Ever have a moment where you are watching a show series/movie franchise or reading a book series and it just hits you that you no longer enjoy it? Like it loses everything that initially pulled you in, for whatever reason. Maybe a change in show runner and the product just has a different feel, the show gets repetitive/stale or gets too far fetched, a character death, etc, etc.

I feel like most long running TV shows limp to a finish rather than end gracefully/naturally.

And no offense to anyone who still enjoys/enjoyed the products I list. Tastes and tolerances are very personal, so not trying to poop on something you love.

Movies:

Matrix Reloaded. All of the Zion stuff killed this franchise for me, as well as stuff just stopped making sense to me. I think I have zero hype for the rumored return to the Matrix universe. It actually came up in a conversation at work and got me thinking about the idea for this thread.

Star Wars Prequels. I remember watching all of these and just thinking that Star Wars lost whatever magic that held me for nearly all of my childhood. Kind of forced myself to watch the latest trilogy, though didn’t bother with Rise, just watched a bunch of spoiler reviews to the point where I feel like I’ve watched it twice. The Mandalorian brought me back a bit, but it was mainly just The Kid.

Honorable mention: Pretty much every horror franchise. Horror movies are notoriously lucrative, but there is only so many times you can go to the well.

TV:

Walking Dead: I watched up until the episodes shortly before where Hershel was killed by the governor. I had been falling out of love with the show before that, with the boring season in the farmhouse, but I think what made me slam the door was when the Governor got a 2-3 episode arc solely focused on him. Just seemed like a jarring break in pace and felt forced and it never really grabbed me after that.

Sons of Anarchy: Season 2. This show immediately dropped what was so compelling about the first season and and the shows overall premise. It went from being a sort of Hamlet in a motorcycle gang, to a run of the mill villain of the season show. For 6 more seasons...

Game of Thrones. Seemed to falter after it caught up with the books and never recovered.

Books:

Horus Heresy. I read them all on release but I’m not even sure where I gave up. I think the one where they take Vulkans corpse back to Nocturne? I always tell myself to get back into it, but I don’t know where to get back in. With that said, loving the Siege of Terra books and that will probably seal the deal on my journey into the Heresy once its finished. If there is a Scouring series, I’ll only dip into it unless they give it a Siege/Beast type set amount of books release window.

Game of Thrones: The wait between novels is a huge killer, and the last two that I read, Feast for Crows and Dance of Dragons just felt like slogs, particularly Feast. Coincidentally right when the show had a quality drop and it started to cut every corner that it could. Not hyped for the franchise at all at this point.

What say you?

Movie franchise? I gave up on the X-Men movies with 3.

TV franchise? Mmmmmmmmmmmmm, I'd say the jump from Teen Titans to Teen Titans Go.

Books? If comic books count, I gave up on the Ultraverse after Marvel ran roughshod all over it.

40k - 6th edition when my blood angels army got tabled by a demons army without killing a single model. Then the week afterwards, when my Angels did almost the same thing to a Space Wolves army.

Horus Heresy - The Unremembered Empire. All the hype, then I realised that like 5 minutes worth of plot development happened and almost everyone ended up in the same position at the end of the book as they were at the start of the book.

Superman Comics - Bendis, 'Nuff said really. Tomasi was perfect.

The Witcher, Netflix series.

Possibly prematurely, but the Bard character just rubbed me up the wrong way, so I bailed.

I have a lot of trouble following long running sitcoms to the end. They just get tedious. See the office (us), parks and rec, etc. i've come to believe that four seasons is an ideal maximum, that's more than enough time to tell a story.

Around four seasons is usually when i give up on a show, at least.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
The Witcher, Netflix series.

Possibly prematurely, but the Bard character just rubbed me up the wrong way, so I bailed.

how dare you, in a miserable gakky world full of miserable gakky people you need the odd ray of sunshine, I just the loved his reaction when Geralt changed his mind cos Ynne in the Dragon Hunt episode

anyhoo

New 52 Constantine, there's a ton of magic users you could have bent into a wannabe Strange why you mess with my Johnny, the nu-vertigo take seems to be back on track

West World, middle(ish) of season 2, might of been due to it being rushed out following season 1 being popular but it just flailed

X-men Apoc; if ever there was ever a 'do it to hold the rights' cluster fup its this and our Sansa is possibly the worst actor ever

Thor:Ragnorok, its not a bad movie, but its where the MCU peaked, War/Endgame has closure but are otherwise a bit mehh

We gave up on Vikings about 7 episodes in the season 5.

Honestly, the writing was on the wall after season 4, but we tried to give it a chance, but the show really ramped up the contrivances and nonsense to "11."

GoT books, around the third one, for various reasons.

Dual Survival (tv) when they dumped Cody. He at least had some good info.
Big Bang Theory after the first season.

I agree on the Horror/slasher films. Most of them just ran too long as a series.

 Turnip Jedi wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
The Witcher, Netflix series.

Possibly prematurely, but the Bard character just rubbed me up the wrong way, so I bailed.

how dare you, in a miserable gakky world full of miserable gakky people you need the odd ray of sunshine, I just the loved his reaction when Geralt changed his mind cos Ynne in the Dragon Hunt episode

Just found him a bit, well, Poochie,

I've made mulitiple attempts to watch the X-files, which follows similar arc of "uneven but often familar early seasons, excellent middle seasons... uh oh!"

Somewehere between the movie, the production moving to LA, and Duchovney leaving I always dip out. It doesn't help that I know the alien conspiracy is never brought to a satisfying conclusion. I've seen one or two later episodes that were recommended, and they're fine, but I really feel that as long as you get past season one, the X-files is a perfect show to hop off whenever you're done.

B5, Legend of the Rangers.

Nope. Nopenopenopenope.

Dr Who, a couple episodes into Capaldi's run, though the last stretch of Matt Smith's run didn't do the show any favors.

Thinking about it, Angels Take Manhattan was probably the real breaking point- way, way too many plot holes and false angst based on seeing the actors off, rather than the characters or story.

Tried to come back for the new doctor, but the stupid teeth aliens and the preaching just... made it not worthwhile.

I also stopped DR. Who at Capaldi and feel no reason to come back. Nothing against Capaldi, but the scripts didn't seem like they had much to say.

Supernatural I stopped when Dean came back from Hell for the first time.... it just became too much at that point.

Punisher after S1. Never went back for Season 2.

Most recently, I think Ozark season 3 just broke me as well, after thinking about it. I finished it a few days ago and its really good, its just... it keeps piling up the hits and there has been little to no resolution. Just getting deeper and deeper and really pushing my tolerance for how much longer I can keep up or stay invested.

For example:



Enjoy the show, but its kind of exhausting.

Book 5 of the Wheel of Time series. It went from being an exciting story to a word vomit cash grab. The books stopped being compelling and instead became a big waste of time. They went form advancing stories to 1,000 page slogs. Each novel ended up having only three things happen: resolve the cliff hanger from the last book, introduce one thing that advances the series' overarching story line, end with a cliff hanger. Which is not a lot for 1,000 pages. I powered through them out of of principle, but it felt like I was being exploited. Thankfully Sanderson saved the end.

I guess there were five things per novel if you count Rand being whiny and Nynave (don't remember how to spell it, not giving any more of my life to this series to look it up) pulling her hair.

I think the trailer for TROS has mostly had me checkout from Star Wars. I couldn't even get into the Mandalorian much (which is sad cause it's great) because I just couldn't bring myself to be invested in a 20+ year butchered franchise that occasionally produces a gem maybe once every ten years. And it's amazing to me that the trailer alone was enough to make me quit.

I also gave up on Worm (a long web novel series) after the first few chapters of its sequel. I just couldn't bring myself to soldier through the author finding new ways to pump up the Godzilla threshold constantly, with no real respite or moments of true warmth from the otherwise excellent characters who do little more than get subjected to new methods of suffering. Still love Worm though.

Frankly though, asinine government conspiracies and melodramatic BS are frequently enough to make me quit something. It's too common right now and its always the same, and I just can't bring myself to bother keeping invested once these become the only thing a show has going on.

I checked out of nBSG after the New Caprica rescue/reset button. The show was just miserable, and it had never been more obvious that the mystery boxes were empty.

Buffy became miseryporn (I’m stealing that phrase) somewhere is season 6. It lost everything that made the show charming.

The Simpsons lost me early in the season where Homer went to New York, and then Armin Tanzanian was the coup de grace.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
I checked out of nBSG after the New Caprica rescue/reset button. The show was just miserable, and it had never been more obvious that the mystery boxes were empty.

Buffy became miseryporn (I’m stealing that phrase) somewhere is season 6. It lost everything that made the show charming.

The Simpsons lost me early in the season where Homer went to New York, and then Armin Tanzanian was the coup de grace.

You're right about nBSG. I stuck with it through the episode where they started singing All Along the Watchtower. But the New Caprica episode was definitely the start of the end.

In nBSG’s defence? The writer’s strike played havoc with it.

I still rate the whole effort as good entertainment despite it, although the last few episodes take a few watchings to properly grasp. Though I totally understand and respect that’s a tall order for others

I rarely truly give up on something, but there are often moments where I go from ravenously consuming everything to taking a huge step back and focus on something else. A few big ones that spring to mind:

Pokemon: Played the series really hardcore but lost my copy of Diamond and Gen 5 didn't draw me back in. Played Gen 6 but once Go was released I was far happier with its passive collection then the IV grind of the base games.

Star Wars: Another example of something where my love for it never really went anywhere, but I gave up on the novels after the Vong were introduced.

Loot: I used to love going for secret special weapons and the like, yet when that went mainstream in the MMO heyday I was already out. Culprit was FFX, where the super weapons had ridiculous requirements and getting them ruined the gameplay with the ability to one shot the final boss. Luckily it meant the allure of the RNG based drop systems had no appeal for me when they landed in full force years later.

Walking Dead lost me quite a ways back. There were like 7 meaningful minutes per episode and the slog wore me out shortly after the prison.

Marvel on Netflix lost me in the Defenders/Luke Cage 2/Jessica Jones 2 era. After those slogs I just couldn't sit through Daredevil 3 or Punisher.

I gave up on Family Guy after Peter found Jesus at the record shop. It was just such a bland, remarkably inoffensive story. Every once in a while I catch a good episode, but rarely feel like I've missed anything. Oddly I still watch the Simpsons.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
I checked out of nBSG after the New Caprica rescue/reset button. The show was just miserable, and it had never been more obvious that the mystery boxes were empty.

I never really got into it (and as cheesy as it is, the original was far superior in terms of characters, story and basic #@$ camera work). The people were terrible human beings with sophomoric high school melodrama relationships.

Basically the same reason I never got into game of thrones, though that was less the relationships and more that the characters I have no reason to care about die, and are replaced by other people I have no reason to care about. As a schtick goes, that isn't much.

Buffy became miseryporn (I’m stealing that phrase) somewhere is season 6. It lost everything that made the show charming.

Buffy should have ended (or generated another spinoff), at the end of Glory arc. But Whedon needed to keep Jossing his dead horses, despite running out of things to say.

lifeafter wrote:Book 5 of the Wheel of Time series.

Was that the one where the women* are stuck in a carriage for a full thousand pages just sniping at each other? That's where I checked out.

*Or rather woman, since every single female character in WoT was a raging nag most of the time with no other notable characteristics (beyond surface features like braid, princess, dresses-as-boy, amazon). Jordan really should have stuck to writing Conan novels.

The Last Jedi (and the subsequent reaction of Disney, the director, etc.) killed Star Wars cold dead for me.

Oh man;

Movies;
-I don't think I've ever watched a movie series where I've hopped off the train because I'm normally not on one even if it's a series. Maybe the Fast & Furious main series since Walker's passed.

TV;

Walking Dead right essentially when they killed Carl. The show had been faltering for me but the irl stuff with the actor moving everything around to stay with the show and then them bouncing him hit a sour note (see also the hilltop lady getting paid short compared to costars).

Fear the Walking Dead was season...3? When I'm only left with the daughter and Sands out of the original group and with a lot of unsatisfying send offs over 2 years.

Vikings end of S4 start of S5. Got old.

Almost any long running sitcom not called the Office, Community, or Parks & Rec.

CW's DC Universe. I like a fair bit of the shows and the characters. It just got to be to much content in a year. We're talking like 150ish hours a year of TV content.

Books;

WoT just like the others here. Probably around the same spot.

Terry Goodkind's series that I think is still going. When they took entire books off to follow non-characters.

GoT because Martin is trash. First 3 are brilliant, or were when I started reading them 20 YEARS AGO! Gave benefit of a doubt for feast of crows and swore never again.

Horus Heresy was far, far to drawn out and didn't focus enough on the important things that made it good.

The Warded Man series. Each book was a back dive into a characters origin story. Which would have been fine except we hit book 5 and were doing it with new characters while the series was supposed to end in book 6.

Hmm, i rarely just give up on shows, the only one i gave up on i came back and finished because i loved it(MLP)
Dr. Who. Kinda Stopped through Capaldis run, despite him being my favorite doctor. I loved the angry old man.
Agents of Shield: after the second to last season, where they killed of a character only to imply he is coming back next season was rough, it not being part of MCU really anymore killed it too.
gave up on Netflix MCU after Iron Fist and Luke Cage where confirmed no more seasons kinda soured me on S3 of other shows, not getting to see how decent storylines might play out pissed me off.
I guess i gave up on Halo? when 5 came out i had an Ps4 not an Xbox and i kinda didnt care to play halo.
Star Wars movies after TLJ: kinda made me just not care. but i watched all the others.
Oh Yeah, Big Bang Theory. I just kinda.....stopped. I was never one to say it was like blackface for nerds or mysoginistic like other(Hey guys, BTW, just because people in the show are mysoginistic, doesnt mean the show is Kay? All those guys get taken to town for their gakky attitudes) I just stopped watching it.
I never really actively stop watching something, i just kinda.........never get into the new season.

Movies?

Star Wars - This franchise once consumed my life. My inner 10 year old is still obsessed with it, but at this point, nothing about it excites anymore. I haven't even seen the newest flick. I just no longer have an interest. I still love Star Wars, the Mandalorian was great, but the movies? I endured the prequels and basically pretended they didn't exist, but at this point, with Luke and Han and Leia and Vader gone, what's there to watch?

TV Shows?

Walking Dead: I just...stoppped caring at some point, making it a point to watch was never a priority, right around the time the Governor pops up.

Battlestar Galactica: The last episode, that ending just obliterated any interest I had in the franchise after that.

Dexter: That last season...oh boy.

Vikings: Trailed off S4/S5 as above.

GoT: In hindsight, the longer it went on the less well it did, S7 and 8 in particular. "Beyond the Wall" in particular was...narratively incoherent.


Video Games?

Mass Effect - I'm still not over what they did to that franchise with the ending to 3. That was the last video game I ever pre ordered, never again. Had zero desire to play Andromeda after that, and the ending even spoils replays of 1 & 2.

Command & Conquer: I'm still a huge fan of this franchise, just not anything they did to it after C&C3.

In defence of Dr Who, by a massive Whovian.

The show has always been highly mutable, with different takes by different writers across different Doctors (sometimes the same Doctor).

I’m one to take the rough with the smooth. And overall, I’d argue there’s far more ropey Who than there is Good Who.

So I’ve learned to take what I can, and simply enjoy enjoying what I like, and not worry overly about what I didn’t. There’s always a new story in the offing, and who can tell how the bones will lie in that one!

 Vaktathi wrote:
Dexter: That last season...oh boy.

I think I gave that one up with the season that had Colin Hanks and Edward James Olmos as the villains. Kept in touch with the show through review sites and blogs, but definitely glad I gave it up when I did.

Arrested Development when they tried to revive it on Netflix. That first season where the actors couldn't all be together, and they just hopped on different storylines was awful. I still haven't watched the most recent season, and can hardly bear to rewatch the old.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
In defence of Dr Who, by a massive Whovian.

The show has always been highly mutable, with different takes by different writers across different Doctors (sometimes the same Doctor).

I’m one to take the rough with the smooth. And overall, I’d argue there’s far more ropey Who than there is Good Who.

So I’ve learned to take what I can, and simply enjoy enjoying what I like, and not worry overly about what I didn’t. There’s always a new story in the offing, and who can tell how the bones will lie in that one!

IMO, Moffat really ruined to show with his take on the Doctor. Where the Doctor was essentially a Manic Pixie Dreamgirl that came into peoples lives and made it better by their antics, and then when they tried to be serious it felt disingenious.
Capaldi was a nice breath of fresh air

 hotsauceman1 wrote:

Oh Yeah, Big Bang Theory. I just kinda.....stopped. I was never one to say it was like blackface for nerds or mysoginistic like other(Hey guys, BTW, just because people in the show are mysoginistic, doesnt mean the show is Kay? All those guys get taken to town for their gakky attitudes) I just stopped watching it.
I never really actively stop watching something, i just kinda.........never get into the new season.

I had this two, three seasons before the end; they are on endless repeat over here and I still really enjoy the first five or so seasons, because they had a bunch of jokes that you had to have a basic understanding of physics/geek culture to understand and there were a number of goofy conversations that I have had in real life with my friends. But at some point any of the actual science / geek jokes got removed and it just became a generic US sitcom, but with nerds. Also they really played up Sheldon being obnoxious, rather than just weird/disconnected and I there enough people who annoy me in real life without having to deal with that in my entertainment.

A different interpretation; Formula 1. I used to love watching the races with my dad all through my childhood and I kept watching it after I left home and we used to talk about it. Then about 10-12 years ago I just found that I was sitting down on a Sunday afternoon and just falling asleep in front of the TV and I started to question why I was effectively sacrificing an entire day of my weekend (cause you can’t really fit much around it) for something that I obviously had no interest in watching. So I just stopped.

I feel like Big Bang Theory is a show about nerds for people who aren't nerds. I'm not offended by it, but as an actual nerd I found it uninteresting. Especially because most of the things the characters were really nerdy about weren't things I'm nerdy about.

 Jadenim wrote:

 hotsauceman1 wrote:

Oh Yeah, Big Bang Theory. I just kinda.....stopped. I was never one to say it was like blackface for nerds or mysoginistic like other(Hey guys, BTW, just because people in the show are mysoginistic, doesnt mean the show is Kay? All those guys get taken to town for their gakky attitudes) I just stopped watching it.
I never really actively stop watching something, i just kinda.........never get into the new season.

I had this two, three seasons before the end; they are on endless repeat over here and I still really enjoy the first five or so seasons, because they had a bunch of jokes that you had to have a basic understanding of physics/geek culture to understand and there were a number of goofy conversations that I have had in real life with my friends. But at some point any of the actual science / geek jokes got removed and it just became a generic US sitcom, but with nerds. Also they really played up Sheldon being obnoxious, rather than just weird/disconnected and I there enough people who annoy me in real life without having to deal with that in my entertainment.

BBT was funny, I still laugh at a few of the jokes(Flash Pacing back and forth was hilarious to me)
To sheldon. It always sucks when they Flanderize a character, so many of my favorite character go to having funny quirks that are part of their personality, to it being the only part of their personality. Because when people find that part funny or likeable, they obviously have to add more of it right? I can name so many characters that i loved that by the final season I didnt recognize them.

I've never been able to follow Who. It's a show that's easier to enjoy specific well regarded episodes. This got really difficult to do, particularly towards the end of Smith's run and I haven't taken the time to watch Capaldi even though I've loved him in the episodes I've watched.

 LordofHats wrote:
I feel like Big Bang Theory is a show about nerds for people who aren't nerds.

This is exactly it, it was a show about nerds for non-nerds, a way to connect to, or project their ideas of, "nerd" stuff without actually having to interact with it. I've never met anyone in any sort of gaming, academia, fandom, etc that was actually into Big Bang theory themselves.

I don't generally do a hard 'nope, never watching/reading that again' especially since I will reread/rewatch stuff so even a franchise that's gone in a dud direction can entertain me with the good earlier stuff

that said I did actively stop watching new battle star galactica midway through a season, I also gave up on stargate-lost in space after loving pretty much all the rest of the franchise

and star wars prequel 2 really put me off the whole thing, although the new stuff has reversed that a bit (they're not a patch on the original but so much more fun than the prequels)

 Vaktathi wrote:

 LordofHats wrote:
I feel like Big Bang Theory is a show about nerds for people who aren't nerds.

This is exactly it, it was a show about nerds for non-nerds, a way to connect to, or project their ideas of, "nerd" stuff without actually having to interact with it. I've never met anyone in any sort of gaming, academia, fandom, etc that was actually into Big Bang theory themselves.

Whilst I'm not defending the steaming gak show it became, the first couple of seasons were fairly distinct if a bit middling, but then I think Chuck et al made a clear choice to go full formula trope sit-com

I also agree with folks about Vikings, there was a clear end point but they just kept going and even lubbery Ms Winnick wasn't enough to carry on bothering with it

Movies:

I thought they tied everything up quite nicely in the first Matrix, sequels seemed an obvious cash grab.

Like so many others, TLJ absolutely murdered my interest in any further Star Wars offerings. I mean Dead 10 dead.

TV:

Battlestar Galactica earns two spots. First, the original series died in my eyes when they actually reached earth... and it was now.

Second, the new series, I lost interest at the end of the premier. The base slander on many of the characters, the ship looked 'ribbed for her pleasure' more than anything else... and Boomer being a boomer was the death knell. Given what I heard about what came after that, I'm glad I stopped there.

So BSG is the only series I should have liked but ended up hating... twice!, and the only series I should have liked but ended up hating by the end of the first episode.

To be honest, most TV shows hit this point two seasons before they get canceled. There's very few shows I'll watch all the way to the end, it might be easier to list those than the ones that jump the shark.

Game of Thrones (TV) - I was still hoping for them to stick the landing as far along as mid-season. They did not, obviously.

Game of Thrones (novels) - I've still enjoyed them, while being increasingly aware that there is no way he's going to be able to pull all of this together. If you think this has a happy ending, you haven't been paying attention.

X-Files - right when they brought in Doggett and whatsername. I tried watching the newest ones, and one or two episodes were fine, but I heard the series finale was hot garbage and didn't bother. For me, they should ended it at the Lost Art of Forehead Sweat.

The Office after Steve Carell left. I stuck with it for a sense of closure but man it was work.

I try to pretend there were no Matrix sequels.

Jericho was a show that got cancelled, had a huge fan push to come back, and then upon miraculously getting a second chance, dropped a season so bad everyone was like "yeah, we're done."

I gave up on TWD once it became apparent only the zombies had any kind of plan at all. For me, this was right around when Curls's mom got eaten, but I would argue it was actually trash since season 2.

