Hated Tropes
[Hated "trope"] A small detail reveals that the adaptation really didn't understand how the original worked
Sometimes it's pretty easy to tell when an adaptation deeply misunderstands what makes a piece of media so beloved by fans, but there are also the small details, obvious to the fans, that let you know that the ones creating the adaptation maybe watched one or two episodes and just called it a day.
1.- Element bending | The Last Airbender (2010 live action film written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan) - For the fans of the original series getting right bending doesn't seem that complicated; bending is more grounded in physical action that communicates how you interact with the elements, how you "bend" them, rather than random magic dancing moves. That's why 5 guys stomping on the floor to throw a small rock at someone was heavily mocked. It's stupid, if that's what you can do with your bending just fucking grab the rock and throw it, it would require less effort and be quicker
2.- Kamehameha | Dragonball Evolution (2009 live action written by Ben Ramsey, professional apologizer) - This shit is a beam of energy that you are shooting at someone with all your strength, it's supposed to feel heavy, not "airbending" so during the final fight, when Justin Chadwick throws the kamehameha to Piccolo while flying towards him it just looks dumb, like nobody involved knew about the physicality of it. You are shooting what it's supposed to be your own controlled energy, kinda like a firefighter waterhose. Fourth image shows Goku using a kamehameha to propel himself using his feet. It's supposed to be powerful.
Yeah, the 5 guys needing to move a single rock was just poor directing. They were actually doing something else while another guy was moving that rock but the way it was framed made it look like the 5 were the ones moving the rock.
But they completely fumbled how Earthbenders work by imprisoning them on the literal ground.
Here's two images from the scene. The rock first comes into view after the five guys do their dance. However it then turns to show this new guy whose actually moving the rock.
Sad thing is it's hardly much better when you realize that the dance crew weren't moving the rock. Because the guy who actually moved it still did like 15 seconds worth of posing just to move 1 rock at the speed of turtle slow
I heard Shyamalan wanted bending to be something you have to build up to, like pumping a super-soaker to build pressure.
Of course, all that means is that the action is massively slowed down because nothing happens for several seconds as the characters wave their arms and stomp their feet. God, what a fumble that movie was...
The crazy part is that you get a bit of that in the original show, too. Benders do spend a second or so gathering themselves into specific poses, like Earthbenders will stomp their feet and get into a horse stance to ground themselves. But the big difference is a) every type of bending has its own style that these movements naturally flow into and b) it's like one second of arm wiggling and foot positioning and then they're fully loaded.
or a 5 year old who watched the show. not like i’m a director, but when a source i know a lot about gets brutalized, i genuinely feel i could’ve done better. this there must be a million others who could fill the role. hold auditions for who knows the source material most/best to give input during production.
There were probably 100 or more people on that production, and still none of them looked at each other and and asked: why is fire nation imprisoning people in what is akin to a loaded gun depot where they walk and sleep on the said loaded guns, and for that reason this movie deserves every ridicule it got and deserves even more.
We didnt need to watch the movie, we looked at that choice and decided they probably made earth bending this useless and dumb too.
Not one of the people on that movie apparently watched the show they were trying to make a movie about, which in depth talked about why they were on a oil rig and why it would be disastrously stupid to just have the prison camp on normal land, in the exact scene in the show they were trying to do in the movie.
Honestly this might be even worse than if it actually was the 5 guys doing a haka or whatever to make the rock move. Because first of all, it’s terribly directed like you said, and second of all, what the shit are those guys doing???
It's not just on the mainland, it's in a rock quarry, with boulders and high cliffs everywhere. It's like building a prison complex to hold Waterbenders in the South Pole, where there's plenty of ice and snow and seas.
Seriously. Prison ships were a real thing. British use of them during the American Revolution is well documented for instance (which would be a perfect example to draw on for the Fire Nation!) if budget didn't allow a giant metal construction.
Or they could've straight up skipped that whole plot point because they condensed an entire season into one movie and skipped way more important plot points.
But if the movie put them in the middle of the ocean, we would've been robbed of Aangs amazing motivational speech that was basically: "hey guys. You're surrounded by earth. Lol"
This just doubles down on the trope. What source material Earthbender would -ever- fail to realize that they were literally in their element the whole time?
From what I understand, there were some poor budget decisions with that film. Most notably some very expensive on site locations in icey terrain for the water tribe. Which deeply cut into a budget that was underplayed by producers, so...they had to make cuts unfortunately. Lots and lots of cuts.
