LilWayneSuckz
Member
Bingo. The events of Alien: Covenant (for me) makes Alien and Aliens less interesting to re-watch....so now I pretend AC doesn't exist.
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What creator/writer ruined the lore of their property overtime the most?
- Thread starter Trojita
- Start date
Bingo. The events of Alien: Covenant (for me) makes Alien and Aliens less interesting to re-watch....so now I pretend AC doesn't exist.
BrutishMrFish
Member
Spoilers:
She blatantly breaks her own established rules regarding time travel, makes it so Belatrix had a kid with Voldemort (despite there being no indication of it happening in the books and no reason for an immortal person to think they'll ever need someone to carry on their legacy), and she ruins Cedric Diggory's character by making him one humiliation away from becoming a Death Eater and killing Neville.
There's just no coming back from Cursed Child. It's not every day that a sequel is makes me feel stupid for ever liking a particular series, and if I didn't like Fantastic Beasts as much as I did I would have ignored the franchise for good.
This is a good one. The plots in Kirby become better every time.
Another opposite example would be Friendship is Magic. Episode quality over the seasons is debatable, but the lore just builds and builds and the world only gets better for it.
I think there are four major taboos that alone, and almost without fail in conjunction, will ruin any series if kept unchecked.
1) Trying to explain and demystify everything.
2) Trying to connect everything together/make everything important.
3) Trying to insert deeper meaning where there originally was not.
4) Trying to continually one-up your past highs and twists.
Most of these failed series are guilty of at least one if not several of these taboos.
Dexter was guilty of all 4 a ton. Dragon Ball was super guilty of #4 and occasionally #2. Star Wars has at times been very guilty of all of these; Star Killer base was the absolute worst example of #4. Mass Effect series was super guilty of #1 and #3 with how they handled the Reapers and ending to ME3. Ridley Scott is super guilty of all these as well, particularly #2 and #3.
1) Trying to explain and demystify everything.
2) Trying to connect everything together/make everything important.
3) Trying to insert deeper meaning where there originally was not.
4) Trying to continually one-up your past highs and twists.
Most of these failed series are guilty of at least one if not several of these taboos.
Dexter was guilty of all 4 a ton. Dragon Ball was super guilty of #4 and occasionally #2. Star Wars has at times been very guilty of all of these; Star Killer base was the absolute worst example of #4. Mass Effect series was super guilty of #1 and #3 with how they handled the Reapers and ending to ME3. Ridley Scott is super guilty of all these as well, particularly #2 and #3.
If we're broadening the category beyond original creators, then this is the correct answer. They are so staggeringly out of their depth that I don't think they could match Frank Herbert if you gave them a million years. They have been so bad for so long that they might be the antithesis to the infinite monkey theorem. Dune is beyond their combined faculties.
Earthbound64
Banned
Tolkien laughs at all of these.
Conkersbadfurday
Member
I'd argue the characters have gotten worse, but yeah, the world has only gotten bigger. Judging by the comic out this week, the movie will only add more. It's quite exciting.
SuperStiltzkin
Member
I agree with this. Its not that the exam arc after that is awful, but it feels off pacing wise. They get one mission, a very good mission arc in the Mist village, and then it goes right into what is basically a tournament arc which then dovetails right into the Sasuke chase saga. The Mist arc was a promising start and i would have liked more fleshed out mission stories like that to really build up the trio as a team. What I like about the Mist village arc is the ability for them to build up these characters who would otherwise be relegated to filler fodder and make you kinda empathize with them. Were it later in the series, the Mist village would be a filler arc. The only characters worth fleshing out later in the series are the world changing ones with immense powers.
ArkkAngel007
Member
Ridley Scott. While I think a number of things about Covenant are being overblown (the blood slipping bit is nothing like how it's often described here), it along with Prometheus are undermining the entire franchise in a manner far more perverse than the AvP films. It's not even an issue of a different expectation, but rather direct contradictions to the very foundation.
JK Rowling isn't far behind after The Cursed Child. Have yet to have a proper watch of Fantastic Beasts to see what comes of that, though it sounds like the sequel will be the big test.
Edit: Throw probably every Marvel and DC superhero series. To the point where the rule is never issue by issue purchases.
JK Rowling isn't far behind after The Cursed Child. Have yet to have a proper watch of Fantastic Beasts to see what comes of that, though it sounds like the sequel will be the big test.
