel artwork has both Sora and Shiro as very different than the anime/manga. Those portray them as beautiful. But in the LN artwork, barring one or two one-off images, they've both got sunken zombie-like eyes, gaunt figures (that gets better as the series goes on), and both are always portraying not just the cockiness of the anime, but active disdain and disgust in almost every appearance. It made you empathize with Imanity, with Steph, that they're definitely not the images of leadership.
Kurami best girl.
Well that's good to hear. Maybe it will happen one day. The series hasn't really faded into obscurity yet despite no pulse on the anime front since the movie. The biggest obstacle to another season is probably the author being slow. They'd definitely want a couple books coming out close to a second season if possible so they could ride the wave for more book sales.
Sounds like standard anime tactics. Good looks are more of a draw. I was just thinking about this the other day with Kusuriya no Hitorigoto. The novel goes out of its way to describe Maomao as being relatively plain, and I think the LN illustrations do an okay job of portraying that, but the manga goes ahead and makes her breathtakingly gorgeous. On one hand I like faithful portrayals but it's hard to complain about the pretty depictions.
Great taste.
blizzard really perfectly embodied the phrase: "oh how the mighty have fallen"
at least it wasn't Index S3 levels of bad, where anime-onlies by episode 5 had no idea what the fuck is going on and who 80% of the characters are
And had someone with the bright idea to translate "honored elder sister" as "sissy". Which is used, like, every three sentences.
oh, that's been around since Railgun S1 official "translation", pretty much entirely changed the way Kuroko treats Misaka compared to original lmao
What did they do with the Beserk adaptation? One of the mangas I plan to read
They've adapted the same one arc three separate times, with I think only one of them even going like a single volume passed it (while skipping an entire other arc to get there). With each version cutting or changing huge bits that would fuck them over later.
But once you read it, you'll see why no one wants to touch it.
I blame GRRM most for being too lazy to finish the books, Dan and Dave because they clearly got bored at the end, and I feel there was some girl power influence because people screeched about Sansa being raped. (Shocking it’s a brutal world) Ayra killing the Knight King and not letting Jon Snw at least fight him was ridiculous
Arya killing the Night King was a narrative killing blow. It did nothing for any character. It was simply to make the soy boys and slay queens pop, to steal a wrestling term.
I speak wrestling lingo. lol. Their excuse was “well Jon killing Knight King is what everyone expected”. Yes because you set it up. Honestly you could’ve stretched the white walkers into a whole season. For them to be a constant issue only to be dispatched in one battle is a bit weak
I hate the subvert expectations bit. It's just them swerving the audience and then sneering at us.
A lot of Konami games are forgotten and barely used. I would love a Goemon collection.
A Castlevania game that isn't a slot machine would be pretty awesome. I'd even be happy with just a solid port (not remake) of Symphony of the Night for modern hardware.
Bloodstained was alright, but just didn't have the magic IMO.
There is one for PS5, but I would love one for Switch. Heck, I have it on my phone, and a PS4 controller just to play that.
Do video games count? Because if so I'm going with Andromeda as my number 1. Mass Effect 3 had disappointed people, but Andromeda absolutely poisoned one of the very few new IPs in sci fi.
As for non games, I'm going to loosely interpret the rules and say Bud Light. New Coke wasn't that much of a market collapse.
And lastly I'll say comic books in general. In the last decade sales from the big 2 have cratered and comic books in general have become useless for anything other than defiling their own IP.
After reading through tons of comments I think it's clear that race/sexuality/gender swapping along with the storytelling retardation that follows people who that kind of shit is the #1 most egregious and all encompassing fuck up of the past decade. It's infected almost EVERY movie, TV show, video game, commercial, franchise and IP from Star Wars, Marvel, DC, Game of Thrones, LoTR, Witcher, anime, Disney, classic European tales and even historical features.
But putting that aside which probably takes up the top 100 slots:
DCEU just fucking up everything. -Snyder shouldn't have helmed it -Horrible casting for Lex Luthor, Flash, Aquaman, Lois Lane -No planning. The movies don't work together. Inconsistent. Unsure of canon. -having half a dozen live action DC universes at the same time or within a short window. Arrow verse, Nolan trilogy, DCEU, Titans, Gotham Knights, Gotham, The Batman, Joker (that's already eight) AND having like five different animated universes at the same time as well. It's fatiguing. -Doing an ensemble movie too soon (Batman v Superman) -Doing an even more ambitious ensemble movie too soon (Justice League) -using the dark Knight returns story at the beginning of the DCEU instead of at the very end (it's literally Batmans last arc, even coming out of retirement) -Not making Black Adam the villain of Shazam 1 (or 2 for that matter) -Giving Black Adam his own movie -Not making Black Adam a villain -Letting the rock ruin a whole movie, franchise and universe
HBO absolutely fumbling the last two seasons of Game of Thrones but especially season 8. The battle of winter fell was horrible. John snow not becoming king was horrible. Sansa being given any authority or any other living thing was horrible since she's basically retarded. Jamie Lannister failing his own character arc was horrible. Arya Stark going from assassin to girl boss warrior was horrible. The Night King getting a dragon was horrible. Basically they ran out of runway and had to land that shit and this was their attempt at a landing. From the glory of season one to the absolute shit clogged toilet of season 7 and 8. So sad to watch.