Witcher - didn't really enjoy epsiode one and they killed the one chrracter I did like, then episode two had a god awful bard and worse crappy elves. never been back
Lost- not sure waht episode but two or three I think - it was just stupid and boring
The Boys - Epsiode One - didn;t care about anyone and they thought they were so clever for swearing, didn;t bother with epsiode two.

Books
Wheel of Time - didn;t get past book one and the epicly slow and tedious descriptions of travel and people.

As far as GoT goes, I realised somewhere around season 5 I was actually rooting for the ice zombies to just march on south and put everyone out of their misery because I no longer cared about any of the characters.

Star Wars from The Farce Awakens, onwards.

The Dresden Files, from when Michael Carpenter was introduced.

There was only one Matrix film, so that doesn't count for the purposes of this thread.

Friends.

Watched a mere handful of episodes, and found it to be pretty awful. Would see the occasional additional episode, often round friends houses, and always felt the same.

Yeah I should have mentioned TLJ destroyed my interest in further films and certianly would not watch anything further by that director.

 harlokin wrote:

The Dresden Files, from when Michael Carpenter was introduced.

Restart at Deadbeat. The first 6 are just essentially character introduction and groundwork.

 Hulksmash wrote:

 harlokin wrote:

The Dresden Files, from when Michael Carpenter was introduced.

Restart at Deadbeat. The first 6 are just essentially character introduction and groundwork.

Thanks, I'll give that a looksee.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Red Dwarf series 7....

 harlokin wrote:

 Hulksmash wrote:

 harlokin wrote:

The Dresden Files, from when Michael Carpenter was introduced.

Restart at Deadbeat. The first 6 are just essentially character introduction and groundwork.

Thanks, I'll give that a looksee.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Red Dwarf series 7....

No problem. I got back and generally reread the series when a new book is coming out and I never go back to the beginning. I just start at Deadbeat as that's when the world outside of just Harry and friends starts to open up. Though I'm surprised you didn't like the first Carpenter appearance. It's one of the better early books with the introduction of the swords and the daenarians (sp?).

And I forgot my sci-fi trifecta of old favorites that became my least favorites and now I don't even shrug when I hear new developments.

Predator. Mainly the AvP's killed it for me. The most recent Predator felt like an insult.
Alien. I feel like they forgot what made the originals so good.
Terminator. Went to the well too many times.

I'm done with them, provided a stellar reboot.

I think its about where I stopped too. I don't think there's anything wrong with it; I think its a difference between binge reading and keeping up with something. That's about the point where I felt reading them one after another that repetition set in and I wasn't getting the same sense of novelty I enjoyed so far. If I'd been reading the books as they came out, I'm sure I'd be more eager for more.

 Hulksmash wrote:

 harlokin wrote:

The Dresden Files, from when Michael Carpenter was introduced.

Restart at Deadbeat. The first 6 are just essentially character introduction and groundwork.

The climax of Dead Beat is legit awesome.

The next Dresden Files book is coming out in a couple months, so this might be a good time for a reread. I’m currently trying to get back into the Mercy Thompson series that I walked away from 4 books ago. She’s a little too ...Rey. Also, the series has an odd mix of religious restraint and urban fantasy sensuality that I find distracting, like if Ned and Maude Flanders were always naked with their blood-thirsty monster squad.




Automatically Appended Next Post:
Oh, Harry Potter. I made it through Deathly Hallows (book and movie), and now have no urge to consume another Harry Potter storylike product in my life.

Agreed - read the first one and was not interested enought to read another HP book.

I made the mistake of trying to read the first Harry Potter book right after I'd just finished reading Dune. There is a reason I never got further.

Only ones I can think of right now, will probably be lots more I've missed in TV shows and Movies.

Books:
The Farseer Trilogy - Can't really put my finger on why, but I'd bought all three to eventually get around to, took the first one to read while waiting around on jury duty, finished jury duty, put it down at home and never picked it back up.

Game of Thrones - Pick a character and stick with their perspective for longer than a chapter, and don't force me to wait about ten more annoying chapters about people IDGAF for to get back to the ones I like. The way the first book was laid out drove me up the wall, and while I can't remember if I finished the first I certainly didn't start the second.

Horus Heresy - I fell off the wagon somewhere reasonably early on, and at this point I'm too scared to ask where to get back on.

Artemis Fowl - The Opal Deception was my last one. Reason: I grew up.

Alex Rider - Archangel? Reason: I grew up and also got sick of the whole "this is definitely the final one now, I promi- never mind I lied".

Wheel of Time (maybe) - In at "maybe" because I'm on Book Three, and I'm not sure if I can really be arsed any more. Most of the characters are about as nuanced and/or likeable as a sun-bleached dog turd, the pacing is glacial until it isn't, and then it's faster-paced and quite good until it's contrived not to be again, and the little symbols above each chapter denoting what happens in it often has me reaching to skip ahead of the formulaic, predictable bits. Part of me wants to struggle through it just to say I did--or at least reach Sanderson's ones--but most chapters make me question why I just spent the last few hours working through them, and I didn't just skim ahead to the next interesting chunk.

The Sword of Truth/Richard and Kahlan - JUST LEAVE IT ALONE. FOR GOD'S SAKE, PLEASE. LET IT LIE.

TV Series:
Parks & Rec - I don't get it. At all. And whenever I mentioned it to anyone who asked if I'd seen it I got different answers to what I should skip and ignore to the point where I genuinely didn't care any more.

Archer - Also didn't get it.

Bojack Horseman - As Above.

Doctor Who - I didn't watch the end of Smith or any of Capaldi until a Netflix rewatch, bar the season opener of Bill's time as companion... I still haven't finished Capaldi/Clara, tried jumping back on for Jodie and after a fairly poor opening - and an episode all about spiders - I stopped trying.

Game of Thrones - "Maybe the TV show will be more watchable." It was not. Halfway through the first episode I realised I was bored and ultimately didn't care.

Agents of SHIELD - To be fair, it wasn't in the UK until Channel 4 got the rights ages after airing, so not really its fault, but I stopped pursuing it after Daisy's parents' arc was done, because it felt like a natural enough end and I was pleased to leave it like that.

Iron Fist - After the first season, because it was bad enough when it was just Whiny McBankHuge, and then it promised to be Whiny McBankHuge + "I Wanna Be The Guy" + This Character Had Literally No Reason To Suddenly Be Evil.

Movies:
Star Wars after TLJ - I had hopes for TRoS, I really did, but then it released and even the people who staunchly defended the painfully average mess that was TLJ turned around and went "Okay, WTF?". I never bothered watching it. Currently have a Disney+ free trial. Could watch it there. Don't think I will.

Harry Potter - Fantastic Finances and How to Grow Them et al don't interest me one jot, and neither will anything else based on the franchise, not least because Rowling herself is already Continuity Crusher-in-Chief, so I trust nothing about any new content to make sense for longer than it stays in cinemas/on stage.

Pirates of the Caribbean - At World's End was 168 minutes of PotC-themed nothing. I watched the first bit of On Stranger Tides and decided it was stupid.

Transformers - I stuck around longer than any of their main characters do.

Star Trek Voyager. I eagerly ate up TNG and DS9 when I was a kid and VOY was pretty much the same, at the start. I think the rot set in when they brought in Seven of Nine. Jeri Ryan is a stunning-looking woman, but that brought up extra doubts about just why they decided to put her in halfway through this nerd show. And the 'pinocchio' arc in Star Trek was already done with both Data and the EMH.
That said, the borgy babies and the 'hologram rights now' storylines were the parts that got a bit too goofy for me.
I'm watching the series for the first time since then, rerun on the Horror Channel. The later seasons don't seem so bad now, maybe because I know what to expect and current TV isn't much better.

Chuck Lorre sitcoms. Two and a Half Men and The Big Bang Theory. Thought they were great laughs at the start, then realised how banal they were when they just retread everything over and over. For BBT I can pinpoint the episode where Leonard and Sheldon try to bury the hatchet with an old school bully, and Penny steals from charity. The way the show made out who made the right decision, and how these were monkeys dancing for a crowd rather than actual characters, was like a light switch in my head. Done.

Game of Thrones. I made it to maybe the end of season three or four. Can't remember which and I don't care to look it up. There were too many noticeable changes, of the type that usually get excused as 'but you have to change things for the screen!' (but which usually mean mucking up some meaningful plot or character point) as well as some other peculiar out-of-nowhere oddities. Hearing about how clueless the showrunners were after 7 and 8, it doesn't surprise me.

The first films in each of the Star Wars prequel and sequel trilogies. 'Nuff said.

Dune! First time I tried reading all the original Frank Herbert-penned books, I ended up throwing God-Emperor of Dune against the wall. Years later I tried again and managed to finish, but man, it's a slog. It's like Herbert realised that his first rant against 'charismatic leaders' made his charismatic leader too... charismatic... and sympathetic, so doubled down on his rhetoric for the rest of the series. And then there's trying to get your head round the arms race of the magic-psychic-powers-but-not-really-magic-psychic-powers-you-guys-just-totally-believable-mundane-insights.
Recommendation: first book. Maybe one or two after. Then stop.

I read Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone recently, because it was free on Prime Reading and I decided to finally see what the fuss was about. I'm still half-wondering what the fuss was about. I guess you had to be a kid.

The Boys. The comic series. Every so often I get the next trade in the series, and then I have to stop for a while because it's such a horrifying, cynical, crapsack interpretation of superhero comics and the world. Superhero comics are always ripe for mockery and deconstruction, but The Boys is more, like a dark glimpse into the head of someone with a permanent hate-on, who you don't really want to hang out with. I'm at the point where I'm not sure I want to suffer on, just to see how the Butcher takes out the Homelander.

Who was that old Black Library character? The Flashheart-in-40K one. Commissar Cain? Loved the short stories in the old Inferno mag. Didn't think much of the longer novels, when the plot had to be pushed along by this cowardly, self-serving character getting a sudden rush of moral indignation out of nowhere.

Robot Chicken. I just found out that All4 has a bunch of Adult Swim stuff for streaming, including Robot Chicken from season 5 onwards, and I thought 'right, there's something to keep me occupied when I'm stuck inside.' I got about halfway through season 6 and stopped. It's nothing. That's the best way I can describe it. There's no wit, no cleverness, very little charm. It's the same couple of instant farting, fighting and sex jokes over and over again. It's not even overly offensive with those, just monotonous and tedious. It makes Chuck Lorre look like Shakespeare and Mel Brooks rolled into one.

Wow. Some of those interpretations aren't even recognizable to the source material. Particularly Dune and Caine (moral indigination isn't ever a motive, its always about image and reputation so he can keep himself as safe as possible).

 hotsauceman1 wrote:

IMO, Moffat really ruined to show with his take on the Doctor. Where the Doctor was essentially a Manic Pixie Dreamgirl that came into peoples lives and made it better by their antics, and then when they tried to be serious it felt disingenious.
Capaldi was a nice breath of fresh air

I dropped out of being a regular Who watcher after the season finale where the Doctor definitely for real no kidding you guys had to die at a certain time or place or the universe would break. Everything in the season had been hammering home that this was an inescapable deathtrap, with characters brooding over this inevitable doom and how to avoid it, or being prepared to risk breaking the universe to save him.

Season finale, turns out that he just needed to be somewhere in that area and appear to die. And so he uses an obvious escape clause to sidestep it, one of several obvious ones he could have used just with super-tech introduced in that season alone. So the entire season was a big fakeout.

I think Moffat's a genius when it comes to creating mood and mystery, and doing clever storytelling with time travel. Most of his individual episodes are brilliant. But that's not the same skill-set as telling a coherent and satisfying story arc, so you have characters who have little to them other than being a Big Mystery and big plots that just fizzle out when the questions actually need to be answered.


I dropped out of Game of Thrones early into S4. I think the bit where I was done was where, hey you know how we spent a big chunk of the last season establishing the wildlings as being an interesting and complex culture of their own rather than just a horde of evil savages? Here are these other wildlings, who are rapey cannibals! And it just seemed to be going out of its way to tell me that nobody in this world deserved anything nice, and I should be rooting for the Night King.


Though I read this and immediately thought of webcomics, and two that were my favourites for well over a decade--

For Schlock Mercenary, it was when I realised somewhere in the whole "they own a space colony now" arc that the pace had become so decompressed that I'd actually entirely lost track of where the characters were or what they were doing. But the nagging problem was the God-AI characters who only seemed to be around to suck the drama out of arc climaxes, be annoyingly smug, always-right and superior to the human characters and to make the setting collapse in meaning

For Scary-Go-Round, it was the abundent WTFery of the Into The Woods arc--let's bring back characters from ten years ago, savagely mock them and then kill them off without them actually adding to the plot. Let's have the entire thing happen because one character is breathtakingly negligent and have nobody at all call him for all the death and destruction that is completely and utterly his fault.

And I've quit more than one "surreal humour" webcomic when the author suddenly decided that the audience really, really wanted to know about his political and social views instead of laughing.

Voss wrote:
Wow. Some of those interpretations aren't even recognizable to the source material. Particularly Dune and Caine (moral indigination isn't ever a motive, its always about image and reputation so he can keep himself as safe as possible).

I know P&R was asked to be kept out of the thread, but...

Frank Herbert always intended Dune to be a parable warning against blindly following a leader figure. It's not a well-hidden secret, aside from the fact that the first Dune novel comes across more as a standard 'hero's journey', underdog-freedom-fighter plot. The theme is more of a focus in Dune Messiah and Children of Dune, which are about Paul's abject failure and the harmfulness of the cult he built up*; and God Emperor of Dune barely has a plot - or at least a plot that could be squeezed into a book less than half the length - because of Leto acting as a mouthpiece for Frank's religious and political rants.

You can call it a biased interpretation, fair enough, I know it's not a widespread opinion. But if you say it's unrecognisable, I wonder what version of Dune you read.

* Imagine the Luke Skywalker scenes from TLJ, then imagine that the bulk of the SW sequel trilogy were those.

Commissar Cain... it's been a while. That's the impression the first book left me with, though. Cain - whose usual reaction is not to outrun the ambull but to outrun the other guy running from the ambull - at one or two points gets uncharacteristically miffed about how the poor imperial citizens are used and sacrificed.

X-Men movies.

First one was a good, if flawed effort. X-2 is superb. X-3 shouldn’t exist. The three Wolverine films are just canon confusing, First Class was brill, Future Past had its moments, and have no interest at all in Apoc or Phoenix.

Ciaphas Cain is not the same as Flashman. He is not a total scumbag, but generally cares for his men. His cowardice sometimes outweighs it, but the series (especially Amberley’s notes) makes it clear that Cain self-deprecatingly exaggerates his flaws and understates his character out of some kind of guilt complex. The books may not be for everyone, but your description of them does not fit, either.

Yup.

Cain’s main flaw is not recognising his very human reactions to things, and failing to understand bravery isn’t about not being scared.

Fair enough, but it's still a departure from the short stories that I didn't agree with.

(And at least someone thought enough to offer a bit of a counterpoint!)

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
Ciaphas Cain is not the same as Flashman. He is not a total scumbag, but generally cares for his men. His cowardice sometimes outweighs it, but the series (especially Amberley’s notes) makes it clear that Cain self-deprecatingly exaggerates his flaws and understates his character out of some kind of guilt complex. The books may not be for everyone, but your description of them does not fit, either.

Agreed - I enjoyed this aspect - he thinks he is a coward but he is not. He does have quite few other flaws though and like Amberely is still a product of the Imperium - things they do and consider comonplace or even reasuringly normal are pretty damn dark.

Supernatural:
The Scooby Doo episode.
This is where they lost me, i have a high tolerance for gak but man.....they where not even trying anymore
Supernatural was great when it was about the Hunt. People going after cryptids and monsters and the Brothers.
But when the Leviathans came and EVERY SINGLE EPISODE was about them, the show lost its charm, still watched though
Then every season just involved deamons and angels, and then god dies and comes back and gak like that.....feth man.
There are SOOO many monsters and myths from around the world, so they didn't run out. But then they wanted to tell these epic grand lord of the rings style stories, ignoring the sheer terror of the show, that monsters exist and the only thing out there to stop them are these barely functioning neurotic hillbillies.
That and the Fujoshies that ended up ruining it

Scooby Doo,

where they added Scrappy Doo, curse his annoying little puppy heart.... this my have been my first childhood realisation that everything has a natural end and you have to know when to let go

I finally quit reading the honor harrington series because frankly dave weber is not a good writer.

He creates an endless series of black and white characters that are either ridiculously good or horribly bad. Many of his characters would strain to be 2 dimensional.

the title character, HH herself, is just too good to relate to, she's inhumanly perfect. I just couldn't stand her after a couple novels.

(I will not call her a mary sue as that term's been co-opted by too many creeps who think and competent female character that does not exist just to be rescued and claimed by a male lead is an affront to their delicate little manhoods.)

The villains are likewise laughably incompetent and frequently follow the exhausted, fossilized James Bond villain model.

Lastly I got tired of weber literally beating the reader over the head with his political views, Without going into politics I will say weber incessantly pounds the drum that his views are good, other views are bad.

After quitting the HH series I quit reading anything with weber's name on it after in a starfire novel of his he, yet again, slapped everyone with a different political view across the face with his.


I also quit watching the walking in circles dead as I got tired of ever more ridiculous villains the same exact plot season after season.

Other things I got sick of:

The Horus Heresy books: I never had a high opinion of WH books. Entertaining at best. The HH series started out pretty good, but then took a pretty hard nosedive. By the Alpha Legion book, whose climax is just. so. stupid. I couldn't take the insult to my intelligence anymore and called it quits.

I kind of agree with Vermis concering Dune. First book is an absolute masterpiece. Second and third are OK. Past those it gets silly.

Orson Scott Card: Ender's Game is fantastic. The Alvin Maker books start out entertaining but after a while and everything else he writes turns into childish beating-you-over-the-head with my ideal values/politics/religion. Steer clear.

Robin Hobb: I managed to read the whole trilogy, but the main character is such a complete moron and masochist (disguised as "loyalty") I never read anything else by the same author. I mean, basically every other page I kept going "no you idiot. Go the other way." Every time he has choice, he always picks the clearly inferior one.

Terry Goodkind: Worse than Wheel of Time. Never made it through the first book. Literally everyone just keeps repeating "good and evil are just two sides of the coin." I get it. Now show me why. Just repeating something until my brain turns to mush doesn't make it true. It just makes me stop listening to you.

Cixin Liu seems to be the new hotness in science fiction. At least, the books are everywhere. I read one book, was mildly entertained, couldn't finish the second because of how completely he (she?) just ignores human nature across both books.

Peter Hamilton's Pandora's Star. Started reading it. Halfway through the book, there still was no sign of a premise or plot or even a story going anywhere, so I put it down and never looked at the author again. If someone can give me a good reason, I might give him another chance, but not with that book.

Matt Swain wrote:
I finally quit reading the honor harrington series because frankly dave weber is not a good writer.

He creates an endless series of black and white characters that are either ridiculously good or horribly bad. Many of his characters would strain to be 2 dimensional.

the title character, HH herself, is just too good to relate to, she's inhumanly perfect. I just couldn't stand her after a couple novels.

(I will not call her a mary sue as that term's been co-opted by too many creeps who think and competent female character that does not exist just to be rescued and claimed by a male lead is an affront to their delicate little manhoods.)

The villains are likewise laughably incompetent and frequently follow the exhausted, fossilized James Bond villain model.

Lastly I got tired of weber literally beating the reader over the head with his political views, Without going into politics I will say weber incessantly pounds the drum that his views are good, other views are bad.

After quitting the HH series I quit reading anything with weber's name on it after in a starfire novel of his he, yet again, slapped everyone with a different political view across the face with his.


I also quit watching the walking in circles dead as I got tired of ever more ridiculous villains the same exact plot season after season.

I disagree. While he has a bit of a swirling mustache fetish for some of his villains quite a few others are pretty deep. Also, Honor isn't perfect. But she is very talented in a narrow field that slowly expands as her area of control expands. Also you're leaving out the fact that she stays sharp and gains more experience because people live 300 years in the series. Hell, she has literal decades where she spends her time learning a new trade between books.

Also his Safehold series you can tell is his true passion and it's pretty solid if also loosely based on the some of the same things as the honorverse. Weber big issue is that he is extremely partial to the British form of government from the age of sail.

I had forgotten about trying to watch GoT. About halfway through the first episode I decided it was either too much porn for the plot, or too much plot for the porn. If you're going to show me even softcore porn, I don't want to find out immediately afterwards they're related. Ew.

For Peter Hamilton’s Pandora’s Star, it takes a while to get there, but the duology has a really interesting villain (or two). MorninLightMountain is somewhere between Skynet and the Tyranid Hivemine for inhuman ruthlessness. I enjoyed all the scenes with him.

You can skip any scene involving Ozzy and not miss anything, though.

For films, I would say.........

Star Wars - I checked out after Force Awakens. A lot of people really like this movie, which I find baffling, but Disney's very first effort with this franchise killed what little love I had left for Star Wars after the prequel trilogy.

For TV...

Big Bang Theory - I forget the name of the episode, I think it's in season 4, where basically the entire cast are doing a panel discussion that's supposed to be about something science related but instead they talk about penis envy and the whole thing devolves into toilet humour. It was at that point I checked out of the show. I still love the first 2 seasons, but the rest of the show is quite forgettable to me.

Shameless - Absolutely adored this show until the 8th season. I stuck through all of that in the hopes season 9 would be better, made it like 3 episodes in and just couldn't anymore. It's unlikely I'll finish. The first 7 seasons are brilliant though.

Walking Dead - Really enjoyed everything up to and including the Governor. Negan really tore the show apart. I really enjoyed watching Jeffrey Dean Morgan play the part, he clearly had a great time and it shows, but the writers bent over backwards making contrivances to accommodate his character. When Carl infiltrates the Savior base and kills one of them, and Negan responds by taking him under his wing, I checked out. Just couldn't do it.

Matt Swain wrote:the title character, HH herself, is just too good to relate to, she's inhumanly perfect. I just couldn't stand her after a couple novels.

(I will not call her a mary sue as that term's been co-opted by too many creeps who think and competent female character that does not exist just to be rescued and claimed by a male lead is an affront to their delicate little manhoods.)

That is hilarious. I hear/read that term used about male characters more than any female characters.