Edit: Throw probably every Marvel and DC superhero series. To the point where the rule is never issue by issue purchases.
Telephone Man
Member
I'm with those saying Akira Toriyama (and/or Toei).
DBZ never had a 'good' plot, but Super is downright insulting. Made me outright hate the characters and not interested in Dragonball Fighter Z.
DBZ never had a 'good' plot, but Super is downright insulting. Made me outright hate the characters and not interested in Dragonball Fighter Z.
True, I actually thought I should add the caveat at the end there that when it comes to creative works if you've got the talent there really aren't any taboos to hold you back. Some of the best writers purposefully break and subvert such taboos to great effect.
Tolkien was inhumanly meticulous and detailed with his work. His works are on a level few have reached since, and I'm sure many would say none have come close. He planned things out, developed things to the nth degree. My taboos are really there for series and creators who haven't done the leg work from the start but try and add that stuff in on the fly, especially when a series has peaked or is coming to the end.
Jorok Goldblade
Member
Eastman and Laird came damn close with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Specifically, Kirby the fifth turtle. They almost poochied their own work.
Prophaniti
Banned
Why couldn't they have just made the end times a set piece for awhile? End times doesn't have to mean overnight. Why are there space marines in my fantasy?
I checked out of 40k after I saw the small mechs. Knights I think? Oh and what they did to the necrons. Yikes.
Screaming_Gremlin
My QB is a Dick and my coach is a Nutt
I think most people have called out most of the obvious choices, but I will go with the Honor Harrington book series by David Weber. The first few books I think are genuinely good space opera, especially if you want some tense space battles. Then it quickly goes down hill. This is partially recycled from a post I made in a few months ago, but applies here.
Weber has no idea how to write any sort of believable flaws for Honor. She is literally the best at everything she does, from leading and inspiring her crew, to strategy, hand to hand fighting, firearms, space katana, etc. Supposedly her math is bad, which would make her a bad navigator, but of course she apparently just naturally knows how to plot the best courses, math be damned. She might as well be the literal definition of a Mary Sue. Also, the less said about her fucking physic space cat the better.
Also the books (well like the first 10) are just Horatio Hornblower in space, aka Space Britain versus Space France. That isn't necessary a bad thing, but Weber's politics can be cringe inducing. Space France is a shit hole, because their society has a basic income given to all people. Naturally, since everyone is on the dole, they are all lazy sacks of shit who don't bother working and their education system is the worst, since why bother going to school? Also, every time Rob S. Pierre's name was written out I had to resist rolling my eyes.
Sadly the space battles begin to take a back seat as the series goes along. It just becomes a few pages where both sides launch a bajillion fuck off missiles, the bad guys die, Honor feels sad about the loss of life for a paragraph, and then goes and drinks space hot coco. And even that starts to take a back seat so Weber can write more and more of his shitty libertarian politics. Seriously, don't read the later books.
But despite all of that, the first few books really aren't that bad!
Weber has no idea how to write any sort of believable flaws for Honor. She is literally the best at everything she does, from leading and inspiring her crew, to strategy, hand to hand fighting, firearms, space katana, etc. Supposedly her math is bad, which would make her a bad navigator, but of course she apparently just naturally knows how to plot the best courses, math be damned. She might as well be the literal definition of a Mary Sue. Also, the less said about her fucking physic space cat the better.
Also the books (well like the first 10) are just Horatio Hornblower in space, aka Space Britain versus Space France. That isn't necessary a bad thing, but Weber's politics can be cringe inducing. Space France is a shit hole, because their society has a basic income given to all people. Naturally, since everyone is on the dole, they are all lazy sacks of shit who don't bother working and their education system is the worst, since why bother going to school? Also, every time Rob S. Pierre's name was written out I had to resist rolling my eyes.
Sadly the space battles begin to take a back seat as the series goes along. It just becomes a few pages where both sides launch a bajillion fuck off missiles, the bad guys die, Honor feels sad about the loss of life for a paragraph, and then goes and drinks space hot coco. And even that starts to take a back seat so Weber can write more and more of his shitty libertarian politics. Seriously, don't read the later books.
But despite all of that, the first few books really aren't that bad!
DongBeetle
Banned
Paul Tibbet and SpongeBob
Crimson_Echidna
Banned
Mac Walters with Mass Effect
Togashi
This has always been bullshit, given that Anakin and Yoda appeared wearing the same style clothing at the end of Jedi.