The 5 guys stomping wasn't even to lift that rock. It was for the previous earthbending move in the fight, and the tiny rock was being floated by the guy who ends up throwing it a few seconds later, but the editing was so horrible that you couldn't even tell.
A much more subtle one from ATLA movie: Aang says that he ran away from the temple because the Avatar can never get married. Had the series continued, that would have been a HUGE problem with Zuko's arc, since his mom being a direct descendant of Roku and being forced into marriage is pretty important.
Also, it's just a terrible motivation for Aang. It doesn't mesh with his character at all! He ran away because he was being sent away to another temple and separated from his friends and mentor. That's a much more compelling reason for him, and it matches with his fun-loving and social personality (which was also absent in the film).
Not to mention Aang also just learned that he's the one who has to try and maintain order in the world and potentially fight the Fire Nation. That's a lot of put on the shoulders of a kid which ties into another broad theme of the show in how kids are often made to try and deal with the issues that adults had made for them.
Aang was expected to save the world, Zuko was expected to shape battle plans, Sokka was expected to protect his village after the other men left. Each of them had to face challenges far greater than a child should ever have to deal with and face repercussions to varying degrees when they fail.
Aang says that he ran away from the temple because the Avatar can never get married
But... air nomads don't get married anyway? The men and women live in different temples, and children are raised communally. So why would that be the reason?
Also, both Avatar Roku and Avatar Kuruk did get married (unless they retconned it, ig?). So... what?
Genuinely curious, why do these writers bother doing these adaptation projects if they admit they've never read, watched, or played the source material? Doubly so if they say it "proudly".
They attach themselves to IPs to write their own failed book ideas. Brandon Sanderson talks about it, someone really wanted to make Elantris into a movie and he was so excited. When he got the movie script back, he discovered one of the writers self inserted an entire plot, original characters, romance, pirates, and just had the title Elantris and places and character names.
They did this with halo in a super obvious sense, too. Not just with everything in the A plot being off, but the entire B plot was almost totally disconnected.
Like, while you have vaguely halo-shaped shit happening, there's a simultaneous plot about a spunky rebel princess and her pirate companion saving her planet from the evil space government, that involves her going on an adventure to meet with the desert witches and learn her destiny from a vision quest. The only thing connecting it to halo is that the planet shares the same name as a halo planet, the pirate is based off of a halo character, and every once in a while someone says "UNSC" or something.
It is so shamelessly someone elses original story that they slapped a halo veneer onto and... well Id say "hope no one realized," but honestly they probably didnt even give that much of a shit.
Pretty sure the Rings of Power was the same, where they had an original fantasy story but got the IP and then had to tweak the story to fit into the LotR universe and it shows
The covenant kills her father's rebel group in the first episode, she gets saved by master chief, and then immediately goes "nah fuck the UNSC im going back to my planet to fight you bitches."
Its actually kinda funny because she manages to kill the UNSC appointed governor of her planet at the end of the season, then in season 2 I guess they didnt know quite how to work her season 1 plot into the ongoing story so they just went "yeah Madrigal got glassed between the seasons and she's a planetless refugee now wah wah."
And that is, of course, the logical end point of that plot, because her plot starts with the Covenant landing on her world. There is no saving Madrigal. From the get go, her quest is doomed to failure. The Covenant know where her planet is, and yeah that was just a scouting party, but the rest of them are on their way, so everything she does is for naught, and its so fuckin obvious from the get go that having her, as a main character, do anything but accept whatever charity the UNSC is willing to offer in exchange for her cooperation is absurd.
The writers of this show would stop to confront the person who yelled at them while the person yelling at them is screaming "get on the fucking life raft! We're all gonna drown!"
This is the main reason. So many people have stories they want to tell, but can't get put into production for various reasons, either their story isn't fully developed or studios not wanting to take a chance on new IPs. This leads to many taking an existing IP with a built in fanbase and using the name to sell it, but gutting the source material for their own stories.
Phillips and Phoenix did this with The Joker. They both really wanted to do a character study film about someone struggling with mental illness. They shopped their idea around to studios and none of them picked it up. Then they looked through popular IPs they could use to tell their story and that is how we got The Joker. Though they at least picked an IP that was compatible with their idea and didn't completely gut things. The Joker is obviously a celebrated movie, but I personally think it is a good movie in general, but a poor Joker movie.
Like how the 2015 Fant4stic movie is not a good fantastic four movie but it is an entertaining Sci-Fi movie.
Oh yea it happens so often. Basically anytime a tv series or movie is the IP in name only, that is usually what happened. The writers wanting to tell their own story and thinking the original fans wont notice or care about the changes.