Just to throw another one in there, I started losing enthusiasm for the Discworld books with Making Money, and I think the main reason why was Vetinari. His role in the story seemed to be being always right, knowing everything and being a mouthpiece for the author's politics, not to mention sucking all the drama out of the climax. For an author who always seemed very left-leaning, it was very weird to have this benevolent dictator being held up as the paragon of common sense and good government--I've heard people say he was meant as a parody of the "Great Man", but after a certain point, there just didn't seem to be any parody left in there. Vetinari had become a straight-faced argument about how the common people are stupid sheep and elected leaders (the guild heads) are hopelessly corrupt, so we need to make the smartest guy in the room into a strongman dictator in times of crisis. And everything in the novels contrived to support that and make him always-right.

Add to that the Witches book where the moral seemed to be "dumb people need to be tricked and deceived by smart people to keep things running smoothly", and it was just getting uncomfortable for me.

I've quit watching Dr. Who and will likely not watch it when it returns next year.

No, it's not because of a woman doctor. Not it's not because the series got ultrawoke.

It's because I don't feel like waiting 10 months for new stuff.

The sopranos started these long long delays between seasons.I watched it because it was a fluke.

I quit watching 'better call saul' because I got tired of the long, long, long delays between new seasons. I quit watching dr who after a year between seasons, then having a t months season from new years to the beginning of march, then nothing till next new years.

If this is the new show model fr series I'm tired of it.

 Matt Swain wrote:
I've quit watching Dr. Who and will likely not watch it when it returns next year.

For me it was largely because episodes and arcs started feeling replayed. . . I stopped watching as Capaldi was getting the sonic, but even before him, many episodes felt like they were just picking up old scripts and just repeating the same thing over and over again to the point it felt somewhere between boring and tiresome. . . Nothing I've seen in previews since then has convinced me to pick it back up.

 Elemental wrote:
Just to throw another one in there, I started losing enthusiasm for the Discworld books with Making Money, and I think the main reason why was Vetinari. His role in the story seemed to be being always right, knowing everything and being a mouthpiece for the author's politics, not to mention sucking all the drama out of the climax.

That never bothered me much, but I started losing a lot of interest in Pratchett when it became a relentless repetition of 'Fantasy Racism is Super Bad'... but parallels of real world racism were often played for laughs. I really don't care about the rights of Golems, Goblins or the one Orc that apparently still exists and plays football. Jingo in particular hit a weird spot, because it came on the heels of caring a lot about the state of Trolls, Dwarves and whatever, but its OK for Colon and Nobby to have horrible opinions about Pratchett's not!Arabs because they're the idiot duo. It felt really tone deaf that the rights and feelings of creatures that don't exist were super serious, but pretty blatant real-world geopolitics were just a font for mockery.



-----
Recently I've been on Steven Universe binge. The character designs put me off a long while, but I'd heard good things about it, so started watching (since I've got more time on my hands). The show was actually pretty impressive. Honest subversion of tropes, actual conflict resolution and pretty tight (and fun!) writing all the way through... up until the end, where the antagonists basically capitulate out of sheer befuddlement. They're just confused so...they stop and just... go along with what the heroes want. But still, it wraps remaining loose ends up, after a slightly too-long fight scene, but the story stuff that mattered had already been resolved.

The movie is kind of a shallow repeat of the show's major themes, but not bad.

But the epilogue season of SU Future is just utter misery porn. A few moments try to shine through, but they get ruthlessly quashed. All the lessons of the origin series are forgotten, and all the important characters, bar the title character, are firmly shoved under a bus, only trotted out once each for a rehash of a lesson learned during the original series that Steven suddenly can't remember until everything explodes in the final few episodes. The creator claims its a PTSD story about all the trauma he dealt with during the original series, but most of that was so fun and light hearted that it rings a little off. It seems more a story about a completely unprepared teenager with too much responsibility for no real reason, and an inability sit down and talk about problems, which was his basic, go-to, fundamental skill during the original show.
Its an after-school 'very special episode' meets a Lifetime channel movie level of depressing, and I can't figure out why they went that way with an unnecessary and superfluous ending to what was a fun adventure cartoon.

 Elemental wrote:

I think Moffat's a genius when it comes to creating mood and mystery, and doing clever storytelling with time travel. Most of his individual episodes are brilliant. But that's not the same skill-set as telling a coherent and satisfying story arc, so you have characters who have little to them other than being a Big Mystery and big plots that just fizzle out when the questions actually need to be answered.

I don't think the Doctor really works as long form story arcs in general. So much of the appeal of the character is exploring the infinite possibilities of time and space so when you bring back the same characters and races for an overarching story you lose a lot of what makes the series compelling. I can't think of a single "culmination" style episode that's really any good. The show kind of peaks at 2 parters.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Vermis wrote:

I read Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone recently, because it was free on Prime Reading and I decided to finally see what the fuss was about. I'm still half-wondering what the fuss was about. I guess you had to be a kid.

The first two books are DEFINITELY more for kids. It's not really until the 3rd where the "wizarding world" gets fleshed out to a point where it becomes a setting for people to dig into akin to Star Wars and the like. Even then, the books suffer from JKR's "everything happens in the last 50 pages" writing style. For the most part, I think the films do a better job of telling the story, though the books are somewhat critical to appreciate the generational sins aspects of the larger plot by the end.

Bored at work, so I thought I'd jump in on this one!

Interesting that so many people have mentionned Buffy and Dr. Who - both shows that I started out really loving, and both I found myself really tired of and burned out on by the time I dropped them.
With Who, it was definitely when Matt Smith took the reins. He felt derivative of Tennant's frantic mania, and the whole "Fish fingers and custard" bit felt like a really shameless attempt to latch onto LOLRANDOMXD humor that was already pretty passe by then. Got tired of Buffy at about season 4, I remember Adam and the whole secret government bit feeling really off. Buffy seemed to start out very self-aware and silly, kind of playing with tropes and subverting them, but morphed after they got out of the highschool setting into taking itself a lot more seriously, and it felt like it started to fall victim to the very tropes it used to be so interesting by undermining. Also the 'every character has a love interest' thing started to feel like bad fanfic.
This is probably a contraversial one, but I think I got done with star wars at about Revenge of the Sith. Lucas certainly tied up his loose ends, but it felt like so much of the movie was just a vehicle for these technically impressive CG battlescapes set to music, with almost all of the plot developments being "oh goodness, the clone troopers become the storm troopers, and now they're baddies?". I gave AOTC a pass because I was about 7 at the time, but I remember being about 10 and watching RotS and kinda being "well, duh?" IDK, I've not enjoyed a Star Wars movie much since, though I will give a special shoutout to the two that I have (FA and that one Han Solo Movie) for being really really not worth watching at all, but I was kinda without choice in both cases.

Dune has come up here a fair bit, and I'm glad it's not on as much of a pedastle as I've seen previously. I probably gave up on Dune about halfway through the first book (kept reading) when Paul goes from fugitive in a hostile world, in a bizarre universe to The Best and Smartest Guy Ever when he drinks the magic water. I love the universe and background as they explored it, but...

...Paul becomes such a boring Mary Sue. Can't be bothered to see what happens next.

Shows that haven't had a show in yet:

The Chris Gethard Show (spoilered because long (did I mention I'm bored?))


Broad City


Attack on Titan


The Monogatari Series


I'll probably remember a really great one later lol, +500 McBogus points if you actually read through any of this nonsense!

Attack on Titan! I tried to watch it, I thought the idea was interesting, but gave up a couple of episodes into season 2. In a nutshell, I thought that 'medieval walled city fighting mindless maneating giants with gas-powered Spider-Man tech' was not only an interesting premise, but also the most believable aspect of it.

 Vermis wrote:
Attack on Titan! I tried to watch it, I thought the idea was interesting, but gave up a couple of episodes into season 2. In a nutshell, I thought that 'medieval walled city fighting mindless maneating giants with gas-powered Spider-Man tech' was not only an interesting premise, but also the most believable aspect of it.

This happened to me too. I lost interest in the anime quickly. I read through the manga quite a bit, but the plot is honestly just a constant string of nonsensical plot reveals with no foreshadowing and I rapdly lost my interest.

Here's a throwback - John Norman and his Gor book series.

When i was shipboard in the Navy and going on deployment, I picked up the first 10 books (I think they went up to 18? 20?) thinking I had some great fantasy fiction to keep me occupied for a number of months. First few books were great, even if it was a pale adaption of Burroughs Princess of Mars plot. The main character was honorable and the stories entertaining.

Then, a few book in, the plots began to take a very dark, S&M twist and frankly got unbearable. I stopped the series before I even finished the 8th or 9th book. Old John must have a very warped sense of male/female relationships and it frankly disgusted me to read him take a higher and higher woman in status only to break her down into what he truly thought of women. I can only say how disturbed his thoughts patterns must be.

 LordofHats wrote:

 Vermis wrote:
Attack on Titan! I tried to watch it, I thought the idea was interesting, but gave up a couple of episodes into season 2. In a nutshell, I thought that 'medieval walled city fighting mindless maneating giants with gas-powered Spider-Man tech' was not only an interesting premise, but also the most believable aspect of it.

This happened to me too. I lost interest in the anime quickly. I read through the manga quite a bit, but the plot is honestly just a constant string of nonsensical plot reveals with no foreshadowing and I rapdly lost my interest.

The scene where the shifters hop out the necks and have a chat like mecha pilots is definitely where it lost me. I occasionally check on the series to see what's up, but I'm definitely not super into it.

There's actually a ton of foreshadowing throughout the series; most notably the nonsense that its building to at the end is heavily teased in the title of the very first chapter. It's just.... kind of ridiculous to its core, which clashes horribly in the very serious world its set in. It's like if the dog ending of Silent Hill 2 was the cannon ending of the series and all the symbolism of the monsters and the like were all just a puppy puppeteer.

 MDSW wrote:
Here's a throwback - John Norman and his Gor book series.

When i was shipboard in the Navy and going on deployment, I picked up the first 10 books (I think they went up to 18? 20?) thinking I had some great fantasy fiction to keep me occupied for a number of months. First few books were great, even if it was a pale adaption of Burroughs Princess of Mars plot. The main character was honorable and the stories entertaining.

Then, a few book in, the plots began to take a very dark, S&M twist and frankly got unbearable. I stopped the series before I even finished the 8th or 9th book. Old John must have a very warped sense of male/female relationships and it frankly disgusted me to read him take a higher and higher woman in status only to break her down into what he truly thought of women. I can only say how disturbed his thoughts patterns must be.

I heard back in the late nineties or early 2000’s that law enforcement kept track of who bought the Gor books the same way they tracked who bought The Turner Diaries.

Attack on Titan is a great choice. The first half of season 1 was riveting and amazing. Then it all goes down hill once they have the mid-season reveal.

 Elemental wrote:

I think Moffat's a genius when it comes to creating mood and mystery, and doing clever storytelling with time travel.

Interesting. With the nu-Who in general I've largely stopped thinking about it as a time travel show. (Which helped keep me watching it for as long as I did, to be honest, since I find time travel plots generally terrible and full of holes)

But most of it is so character driven that the time travel is just window dressing so they can do wacky sets in the background and leave each story with few lingering consequences at the end. Its basically an excuse for varied set and costume design, and an easy way out of hanging plots, consequences and secondary characters, but the actual time travel doesn't really matter in any significant way. Just a vehicle for the show to happen in.

 LunarSol wrote:
There's actually a ton of foreshadowing throughout the series; most notably the nonsense that its building to at the end is heavily teased in the title of the very first chapter.

I suppose it depends on how we define foreshadowing. I do get that sense that this is a story where the ending is already known and there is that ever constant march toward a conclusion. I never felt like the series was aimlessly meandering through its plot.

For me though I feel like most of the reveals just come right out of left field while you spend most of the time in the story looking right. You're focused on this one thing that looks like it's building to something and then BOOM plot twist what were you looking at that doesn't matter anymore we're on this now. And it's constant in the story, like clockwork. It's one thing to keep the story moving along, but I feel like Attack on Titan at no point ever lets you settle into the narrative. At any moment you start to feel like you're in the story, it throws another WTF twist at you with no warning. And some of them are really damn WTF.

 LordofHats wrote:

I suppose it depends on how we define foreshadowing.

The big one is the conversations characters randomly have with no one throughout the series which are:

MAJOR SPOILER:


In terms of how the plot reveals itself, you're absolutely right. It totally turns into the kind of story where the people of Victorian London are actually living in a zoo run by aliens, but when they escape the zoo they find out that the aliens are actually part of a huge computer simulation run by people who have put captured aliens in the Matrix to see how aliens would act in Victorian London. It's remarkably coherent, but still nonsense.

 MDSW wrote:
Here's a throwback - John Norman and his Gor book series.

When i was shipboard in the Navy and going on deployment, I picked up the first 10 books (I think they went up to 18? 20?) thinking I had some great fantasy fiction to keep me occupied for a number of months. First few books were great, even if it was a pale adaption of Burroughs Princess of Mars plot. The main character was honorable and the stories entertaining.

Then, a few book in, the plots began to take a very dark, S&M twist and frankly got unbearable. I stopped the series before I even finished the 8th or 9th book. Old John must have a very warped sense of male/female relationships and it frankly disgusted me to read him take a higher and higher woman in status only to break her down into what he truly thought of women. I can only say how disturbed his thoughts patterns must be.

Its a fairly notorious series - interestingly its not without its female fan base but then so had 50 shades of Grey etc.

The Lost Room.

Really took me by surprise with how good it was.

Gave up on it in the last 10 minutes of the last episode, where the central concept was sacrificed to keep the possibility open for an ongoing series....which never happened anyway.... So disappointing.

Kind of cheated with this one.

Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time was a big one, I had read up through book 9 (Winter's Heart) and they had consistently gone from amazing, to excellent, to great, to good, to pretty good to kinda good etc for the entire series, each book being not quite as good as the one before. By book 9 they were barely mediocre and I really struggled to finish it. Book 10 finally released and my friend read it, I asked him if anything particularly important even happened in the entire book, he thought for a little bit and said not really, and so I was done with the series. After Jordan died and the last few were ghost-written by another author, I had another friend give me the final run-down and have been perfectly satisfied with that 20 minute synopsis ever since.

For anime, I started watching Bleach on a recommendation when it was still fairly new (you had to download the episodes with fanmade subtitles, it wasn't in USA yet). I was really getting into it, had some great character arcs and really awesome fights, leading to enemies slowly becoming allies as they realized the true enemy, all leading up to the the final showdown with the main villain in episode 62, only for him to escape at the last second in the DUMBEST way possible. After an intense (and truly epic) fight, but JUST before the killing blow lands the Main Bad literally casts a shield of invulnerability, monologues for a minute and then flies away. It was literally an "oh crap, this is getting really popular, we need to extend it" decision by the creators. I got through about 6 worthless filler episodes and realized they were turning the battle anime into a slice of life anime until the manga had enough story to get back to the main line and was utterly done with the show.

My friends kept watching and confirmed there was another 50ish episodes of filler and side stories until the main story continued (in the end there were 366 episodes in the complete series), but ever since I have proudly proclaimed that I love the anime Bleach and am very glad that it definitely ended on episode 62 when the Main Character beheaded the Main Bad and brought the story to an immensely satisfying end on episode 62, and that maybe a sequel would be great someday but it isn't needed because they certainly came to an excellent and complete finish on episode 62 when the final fight brought the story to it's ultimate and wonderful conclusion.

I am about to spout Heresy.

I stopped watching Neon Genesis Evangelion at about Episode 6.

I couldn't get in the robot anymore.

 Kalamadea wrote:

For anime, I started watching Bleach on a recommendation when it was still fairly new (you had to download the episodes with fanmade subtitles, it wasn't in USA yet). I was really getting into it, had some great character arcs and really awesome fights, leading to enemies slowly becoming allies as they realized the true enemy, all leading up to the the final showdown with the main villain in episode 62, only for him to escape at the last second in the DUMBEST way possible. After an intense (and truly epic) fight, but JUST before the killing blow lands the Main Bad literally casts a shield of invulnerability, monologues for a minute and then flies away. It was literally an "oh crap, this is getting really popular, we need to extend it" decision by the creators. I got through about 6 worthless filler episodes and realized they were turning the battle anime into a slice of life anime until the manga had enough story to get back to the main line and was utterly done with the show.

My friends kept watching and confirmed there was another 50ish episodes of filler and side stories until the main story continued (in the end there were 366 episodes in the complete series), but ever since I have proudly proclaimed that I love the anime Bleach and am very glad that it definitely ended on episode 62 when the Main Character beheaded the Main Bad and brought the story to an immensely satisfying end on episode 62, and that maybe a sequel would be great someday but it isn't needed because they certainly came to an excellent and complete finish on episode 62 when the final fight brought the story to it's ultimate and wonderful conclusion.

Bleach is so bad I gave up on the manga because it wasn't going anywhere. The anime didn't even reach the end of the story (though apparently it might get to now?). You're definitely right. The series never goes anywhere after 62. Tite Kubo mostly just starts spamming neat character designs and super powers. The big bad's powers are so ludicrously OP he's never again interesting and the series just kind of flails about until you finally give up and walk away.

Anime in general.

Started off around 1990 with Akira (which is ace).

After that, it all became a bit pervy, in far too many ways, for my tastes.

I’ve dabbled since (Princess Mononoke and Ghibli in general is good), but it’s too Russian Roulette for me, except instead of a bullet it’s an unfeasibly prehensile ‘male chicken’ with a worryingly underaged girl on the end of it.

I know I’m doing the majority a disservice. And I’m probably just incredibly unlucky with the stuff I’ve seen (and spoiled by seeing Akira”s perfection as my first taste), but it’s just something i don’t get on with.

Absolutely no disrespect or shade to anyone who does enjoy it.

I had a remarkably similar experience with anime.

However, I started with Dragon Ball. When I tried Akira, I didn’t like it. The Ghibli stuff I like, but not enough to seek out.

In college, I thought I would get into anime for sure, so I joined the anime club. We watched a bunch of stuff, and other than Ah My Goddess, I had trouble sitting through more than half an hour at a time. Evangelion finally convinced me I just wasn’t going to be an anime fan.

Dragon Ball is something I’m not allowed to discuss, for fear of harshing many mellows!

To those that enjoy? Enjoy. I just have strong feels, which are of no import except to me. And this is how i constructively vent.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:

 MDSW wrote:
Here's a throwback - John Norman and his Gor book series.

When i was shipboard in the Navy and going on deployment, I picked up the first 10 books (I think they went up to 18? 20?) thinking I had some great fantasy fiction to keep me occupied for a number of months. First few books were great, even if it was a pale adaption of Burroughs Princess of Mars plot. The main character was honorable and the stories entertaining.

Then, a few book in, the plots began to take a very dark, S&M twist and frankly got unbearable. I stopped the series before I even finished the 8th or 9th book. Old John must have a very warped sense of male/female relationships and it frankly disgusted me to read him take a higher and higher woman in status only to break her down into what he truly thought of women. I can only say how disturbed his thoughts patterns must be.

I heard back in the late nineties or early 2000’s that law enforcement kept track of who bought the Gor books the same way they tracked who bought The Turner Diaries.

Yes, I believe it; good thing my purchase was way back in the early 80's!

 Mr Morden wrote:


Its a fairly notorious series - interestingly its not without its female fan base but then so had 50 shades of Grey etc.

I almost get the 50 shades appeal; super ultra-rich dude that can cater to your every wish wants to get his kink on. Not for me, obviously... Just no reason to treat a women in this manner IMHO.

Someone mentioned how nuGalactica was affected by the writer’s strike, but I don’t think any show was more badly affected than Heroes. After a spectacular and incredible buzz generating first season, the strike caused it to completely crash and burn.

Ditto about anime and manga. Akira is one of those films that should be seen, whether you're an anime fan or not. Ghibli's stuff is charming with some proper gems. But the only anime TV show I managed to sit through for any amount of time was Pokemon, when I was a kid.

Manga: I once had the entire set of TPB volumes for Akira, based on the strength of the film. Been a while since I sold them on, so I could hardly tell you what the plot was in the later volumes. But I remember that I'd be hard-pressed to tell you anyway. It was not straightforward. I since bought the first volume again, mostly for the art. (There are those trying to ape 'the manga style', and then there are manga artists)

I've upped my manga reading recently. I got that Shonen Jump app - cheap enough for the huge back catalogue you get access to, and let me check out some of this stuff that people rave about. I also started buying Battle Angel Alita on kindle after the film came out. It helped me realise that Akira's kind of escalating-but-meandering, stretch-it-out-for-the-sales-figures plotting is kind of a common thing in manga, isn't it? Mind you, some do it better than others. Dragonball was fun but I have no problem dissing Dragonball Z in front of it's fans. It earned a spot here for the whole continuity, because of how monotonous that formula became. Big enemy > train > get new power > beat enemy > tournament > new bigger enemy > train more > get even bigger power > beat bigger enemy > tournament > new even biggerer enemy > train moar wash rinse repeat aaargh

Out of everything else I read (a handful of series) Death Note is the other one that belongs in this topic. I have trouble figuring out how all that go-nowhere genie-lawyering two-nerds-second-guessing-eachother stuff became so popular.

Like Harry Potter, I guess you had to be a kid.

For the most part marvel movies after end-game. There's just nothing left after end-game to keep me interested. Maybe if guardians 3 comes around or another ant man movie but when I saw the movies coming most just seemed crap. Maybe scarlet witch will be ok or black widow but I saw a scene from a black widow trailer that just rubbed me the wrong way and I'm on the fence with that movie as it is.

@mad dok: I don't watch anime much myself and I have to watch more serious anime. Anything which comes off as a harem anime, slice of life or le wacky characters lulz is something I skip. I also get that all the characters are in high school due to the core audience but that trope should really die off. I enjoyed gungrave and parasyte. There may be a few other good ones in there. I got halfway through Monster before giving up. It was mostly just too long. Sadly I wished parasyte was a bit longer but it did what it had to do with the episodes it had. I might watch black lagoon. There's a few I've always meant to watch.

--------

Another one to mention is warhammer 40k in general. Hopefully I can count this game. I like it and hate it. I haven't passed the point of no return but beefy spess mehreens always bugged me and now we have them in everything even fantasy. I enjoy 40k but there's still something about it that annoys me. I think the writing has gone downhill a bit or maybe at one point it became more serious rather than goofy and over the top. The prices certainly never helped and the lopsided balance has never been good. Maybe it's getting a fix. Maybe when warhammer fantasy comes back I'll feel good again.

If its part of Shonen Jump, its likely to be stretched beyond its shelf life. A big part of that is the same reason it happens anywhere; Jump is THE spotlight and once you get your shot you'd best ride it as long as it lasts. The other big thing is Jump is one of the most grueling meat grinder industries out there. Each story is a one man show, expected to provide 16 pages of original art and story every single week and if quality doesn't keep up, you'll be dropped for a hungrier, younger artist before you know it. Padding is a pretty common coping mechanism, as is simplified character designs once a character has become established (famously, Goku's hair changes when he goes Super Saiyan so that Toryama didn't have to fill in the black hair).