Also, given how consciously Lucas didn't "give the fans what they want" in terms of themes (making the Jedi antagonistic and partially responsible for the fall of the Republic, for instance) I don't think the issue was misinterpreting the series through fandom. It was that he had ideas he simply was not good enough to pull off through his directing or writing.
There's a lot of good Community even in the third through sixth seasons, but by the time they started bleeding cast members and had turned Chang into a guy who literally kidnapped the dean and took over the school, they really borked the believability. It's weird to rewatch the early episodes and how it clearly takes place at a community college, and by later seasons it might as well have been a random assortment of rooms where ostensibly classes were held sometimes. It stopped feeling like a place and instead just a madhouse of wacky sitcom characters.
Dan Harmon, like a lot of creators, has gotten turned into a messiah genius when he does crap work sometimes too.
Luckily you can ignore it, especially as it was never released as a full-fledged prose book and it's not getting bundled with the original seven. Probably in decades if Harry Potter stands the test of time all the ancillary media will be this weird footnote people look at strangely and ignore.
Bobby Roberts
Banned
Oh, I'd be remiss if I didn't point out that 95% of the examples in this thread aren't really "lore," but just plain ol' story. Not even backstory, at that. Just story.
But ehhhh
But ehhhh
elrechazado
Banned
Nobody mentioned Tom Clancy's jack Ryan series. Got progressively into dumb politics from its roots as military tech/strats/espionage.
ArgyleReptile
Banned
Claymore went along pretty well in comparison to some of these other series.
I'd say even The Destroyer made sense. It was basically a fusion of two Rank 1 Claymores, which made it a fused Abyssal One, so power wise, it checks out. Now, Clare breaking out of it all the way to the the Riful-Dauf Child is when shit got weird.
Inoue, Urasawa, Nagai, Tezuka, Buronson
Just_myles
Member
Lucas quickly comes to mind.
Oh and Kuuuuuubbbbbooooo
Oh and Kuuuuuubbbbbooooo
Huge Succeeded
Banned
It's hard for me to pin down where I stand re: Toriyama because I kind of admire that he doesn't give a fuck and it's contributed greatly to my continued enjoyment of Dragon Ball
Spacejaws
Member
Oh absolutely there is some great stuff throughtout Community and all the way to the end it still had some of that magic, even during the season withiut Harmon that people like to flat out shit over, but the potential it originally had with its premise and characters fells like it was just tossed in the air one day and some characters like Chang and Pierce got a really raw deal and pretty much squandered after season 2. It was almost like they couldn't understand their original appeal with relatable people and starting making the group wacky caricatures.
It was still one of my most rewatched series but the first and second season remain one of my favourite and faultless seasons in television. Everything else is an enjoyable filler episode.
Bakkus
Member
Not only this, he must also have an obvious hand in retconning DK and Diddy's relationship. They used to be uncle and nephew, now they're just monkey friends. The latter isn't even his creation.
TheRedSnifit
Member
They were always bad. In the book Stay Awhile and Listen: How Two Blizzards Unleashed Diablo and Forged a Video-Game Empire, one of the chapters mentions how with Warcraft 1, they made the game, and then they worked on the story (both with Warcraft & Diablo). And with Warcraft at least, there was a section where it said they just threw one of the employees into a recording booth and told him to make up the story on the spot, which would later be used for the cutscenes.
I think that was the biggest problem I had with the Warcraft movie. It really put in perspective how silly the story of Warcraft was when you were having to cringe through it at the movie theater.
EYEL1NER
Member
I don't have any problems with the current state of the 40K lore and narrative. I feel like they may have gone in a bit too hard on the Space Wolves when Magnus returned but overall I'm pleased with the 40K universe. I don't know much about WFB/AoS but yeah, I imagine I would be a bit irritated over the way that went down had I been a fan at the time.
Bobby Roberts
Banned
I have one job, Chumley
Also, whoever writes Telltale Games' The Walking Dead.
The first season was a touching story of a troubled man & an orphaned little girl bonding with one another as they try to survive in the midst of an undead apocalypse, while also weathering the storm of the emotions of those around them. It had real, human emotions in it, brought about by real, believable events in the plot. No conflict felt contrived, and all the dialog felt real & believable. Plus, it gave us Clementine, one of the best female protagonists in video games today.