Sequel fatigue. Marvel can't stop making shit movies. Disney same thing with Star Wars everything movies rides parks shows, and Indiana Jones, Toy Story.
Dr Who: Take a franchise that printed money for 50 years and not only systematically remove all the things that people loved about it, but also retroactively and irrevocably alter the established lore so that those things are no longer canon.
Kathleen Kennedy
On a meta level, all the remakes, reboots, prequels and sequels. The woke trend is what killed Hollywood, but it was sick for decades before that because they refused to take a fucking risk and finance a new idea or two. Anyone with an iota of creativity was beaten down or driven out long before the Woke Wave.
I also agree with Mpetey about the Snyderverse, and with you about Marvel. I have never seen a franchise piss away so much audience goodwill so quickly as what Disney Marvel have done these past few years.
I hate what they did to Dr Who. So glad all the classic who is on Tubi. I watched Nu Who up to Capaldi and got annoyed with Bill. Gave Jodie and hated the Rosa Parks episode. I heard how they retconned everything and did an episode glorifying a delusional boy who thinks he is a woman
Star Wars in general, I just don't care about it anymore. I'm more excited about a fan made animation of the Thrawn Trilogy release bit by bit then anything "official" anymore.
Game of Thrones. Do I need to elaborate?
Ghostbusters reboot, seemed to be the first massive flop.
Yes. Darth Angelus is doing great
sir, I'm going to need you to post a source on that!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MN8oCvpyQjQ&list=PLIXGhtpYcgXdpREUecruJR1Yy3h8w4d-s
1)As far as entertainment goes, Star Wars is probably got to be the biggest blunder of the decade, possibly in the history of Cinema. While it was technically financially profitable, a complete money printing franchise was reduced to b movies on a streaming service. not to mention a franchise that once elicited emotions ranging from indifference to absolute love now elicits absolute hate to indifference.
2)Destiny is another big one that comes to mind. that game single-handedly made a games budget go from an advertising feature to something to hide. not to mention being a defining exercise in what happens when you overhype a piece of media.
3)Lastly there's Mass Effect. there were many ways to end that trilogy but ending it in a way that completely ties up the entire galaxy was a colossal mistake, ending overhype aside. Even upon launch of Mass effect 3 that franchise was growing like hotcakes and probably set to become the next Star Trek. however it was the franchise that also was one of the first to feel the wrath of social media era backlash due to the crappy marketing and last minute rewrites, and it will never recover. not to mention I do actually believe that it contributed heavily to gamergate, it being one of the first gamers rise up moments I could think of in the social media era. without the Mass effect ending to focus so many people's attention on e-drama, I doubt gamergate would have even gotten noticed.
Crunchyroll fucking up it's Webtoons collaboration by having each of the chosen adaptations (Tower of God, Nobalise and God of High School) either rushed plot or terribly promoted. Though this is the people that gave us Ex-Arm, a show so bad, weebs had to formally apologise to Berserk 2016 for saying they were the shittiest
Sony not reading the room on Mobius and getting mene'd into re-releasing it to bomb a second time. It wasn't the biggest disaster but went to show how useless and out of touch marketing departments are nowadays.
Just misusing Cavill and actors like him in general, he's had it bad from Superman to The Witcher and everyone says he's a great actor in both but the scripts are bad. It's funny because during the writers strike last year, tge generally public were relieved to not have to suffer with it for a while.
1.) Several series that have come out, from LotR to WoT, which have had show main actors, directors, and even writers BRAGGING that they've never read the source materials.
2.) Video game directors switching markets, going after the (mostly mythical) "greater market". Make it more childish, more simple, easier, more accessible to women. The fact that's included in that list should insult women more than anything, but that's exactly the ideology the video game companies followed.
3.) The "Netflix Adaptation" meme. Netflix either needs to start trying, or stop.
Completely agree
Riddick. Missed opportunity for a cool af franchise. Pitch black was great as a low level intro, got you interested and wanting more. Chronicles though went too big too fast and tried to shove too much into just one movie. It could have, and should have, been split into three at least. Have him escape the prison and kill the luitenant, maybe sneak in and steal something from the big ship. Ending the burgeoning evil empire/cult in one film though was too much.
Star wars - nuff said
MCU - Involving time travel and multiple universes, it kills any and all stakes. People say it got shit after end game. No. End game was what made it shit.
Spider man - rebooting it for the 1000th time, nobody cares anymore.
Criminally, criminally underutilized character in general. Especially considering all the Spider-Man movies they've made. How do you never throw Black Cat into any of them? They got close once or something, but that was it.
And in Spectacular I loved the whole dynamic of how she only loved him as Spider-Man but didn’t love Peter Parker. I love Amazing but Spectacular Spider-Man was the first comic book I ever read so that will always be special for me. I know in modern comics they made her bisexual (like they do with everyone) but I’d change it back to normal. Cast a beautiful woman to play her as well