Anime based on Jump face issues beyond that. Every week they're churning out 20 min of animation, which can go through 16 pages pretty quick. Production won't start on a series until its built up a couple years of popularity, but it doesn't take long to catch up. Traditionally they've coped with this by writing their own drawn out subplots, or just pacing episodes VERY slowly (how many minutes can someone stand and scream?) though they've been improving over time, with the Naruto manga skipping side plots to be covered in the anime and most recently FINALLY switching to a shorter, more seasonal approach to put an emphasis on quality.

That's just the Jump stuff though. There are plenty of shows that aren't based on Manga that can have far cleaner story arcs and pacing. There's just so much content it can be hard to sort the wheat from the chaff. You just have to give it a try, find what you like, find people that like what you like, and can point you in the right direction. I kind of like watching anime on a 2 year delay. It can make it a lot easier to find stuff that holds up.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Dragon Ball is something I’m not allowed to discuss, for fear of harshing many mellows!

To those that enjoy? Enjoy. I just have strong feels, which are of no import except to me. And this is how i constructively vent.

Eh. I can see many reasons to dislike Dragonball. Won’t bother me to hear yours. In fact, I’d be interested, as Drahonball is also one of the series I couldn’t finish, although I’ll probably get farther in the DBZ Abridged series than I did in the original manga.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Seeing as I just realized this is the thread:

Dragonball Z. I started it in the Cell saga, back filled the entire series while I was i to it, and then dropped it pretty quickly during the Majin Buu saga. It’s super repetitive wish fulfillment with few genuinely likeable characters. I might have been more bored if Frieza hadn’t been in Nameksei and Cell hadn’t had time travel and jinzoningen (we called them robots) shenanigans.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Dragon Ball is something I’m not allowed to discuss, for fear of harshing many mellows!

To those that enjoy? Enjoy. I just have strong feels, which are of no import except to me. And this is how i constructively vent.

Do you mind telling me? I have never understood why dbz is soooo well loved, fun and good, but it lacks in so many areas

 Kalamadea wrote:
For anime, I started watching Bleach on a recommendation when it was still fairly new (you had to download the episodes with fanmade subtitles, it wasn't in USA yet). I was really getting into it, had some great character arcs and really awesome fights, leading to enemies slowly becoming allies as they realized the true enemy, all leading up to the the final showdown with the main villain in episode 62

Honestly, you probably lucked out cause the Soul Society Arc was easily the best the series ever managed. It's all downhill from there even as the art improves and the characters get more interesting.

Bleach is so bad I gave up on the manga because it wasn't going anywhere.

Bleach is the anime/manga that I think best exemplifies the phrase "wasted opportunity." Tite Kubo isn't untalented. He has a real talent for characters that just capture your interest and stand out in unique ways without feeling tired or awkward and that's something I think the entire genre struggles with given it's serial nature. His characters have creative powers, the fights start good and only get better in terms of art and panel work. Bleach had so much going for it and it was all wasted because it was just too much. Hardly any of the characters ever got satisfactory pay off for their struggles. Arcs were overlong and overstayed their welcomes (part of that tbf is supposedly executive meddling and not what Tite Kubo wanted). The series had such a spectacular cast and surprisingly well done world building and you just never got to enjoy any of it because the series has the attention span of an ADHD kid on a sugar high. Characters would get introduced, capture your interest, and 95% of the time they just dropped off the face of the Earth when some new interesting character showed up.

It worked for a time in keeping sales going cause there was always something interesting going on, but I think as the series went on the ever piling mountain of unfulfilled potential just left the series fluttering in the wind.

I did soldier through Bleach all the way to the end, but I was definitely on autopilot from the end of the Aizen arc onwards. The anime suffers doubly so cause it just looks so cheap. Especially as it goes on. Naruto actually shelled out serious dough to make some fights look great on screen (many of the last fights in the series are movie quality animation). Bleach never once did that, except maybe briefly for a few frames in the battle against Ulquiorra (which imo is actually one of the biggest let down fights in the story). It's an interesting inverse actually. I think Bleach started really strong and quickly fell part after completing it's first big arc. Naruto started on shaky feet, kind stumbled through lots of its early publication on sheer charisma, and then became amazing up till it's overdrawn (and WTF when did this become scifi?) ending.

(though apparently it might get to now?).

They have announced an anime adaptation this year for Bleach's final arc, so if you liked Bleach you'll get more. I honestly think the final arc exemplifies everything wrong in Bleach though so my interest is a null value. On the bright side, the anime won't be constantly interrupted with filler this time, and that can only improve watchability. Bleach had particularly atrocious filler arcs, and nearly half the anime is filler content.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
I’ve dabbled since (Princess Mononoke and Ghibli in general is good), but it’s too Russian Roulette for me, except instead of a bullet it’s an unfeasibly prehensile ‘male chicken’ with a worryingly underaged girl on the end of it.

Oh, speaking of this!

Irregular at Magic Highschool.

I think I actually liked it and watched it all the way through the first time when it came out. Recently I tried to give it a watch again... And I quit at episode 4 for the following reasons that somehow managed to slip past me the first time;

-Main heroine has zero character outside of obsessing over whether or not she can force her emotionally stunted brother (and she knows he's stunted) into an incestuous romantic relationship. That's literally all she has going for her as a character. That's it. No idea how I missed it the first go but it makes her completely unlikable bordering on a fething rapist. She even knowing 'kills' him for the crime of interacting with other girls with the foreknowledge that he just magically resurrects himself when he dies with the implication that he doesn't specifically remember she did it.
-Main hero (said heroine's emotional stunted brother) is a fascist who gives a author rant on how people facing inequality and discrimination should think about how the privileged feel. Serious "WTF how did I miss this" moment for me right there. The very first arc of the story is about discrimination between students at Magic High School based on how good they are magic (which admitted does make some sense). There's a girl character who feels inadequate, rejected, and isolated from a society that includes violent discrimination (potentially lethal, violent discrimination) against her for not being the best because her talent is low. He fething gives her a speech about how she should be more understanding of how hard it is to be privileged and that she should just accept her lot and work with it rather than express her frustrations at a casually violent system that is psychologically traumatizing her. This is followed up by talk of a terrorist organization that is apparently evil for thinking citizens of a society should be equal and the citizens are selfish idiots for wanting it... I mean, he's emotionally stunted so there was an opportunity there for the character to maybe grow but feth that the story just reinforces his fethed up worldview at every turn and characters all end up agreeing with him because he's 'great' or something.

EDIT: It's especially weird, cause there is this trend of fascist nationalism in Japanese culture that comes out in anime/manga often enough. It's why I quit Gate, Guilty Crown, and Valvrave. I'm usually pretty fast to note when someone is quietly suggesting Imperial Japan did nothing wrong, I have no idea how I fething missed it this time when the show was basically waving the damn flag in my face.

Bailed right the feth out of that XD

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Anime in general.

Started off around 1990 with Akira (which is ace).

After that, it all became a bit pervy, in far too many ways, for my tastes.

I’ve dabbled since (Princess Mononoke and Ghibli in general is good), but it’s too Russian Roulette for me, except instead of a bullet it’s an unfeasibly prehensile ‘male chicken’ with a worryingly underaged girl on the end of it.

I know I’m doing the majority a disservice. And I’m probably just incredibly unlucky with the stuff I’ve seen (and spoiled by seeing Akira”s perfection as my first taste), but it’s just something i don’t get on with.

Absolutely no disrespect or shade to anyone who does enjoy it.

If this was a few years ago, i would say that you would be doing it a disservice.....but not now. Anime has gotten worse to the point i cant stomach it, and fans are the worse. They Vehemently defend or hand wave the worse of things.

 LunarSol wrote:

 LordofHats wrote:

I suppose it depends on how we define foreshadowing.

The big one is the conversations characters randomly have with no one throughout the series which are:

MAJOR SPOILER:

Spoiler:

actually conversations being had with past and future carries of the Attack Titan power that essentially exist at all times simultaneously Dr Manhatten style.

In terms of how the plot reveals itself, you're absolutely right. It totally turns into the kind of story where the people of Victorian London are actually living in a zoo run by aliens, but when they escape the zoo they find out that the aliens are actually part of a huge computer simulation run by people who have put captured aliens in the Matrix to see how aliens would act in Victorian London. It's remarkably coherent, but still nonsense.

You mean something like how Big O ended?

 Just Tony wrote:


You mean something like how Big O ended?

I mean, Big at least foreshadowed it... Sort of? Big O was constantly dropping hints that not all was as it seemed in the setting, that games were being played behind the scenes and that current events were cyclical and had happened before. The ending is 'out there' but not so much that it was completely nonsensical. But yeah, anime has a nasty habit of WTF endings that throw a lot at you really fast and then do a half-ass job at resolving anything and Big O deserves a place right at the top on that list. Part of their issue was that for awhile they were expecting another season and word they would not be getting one again came down suddenly and they rushed to try and wrap up the story.

Big O is funny in that regard. Everything about its ending is paraded throughout the entire series, but it feels like its mostly just artistic window dressing. Then the ending comes around and is all like... no... that's what is really going on, and its kind of disappointing because those things are better as flourishes and nothing is really gained or learned from the ordeal.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 LordofHats wrote:

Oh, speaking of this!

Irregular at Magic Highschool.

I recently gave this a shot myself and.... ugghhhhhhhhh yeah, no. Nope nope nope.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 LordofHats wrote:

I did soldier through Bleach all the way to the end, but I was definitely on autopilot from the end of the Aizen arc onwards. The anime suffers doubly so cause it just looks so cheap. Especially as it goes on. Naruto actually shelled out serious dough to make some fights look great on screen (many of the last fights in the series are movie quality animation). Bleach never once did that, except maybe briefly for a few frames in the battle against Ulquiorra (which imo is actually one of the biggest let down fights in the story). It's an interesting inverse actually. I think Bleach started really strong and quickly fell part after completing it's first big arc. Naruto started on shaky feet, kind stumbled through lots of its early publication on sheer charisma, and then became amazing up till it's overdrawn (and WTF when did this become scifi?) ending.

Both are somewhat victims of editorial demand to keep things going. Bleach just falls apart completely, where Naruto mostly bloats while keeping its eye toward the ending to keep from going too far off course. The editorial Sasuke fetish never naturally links up with Naruto's actual plot and reads like two different comics that don't line back up naturally and have to be resolved with a rather tacked on big bad. It's still probably one of the most satisfying conclusions to one of the Jump super stars out there. Just kind of the nature of the beast I suppose.

An example from today: The Letter for the King, a new series on Netflix that might as well be titled "Generic Medieval Low Fantasy Adventure #34567." The series is apparently based on a Dutch book from the 1960s, so maybe the story was more fresh then. Today it's mediocre in every conceivable way with nothing interesting going for it.

And that's just the premise.

The actual show has a fairly strong first episode, with a pretty strong imo performance by the lead actor. Unfortunately, by episode 2 he's the only actor who seems to be selling his character well. The rest are all really shallow bordering on disinterested and the writers seemed pretty disinterested too cause obvious plot holes start cropping up fast and irrational "because the plot needs it" behavior begins dominating what characters do. The series also has massive issues with basic chronology for a series with an inbuilt time limit for its main quest (14 days). Two days into said quest, somehow people miles and miles away are more aware of what's going on than the main character is despite the main character having a half a day head start. The Queen of dumb-sounding-name-county-A is meeting with the king of dumb-sounding-name-county B despite their kingdoms apparent being far enough apart that the main character expresses disbelief you can get from one to the other in 14 days within those same two days. And a third tertiary character within those same two days has apparently managed to leave country A and get to country B and then be at this meeting in that time period.

It's such a glaring issue only laziness can possibly explain the writers not noticing the glaring time issues in a series that starts by putting the hero on the clock.

I quit at episode 3, when characters taken prisoner by some bad guys who just murdered a bunch of people decided to have a fething snow ball fight in the middle of their hostage situation. It's actually almost funny, cause the actor playing the hostage taker seems legitimately shocked and confused when he says "I can't believe this." I was right there with him. I didn't believe it either and turned the program off.

 totalfailure wrote:
Someone mentioned how nuGalactica was affected by the writer’s strike, but I don’t think any show was more badly affected than Heroes. After a spectacular and incredible buzz generating first season, the strike caused it to completely crash and burn.

I wasn't a Heroes fan, but I watched it a little. I'm not sure that the concept was built to last.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 LunarSol wrote:
Anime based on Jump face issues beyond that. Every week they're churning out 20 min of animation, which can go through 16 pages pretty quick. Production won't start on a series until its built up a couple years of popularity, but it doesn't take long to catch up. Traditionally they've coped with this by writing their own drawn out subplots, or just pacing episodes VERY slowly (how many minutes can someone stand and scream?) though they've been improving over time, with the Naruto manga skipping side plots to be covered in the anime and most recently FINALLY switching to a shorter, more seasonal approach to put an emphasis on quality.

I'm actually a big fan of DBZ Kai. That probably will spark some BLAAARGH in some corners. But to me it restores the pacing of the manga, solving the original series' single biggest problem.

I feel like there's a definite trend after experience gained with Bleach, Naruto, and One Piece. Of them, only one is still going and that anime has started taking frequent hiatus' rather than churn out filler. Filler arcs are universally bad. I can't think of any anyone actually liked. The industry is switching over to more episodic production based on publication and popularity, like we see in the production of the My Hero Acadamia, Attack on Titan, and Demon Slayer animes. It's much more focused on quality and faithfulness to the source material than having a new episode available every week.

 LordofHats wrote:
An example from today: The Letter for the King, a new series on Netflix that might as well be titled "Generic Medieval Low Fantasy Adventure #34567." The series is apparently based on a Dutch book from the 1960s, so maybe the story was more fresh then. Today it's mediocre in every conceivable way with nothing interesting going for it.

I remember reading that book when I was a kid in the 80s. It's a coming-of-age story written for kids IIRC (don't know what the show made of it - haven't seen it). Not Harry Potter young teenagers kids, easily pre-high school kids. I think I was 8 or 9 when I read it or something. Then again, I was a prodigious reader then, reading well above my age. 8-year old me was very impressed by it though - read a lot of other stuff by the same author.

Bran Dawri wrote:

 LordofHats wrote:
An example from today: The Letter for the King, a new series on Netflix that might as well be titled "Generic Medieval Low Fantasy Adventure #34567." The series is apparently based on a Dutch book from the 1960s, so maybe the story was more fresh then. Today it's mediocre in every conceivable way with nothing interesting going for it.

I remember reading that book when I was a kid in the 80s. It's a coming-of-age story written for kids IIRC (don't know what the show made of it - haven't seen it). Not Harry Potter young teenagers kids, easily pre-high school kids. I think I was 8 or 9 when I read it or something. Then again, I was a prodigious reader then, reading well above my age. 8-year old me was very impressed by it though - read a lot of other stuff by the same author.

I can only imagine the book was better, honestly. Even something as generic as this can't be this bad if it warranted the popularity to be adapted to TV 60 years after it was written. The show's glaring issues reek of 'lazy television' and actors who just want their paycheck. There's only two in the show that I think are honestly trying, and one of them suffers because her honest performance is drowned by actors around her who clearly aren't trying and seem to be surprised that they're actors in a tv show.

 LordofHats wrote:
I feel like there's a definite trend after experience gained with Bleach, Naruto, and One Piece. Of them, only one is still going and that anime has started taking frequent hiatus' rather than churn out filler. Filler arcs are universally bad. I can't think of any anyone actually liked. The industry is switching over to more episodic production based on publication and popularity, like we see in the production of the My Hero Acadamia, Attack on Titan, and Demon Slayer. It's much more focused on quality and faithfulness to the source material than having a new episode available every week.

Two of them really. Boruto is as much a new series as Shippuden was. The emphasis on quality has been fantastic, though its as much a result of the shift to digital distribution as anything else.

 LordofHats wrote:

Bran Dawri wrote:

 LordofHats wrote:
An example from today: The Letter for the King, a new series on Netflix that might as well be titled "Generic Medieval Low Fantasy Adventure #34567." The series is apparently based on a Dutch book from the 1960s, so maybe the story was more fresh then. Today it's mediocre in every conceivable way with nothing interesting going for it.

I remember reading that book when I was a kid in the 80s. It's a coming-of-age story written for kids IIRC (don't know what the show made of it - haven't seen it). Not Harry Potter young teenagers kids, easily pre-high school kids. I think I was 8 or 9 when I read it or something. Then again, I was a prodigious reader then, reading well above my age. 8-year old me was very impressed by it though - read a lot of other stuff by the same author.

I can only imagine the book was better, honestly. Even something as generic as this can't be this bad if it warranted the popularity to be adapted to TV 60 years after it was written. The show's glaring issues reek of 'lazy television' and actors who just want their paycheck. There's only two in the show that I think are honestly trying, and one of them suffers because her honest performance is drowned by actors around her who clearly aren't trying and seem to be surprised that they're actors in a tv show.

I'm not even sure it could be called an adaptation in some sense. I remember reading the book as a kid and from the top of my head the series:
Totally reinvents the main character because conflict? In the book he has no struggles in life, he just starts his adventure as he is about to become a knight/come of age.
Massively expands on certain characters and adds new ones (I guess because the book only really featured two boys). So all of that is just invented for the show, even the girl he travels with has only a tiny part in the book.
Adds magic, why? The book has zero magic afaik. Its just ticking generic fantasy boxes off at this point. A prophecy and all that crap? In the original it was just about a letter telling a king about a murder plot. The book was Medieval make belief, not even fantasy in that sense.

So they took the loose overarching story of the book and took a knife to it to fit Netflix. Granted, the book was quite a by the numbers young boy adventure book (red knight bad! white knight good!), which would probably have been boring and simplistic for everyone over 12. But then why adapt it in the first place?? Now its just a generic teen fantasy as far as I can see. It combined the worst of both worlds, a pre-teen children's book with a generic teen fantasy and stitched them together into one boring show.

Edit: a short Google in Dutch by newspaper reviews sums it up as more Netflix than Tonke Dragt (the writer), who herself prefers to call it 'inspired by' as opposed to an adaptation.

Shows;
The Walking Dead.
Battlestar Galactica.
Naruto.

Books;
Dracula.
All Quiet on the Western Front.
The Count of Monte Cristo.

But not intentionally for any other reason than I just stopped midway and didnt follow through. I was enjoying watching/reading them.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Anime in general.

Started off around 1990 with Akira (which is ace).

After that, it all became a bit pervy, in far too many ways, for my tastes.

I’ve dabbled since (Princess Mononoke and Ghibli in general is good), but it’s too Russian Roulette for me, except instead of a bullet it’s an unfeasibly prehensile ‘male chicken’ with a worryingly underaged girl on the end of it.

I know I’m doing the majority a disservice. And I’m probably just incredibly unlucky with the stuff I’ve seen (and spoiled by seeing Akira”s perfection as my first taste), but it’s just something i don’t get on with.

Absolutely no disrespect or shade to anyone who does enjoy it.

Anime can be... odd. When I was first properly introduced to it back in college (not counting dub stuffed that was heavily edited and dropped on US networks as something completely different) I liked a lot of it because it was different and often didn't end up with the same old cliches and tropes. As I watched more of it, I realized that they most anime was using a different set of cliches and tropes, they were overusing and leaning even harder on them than western shows. The formulas were really real, and exceptions were rare

Though there are some good exceptions. Also a lot of wtf exceptions- biggest non-pervy example, Magic Knights Rayearth. The animation quality is terrible, the manga is better, but the story/subversion stabs right for the gut, in a show that's nominally for young teens. But then that's true for a lot of the CLAMP stuff in general. When they're not being super creepy with romance plots for too young kids and incest, they go right for the tragic feels).

I've still not seen The Matrix 3

Shows/movies

Vikings
Game Of Thrones
There will be blood
Rig 45

Books

Wheel of Time
Panserhjerte by Jo Nesbø

Crispy78 wrote:
I've still not seen The Matrix 3

Don't bother - its not very good. I thought the animated stuff was better.

Crispy78 wrote:
I've still not seen The Matrix 3

I've still not seen The Matrix 2.

Just binged watched the first season of Killing Eve while painting some Harlequins.

On the one hand it was amusing and a good twist on classic thrillers like Day of the Jackal, but on the other it falls flat on the connection between the two female leads. Eve is supposed to be getting darker while Villanelle desires to be normal, and that part of it is developled too slowly for certain events which come across as unconvincing, if not flat-out "WHAT???". This can work and a good example would be Aziraphale and Crowley from Good Omens, while the BBC - if they are so obsessed with their lgbt agenda to the point of hijacking Doctor Who with pregnant men - could at least take a leaf out of Avery Brook's DS9 episode "Rejoined" and do it with common sense.

Good concept and there is some fun to be had, but apparently the next two seasons aren't quite as strong, and its on that note I shall leave it there with Killing Eve.


Oh, Matrix. Felt the first film was pretentious clap trap, and get annoyed everytime someone quotes it as a basis for philosophical debte. The two sequels are very silly but the action scenes are good fun, even hilarious in the case of Reloaded's "burly brawl". It's Highway chase and the Dock battle in Revolutions are too much fun to miss out on.

"Mr Anderson! We missed you!"

Killing Even season 1 is great fun but Eve simply isn't - I really enjoyed the show but felt the book was better except for Jodie's Villenieve and the MIG lady - she is fantastic in the show.

Season 2 is ok Eve driven episodes are not as good.

In my young teens I was so bummed by the Wheel of Time by about book 8-9. The basic story had so much promise, as well as the glimpses of all the insane elseworlds that different characters kept stumbling upon throughout the series, as well as the mysterious magical artifacts that were left from the time before. But then it just became such a slog to read through, and massive parts of each book became dedicated to a single character at a time as they all got extremely separated.

I may have to go back to it after reading some of Brian Sanderson's stuff, as The Stormlight series, his new Wheel or Time-level 1,000-page per book series is freaking awesome, and I can only imagine what he did to wrap up the Wheel of Time. I am hesitant to go back to the WoT, but have read all three Stormlight books so far twice over.

Ooh, lads, I just remembered a good one. Margaret Atwood: Maddaddam triology.
I read the first of these 3 and loved it. I'm a big Atwood fan, having read The Handmaid's Tale at like 16/17, when I was like a full-blown furious-at-the-world anarcho-punk kid, and the no-happy-ending dystopia that resonated with so much of the American Anti-Reagan/religious right music I loved absolutely cemented her as a favorite writer of mine. When I got a chance to read the first of the Maddaddams, I was thrilled, it's a really great environmental apocalypse sci-fi novel, feels really new, but with that same old Atwood snark. Highly recommend.
But the sequels...