Season 2 is Telltale's version of Real World. A bunch of maladjusted adults toss all their problems onto a little girl, we have retread character archetypes, even more worthless characters that eventually get turned into either walker fodder, or become walkers - whether we want them alive or not. We also have fascist community leaders, bullshit romantic subplots, and...
.
Season 3...
Also, more fascist survivor communities, and we don't get to play as Clem anymore.
Sprinkle in a bullshit spinoff that no one gives a fuck about, and you got yourself some good ol fuckery.
The first season was a touching story of a troubled man & an orphaned little girl bonding with one another as they try to survive in the midst of an undead apocalypse, while also weathering the storm of the emotions of those around them. It had real, human emotions in it, brought about by real, believable events in the plot. No conflict felt contrived, and all the dialog felt real & believable. Plus, it gave us Clementine, one of the best female protagonists in video games today.
Season 2 is Telltale's version of Real World. A bunch of maladjusted adults toss all their problems onto a little girl, we have retread character archetypes, even more worthless characters that eventually get turned into either walker fodder, or become walkers - whether we want them alive or not. We also have fascist community leaders, bullshit romantic subplots, and...
Jane
Season 3...
a little girl gets murdered in front of her guardians & her sibling, all because of some half-eaten pudding cups.
Sprinkle in a bullshit spinoff that no one gives a fuck about, and you got yourself some good ol fuckery.
Auto-Reply
Member
Alien - It's been brought up before but Ridley Scott isn't really the writer of the first Alien, doesn't prevent it from having him ruin the mythology behind the creature of course.
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Star Wars - ... eh, I feel like that details like the midichlorian thing are only minor annoyances, the overall problem were the prequels in their entirety, as in that they were horrible movies that didn't need to exist in the first place.
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Halo - Not sure if "ruined" but there was a simple concept that was then artificially blown out of proportion.
Ancient humans fight alien flood, humans remove all sentient life from the galaxy, even themselves, to stopp the flood.
Humans rise again (planned or not by the ancient humans) they wage war with another group of aliens and rediscover the tech of the ancient humans and the flood is set free again.
Was a simple and understandable concept imo, now they've gone and split ancient humanity into two races and created a third race they then twisted into what the flood is supposed to be to tell a convoluted story... I'm not sure why this was done, maybe it was planned all along but it turned something simple and understandable into something convoluted and messy with many open questions and many logical faults that only can be explained by simply swiping many of these questions under the rug
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Star Wars - ... eh, I feel like that details like the midichlorian thing are only minor annoyances, the overall problem were the prequels in their entirety, as in that they were horrible movies that didn't need to exist in the first place.
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Halo - Not sure if "ruined" but there was a simple concept that was then artificially blown out of proportion.
Ancient humans fight alien flood, humans remove all sentient life from the galaxy, even themselves, to stopp the flood.
Humans rise again (planned or not by the ancient humans) they wage war with another group of aliens and rediscover the tech of the ancient humans and the flood is set free again.
Was a simple and understandable concept imo, now they've gone and split ancient humanity into two races and created a third race they then twisted into what the flood is supposed to be to tell a convoluted story... I'm not sure why this was done, maybe it was planned all along but it turned something simple and understandable into something convoluted and messy with many open questions and many logical faults that only can be explained by simply swiping many of these questions under the rug
Should have just ended it with Dragon Ball. Or at least avoided the entire Saiyan nonsense. It completely ruins Dragon Ball and I just act like DBZ doesn't exist when I watch Dragon Ball.
Frozenprince
Banned
The Wheel of Time books get bogged down hard with utter crap and nonsense by Jordan's need to write 15 of the motherfuckers (though he only finished 11).
Knew you were good people.
Knew you were good people.
Every time Chris Claremont comes back to write X-Men stuff it reads like weird fanfiction.
Really just Walking Dead in general. But with the comics/show that's almost by design I guess.
Really just Walking Dead in general. But with the comics/show that's almost by design I guess.
Frozenprince
Banned
I think Buu Saga actually handles this the best of all of the arcs, because not a single one of the new transformations is actually, well, good enough. SSJ3 is actually a detriment! I think that was a cool way to handle it.
The rest of the arc is a mess, but that aspect actually gets it kinda right.
Hitlersaurus Christ
Banned
If say Eureka Seven AO, but the main guy behind the original's story wasn't involved in it or the movie. It takes a big fat shit all over the original and its characters.