...oh man, the sequels. God's Gardeners has it's moments, for sure. As someone who was raised in a staunchly Catholic household, I appreciate the intertextuality, and like, it's not un-fun, but the ending, where everyone magically meets up with the hero of the first novel, who the protagonist of this one just happens to know, is fething lame. The third book reads like bad fanfiction and is essentially a great example of deus ex machina done really, really fething badly. It's put me off any modern Atwood, and I'm really afraid to check out the Handmaid's Tale sequel for that reason.

Killing Eve is a show I really never got into. I missed the first season while I was out in Korea, and when I came back to the UK, my mum was raving about it. Watched the 2nd season with her, and just. God. BBC bad dialogue at it's worst, a load of crummy "Eve is a psychopath so that means she has magic powers and can just violence herself out of any situation" plot points. Not fun.

'Cause I opened the lid on the Pandora's box of anime, I think about 5 or so years ago, I would've pretty much agreed with a lot of sentiment in this thread that Shonen stuff had gotten really formulaic, and that crap, fan-service-y nonsense whose sole purpose was to sell merch of cute girls for a few months and then be forgotten had become FAR too common and profitable for studios to make anything but. (I also have some SPICY anime recommendations for anyone who liked AKIRA, though I'm shocked that there are people who tried the Manga and liked it less???)
However!

I'm gonna say that in recent years, a ton of Anime has really turned this around. Just like in the 90s, when there was a load of really strange outsider stuff, like Eva and Akira being made, in the case of Eva, on an absolute shoestring of a budget, the technology for making anime and manga has gotten really, really affordable. This has lead to a real explosion of stuff, and a great deal of experimentation. While I'm really more into manga these days, it's easy to see how virality is playing a part in how the industry is evolving. Before, as people have pointed out, writers had to bust ass to get their work featured in a big publication monthly/weekly manga anthology, and that often meant jumping through various, very hoops in the faint hope of it maybe matching the beat of someone else's drum. But with how quickly a manga cap can blow up on twitter these days, even big business manga and anime are sitting up and paying attention. A great example of this is Kimetsu no Yaiba, which is, shock horror, a Shonen Jump series, but, though it shares a few tropes, is actually super gritty and grim, main characters die and everything is a bit of a far cry from Naruto or One Piece. It's ultra popular amongst highschool kids, and in my opinion is really unique, both in terms of the themes it plays with, but also the quality of writing and characterization.

Also, can we talk about music here, too? Because whilst I'm sure we all have too many betrayals to talk about (*glares angrily at everything Blink-182 made after the 90s in suburban white kid*), by FAR my biggest "I'm out" moment was The Front Bottoms' Back on Top. Gone was the fragile, vulnerable anxiety of the vocal delivery that made their first 3 albums (including the non-studio, youtube only ones) such a masterwork of sad-boy-punk of the late '00s early '10s, but they also did away, somehow, with the lyrical wit and content, leaving their subsequent stuff just feeling to slick and poppy and vaccous. Bummer, because when I was about 19 I think I played that self-titled album nearly constantly for about a year at least, and would tell anyone with ears to listen to them.

I’m actually a bigger fan of current Blink 182, now that Tom is gone. Of course, being replaced by the lead singer from my favorite band (Alkaline Trio’s Matt Skiba) doesn’t hurt that preference any. They’re older, more grown up (yet strangely more cynical), and they’ve created something that is the lovechild of Blink and Alk3.

 posermcbogus wrote:
though I'm shocked that there are people who tried the Manga and liked it less???)

Wait, was that me?

Just in case: I didn't like it less, I just have real trouble remembering what happened when the manga kinda sorta picked up from where the film kinda sorta left off.



If it was available digitally I'd snap it all up again.

SamusDrake wrote:

Oh, Matrix. Felt the first film was pretentious clap trap, and get annoyed everytime someone quotes it as a basis for philosophical debte.

Well, it _is_ the basis for philosophical debate... in a Freshman Philosophy 101 class.
It plays out like the writers/directors read some cliff notes on philosophy, wuxia and a few very basic sci-fi tropes about robot rebellions, and then proceeded to Dunning-Kruger their way through a film that started life as a Bill and Tedd Visit the Future script.

Another new addition.

Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky. It's an interesting book, with interesting ideas, and some interesting narrative ideas for presenting said ideas. And all of it's interesting ideas are fundamentally wasted in a book that seems to revel in its own tedium. The characters are largely boring and forgettable (and on the human side seem to be mostly motivated by holding the idiot ball). The alien side of the story is actually really cool, and where all the love from the author really seemed to be, but it's so mired in prose right out of a stuffy university lecture I found it to be far duller than it should have been. Also a wasted opportunity imo, because the 'alien' society really isn't any different from human society as it develops. Not really in any ways, despite vast differences in biology and environment. And the presentation is really all just boggling. It feels more like a successive series of goings on. I got bored waiting for the narrative to evolve past 'stuff that happens" halfway through.

It plays out like the writers/directors read some cliff notes on philosophy, wuxia and a few very basic sci-fi tropes about robot rebellions, and then proceeded to Dunning-Kruger their way through a film that started life as a Bill and Tedd Visit the Future script.

I feel like the Matrix is a prime example of a movie where anyone who ascribes depth to it is really just revealing their own shallowness. It's an action blockbuster with some 'look how thoughtful we are' window dressing. It's about as deep as any other action blockbuster.

I always thought of the first half of the Matrix as a pretty cool "what's real, what isn't" Philip K. Dick-esque mindfuck movie. With karate.
Then halfway through Neo say "We need guns. Lots of guns." and it shifts gears into a mindless action movie which looks cool but fails to deliver on the rollercoaster ride of the first half.

The sequels other than Animatrix don't exist. Much like the third SW trilogy.

 LordofHats wrote:


I feel like the Matrix is a prime example of a movie where anyone who ascribes depth to it is really just revealing their own shallowness. It's an action blockbuster with some 'look how thoughtful we are' window dressing. It's about as deep as any other action blockbuster.

Eh, for 1999, I feel the Matrix was pretty deep for an action blockbuster, particularly as everyone seemed to have missed out on the preceding year's Dark City. The original Matrix movie is very much a product of its time and place, that pre-9/11 *early* internet era when the internet was still something of an undiscovered country for most people (even cell phones were several years from total personal ubiquity), and a lot of concepts in the movie just don't vibe today like they used to, but back then it was mind blowing. I see the Matrix much a I see old Star Trek or Doctor Who, the more time goes on, the more their flaws are revealed, and the less likely a new viewer will appreciate it as techonology/tastes/writing quality/cinematography in general have moved on, but for their time were brilliant.

Comics - DC's New 52. When DC decided to toss out decades of continuity for some half baked retreads which weren't really new.

And with a loss of interest in DC came a loss of interest in Marvel and the rest. Still get occasional TPBs but don't care about the two universes any more.


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 Vermis wrote:

 posermcbogus wrote:
though I'm shocked that there are people who tried the Manga and liked it less???)

Wait, was that me?

Just in case: I didn't like it less, I just have real trouble remembering what happened when the manga kinda sorta picked up from where the film kinda sorta left off.

Spoiler:

I remember a blink-and-you'll-miss-it street preacher from the film was the leader of a faction of ex-experiment kids, and Tetsuo wasted the american navy when they turned up, I think? But the rest is fog.

If it was available digitally I'd snap it all up again.

My memory is fuzzy as well, but it's been 15 years, 5 of them drinking in the Caribbean so a lot of memory has been lost. But IIRC the 'nuke him from orbit' scene got repeated 2 or 3 times and I lost of a lot of interest.

In theory Manga should be much better than the endless universe churning of American comics but I find again and again that once a manga-ka has a hit the story immediately stalls as long as it can (looking at you 20th Century Boys and Battle Royale) until sales fall far enough and get on with it.


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Bran Dawri wrote:
I always thought of the first half of the Matrix as a pretty cool "what's real, what isn't" Philip K. Dick-esque mindfuck movie. With karate.
Then halfway through Neo say "We need guns. Lots of guns." and it shifts gears into a mindless action movie which looks cool but fails to deliver on the rollercoaster ride of the first half.

The sequels other than Animatrix don't exist. Much like the third SW trilogy.

(and the second SW trilogy. And the 3rd movie. So basically Star Wars is 2 films, the animated Clone Wars, about half the CGI clone wars, the Marvel comic, 2/3s of Dark Empire and an article from 1981 in Cinema Gems magazine that guessed what Revenge of the Jedi would have).

As for the Matrix, I love it, but was very bummed out when Neo turned out to be the chosen one and not Morpheus. Think about it. The Oracle predicted Morphius would find the one. Morphius was always a lot more competent than Neo. Wouldn't be something if he was the One all along and just needed some confidence?

Reloaded was OK as a middle sister. The 3rd one... well it was certainly a film with dialogue and everything.

The Last Jedi is the moment I gave up on the idea of Star Wars...movies. As we’re discussing in another thread, it works much better on TV. But I will not hold my breath for any future SW movies.

 Vaktathi wrote:
Eh, for 1999, I feel the Matrix was pretty deep for an action blockbuster, particularly as everyone seemed to have missed out on the preceding year's Dark City. The original Matrix movie is very much a product of its time and place, that pre-9/11 *early* internet era when the internet was still something of an undiscovered country for most people (even cell phones were several years from total personal ubiquity), and a lot of concepts in the movie just don't vibe today like they used to, but back then it was mind blowing. I see the Matrix much a I see old Star Trek or Doctor Who, the more time goes on, the more their flaws are revealed, and the less likely a new viewer will appreciate it as techonology/tastes/writing quality/cinematography in general have moved on, but for their time were brilliant.

I don't think it's vibe so much as derivation.

The Matrix's real innovations weren't it's thoughtfulness, but its cinematography. The way the film was shot and the way it took its own story serious set new standards for action blockbusters. Compare it to earlier films like Die Hard and Lethal Weapon, that are kind of tongue-in-cheek imo about what they are. The Matrix was a blockbuster that treated itself as a serious film with serious ideas, and I can give it that even if I think it's ideas were ultimately really shallow. Modern film owes a lot to the movie, and like many movies that innovated or set new standards, it shows its flaws as time goes on and newer films take what it did well and do it better.

I look at The Matrix a lot like I look at Neon Genesis Evangelion, Ghostbusters, or Call of Duty. They changed the landscape of their genres and mediums, and I think they suffer as a result because people who didn't know them when they were new are less impressed because they're familiar with the things they did well and 'new' as being common place. It's easy to forget in hindsight that they were groundbreaking in their own time.

Battlefield,
Pinpoint BF V, not just because as an History enthusiast it irked me but also because it was and still is an unpolished turd.

Eva's the clearest example of something so influential that everything that came after it was essentially a copy trying to add just enough to appear unique. It's actually similar to the problem with Superman; he's THE Superman, but every other super hero is basically Superman + something to try and be more unique or interesting.

Hmmm, the problem with me, is I tend to not have a single "tipping point" when I stop enjoying something and put it down like "THAT WAS THE FINAL STRAW!"

it tends to be more: something is not holding my attention well enough to continue, so I just move on to something else.

I guess the biggest one, from the days of my youth, would be the sequels to Ender's Game.

I had read Ender's Game probably...god, twelve times? since I finally decided to pick up the sequels. I was a bit of an obsessive re-reader when I was younger, and I was much happier to re-read something I knew I liked than something I didn't know if I was going to like, especially if the characters were important to me.

And god. Damn. did those sequels take the people I loved and turn them into something utterly unlovable. Every single thing I liked about the original was stripped away, and it successfully "Shrek the Third'd" the franchise for me. Which is kind of a sad thing, because no other single novel holds more childhood nostalgia to me.


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 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Anime in general.

Started off around 1990 with Akira (which is ace).

After that, it all became a bit pervy, in far too many ways, for my tastes.

I’ve dabbled since (Princess Mononoke and Ghibli in general is good), but it’s too Russian Roulette for me, except instead of a bullet it’s an unfeasibly prehensile ‘male chicken’ with a worryingly underaged girl on the end of it.

I know I’m doing the majority a disservice. And I’m probably just incredibly unlucky with the stuff I’ve seen (and spoiled by seeing Akira”s perfection as my first taste), but it’s just something i don’t get on with.

Absolutely no disrespect or shade to anyone who does enjoy it.

I like an anime personally, for its willingness to explore some really compelling and interesting concepts that you generally see only in sci-fi short stories and novels, but the set of anime tropes that it has become saddled with really, REALLY drag many of its initially cool concepts into the mud.

There's nothing that grabs me and makes me want to sit down and watch it from a brief summary or intro sequence like an anime, and there's also nothing that disappoints and infuriates me like an anime. Take "knights of sidonia" -

"The remainder of humanity (that we know of) is on the run Battlestar Galactica style in a single huge spaceship built into an asteroid, following an encounter with a form of alien life that is completely and utterly inhumanoid, which appear to "communicate" by globbing into one antoher to form a single entity and share minds. First contact involved these alien beings dissolving and consuming the entire earth, and they now pursue humanity for unknown reasons. The ship is so massive and moving so quickly that attempting to turn it just three degrees is a cataclysmic event that unavoidably leaves hundreds dead. The humans have a grand total of 30 kilograms of a material that cannot be absorbed by the aliens and instead destroys them, so they have fixed them onto lances, so they don't lose it."

what a great fething setup! There's so much good gak going on there, from the leaders of the ship being this council of artificially kept alive corpses with their minds linked together, to the aliens "attacking" the humans being evidently just trying to learn about them and eventually coming to the conclusion that "having giant robot fights" is just how humans communicate with one another...and yet, somehow, it manages to have just enough anime trope bs in it to kill my interest in the middle of the second season.

That said, there are animes, both classic and recent, that dodge the bullet of those tropes and are just really, really, REALLY good concept-driven story telling. For a really super recent show like that, "The Promised Neverland" is extremely good, good enough that after watching the first season I went to read the books because as a setup I felt like it was DEFINITELY going to disappoint me in the classic "Lost" style of "oooh lots of mysteries, and it's lots of mysteries because we don't have any good ideaaaaas!!!" but it actually did not do that. Which is cool! Certainly the first time one of those serieses or shows defined by a kind of sci-fi mystery setup in the beginning hasn't come up with something way worse than all the fan theories/speculation surrounding it. If I had one complaint about the later part of the series, it'd be the fact that they stray just a tiny toe into the "ridiculous anime fight" territory, which kind of sucks because where the series is at its best is when it's about comparatively powerless characters using intelligence to overcome seemingly no-win situations.

I mean, if you like Akira though, then I suppose that trope wouldn't really bug you that much, because Akira leans on that particular chestnut even harder than comedic shows like one-punch man where that's the central gag.

LordofHats wrote:The Matrix's real innovations weren't it's thoughtfulness, but its cinematography. The way the film was shot and the way it took its own story serious set new standards for action blockbusters.

Indeed!

the_scotsman wrote:to the aliens "attacking" the humans being evidently just trying to learn about them and eventually coming to the conclusion that "having giant robot fights" is just how humans communicate with one another...

Huh. Reminds me of a bit from Alita.



Those two examples do have an element of a 'we'll just keep speaking english, but louder and slower' attitude about them.

On the topic of Jurassic Park, and JPII specifically: beating a raptor with high school gymnastics. That was a watershed moment for me, where I realised three things:

- there were people out there who would purposely ruin the JP series like that.
- there were people out there who would purposely ruin any film like that.
- Spielberg was out there and would purposely ruin a film like that.

There's an in-joke where the screenwriter has a cameo, eaten by the Tyrannosaur in San Diego. It doesn't seem enough, somehow.

There was a period of time where I thought I hallucinated that scene.

That Raptor-defying gymnastics scene is why I stopped watching JP films. My friends and I made fun of that for yearrrrrs.

I had the same issue with Lex hacking the computer system in the first film.

"This is a unix system....I know this system! It even plays Solitare and Mine Sweeper! Do you understand what this means? We can play Solitare AND Mine Sweeper on a unix system!"

"JUST LOCK THE BLOODY DOOR!!!"

Not Online!!! wrote:
Battlefield,
Pinpoint BF V, not just because as an History enthusiast it irked me but also because it was and still is an unpolished turd.

Omg... so much this. I've loved the franchise for years. I played the original way back in 2002, missed Vietnam and 2, but have played consistently from Bad Company 2 onwards. I've loved every entry in the series until V. As a WW2 nut I'm honestly baffled that DICE managed to make a WW2 shooter that I didn't like but somehow they found a way. I'm hoping they'll find their feet again with the next entry, whenever it drops. I'm glad they're getting an extra year to develop it, hopefully it helps.

SamusDrake wrote:
I had the same issue with Lex hacking the computer system in the first film.

"This is a unix system....I know this system! It even plays Solitare and Mine Sweeper! Do you understand what this means? We can play Solitare AND Mine Sweeper on a unix system!"

"JUST LOCK THE BLOODY DOOR!!!"

That scene bothered me mostly because I had been introduced to UNIX the year before, and I was baffled by the 'user interface' being a slow flight simulator over rectangles.

At the time, if you logged onto a UNIX workstation, odds are pretty good that you were looking at a black screen, maybe a short bit of intro login text and this:

C:\Username>

and a blinking cursor after the '>'

No other information at all. Good luck!

Granted, having her dramatically type 'ls' and 'cd' repeatedly wouldn't have been very interesting to watch. But a good 'rm *' would have solved a lot of problems.

I figured her grandpa, the guy who made all the choices, had given her a class in the parks OS, or had chosen an AOS that the family liked on their home machines. Of course, this would have been better explained if she’s said “Grandpa showed me how to use this.” instead.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Autocorrect slaughtered my post like a helpless piglet.

That's what bothers most people, but that's not actually the problem with it. The OS in question IS actually Unix-based; just not a remotely popular implementation. It's called Irix if you want to read the history on it, but essentially it was being developed by the company that did the CGI dinos and essentially inserted as a plug.

The problem with the scene is that recognizing the OS doesn't really let you hack into the system, though one could argue that maybe Irix was just so badly designed you could. The ME of its time.

It’s been a while, but did she need to hack it or just turn stuff on?

I tried to get into Neon Genesis Evangelion, but damn. It was so slow I kept falling asleep because I was watching it after the kids went to bed. Sometimes I feel like I maybe just need to have my Anime be like FullMetal Alchemist to enjoy it.

I watched Bleach for a while. It got to the point I no longer cared about the main characters, or even the secondary ones. But was interested in the tertiary ones. I was watching it via Netflix disks, and forget if I just stopped getting them or they didn’t have any more.

David Webber is great for trilogies, but his stories tend to get repetitive. I tend to get 4-ish books in, then taper off. Read a lot of the HH series, and some of the Stronghold. Plus assorted one offs, which were fine.

Wizards’s First Rule was an other series that just got repetitive. Interesting book, but the sequels were just more of the same formula, tweaked, but not enough to make them worth it.

TLJ was the last Star Wars movie that I saw right when it came out. Still seen them all, but no rush on the later ones.

After the Butlarian Jihad trilogy, I tapered off the new Dune stuff. I think the last books to finish the Frank’s main arc were the last I read. There were some gems in the whole thing, but a lot of chaff. The original Dune is a classic, then it goes downhill. Sequel was still good, 3-4 were meh, and then I think it picked up a bit. Of the new stuff, the immediate prequels were good, the rest, pass.

David Brin is one of my favorite authors, but his last book felt really phoned in. Also disappointed in William Gibson’s latest.

 AegisGrimm wrote:
I tried to get into Neon Genesis Evangelion, but damn. It was so slow I kept falling asleep because I was watching it after the kids went to bed. Sometimes I feel like I maybe just need to have my Anime be like FullMetal Alchemist to enjoy it.

FMA was a rare manga that both got the popularity needed to keep running over a long period of time, and had a writer/editor who was completely content to end it when it was proper.

 creeping-deth87 wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:
Battlefield,
Pinpoint BF V, not just because as an History enthusiast it irked me but also because it was and still is an unpolished turd.

Omg... so much this. I've loved the franchise for years. I played the original way back in 2002, missed Vietnam and 2, but have played consistently from Bad Company 2 onwards. I've loved every entry in the series until V. As a WW2 nut I'm honestly baffled that DICE managed to make a WW2 shooter that I didn't like but somehow they found a way. I'm hoping they'll find their feet again with the next entry, whenever it drops. I'm glad they're getting an extra year to develop it, hopefully it helps.

Not when Dice Stockholm is the developper. Other subdivisions have B teams, but DICE stockholm is more akin to the Z division.

As for the underlined there are SO MANY REASONS HOW that it is difficult:

But here a non complete list:

Marketing:


The design:


The actual game design:

Hmmm oh, loads of stuff. I often get to a point where I just nope out on stuff.
Comic books:
- I was a huge batman fan until Chuck Dixon left and Grant Morrison started writing it. I despise the Grant Morrison version so much that I cannot go back to Batman now, the well is poisoned with all his stupid additions.
- Spiderman comics similarly, the entire Parker Enterprises thing making Peter Parker into Mark Zuckerberg, just no, no, no.
Generally, all the big crossover events and constant continuity resets just drove me away from DC comics. I mostly only read Marvel stuff now, and even then I will drop out for entire runs if the writer is a hack.

TV Shows
- I loved the first two seasons of the BSG remake and liked parts of the third. But then everyone got all sweaty and religious and the show jumped sixteen sharks through flaming hoops.
- I was a huge Supernatural fan until I dunno, season 5? It still has great episodes but I felt the main characters had become pretty stagnant charicatures of themselves at that point. Early seasons are still great though.
- Buffy the Vampire Slayer was something I loved as a teenager up til I guess the Evil Willow arc? I just gradually lost interest as the characters became more and more unlikeable.
- Dr Who was a big disappointment to me. I was really let down with Stephen Moffat's run. I thought Matt Smith was a really great doctor and the first season has some awesome parts, but the show really got way too high on it's own farts and River Song was a terrible and unlikeable character for me.

Book Series
- Horus Heresy just has too much variation in quality. I dunno where I stopped but way before it had gotten anywhere significant. Maybe Outcast Dead or something? Was thinking of going back to it recently but I see that they are still letting hacks write most of it so I am not super interested for the prices they charge. I wish the series could have kept to the tone and pace of Horus Rising. It just accelerates WAY too fast in the first three books and skips over any characterisation of Horus in favour of "Magic Knife makes ya evul".
- Like others, I dropped Wheel of Time. The quality drops around book 5, book 6 is crap, brief rally in book 7, book 8 is garbage, rallies again in book 9 but then book 10 is unmitigated crap. Stopped reading and only came back for the finale, and did not feel like I had missed ANYTHING by doing so. Would probably not be able to read the series again now, as I would be two embarassed by the awful characterisation and weird sex stuff.
- A Song of Ice and Fire for similar reasons. Martin's "gritty" style is less appealing to me now than when I was 18, and I did not really enjoy the last book released and am no longer excited for the next one. When I look back, a lot of the other series I was reading at the time like Robin Hobb's Farseer series have aged waaaay better.

Movie Series
- DC Movies. I was a much bigger DC fan than Marvel for a long time, only really being big into Spiderman on the Marvel side. But the combination of the poor handling of the comics and the utter trashing of the brand with these trainwreck movies has really soured me on the characters. Rewatching the old animated stuff in the lockdown and it remains charming and loveable, but I stopped going to see the DC movies after Batman Vs. Superman, one of the worst movies I have ever seen.

 LunarSol wrote:
That's what bothers most people, but that's not actually the problem with it. The OS in question IS actually Unix-based; just not a remotely popular implementation. It's called Irix if you want to read the history on it, but essentially it was being developed by the company that did the CGI dinos and essentially inserted as a plug.

The problem with the scene is that recognizing the OS doesn't really let you hack into the system, though one could argue that maybe Irix was just so badly designed you could. The ME of its time.

could've been worse




gotta get me a keyboard that works like that one day.

 AegisGrimm wrote:
I tried to get into Neon Genesis Evangelion, but damn. It was so slow I kept falling asleep because I was watching it after the kids went to bed. Sometimes I feel like I maybe just need to have my Anime be like FullMetal Alchemist to enjoy it.

NGE is very 90s at times, and sags pretty heavily in the middle. It is definitely not a similar vein to FMA in any kind of sense, and I tend to only recommend it to folks who I know are interested in looking into "classic" anime stuff.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 LordofHats wrote:

 AegisGrimm wrote:
I tried to get into Neon Genesis Evangelion, but damn. It was so slow I kept falling asleep because I was watching it after the kids went to bed. Sometimes I feel like I maybe just need to have my Anime be like FullMetal Alchemist to enjoy it.

FMA was a rare manga that both got the popularity needed to keep running over a long period of time, and had a writer/editor who was completely content to end it when it was proper.

Yeah, it's also why I am so fething pumped about The Promised Neverland. It has that same degree of being both long enough to have a huge, intricate, overarching plot and tight and planned enough that there's zero meandering and zero filler. When they start getting into the later seasons of the animation it is going to be FMA:Brotherhood level good, and it's almost exactly the same length - there's going to be about 12 manga volumes, 3 volumes to a TV season for 4 seasons.

Not Online!!! wrote:


Not when Dice Stockholm is the developper. Other subdivisions have B teams, but DICE stockholm is more akin to the Z division.

As for the underlined there are SO MANY REASONS HOW that it is difficult:

But here a non complete list:

Marketing:

Spoiler:

Yeah, that is supposedly how a WW2 game of a franchise that prided itself in imersion, should look like.... What do you mean it doesn't ! YOu are AlL tHe FolLoWiNg!!!!!

- Calling fans uneducated." Even though there were just as many surprisingly good thought out argumentations against this.

- Telling fans to not buy it. " Well the numbers did show now didn't they.

The design:

Spoiler:

Overarching Design is and was a failure.
What do i mean by that:
-A life service which allready performed worse in the sales department doesn't get any "life" service.
-Pay to earn cosmetics.
- No community servers.
- Gamemode rotation on some of the bread and butter modes like rush.
- NOT HAVING THE TECHNOLOGY FOR A 2x XP event supposedly, even though all BF titles recently had a 2x event due to the virus. Tied in of course with the over grindy but skipable by money grind for cosmetcs. AKA Greed.

The actual game design:

Spoiler:

- No all kit weapons.
- Serious balance issues in weapon balancing often times self introduced in ttk changes. (type 2 a, MMG too good, too bad, )
- Attrition: A idea that went neither far enough nor needed implementation. Either or no half measures because the halfmeasure ATM in place is just bloody annoying.
- Vehicle balance issues, because the one thing BF1 did really bad (aka choosable vehicles instead of fixed spawns)they copied over.
-gak tier visibility. Even after a whole year. BF1 had genius 10 / 10 visibility compared to V and BF 1 allread yhad visibility issues.
- Bad map design. Something that Dice Stockholm started with BF4, and BFV completed in many ways, the maps first designed by artists and then actually getting into the hands of actual level designers leading to hillariously stupid designed maps. One sided as all hell.
- the women. Not as in they are there, even though as a history nut you might allready have issues with it for most factions (except the soviets). No what i mean here is beyond the completly ahistorical fact of their implementation they also scream louder then the 10 Handgreanades inevitable flying and detonating on you when you attempt to revive them.
- Dice Stockholm, including but not limited too: Rushjob, lack of understanding of the technology, lack of foresight , lack of skill as shown by early 4 aswell and 0 capability to actually make a Netcode work (same as bf4). Except BF4 got handed off to LA and turned into a great game.

Oh wow, I had no idea DICE Stockholm was the problem. Doubly surprised that LA was the reason 4 was so good, as I understand it they developed the first Star Wars Battlefront reboot which I thought was complete and total garbage. As to the rest of the post, yeah I agree that map design has been a huge problem with V. The only maps I've been genuinely excited to play are Devastation and Iwo Jima, everything else I either loathe or just... completely indifferent. I do really hate the 'life service' model. I was initially very excited about the prospect of free new maps, but considering how slow the support has been I honestly think I'd rather go back to the way BF1 did it. Yeah it cost more, but I at least got way more content.

I gave up on DICE a long time ago (if we're including developers). I laughed my butt off in the BFIII era, when I thought the franchise and the developer were already on a downhill slide and people were saying "It's EA's fault, not DICE" and I was like EA is in the name now, there's no difference.

 LordofHats wrote:
I gave up on DICE a long time ago (if we're including developers). I laughed my butt off in the BFIII era, when I thought the franchise and the developer were already on a downhill slide and people were saying "It's EA's fault, not DICE" and I was like EA is in the name now, there's no difference.

Ah man, I loved 3. Operation Metro, Kharg Island, Damavand Peak, Seine Crossing, Tehran Highway - that game was chock full of fantastic maps. Back to Kharkand was fantastic DLC too. There were definitely some things that drove me absolutely insane - USAS-12 with frag rounds and the broken as feth FAMAS when it first came out come to mind, but those were eventually addressed with patches so most of what I hated in the game was temporary.

 Da Boss wrote:
Hmmm oh, loads of stuff. I often get to a point where I just nope out on stuff.
Comic books:
- I was a huge batman fan until Chuck Dixon left and Grant Morrison started writing it. I despise the Grant Morrison version so much that I cannot go back to Batman now, the well is poisoned with all his stupid additions.

I hate literally everything Grant Morrison ever wrote. If there was a more self important no talent hack in the history of comics, I can't think of them.

 creeping-deth87 wrote:

 LordofHats wrote:
I gave up on DICE a long time ago (if we're including developers). I laughed my butt off in the BFIII era, when I thought the franchise and the developer were already on a downhill slide and people were saying "It's EA's fault, not DICE" and I was like EA is in the name now, there's no difference.

Ah man, I loved 3. Operation Metro, Kharg Island, Damavand Peak, Seine Crossing, Tehran Highway - that game was chock full of fantastic maps. Back to Kharkand was fantastic DLC too. There were definitely some things that drove me absolutely insane - USAS-12 with frag rounds and the broken as feth FAMAS when it first came out come to mind, but those were eventually addressed with patches so most of what I hated in the game was temporary.

Atleast BF 3 had the audacity to actually work.
Allbeit the gunbalance was attrocious...

I got another one.

Shokugeki no Soma (aka Food Wars!) is a manga/anime series about food. And battles fought with food. It's basically if someone decided to make Iron Chef an academic institution and it was a really fun and inventive series that simultaneously took it's silly premise seriously enough to ratchet up the tension but played itself for enough laughs that it could be really funny when it wanted to be.

It was a really good battle series with a strong start that came out around the same time Naruto was ending so it basically had the world as an oyster.

And it promptly destroyed the oyster. I quit the series when it went into it's 3rd major story arc, introducing one characters hyper abusive dad (like seriously, I'm pretty sure Japan has CPS and this guy would not have been allowed to keep being a parent with a simple phone call) and a whole slew of characters inexplicably becoming hyper elitist donkey-caves for completely unclear reasons that even 50 chapters into the arc were not explained to the audience. It literally came off as these people just decided to be complete and total donkey-caves with no sense of basic humanity out of the blue. The series dove tailed rapidly into characters behaving like unbearable cartoon villains while pumping the stakes to insane levels in the process. It completely destroyed the serious but not too serious tone of the series up to that point and made it effectively unenjoyable.

I suspect I wasn't the only one, as while the manga continued for about 3 years after that arc started, it died a rapid and sudden death last year and I have heard literally no one lament its ending.

Essentially, the cooking skill of the characters outpaced the authors own knowledge and things fell apart once the cooking itself lost all practical application.

I gave up on the Xanth novels about 2 and a half books in. It was like being trapped with a sweaty, overexcited nerd who only speaks in puns.

 Gitkikka wrote:
I gave up on the Xanth novels about 2 and a half books in. It was like being trapped with a sweaty, overexcited nerd who only speaks in puns.

That means you got to miss out on the really creepy stuff. Not just the basic love-potion bestiality that spawned centaurs in Xanth, but the pedophilia and a really bizarre author rant at a fan letter, wherein he tells the reader he is dishonorable scum for saying that if a child is promised to an evil tyrant by his parents (an evil computer in the book, and Hitler in the letter), the kid should just refuse to work for him. For whatever reason, this offended Piers to the point that he spent a good page and a half insulting one his readers at the back of one the later books.

Even as a kid, the reader's logic was far more sensible. A person isn't required to do evil just because someone else promised they would.

---
Of course, for Piers Anthony, Xanth is the family friendly stuff.
His porn gets extremely offensive.

Phantom Menace killed Star Wars for me. I saw it opening day and was the first to speak when the credits began to roll and the lights went up... "What the Feth was that?"
I got more entertainment from the audience walking out of the theater and telling the next wave of movie goers to get their money back.
I went immediately went home and tossed my Star Wars stuff into a big box and gave it to some kids in my neighborhood.

Star Trek... I tried watching enterprise but T'pol only held my interest for so long. Anything after it is completely forgettable or stupid.

Sopranos... Once it started on Vito being gay and following the lesser characters I lost interest. Just like GoT it had been a great show for years that I would have recommended to anyone then it became a stupid story with an ending so bad that it never needs to be mentioned again (except when sharing tales of franchises we abandoned).

Comic books... Stopped reading and buying shortly after Joe Mad! stopped work on Battlechasers. As someone who bought comics for the art over the stories there have been very few comics I would even flip through in the last decade.

TV... I stopped watching TV back in '99. For years I barely watched anything unless it was DVDs or online videos.

40k... The introduction of Primaris and the return of Girlyman ruined the setting for me. I sold off all 40k models except a single Tin-Boy.

40k novels... I stopped somewhere in the Horus Heresys first 20 or so books. I just don't care anymore.

Ghostbusters... 2016 was the year I decided that most of the world doesn't deserve to live and I continue to hope that California sinks into the ocean.

Pretty much anything that has been "reinvented" in the last decade.

 DeffDred wrote:

I went immediately went home and tossed my Star Wars stuff into a big box and gave it to some kids in my neighborhood.

I've never totally understood this response. Like, I've never listened to a bad song by a band I like and thrown out their old albums.

 DeffDred wrote:


40k novels... I stopped somewhere in the Horus Heresys first 20 or so books. I just don't care anymore.

Mate, most of your post makes you just sound old, and a bitter old dude at that. . . (I get that this is a gripe thread, but still)


On the subject of 40k novels. . . I think I made it about that far into HH as well. The biggest issue for me was, you'd finish a book and go, "I just read 400 pages and literally nothing changed. Nothing really happened, there's no fething effects to what they did here??"

I haven't sold any of my warhammer stuff, but for me it wasn't so much any one thing as it was the position I was in. . . See, I spent a good year and a half or so as an on-call, and when I was in the shop (which frankly, was any time it was open and I wasn't in my uni classes at the time, except sundays) I felt compelled, as an employee to "be excited" for releases. There were some things I genuinely liked and genuinely got into, but there's only so much you can do before hitting a wall. The release cycle was relentless, there was no lull in "big" releases.

Within the setting itself, it really started feeling like a caricature of itself. . . GrimDark for the sake of GrimDark. And when the new book comes out its "hey!! look how grimdark we are! We're grimdarker than the last grimdark book from last week!!" In basically every other setting I've come across, be it game, video game, fantasy novel series, whatever, there isn't just this piling on dark and grim and blood, etc. . . There's usually an underlying reason behind something, and there's some form of resolution to it. For me, its gotten to the point where even the bolter-porn stories are just plain boring because all of the grimdark has become so blase.

 LunarSol wrote:

 DeffDred wrote:

I went immediately went home and tossed my Star Wars stuff into a big box and gave it to some kids in my neighborhood.

I've never totally understood this response. Like, I've never listened to a bad song by a band I like and thrown out their old albums.

Really, you seized on that comment rather than his comment that the world deserves death because the Ghostbusters remake was bad?

DeffDred wrote:Ghostbusters... 2016 was the year I decided that most of the world doesn't deserve to live and I continue to hope that California sinks into the ocean.

 LunarSol wrote:

 DeffDred wrote:

I went immediately went home and tossed my Star Wars stuff into a big box and gave it to some kids in my neighborhood.

I've never totally understood this response. Like, I've never listened to a bad song by a band I like and thrown out their old albums.

I can... sort of...

There have, occasionally, been a book so bad it poisoned not just the series, but everything the author had done. Piers Anthony, for example; his Bio of a Space Tyrant was so awful I dumped all of his books that I owned. Why? Because his writing style reminded me of those awful stories even in completely unrelated books. I just couldn't get past it and go back to enjoying them anymore.

But not every franchise;ending experience has been THAT bad to cause such an extreme reaction. Star Wars, for example; I LOATHE TLJ, didn't bother with RoS, and never got around to purchasing TFA. But I still love the OT and some of the novels. Even Rogue One still has a place in my heart. When Age of Sigmar crushed my hopes for a better balanced Warhammer Fantasy Battle, I didn't throw away my WFB stuff; I just looked for alternatives before settling down and just continuing to play WFB 8th.

Voss wrote:

 LunarSol wrote:

 DeffDred wrote:

I went immediately went home and tossed my Star Wars stuff into a big box and gave it to some kids in my neighborhood.

I've never totally understood this response. Like, I've never listened to a bad song by a band I like and thrown out their old albums.

Really, you seized on that comment rather than his comment that the world deserves death because the Ghostbusters remake was bad?

DeffDred wrote:Ghostbusters... 2016 was the year I decided that most of the world doesn't deserve to live and I continue to hope that California sinks into the ocean.

I responded to the part I thought was worth a constructive conversation.

Joke’s on him. If the fifth largest economy in the world sinks into the ocean, he and his are looking at a much slower death. Haw haw [/Nelson]


But anyway, that bleak and pointless grimdark ruined the Old World for me. Well, it made me lose interest in the Army Books and GW canon, where every fight was pointless and eternal suffering at the hands of Chaos was inevitable. The BL novels that took place post Storm of Chaos weren’t quite so hopeless.

40k was in danger of going the same way, but I feel they sped up their own fluff-demise with the ridiculous retcons during 5th edition and the sad Gathering Storm-era and its apparent flinging of crap at walls to see what sticks.

 LunarSol wrote:

 DeffDred wrote:

I went immediately went home and tossed my Star Wars stuff into a big box and gave it to some kids in my neighborhood.

I've never totally understood this response. Like, I've never listened to a bad song by a band I like and thrown out their old albums.

While I haven't quite done this sort of thing, there have been instances where something has been done so poorly it ruined everything in a franchise for me. Mass Effect is probably the biggest one that springs to mind, because even going back and replaying ME1 or ME2, the ending actively undercuts so much of the narrative content, and retroactively inserts itself so many places (like sitting in an elevator in the Citadel in ME1 and thinking "hey...isn't that stupid starchild already floating here this whole time?") that it really just obliterated the fun from playing the rest of the story unless you actively pretend the story conclusion doesn't exist. Battlestar Galactica was another one, because the ending was so stupidly hamfisted, and in rewatching it there's just too many things that happen for no reason and never get tied up, that it's hard to get back into.

If we're discussing computer games as well...I gave up on 90% of them when DLC went from "an actual expansion which you add to an already complete game"...and became "Unlock actual normal game features and things in different colours".

In general, feth DLC of all shapes and sizes unless it's an actual expansion to an existing product.

This change impacted quite a few games I would have carried on playing. I stopped paying any attention to the Total War franchise (easily one of my favourite gaming franchises of all time) when you had to buy a DLC expansion for $3 to see blood in the game...get fethed.

I can kinda understand the blood and gore argument... If it cost a penny.

It's a simple case of, they want a lower age rating resulting in more copies of the game being sold. So by adding blood and gore as an age gated addon, that minimises the risk to the company.

But, by that argument, the price is arbitrary, and thus should be as cheap as humanly possible.

It is not.

 Elbows wrote:
If we're discussing computer games as well...I gave up on 90% of them when DLC went from "an actual expansion which you add to an already complete game"...and became "Unlock actual normal game features and things in different colours".

In general, feth DLC of all shapes and sizes unless it's an actual expansion to an existing product.

This change impacted quite a few games I would have carried on playing. I stopped paying any attention to the Total War franchise (easily one of my favourite gaming franchises of all time) when you had to buy a DLC expansion for $3 to see blood in the game...get fethed.

Oh yes, absolutely. That kind of bollocks can feth right off.

Remember when DLC was fun? Remember The Shimmering Isles? Point Lookout? Now it’s all ‘fork over more cash to play as the main character outside of story mode’ and other such nonsense. DLC used to be the fries to go with your burger...now it’s the fething cheese and dressing.

for games it was Doom 3, a very pretty tech demo that absolutely wasn't Doom, and the games media heaping praise on it like twas the second coming, don't think I've bought anything day 1 or full price ever since (maybe WoW but that was nerd herd pressure)

 Vaktathi wrote:

 LunarSol wrote:

 DeffDred wrote:

I went immediately went home and tossed my Star Wars stuff into a big box and gave it to some kids in my neighborhood.

I've never totally understood this response. Like, I've never listened to a bad song by a band I like and thrown out their old albums.

While I haven't quite done this sort of thing, there have been instances where something has been done so poorly it ruined everything in a franchise for me. Mass Effect is probably the biggest one that springs to mind, because even going back and replaying ME1 or ME2, the ending actively undercuts so much of the narrative content, and retroactively inserts itself so many places (like sitting in an elevator in the Citadel in ME1 and thinking "hey...isn't that stupid starchild already floating here this whole time?") that it really just obliterated the fun from playing the rest of the story unless you actively pretend the story conclusion doesn't exist. Battlestar Galactica was another one, because the ending was so stupidly hamfisted, and in rewatching it there's just too many things that happen for no reason and never get tied up, that it's hard to get back into.

ME3 is one of the few times I've actually felt something truly ruined a great thing, but a lot of that comes down to just how many times the franchise had given exactly as it promised, with some of the best examples ironically being in ME3 itself. I've kind of gotten to the point where I can appreciate the franchise by just.... leaving the Star Child out. Shepard and Anderson, sitting in the Crucible as two friends potentially meeting their end looking out as all their work saves the galaxy. It's a good example of what I mean. As much as I DESPISE the end, being mad about it just robs me of some of my favorite moments in gaming. The end of the genophage and Geth war are two of the most satisfying arcs I've ever played and even the battle for Earth is utterly fantastic in the way it comes together. It's just that last bit that, honestly, you don't need to see to get a sense of finality to the story.

FWIW, one of the only other times I've really fully raged against something was One More Day. It's the only time I've felt the need to tear a comic in half just to know I destroyed it with my bare hands. A lot of that is personal though. When it was released, I'd been married for less than a year and my mother was dying of cancer. To this day it still makes it hard for me to read a mainline Spiderman comic. It's just not a character or world I can identify with anymore, even if I still greatly enjoy other incarnations of the character (PS4/MSU/Spiderverse/etc).

 LunarSol wrote:

Voss wrote:

 LunarSol wrote:

 DeffDred wrote:

I went immediately went home and tossed my Star Wars stuff into a big box and gave it to some kids in my neighborhood.

I've never totally understood this response. Like, I've never listened to a bad song by a band I like and thrown out their old albums.

Really, you seized on that comment rather than his comment that the world deserves death because the Ghostbusters remake was bad?

DeffDred wrote:Ghostbusters... 2016 was the year I decided that most of the world doesn't deserve to live and I continue to hope that California sinks into the ocean.

I responded to the part I thought was worth a constructive conversation.

To be fair, he has a point about Ghostbusters. Anything that includes Melissa McCarthy should generate a response of that sort. TPM doesn’t ruin Star Wars as a whole. Neither does the abomination that is TLJ. The original trilogy is still a gem among sci-fi.

 Compel wrote:
I can kinda understand the blood and gore argument... If it cost a penny.

It's a simple case of, they want a lower age rating resulting in more copies of the game being sold. So by adding blood and gore as an age gated addon, that minimises the risk to the company.
.

Well, not just that. There are countries they just can't sell in if that's part of the 'base game,' though that used mean disabling it. Like the UK copies of Fallout 1 & 2 mysteriously had no children in them, so Interplay didn't fall foul of UK violence against virtual children laws.

That said, I think TW blood effects often look awful, like someone dipped a mini in a red paint pot. So I'd rather not have them anyway.

 Future War Cultist wrote:


Remember when DLC was fun? Remember The Shimmering Isles? Point Lookout? Now it’s all ‘fork over more cash to play as the main character outside of story mode’ and other such nonsense. DLC used to be the fries to go with your burger...now it’s the fething cheese and dressing.

Uhh. . . did you forget that Shivering Isles was part of the same game that offered horse armor??

Now, granted that particular sin pales in comparison to many of the common games that are out now. . . Was talking to the other video gamer at my work about DLC and he pointed out there was apparently a DOA6 "all included" bundle on Steam (when I was looking just now, it wasn't there) with literally every single DLC, all the costumes, hair color, options, etc. DLC, would run you over $1,000 . . . which is frankly, absolutely ridiculous, especially when there's no additional story for any of it. . . it's not like you buy "Tina's school girl costume" and you get a special story mission to go with it.