Part of me wants to say .hack//. Stuff got pretty dumb with LINK and all the revelations of everything being connected and a conspiracy being behind everything in the series. But the web novel and Quantum OVAs were really good, and the movie wasn't bad.
Part of me wants to say .hack//. Stuff got pretty dumb with LINK and all the revelations of everything being connected and a conspiracy being behind everything in the series. But the web novel and Quantum OVAs were really good, and the movie wasn't bad.
Glass Rebel
Member
On a personal level, definitely Ridley Scott with Alien. Prometheus and Covenant are arguably even more damaging than Alien 3 and Resurrection because they retroactively make the original Alien worse.
If you were to care about that shit I mean. Luckily I don't so...
If you were to care about that shit I mean. Luckily I don't so...
How has GRRM ruined ASOIAF's lore? You might not have liked some of the storylines of some characters in the last couple of books but the lore/world-building is still unarguably excellent (note: I haven't seen the last 2 seasons of the tv show so I'm not sure if there have been some revelations there that also apply to the books that ruins aspects of them as well).
As a play experienced in theatre it was properly great though, it would be a shame to not have that. It does stand apart from the rest for me and I am willing to overlook its problems for what it does accomplish.
ZehDon
Member
First names that came to mind. I don't have children, but I know what it feels like to watch them be torn to pieces and the pieces then pissed upon by mad men who laughed while they did it.
That's a good one.
Miller went from making one of the best Batman stories ever told, to one of the worst. Completely destroyed his Batman and Robin. III was also terrible.
From
to
I'm not sure how Game of Thrones destroyed their lore. One could argue that the quality went down, I would disagree since season 6 was the best so far, but the lore has not been ruined at all.
Monocle
Member
George Lucas made Darth Vader a dumb kid and a pouting teen after making him an ailing old man. And it turns out the tragic fall of Anakin Skywalker was more of a temper tantrum resulting from the awful communication skills of he and his colleagues.
Also: midichlorians. Nothing in the Alien universe is remotely as laughable or infuriating as midichlorians.
The list goes on. Honestly if you set out to purposely sabotage Star Wars, you couldn't do a much better job than Lucas managed with his prequels. If you can work the mental miracle of reconciling the wildly divergent tone and quality of the PT and the OT, and manage to view the two trilogies as a cohesive whole, the PT makes nearly every major character and event in the originals less appealing and dramatically effective.
Also: midichlorians. Nothing in the Alien universe is remotely as laughable or infuriating as midichlorians.
The list goes on. Honestly if you set out to purposely sabotage Star Wars, you couldn't do a much better job than Lucas managed with his prequels. If you can work the mental miracle of reconciling the wildly divergent tone and quality of the PT and the OT, and manage to view the two trilogies as a cohesive whole, the PT makes nearly every major character and event in the originals less appealing and dramatically effective.
He's confusing 'destroying lore' with 'doing stuff I don't like'. I mean, I strongly disliked most Game of Thrones stuff post-season 4 (yes, including season 6, which I really don't understand the love for), but they haven't really screwed up the lore.
His claim for ASOIAF confuses me even more. GRRM never, ever changed or altered the lore. He's one of the most consistent world-builders around.
It's obviously the dark Knight. Not even a contest. And i don't even think 3 was that bad. It was Just ridiculous.
Lucas i feel that he had his heart in the right place. The prequels got a bad rep because they tried to introduce new things to shape the universe better and not because they were actively bad movies (even though the second one is unbelievably bad) as show by ep 7, which is godawful and everybody likes it.
He tried to do new stuff for a fanbase that wanted none of it. I appreciate that. I don't feel that New stuff destroyed the lore either.
Lucas i feel that he had his heart in the right place. The prequels got a bad rep because they tried to introduce new things to shape the universe better and not because they were actively bad movies (even though the second one is unbelievably bad) as show by ep 7, which is godawful and everybody likes it.
He tried to do new stuff for a fanbase that wanted none of it. I appreciate that. I don't feel that New stuff destroyed the lore either.
Monocle
Member
Whaaaaat. No, it's precisely because they're bad movies and a lot of their world building is lame that the Prequels are rightly despised.
TFA isn't "godawful" any way you slice it. Even if you're one of those ridiculous people who claim it's a remake of ANH in spite of the totally different characters, arcs, narrative, and dramatic beats, it's still a damn good movie. Well made, well acted, well written, well paced, well designed.
I don't know about you, but I find myself saying "Chucks! Buttfirst it!" all the time.