A couple days ago, the moment I started something and the moment I gave up on it happened within hours. I bought the first volume of Cerebus the Aardvark on comixology, finally checking out what made it so popular and if there was any hint of the controversy that dogged it later.

Nothing of either of those. It was unbelievably boring. Incessant hand-wringing about how society is awful and everyone is an evil moron, that you've heard a million times before, by this time. Like Howard the Duck in chainmail, like the spiritual grandaddy of Garth Ennis. But Dave Sim can't even weave a decent or entertaining satire out of it. Most of the attempts at humour involve pastiches of well-known characters, like the Batman guy dressed up as a cockroach, or 'Elrod of Melvinbone' talking like Foghorn Leghorn, or the guy who's straight-up Groucho Marx. Those get old real fast. Most of the rest of it involves the evil-sociopath-of-the-week (or our 'good' sociopath protagonist) droning on at length about the political or military situation and their convoluted plan to manipulate it for their own gain - good grief, Dave, ever heard of 'show don't tell'? - until they slip on a metaphorical banana peel and it all comes crashing down.

I ended up skimming page after page of speech bubbles, waiting for something to happen. Then it ended.

 LunarSol wrote:


ME3 is one of the few times I've actually felt something truly ruined a great thing, but a lot of that comes down to just how many times the franchise had given exactly as it promised, with some of the best examples ironically being in ME3 itself.

I can relate to this feeling. I thought ME2 was a god awful game. To even call it a game even was a slight against the genre in my eyes. ME2 wasn't a game, it was a glorified expansion pack of side quests. The great characters it introduced, improved combat over its predecessor, and the great development of already good characters couldn't salvage what was to me a complete misfire of an experience that felt all to haphazardly thrown together for all the polish it had.

ME3 started out feeling like a return to form. The best parts of ME2's game play improvements but a return to the gripping, epic, storytelling of the first game with some great resolutions to a whole lot of plot threads that really restored my faith. There were some powerful moments in 3. Things that I think took a lot of talent and effort to pull together in any way, let alone a good one. My faith was restored. Then the ending came and my only thought was 'bs.' The ending ruined it all for me. About the only thing I enjoyed after that was the pretty damn good co-op they put together. Up until some technical issues and customer service failures made me stop even liking that. Thinking about it now, yeah, the quality of the game before the ending actually makes me loath the game even more than if it had just been more gutter garbage like ME2. If everything before that ending had been as bad as the ending was, I probably would have just shrugged and walked away instead of feeling betrayed and cheated.

That's it also the game where I effectively gave up on Bioware.

The Spellpurge and forgotten realms. I was a big fan of forgotten realms, read as many of the books as I could, bought the sourcebooks etc. (I did play games in FR but I also bought em because I wanted to know about the setting)
the Spellpurge just killed my intreast. it turned the setting into something I could no longer reckongize

LunarSol wrote:

 DeffDred wrote:

I went immediately went home and tossed my Star Wars stuff into a big box and gave it to some kids in my neighborhood.

I've never totally understood this response. Like, I've never listened to a bad song by a band I like and thrown out their old albums.

When I started learning music theory after I picked up guitar it changed the way I looked at probably half to two thirds of the music I listened to. I dropped all those CDs off at my older brother's house with no regrets. So I can understand the response.

BrianDavion wrote:The Spellpurge and forgotten realms. I was a big fan of forgotten realms, read as many of the books as I could, bought the sourcebooks etc. (I did play games in FR but I also bought em because I wanted to know about the setting)
the Spellpurge just killed my intreast. it turned the setting into something I could no longer reckongize

As a WFB fan and player, I can feel your pain...

 Elbows wrote:
If we're discussing computer games as well...I gave up on 90% of them when DLC went from "an actual expansion which you add to an already complete game"...and became "Unlock actual normal game features and things in different colours".

In general, feth DLC of all shapes and sizes unless it's an actual expansion to an existing product.

This change impacted quite a few games I would have carried on playing. I stopped paying any attention to the Total War franchise (easily one of my favourite gaming franchises of all time) when you had to buy a DLC expansion for $3 to see blood in the game...get fethed.

Nowadays you must be happy if the game even comes playbale. Looking at you bethesda, bioware, EA, and consorts. the whole attitude atleast TW only has 2 such failures in an overall decent series. Tbf though these two even hurt more because of Sega also milking DLC.

I really loved this series of books by Chris Wooding called 'Tales of the Ketty Jay'
The first book was a good read and the 2nd and 3rd books were just fantastic , the author really had found his stride with the characters and universe.

Then came the fourth and final book, what a let down! It's like he had forgotten what had made the last three books so good and was intent on providing unnecessary information or resolution to every plot point just for the sake of it.
I appreciate that endings are the hardest bit, but that was a real lesson in what not to do.

Conversely, I read the book Hyperion Cantos and absolutely loved it. In the front of the book was an essay basically waxing lyrical about how good the book is but also lamenting how the author kinda spoils the brilliance of the first book with the rest of the series. Therefore, I've decided to leave the series there, so in my mind the book will always retain its brilliance!

With the full Hyperion Cantos, there's 4 books, the first two (Hyperion and Return to Hyperion) are fantastic on their own. The other two sequels (Endymion and Rise of Endymion) are also good, but are best treated essentially as an alternate universe with a reworked view of the events of the first two books.

Simmons can write a great story, but also tends to go overboard on "I'm an author, look how fancy my English degree is! I'm *soooooooo* into melancholy 19th century poets!", and his newer stuff is substantially and increasingly less interesting (Ilium was pretty neat, Olympos became totally incoherent, while Flashback is sadly basically "minorities destroy America fanfic" with lots of awkward septuagenarian-oriented cable news tropes hamfisted in)

 Vaktathi wrote:
With the full Hyperion Cantos, there's 4 books, the first two (Hyperion and Return to Hyperion) are fantastic on their own. The other two sequels (Endymion and Rise of Endymion) are also good, but are best treated essentially as an alternate universe with a reworked view of the events of the first two books.

Simmons can write a great story, but also tends to go overboard on "I'm an author, look how fancy my English degree is! I'm *soooooooo* into melancholy 19th century poets!", and his newer stuff is substantially and increasingly less interesting (Ilium was pretty neat, Olympos became totally incoherent, while Flashback is sadly basically "minorities destroy America fanfic" with lots of awkward septuagenarian-oriented cable news tropes hamfisted in)

That sounds a lot like what happened to Orson Scott Card. I swear he got way too wrapped up in how 'deep' he thought he was that he only ended up showing how shallow he could be.

I think the only books he wrote that I ever enjoyed were Ender's Game and Speaker for the Dead. Everything else is just... Not as good. Ender's Shadow is fun enough, but some of his books really strain to try and have more meaning than Card can coherently convey.

EDIT: Oh, and maybe we can throw Terry Goodkin in on that too. Some of the later Sword of Truth series books are infamous for devolving into objectivist political rants.

Now that you mention Card, while I'm sure I've read "in Enders Shadow" and "Xenocide" (they're on my shelf), I can't actually remember squat except the events in the original EG and Speaker

 Vaktathi wrote:
Now that you mention Card, while I'm sure I've read "in Enders Shadow" and "Xenocide" (they're on my shelf), I can't actually remember squat except the events in the original EG and Speaker

They're honestly pretty forgettable. Everything else he's written kind of is. The plot points I actually remember from Ender's Shadow are a) Bean is the main character, b) the villain is a sexist prick, and c) there's a scene where, in the middle of a war, someone commands their troops to go home and make babies because something something babies and making them are the most human thing ever? His other stuff goes weird places and imo becomes incredibly incoherent. Card is an author who I think let his initial success go way to his head and he convinced himself he was the next great writer.

The first Hyperion book is brilliant. The second is really good up until the last sixth or so. I vaguely remember that it reveals love is the fifth nuclear force. The Endymion duology sounds fine from reviews, but this fool won’t be a sucker again.
...unless you count the time I read Ilium and then threw Olympia against the wall. Damn you, Simmons! You did it to me again!



I read the short story of Ender’s Game before the novel, and found the novel tedious and unnecessary. I never made it more than 30 pages into Speaker or Xenocide.

To stop hammering poor Card,

I recently tried an audiobook. The Knife's Edge, which is the product of a self-published epic fantasy novel. I'd just finished Aching God by Mike Shel and was impressed with it as another self published fantasy novel. It wasn't world changing, but it was good so I went looking for others to see if there were more hidden gems and found Knife's Edge by Matt Wolf. I had great reviews with lots of people praising it for doing things its own way.

The reviews were so very wrong. Within the first 3 hours the story hit on every fantasy cliche. It's got a dumb prophecy compounded by someone deciding to keep it a secret for no apparent reason (and all of this is covered in 2 hours that move the plot forward about 5 seconds). The first two hours of the book are pointless cause the main character loses his memory of them and they don't come back for the next ten hours in any meaningful way. Hint to prospective writers, NEVER write the first book in your 'ten book epic' with the arrogant presumption that people will read the other nine and you don't have to worry about plotting a tight narrative. The biggest issue Wolf has in The Knife's Edge is that 15-16 hours of his 20 hour book is pointless empty filler with character introductions that don't seem to matter (yet), events that go unexplained (for now), and more dangling plot threads than GRRM has woven into 5 novels. This book desperately needed an editor to look the writer in the eye and tell him the book is like a pilot episode that tried to hook its audience but runs for an entire season.

To make it worse, it got real obvious real fast that the reviews were only saying the plot did things its own way because the people who liked it have clearly never seen an anime series. The story is plotted like one all the way through, with the character undergoing the epic cycle of training -> plot -> training -> plot for 20 hours. Most good anime these days has the sense to do the training off screen! People unfamiliar with the genre maybe might overlook how mundane that formula becomes at first, but like most anime/manga fans I think I got sick of it after DBZ, Naruto, and Bleach. Most series' today do their 'training' sequences off screen or minimize them heavily rather than drag them out. The series furthers these cliches with gratuitous battle shouting, meandering internal monologues about what a character can/can't do, characters saying aloud thing no actual person would ever say, and frantic action scenes that stop in the middle of things so someone can give a chapter long explanation that could have just been a few sentences.

And I feel bad saying that, cause Matt Wolf has the talent to be a good writer. His story just desperately needed refinement and maturation that comes from a hard nosed editing process. I know some people like to rant at editors and be all 'artistic integrity' but sometimes you really need one. As it is, it's plotted bizarrely, arrogant in its assumption of its own success, and only novel if you're unfamiliar with another genre.

It's got a dumb prophecy compounded by someone deciding to keep it a secret for no apparent reason (and all of this is covered in 2 hours that move the plot forward about 5 seconds). The first two hours of the book are pointless cause the main character loses his memory of them and they don't come back for the next ten hours in any meaningful way.

Ouch. Prophecy, 'dramatic' secret keeping and memory loss?

Its (almost) all of my least favorite things in film/books.

Add 'coming of age' story (it isn't inherently bad, just tiresome), and they've got the whole bundle.

Voss wrote:
Add 'coming of age' story (it isn't inherently bad, just tiresome), and they've got the whole bundle.

...

About that...

Gonna be controversial here and say Star Wars about 3/4's of the way through Return of the Jedi. Sitting through one average film, one good film and the the finale that got progressively worse just killed any interest for me and i've never had an interest in going back too it.

Sounds like the moment that turned you against the franchise was somewhere between C3PO telling the Ewoks “Toronto Gosh” and “Nooch Vader”?

I mean, not particularly. I had no real issue with the ewoks in general, the movie was just boring too me. And Harrison Ford's "i really don't want to be here" acting was kind of off putting too. And only one good movie out of a trilogy isn't enough to make me want to look at more of that particular universe.

Alien Covenant completely ruined the Alien franchise for me. Finding out their origins, and their reasons for being where they are even takes away from the older movies for me.

I gave up on Star Wars after the 7th movie even though the prequel trilogy was not to my taste. It wasn’t a bad movie, certainly better than Episode 1, but it didn’t make me want to watch any more Star Wars movies.

phillv85 wrote:
Alien Covenant completely ruined the Alien franchise for me. Finding out their origins, and their reasons for being where they are even takes away from the older movies for me.

I gave up on Star Wars after the 7th movie even though the prequel trilogy was not to my taste. It wasn’t a bad movie, certainly better than Episode 1, but it didn’t make me want to watch any more Star Wars movies.

Do you mean Promethus - that was a very very poor film, Convenant was improved on that but agreed it was nothing compared to the first two films.

 LordofHats wrote:

Voss wrote:
Add 'coming of age' story (it isn't inherently bad, just tiresome), and they've got the whole bundle.

...

About that...

Color me surprised. Its an easy intro to fiction in general, as it provides an proxy character for the audience to be explained at.
But in the hands of lazy writers, its just terrible. You can tick off the various boxes of destiny, rejection, acceptance, Special Chosen-ness, etc

 Just Tony wrote:

When I started learning music theory after I picked up guitar it changed the way I looked at probably half to two thirds of the music I listened to. I dropped all those CDs off at my older brother's house with no regrets. So I can understand the response.

If taking music theory classes makes one discard the majority of music one enjoys, there should be a warning label. At any rate, that kills whatever interest I might have harbored in doing so. I enjoy my music and don't want to see it ruined by over-analysis like my former enjoyment of poetry was.

Its hard to say, TLJ killed my enthusiasm for Disney Wars but I still watched Solo and Mandalorian, but I would say that Fall of skywalker is my walk away point for that franchise.

For marvel, it has not happened yet but I am increasingly apathetic about the series, not that its gotten bad or anything just lost interest.

Altered carbon series 2 was very poor, Falcon just could not pull off the role and the rest of the supporting caste just did not do it for me, wont likely watch a 3rd series.

JJ Trek Discovery I watched from start to finish because I am a trekky and a gluton for pain, however the end of the last season was my walk away point, I will not be returning to that series.

Kurtzman Trek Picard I got to episode 5 I think it was and just went "nope" and stopped watching, I sat through all the JJ Trek movies, Disco and Picard was the straw that broke the camels back.... terrible show made for people who hate star trek or have never seen it.

But with the bad you have to have the good.

Sense 8 is really really not my kind of thing normally and around episode 3 is when I went "yeah, I like this" and carried on watching.

The Expanse.... nuff said, excellent all round series.

The Good place, another show I would normally not touch with a barge pole but it has some actors I like and I dont regret it, very wholesome and fun series.

I still much love Alien and Aliens, but I can second Covenant killing my interest in the series. Honestly, I think I lost a little respect for Ridley Scott in the process cause the movie was way more Prometheus than Alien and I felt a little cheated by the stupid cartoon villain plot line he tried to make the centerpiece of a movie with Alien in the title. I think it's one of the few movies where executive meddling actually improved things cause the last sequence of the film was the best part and it clearly wasn't in the original script.

So Netflix is pushing the Midnight Gospel and the reviews are good. But honestly, it comes across as podcast by a stoner with random animations in the background.

 Vaktathi wrote:
With the full Hyperion Cantos, there's 4 books, the first two (Hyperion and Return to Hyperion) are fantastic on their own. The other two sequels (Endymion and Rise of Endymion) are also good, but are best treated essentially as an alternate universe with a reworked view of the events of the first two books.

Simmons can write a great story, but also tends to go overboard on "I'm an author, look how fancy my English degree is! I'm *soooooooo* into melancholy 19th century poets!", and his newer stuff is substantially and increasingly less interesting (Ilium was pretty neat, Olympos became totally incoherent, while Flashback is sadly basically "minorities destroy America fanfic" with lots of awkward septuagenarian-oriented cable news tropes hamfisted in)

Oh interesting, the essay basically said that by explaining the mystery of the Time Tombs and the Shrike the author makes it mundane, whereas in the first book he doesn't make that mistake.

I think all series have some inconsistency in them, so sometimes it's best just to read the gems rather than slavishly finishing the whole series just because it's there.

 Vulcan wrote:

 Just Tony wrote:

When I started learning music theory after I picked up guitar it changed the way I looked at probably half to two thirds of the music I listened to. I dropped all those CDs off at my older brother's house with no regrets. So I can understand the response.

If taking music theory classes makes one discard the majority of music one enjoys, there should be a warning label. At any rate, that kills whatever interest I might have harbored in doing so. I enjoy my music and don't want to see it ruined by over-analysis like my former enjoyment of poetry was.

It simply made me pay more attention to the structure of the music I was listening to. I mean, look at Living Color. That band gets rather high praise but when you listen to Vernon Reid from a technical viewpoint he's playing chromatic speed picking almost non stop on all lead work. Listen to Cult of Personality. When he DOES slow down to go "melodic" it's out of key and in poor tempo compared to the rhythm section. It's garbage. You can always tell the "chromatic or GTFO" players, their rhythm section picks one note and stays on it while the guitar player violates every semblance of structure. I like to call it the Mark Tremonti Effect.

I was surpisingly okay with considering the point where Thanos snaps his fingers and retires to his farm, to be the end point of the MCU.

I didn't mind Prometheus. Quite liked it in a few places. But Covenant took the world-shrinking aspect of Prometheus (the space jockeys being, like, Primaris humans or something) and doubled down on it. Took the Lovecraftian elements of Alien - an ancient, fathomless, unknown and uncaring creature, in an ancient, fathomless, unknown and uncaring universe, where humans are gnats or prey - and wiped them away by making the origin of the xenomorph a near-future robot with a petty grudge.

Though given the human cast, as interesting as plain porridge, you can kind of see his point.

 Kroem wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:
With the full Hyperion Cantos, there's 4 books, the first two (Hyperion and Return to Hyperion) are fantastic on their own. The other two sequels (Endymion and Rise of Endymion) are also good, but are best treated essentially as an alternate universe with a reworked view of the events of the first two books.

Simmons can write a great story, but also tends to go overboard on "I'm an author, look how fancy my English degree is! I'm *soooooooo* into melancholy 19th century poets!", and his newer stuff is substantially and increasingly less interesting (Ilium was pretty neat, Olympos became totally incoherent, while Flashback is sadly basically "minorities destroy America fanfic" with lots of awkward septuagenarian-oriented cable news tropes hamfisted in)

Oh interesting, the essay basically said that by explaining the mystery of the Time Tombs and the Shrike the author makes it mundane, whereas in the first book he doesn't make that mistake.

Eh, it's explanation is kinda dumb (though so was the ultimate force of universal love ), and is part of why I say to treat the second two as kinda their own thing, but the time tombs also don't play the same central role in the plot that they did in the first two either so within the context of the second two books doesn't feel quite as silly.

I think all series have some inconsistency in them, so sometimes it's best just to read the gems rather than slavishly finishing the whole series just because it's there.

There's definitely something to be said for that. Endymion and Rise of Endymion are good reads, but at the same time are completely skippable if you're not looking for more of Simmon's specifically and were satisfied with the first two books. There are interesting things presented in the book
but overall doesn't continue the same original story thread as the first two in the same way and a lot of concepts are re-imagined through the guise of "you only got part of the story" in the first couple books.

Fear The Walking Dead

After the first season. Horrible characters (probably testament to the actors to be fair), boring plot, failed mission statement.

Just didn’t give enough of a flip about the people or the stakes.

Have tried a couple of times to get back into it, and just can’t.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Fear The Walking Dead

After the first season. Horrible characters (probably testament to the actors to be fair), boring plot, failed mission statement.

Just didn’t give enough of a flip about the people or the stakes.

Have tried a couple of times to get back into it, and just can’t.

First season was trash. That showed turned a solid corner 3-4 episodes into season 2. And then I dropped it like a hot brick in the season they finished off all of the family except the sister.

Dies the Fire. It started off with such a great (and at the time, unqiue) premise but the writing was a constant abuse of the English language. I got three books in before it just became too mentally painful to read.

Runner up is Bastard!!!. It was a really good premise, but a twelve year old got ahold of the script and filled it from top to bottom with panty jokes

 ChargerIIC wrote:
Dies the Fire. It started off with such a great (and at the time, unqiue) premise but the writing was a constant abuse of the English language. I got three books in before it just became too mentally painful to read

I loved the first trilogy of that series. I enjoyed the kids journey to Nantucket in the next grouping. Gave up on it with the grandkids of the original group series as it got just to out there.

I actually haven't read the Dies the Fire series, but as its supposed to take place locally, I probably should get in on some of it

Big Bang Theory - Used to love that show but cracks started to appear around Season 5-6, after that you could see the Flanderisation in pretty much every character. Sheldon for example changed from "a bit awkward and has his own weird traits" to "I'm so weird I'm going to break up with my girlfriend of 5 years because my flatmate wants a new table" (which is an actual plotline). Then they decide to introduce a baby into the show, which is a general sign that the they're running out of ideas, and the show's changed from nerd humour to a generic sitcom.


Horus Heresy - They're milking it too much, I read up to around Book 35 and put it down for a while during uni, now I have no bloody idea where to start again from.

Can't believe the HH cow hasn't died from dehydration yet, keeping up with that 15 year series is just insanity at this point. More insane is that it actually still makes enough money to keep going.

 Vaktathi wrote:
I actually haven't read the Dies the Fire series, but as its supposed to take place locally, I probably should get in on some of it

The first 3 were especially neat back when they came out especially because it was one of the first "everything stops working, go" that didn't involve a slow slide or zombies. I was so excited for the show "Revolution" when it was going to come out because it seemed like they were going to go off the same idea but that show was terrible and didn't even try to be a coherent universe.

 Disciple of Fate wrote:
Can't believe the HH cow hasn't died from dehydration yet, keeping up with that 15 year series is just insanity at this point. More insane is that it actually still makes enough money to keep going.

I'm still going through it off and on, and really like 75% of them do not need to exist and don't push the story forward at all. The later books in particular are particularly glaring in how obvious the 'we're milking this cow far all we can" they are. Then I saw Siege of Terra is going to be 10 books. Just how? How can you possible take ten books to tell that story without most of it being wasted time? And some of the books are actually not even all that bad, it's just that they're in a massive series and they don't do anything to progress it.

I think part of it is you have 18 legions, with their characters themselves.
Hell, 18characters is pushing it sometimes.
And because everyone has their favorite and want their favorites to be shown. and because they all want their favorites to be "Good Guys" they all have to be sympathetic, misunderstood or under control.
HH has no real villain,

Sure it does: Ben Counter.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
Sure it does: Ben Counter.

I was going to say a lack of integrity and focus XD "Make as much money as possible" is a business strategy, not a creative vision and creative vision is what the HH series needed and seemed to lose all sense of somewhere around Fear to Tread IMO.

EDIT: As an aside, Fear to thread was really painful. It's a long book that moves the plot forward about 5 seconds every few thousand words, and honestly could have been half as long as it was. I have no idea why some writers (especially fantasy writers) have an obsession with making things as long as possible. The quality of a story is not in its word count and just making it longer doesn't automatically make it better. It's amazing to me that everything in Stormlight Archives and Malazan are such huge books that actually manage to be mostly worth their size while other people will just pad out a story like it's a damn race to see who can make the thickest tome.

Fear to Tread is also the last HH book I attempted to read. Killed my interest for a year, and by then the rest of the series had become insurmountable.

 LordofHats wrote:

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
Sure it does: Ben Counter.

I was going to say a lack of integrity and focus XD "Make as much money as possible" is a business strategy, not a creative vision and creative vision is what the HH series needed and seemed to lose all sense of somewhere around Fear to Tread IMO.
.

There was either an Eisner Quote or Iger quote regarding disney and making money vs art it it pretty much said this
"We are in the business of making money not art, but good rememberable art makes money, so we are in the business of making art"
And it makes sense. Disney could just factory out movies, and they kinda do. But they make good movies, that are remembered and still make money today.
You can make Art and Money.
Ill see if I can find the quote

I am late to the thread another read the whole thing and I cannot be the first to write this but Star Wars after movie 7.

Also The Walking Dead after Neegan.

 LordofHats wrote:

 Disciple of Fate wrote:
Can't believe the HH cow hasn't died from dehydration yet, keeping up with that 15 year series is just insanity at this point. More insane is that it actually still makes enough money to keep going.

I'm still going through it off and on, and really like 75% of them do not need to exist and don't push the story forward at all. The later books in particular are particularly glaring in how obvious the 'we're milking this cow far all we can" they are. Then I saw Siege of Terra is going to be 10 books. Just how? How can you possible take ten books to tell that story without most of it being wasted time? And some of the books are actually not even all that bad, it's just that they're in a massive series and they don't do anything to progress it.

The 75% filler bit is why its so insane, writing, printing and shipping all cost money. Still there seem to be enough people buying the filler to make it profitable? How? Who manages to keep slogging through all these terribly slow books? Some are even entirely unrelated to the actual HH.

Siege of Terra being 10 books at this point is unsurprising, given the track record they might milk the scouring into the HH series to keep it rolling.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
Fear to Tread is also the last HH book I attempted to read. Killed my interest for a year, and by then the rest of the series had become insurmountable.

At some point the investment in the series was going to become more expensive than the hobby itself. It costs 1000-1500 bucks or something if you buy all the books on release (20-25 per book). That's at least 10 imperial knights here.

 Disciple of Fate wrote:
Still there seem to be enough people buying the filler to make it profitable? How? Who manages to keep slogging through all these terribly slow books?

Ahum.

Uh...



40K players?

Firefly. . . I made it all of 3 or 4 episodes before I turned to the wife and said, "Really?!? this is this BS you been hyping for so damn long? Why the hell do you like it?"

The writing was trash, the acting wasn't great, the budget was worse (and ultimately didn't help the series). Overall, and I know its unpopular opinion these days, I am glad that gak was cancelled.


There's a small chance that, if I hadn't had my wife talking it up like it was the greatest show ever for a couple years, and hadn't had friends say it was a great show, and generally had so many people talking up this show as something absolutely amazing, there's a small chance I may have enjoyed it. . . but ultimately I found it to be a horrible waste of my time that I'll never get back.

 Ensis Ferrae wrote:
The writing was trash, the acting wasn't great, the budget was worse (and ultimately didn't help the series). Overall, and I know its unpopular opinion these days, I am glad that gak was cancelled.

For what it's worth, I think the series is getting less and less slack as time goes on. I think it was a profoundly mediocre show and the only thing good to come out of it was a quite entertaining movie that hits no good notes if you didn't watch the show.

 Vermis wrote:

 Disciple of Fate wrote:
Still there seem to be enough people buying the filler to make it profitable? How? Who manages to keep slogging through all these terribly slow books?

Ahum.

Uh...



40K players?

From the 10 or so 40K players I know, several have never read a HH book, several a few and one about a dozen. Not one has read dozens and according to Wikipedia they are up to 56(!) books. It would be interesting to see the numbers of 40K players versus average number of HH books read.

 Ensis Ferrae wrote:
Firefly. . . I made it all of 3 or 4 episodes before I turned to the wife and said, "Really?!? this is this BS you been hyping for so damn long? Why the hell do you like it?"

The writing was trash, the acting wasn't great, the budget was worse (and ultimately didn't help the series). Overall, and I know its unpopular opinion these days, I am glad that gak was cancelled.


There's a small chance that, if I hadn't had my wife talking it up like it was the greatest show ever for a couple years, and hadn't had friends say it was a great show, and generally had so many people talking up this show as something absolutely amazing, there's a small chance I may have enjoyed it. . . but ultimately I found it to be a horrible waste of my time that I'll never get back.

Firefly was a product of its time and place, it was the era of shows like Stargate and Farscape, they're trope-filled, low budget, small cast space adventures. Next to stuff like that, Firefly holds its own. And, just like those other shows, if you try and get into many years or a couple decades after their initial run, they don't hold up as well. Same way trying to watch 60's Star Trek or Doctor Who now would be awful without nostalgia glasses.

 Vermis wrote:

 Disciple of Fate wrote:
Still there seem to be enough people buying the filler to make it profitable? How? Who manages to keep slogging through all these terribly slow books?

Ahum.

Uh...



40K players?

Much as I would normally want to agree, I don't actually know anyone who has kept up with the series or even tried to

That said I don't think GW is expecting people to, they're writing books for every conceivable subfaction, getting a bunch of people to buy maybe the first few for the meat and potatoes of the origins of the HH, and maybe a couple others after that related to their specific faction of interest as the years go on, instead of expecting anyone to actually read and own 35 HH books.

But I do wonder how long it's able to keep going, I haven't read any of them in years. I really just don't need every minor faction and character's viewpoint of the Siege of Terra spread over 10 books. More to the point, I think I preferred when the Horus Heresy was an era of barely understood shrouded myth, far too much of the substance of the HH basically relies on everyone involved having the emotional intelligence of a toddler and a stunning lack of ability to self reflect or think through simple consequences that simply does not fit the positions of power these people hold or their climbs to get tehere, and it's all presented largely unironically, coming off as hamfisted and stupid instead of dystopian grimdark. Having the Horus Heresy so illuminated and defined, and seeing the wizards behind the curtains so to speak as the manchildren they mostly are, makes it far less interesting and compelling (particularly as it relates to the primary 40k story) than it was just as a mythical origin era.

I feel like Star Gate SG-1 has aged very well, but SG-1 was a great show. Farscape definitely hasn't aged well. Nor have the early seasons of TNG.

I love Stargate SG-1, but I just pulled up a random first season episode (ep8 Brief Candle), and if I had never seen Stargate before today, I'd be looking for something else to watch before the 90 second mark

We're just legitimately used to a higher bar these days, and thats a good thing. The closest I can think of to something of the same budget/acting quality/sets/etc as Firefly/Stargate/Farscape today is Vagrant Queen on Syfy, and that's sporting a mighty 4.1/10 on IMDB ratings right now (and I think that's generous honestly), but had that aired in say, 2000 we'd be talking about it like a beloved classic. Firefly was a great show if you caught in in 2002, but if one tried to get into it today, I can totally see where it would be a letdown.

Forgot one...


Rynn's World guarantees that I will never buy another GW novel ever again.

i love Sg1 and i binged it all a couple summers back, when getting through 10seasons in 2 months was feasible for me.......i miss those days, now its a month to get through a season)
IT definitly has some major problems(Lets not forget the 4th episode, what is essentially the first episode that is a regular is hot garbage.)
I feel it still holds up somewhat well, but you kinda have to think of it differently.
ITs kinda sad sometimes to think shows that where great of even pehnominal when they come out, will be left behind or looked back at with a quint "Awwww" because of just the changing times.

The first season of SG1 was pretty weak, but once it found its footing it really took off. Same thing for TNG and Babylon 5, really.

Joss Wheeon kind of does the opposite. The first three seasons of Buffy are clearly the best, while the last two are mostly pretty dire. Angel got a second wind with a lot of fresh blood in season 2/3, but it was getting tired just before the end. Firefly was never really my thing, but I thought the movie played well to Whedon’s strengths in a way many of the episodes didn’t.

Does anyone remember Special Unit 2? That was a show that was just finding its stride when it got cancelled. What a shame.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
The first season of SG1 was pretty weak, but once it found its footing it really took off. Same thing for TNG and Babylon 5, really.

.

TNG took like 5 seasons to get good honestly.
I honestly tried to watch TNG......i literally couldnt. I turned it off. Which is funny because i actually like the show and characters, i remember it when i was a kid watching episodes.
But i cant actually sit down and watch it as an adult.

 Vaktathi wrote:
Firefly was a great show if you caught in in 2002, but if one tried to get into it today, I can totally see where it would be a letdown.

Funny, I tried getting into it back then, but I had the same reaction as Ensis.

I watched the series in 2003 and I didn't think it was good. I even wrote a spiel once upon a time about how the first episode of the series was god awful and I was unsurprised the series never took off.

 Ensis Ferrae wrote:
Firefly. . . I made it all of 3 or 4 episodes before I turned to the wife and said, "Really?!? this is this BS you been hyping for so damn long? Why the hell do you like it?"

The writing was trash, the acting wasn't great, the budget was worse (and ultimately didn't help the series). Overall, and I know its unpopular opinion these days, I am glad that gak was cancelled.

Don't sweat it. We may disagree, but the name of the thread is "The moment you gave up on a franchise", not "Convince me I was wrong to give up on a franchise".

Everyone likes different things. I've seen a lot of stuff from this thread show up in the threat of 'Franchise you followed all the way to the end with no regrets' thread, and vice versa.

 Vaktathi wrote:
I love Stargate SG-1, but I just pulled up a random first season episode (ep8 Brief Candle), and if I had never seen Stargate before today, I'd be looking for something else to watch before the 90 second mark

We're just legitimately used to a higher bar these days, and thats a good thing. The closest I can think of to something of the same budget/acting quality/sets/etc as Firefly/Stargate/Farscape today is Vagrant Queen on Syfy, and that's sporting a mighty 4.1/10 on IMDB ratings right now (and I think that's generous honestly), but had that aired in say, 2000 we'd be talking about it like a beloved classic. Firefly was a great show if you caught in in 2002, but if one tried to get into it today, I can totally see where it would be a letdown.

I'm trying to think of what you mean by a 'higher bar' for shows these days, and I'm drawing a complete blank. Do you mean effects? Because if you mean story and characters I'm just going to laugh.


Firefly got carried by the 'Whedon is a demigod' phenomenon off the back of Buffy, same as Angel. That it wasn't very good was because people deliberately weren't looking behind the illusion.
Fox knew. Its why they advertised the show as 'We gots space whores!' to draw interest.

Voss wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:
I love Stargate SG-1, but I just pulled up a random first season episode (ep8 Brief Candle), and if I had never seen Stargate before today, I'd be looking for something else to watch before the 90 second mark

We're just legitimately used to a higher bar these days, and thats a good thing. The closest I can think of to something of the same budget/acting quality/sets/etc as Firefly/Stargate/Farscape today is Vagrant Queen on Syfy, and that's sporting a mighty 4.1/10 on IMDB ratings right now (and I think that's generous honestly), but had that aired in say, 2000 we'd be talking about it like a beloved classic. Firefly was a great show if you caught in in 2002, but if one tried to get into it today, I can totally see where it would be a letdown.

I'm trying to think of what you mean by a 'higher bar' for shows these days, and I'm drawing a complete blank. Do you mean effects? Because if you mean story and characters I'm just going to laugh.

Mostly I'm referring to production value in general, approaches to realism, and less reliance on camp humor and gimmicks, better scene framing and timing, better budgets or and a more advanced set design science, etc. There's absolutely still awful stories and characters and atrocious acting (hello anything Star Trek these days), but to go along with that we've also had examples of outstanding storywriting, characters, and acting that was simply nonexistent in almost the entire television medium and especially scifi/fantasy in the late 90's and very early 00's even in shows that had their own problems in those areas (e.g. Battlestar Galactica, Game of Thrones).

I mean you also have the shift from episodic to serial recently where you can tell better stories.

 Disciple of Fate wrote:

 Vermis wrote:

 Disciple of Fate wrote:
Still there seem to be enough people buying the filler to make it profitable? How? Who manages to keep slogging through all these terribly slow books?

Ahum.

Uh...



40K players?

From the 10 or so 40K players I know, several have never read a HH book, several a few and one about a dozen. Not one has read dozens and according to Wikipedia they are up to 56(!) books. It would be interesting to see the numbers of 40K players versus average number of HH books read.

I know more people who read the HH books then actively play 40k.

a book every 2-3 months is pretty cheap compared to a 40k army.


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 Just Tony wrote:

BrianDavion wrote:The Spellpurge and forgotten realms. I was a big fan of forgotten realms, read as many of the books as I could, bought the sourcebooks etc. (I did play games in FR but I also bought em because I wanted to know about the setting)
the Spellpurge just killed my intreast. it turned the setting into something I could no longer reckongize

As a WFB fan and player, I can feel your pain...

WFB to AOS actually suprised me because at the time AOS had happened both 4yh edition D&D and MWDA had been out for awhile and basicly failed. both MWDA and 4E Forgotten realms where "hey let's blow up the setting, do a big time jump and restart with a new game to make the game more appealing to new fans who won't feel intimidated by all this back story" and they failed because the eistablished fan base rejected it. AOS has done alright now (apparently it's selling quite well) but considering what had happened in the market during the planning phases it was a pretty ballsy move.

I know quite a few who do Audio Books during commutes/painting.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

BrianDavion wrote:


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Just Tony wrote:

BrianDavion wrote:The Spellpurge and forgotten realms. I was a big fan of forgotten realms, read as many of the books as I could, bought the sourcebooks etc. (I did play games in FR but I also bought em because I wanted to know about the setting)
the Spellpurge just killed my intreast. it turned the setting into something I could no longer reckongize

As a WFB fan and player, I can feel your pain...

WFB to AOS actually suprised me because at the time AOS had happened both 4yh edition D&D and MWDA had been out for awhile and basicly failed. both MWDA and 4E Forgotten realms where "hey let's blow up the setting, do a big time jump and restart with a new game to make the game more appealing to new fans who won't feel intimidated by all this back story" and they failed because the eistablished fan base rejected it. AOS has done alright now (apparently it's selling quite well) but considering what had happened in the market during the planning phases it was a pretty ballsy move.

Its kinda what just happens sometimes. There gets to a point where things are so fething big that they intimidate people wanting to get in. So they have to get new people in because older fans inherantly dont buy much. and the simple answer is.....reboot it.

When I wanted to get into WHFB's setting, there was a book available at regular bookstores called something like "The World of Warhammer." It was pure background (and art) and fairly slim, but packed the right amount of information to leave me with enough of a foundation in the setting not to feel overwhelmed. I don't think I've ever seen anything like that for D&D, Mechwarrior or Warmachine.

Warmachines lore was in it's expansion books, the problem was it was stories with no background.
Now those don't exist and the only way to get lore is their books.

I’ve had a turbulent opinion of Prometheus that has smoothed out over the years and settled into affection. Covenant is an interesting movie but, like Alien Resurrection and the AvP movies, I don’t think it fits with the others. Folks who don’t like these films should rest easy; if another Alien film gets made the producers will almost surely go the route of the Terminator franchise and ignore everything after Aliens.

 Manchu wrote:
I’ve had a turbulent opinion of Prometheus that has smoothed out over the years and settled into affection. Covenant is an interesting movie but, like Alien Resurrection and the AvP movies, I don’t think it fits with the others. Folks who don’t like these films should rest easy; if another Alien film gets made the producers will almost surely go the route of the Terminator franchise and ignore everything after Aliens.

See i never liked when they did that. First it makes it confusing AND there are people out there who like those movies.

It’s probably for the best. Hopefully, it will be done with Star Wars some day.

 creeping-deth87 wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:


Not when Dice Stockholm is the developper. Other subdivisions have B teams, but DICE stockholm is more akin to the Z division.

As for the underlined there are SO MANY REASONS HOW that it is difficult:

But here a non complete list:

Marketing:

Spoiler:

Yeah, that is supposedly how a WW2 game of a franchise that prided itself in imersion, should look like.... What do you mean it doesn't ! YOu are AlL tHe FolLoWiNg!!!!!

- Calling fans uneducated." Even though there were just as many surprisingly good thought out argumentations against this.

- Telling fans to not buy it. " Well the numbers did show now didn't they.

The design:

Spoiler:

Overarching Design is and was a failure.
What do i mean by that:
-A life service which allready performed worse in the sales department doesn't get any "life" service.
-Pay to earn cosmetics.
- No community servers.
- Gamemode rotation on some of the bread and butter modes like rush.
- NOT HAVING THE TECHNOLOGY FOR A 2x XP event supposedly, even though all BF titles recently had a 2x event due to the virus. Tied in of course with the over grindy but skipable by money grind for cosmetcs. AKA Greed.

The actual game design:

Spoiler:

- No all kit weapons.
- Serious balance issues in weapon balancing often times self introduced in ttk changes. (type 2 a, MMG too good, too bad, )
- Attrition: A idea that went neither far enough nor needed implementation. Either or no half measures because the halfmeasure ATM in place is just bloody annoying.
- Vehicle balance issues, because the one thing BF1 did really bad (aka choosable vehicles instead of fixed spawns)they copied over.
-gak tier visibility. Even after a whole year. BF1 had genius 10 / 10 visibility compared to V and BF 1 allread yhad visibility issues.
- Bad map design. Something that Dice Stockholm started with BF4, and BFV completed in many ways, the maps first designed by artists and then actually getting into the hands of actual level designers leading to hillariously stupid designed maps. One sided as all hell.
- the women. Not as in they are there, even though as a history nut you might allready have issues with it for most factions (except the soviets). No what i mean here is beyond the completly ahistorical fact of their implementation they also scream louder then the 10 Handgreanades inevitable flying and detonating on you when you attempt to revive them.
- Dice Stockholm, including but not limited too: Rushjob, lack of understanding of the technology, lack of foresight , lack of skill as shown by early 4 aswell and 0 capability to actually make a Netcode work (same as bf4). Except BF4 got handed off to LA and turned into a great game.

Oh wow, I had no idea DICE Stockholm was the problem. Doubly surprised that LA was the reason 4 was so good, as I understand it they developed the first Star Wars Battlefront reboot which I thought was complete and total garbage. As to the rest of the post, yeah I agree that map design has been a huge problem with V. The only maps I've been genuinely excited to play are Devastation and Iwo Jima, everything else I either loathe or just... completely indifferent. I do really hate the 'life service' model. I was initially very excited about the prospect of free new maps, but considering how slow the support has been I honestly think I'd rather go back to the way BF1 did it. Yeah it cost more, but I at least got way more content.

And they cut it off as of yesterday

 Elbows wrote:
If we're discussing computer games as well...I gave up on 90% of them when DLC went from "an actual expansion which you add to an already complete game"...and became "Unlock actual normal game features and things in different colours".

In general, feth DLC of all shapes and sizes unless it's an actual expansion to an existing product.

This change impacted quite a few games I would have carried on playing. I stopped paying any attention to the Total War franchise (easily one of my favourite gaming franchises of all time) when you had to buy a DLC expansion for $3 to see blood in the game...get fethed.

I mean, this is kind of an extreme strawman argument here when applied to TW in particular, since the DLC releases that they've been putting out for Warhammer TW have been fething stellar.

1) nearly every DLC is a complete new faction

2) all the gak you purchased for DLC in TW1 carried over to TW2 and the games actually merged into one another letting you play with everything together on a huge map, which kicks ass

3) even if you don't buy the DLC factions they get added to your game as enemies and you can play against them

I agree with you that DLC can be and often is total bs. but a lot of DLC is just what expansion packs used to be


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Manchu wrote:
I’ve had a turbulent opinion of Prometheus that has smoothed out over the years and settled into affection. Covenant is an interesting movie but, like Alien Resurrection and the AvP movies, I don’t think it fits with the others. Folks who don’t like these films should rest easy; if another Alien film gets made the producers will almost surely go the route of the Terminator franchise and ignore everything after Aliens.

See, I'm kind of of the opinion that "horror franchise" or "horror sequel" should not really be things that exist. How is it "horror" if you go in knowing what to expect and you made your purchase based on having experienced a previous branded product and want more of that same.

That said, I do think Prometheus was more successful as a horror movie to me than any of the alien sequels precisely because you go in not knowing what the monster is or what it could do. It was just frustrating because it was a horror movie with RELENTLESSLY idiotic characters.

horror movie with RELENTLESSLY idiotic characters

I would be greatly thrilled if someone could just write a horror film with characters who are not idiots. Even some of the ones I really like, Sinister for example, seems to hinge on a character making a bad choice so obviously bad it boggles the mind.

 LordofHats wrote:

horror movie with RELENTLESSLY idiotic characters

I would be greatly thrilled if someone could just write a horror film with characters who are not idiots. Even some of the ones I really like, Sinister for example, seems to hinge on a character making a bad choice so obviously bad it boggles the mind.

That is part of the reason I like the horror movies I like.

couple examples off the top of my head:

Babbadook. I never felt like the main adult character in this film was acting out of STUPIDITY, just acting under a reasonable, commesurate level of stress and fear surrounding the situation.

I would never criticize the scene in Prometheus where the lady runs away from the falling ship in the direction it's falling. That looks stupid, to the audience, because we can see continuously over her fething shoulder, a thing she cannot do. She looks behind her shoulder for a fraction of a second, and probably doesn't see much of anything. Your instinct would be exactly the same as hers: just run away. It'd be down to luck if you ran in the right direction! My complaint is more with the very opening bits of the film, where they do gak like take off their god damn helmets when they're supposed to be astronaut-tier biologists and scientists. "hey, the air is clean, let's take off our helmets! Couldn't be any kind of microbial threats present on this ALIEN fething PLANET"

Annihilation. Here is a story about professionals descending into a maddening, horrific situation where they are actually portrayed as consummate professionals before they go crazy, and I appreciate that so, so much. It adds immensely to the horror toward the end of the film where the first time the characters encounter a threat, they follow their training instinctually and take it the feth out while maintaining discipline.

Get Out. I'll be honest, I didn't see Get Out through as much of a horror movie because I found it really fething funny during the "tension building" section, but I did appreciate that the main character seemed to act rationally throughout.

Id add Event Horizon and i think its called Pandemonium (or something, its another space one). Bith show tge charactersmostly acting rationally but dealing with something so far outside of their training/common sense/rationality that they can be excused for errors they make in hindsight.

I would agree with those suggestions.