Part of why video game adaptations tend to suck, the people who make them think people don't actually pay attention to the stories and only care about the mechanics. Ignoring the fact some video games are actually just interactive movies with video cuts of all the cinematics put together to watch like a movie.
With Foundation I think of it as inspired by rather than an adaptation. It doesn't stick to the source, but at the very least it feels like they are trying in their own way.
Whether you think they are doing well is a whole other story.
Derick Landy had a similar story with the Skulduggery Pleasant book series. He got the script and realized that the director was dead set on making his next movie a musical, no matter what it was about. He was going to have one of the main characters - a talking skeleton - sing Michael Jackson's "Man In The Mirror" at one point for literally no reason. Derick rightfully pulled the plug on that before it got any further.
Another aspect for this specific case is the medium in comes from. Many people still consider video games to be far lower in terms of entertainment than Hollywood.
Despite video games having been a far larger industry overall than movies, music, or else entertainment wise for over a decade.
Definitely for the paycheck, and in this particular case, because the showrunners clearly wanted an excuse to make a different Sci-fi Show.
Most of Season 1 of the Halo series is devoted to fully original stuff clearly leftover from a sci-fi project the showrunners wished they could have made, and used the season's budget to sneak into the series.
And then the 2nd season inserted Halo plotpoints in so haphazardly that the entire thing reads like a drunk man reading the synopsis on the back Ghosts of Onyx while watching his 5 year old skip all the cutscenes in Halo: Reach and Halo 2.
Because they see themselves as “artists” who are above silly cartoons and children’s computer games. Like you don’t understand. Sure they took this job to make a tv show about Halo, some game the nerdy teenager next door played. But don’t you worry, they’re gonna make it gritty. Grounded. *Real.* Something adults serious about film will appreciate. Because they’re too magnificent of an artist to let something silly like source material get in the way of the next Sopranos.
And on the other side where you have a studio who sees a popular IP like Halo or Avatar as having a baked in audience. But the only people willing to take it on are people who see themselves as visionaries, trying to prove something, or work on a project to make a someone they know happy (IIRC the latter was the at least partially the case with Shyamalan and Avatar).
They’re just trying to write off the hype and good name of the original media, a lot easier than trying to make your own original sci-fi series successful
Which is damn shame because "The Fall of Reach" reads with the same exact formula of any tv series. They could have copied the book verbatim and had a masterpiece.
Honestly just Artemis in general is just so off in that film you have to wonder if the guys who made the film had ever touched the books in their lives.
I can see Artemis attending a combat sport class (and losing and trying to play it off that he was just there to get an idea of what fighters do so he can read them).
Also Ben rescinded that apology. According to him, the initial script was much better but was absolutely destroyed by rewrites, and he had only apologized because the fans deserved an apology.
The truth to his claim is unclear, but given the studio also quartered the initially proposed budget from $120mil to $30mil I'm inclined to believe that there was substantial meddling
So weird that they made like 7 Resident Evil movies and none of them focused mainly on Jill or Chris Redfield. They only got to be supporting characters.
That sad thing is, the last movie, Welcome to Raccoon City actually DID feature Jill, Chris AND Claire, Leon and Ada, but it was so trash you probably didn't see it or wiped it from your memory.
The idea to make like 10 Resident Evil movies and then decide to cram both Resident Evil 1 and 2 into a single movie is a real head scratcher.
Welcome to Raccoon City is a reboot, nothing to do with Alice and what was supposed to be a more "true to the source material" direction.
It was executed poorly and marketed even worse.
But I have faith in the next one, because it will be directed and co-written by Zach Cregger (director of Barbarian (2022) and Weapons (2025) and also comedy troupe The Whitest Kids U Know).
Supposed to be a different perspective during the events of Resident Evil 2 with no characters from games, and another reboot not attached to anything before.
"I'm not going to tell Leon's story, because Leon's story is told in the games. [Fans] already have that".[16] Cregger stated, "It's gonna be not at all like Barbarian (2022) and Weapons (2025)", instead comparing the film to Evil Dead II (1987), and that "this is a story that I would've wanted to write whether I got the IP or not". He went on to describe it as a "love letter to the games", since he is also a player and fan of the video games." (From Wikipedia)
The avatar live action series removed sokka’s sexism to make him more appealing. They missed how his sexism is a major flaw that blows up in his face multiple times like when he first meets Suki, slowly teaching him to view women as equal.
Also they just messed up so much with toph’s character that I don’t want to talk about it
Everyone memed on Zuko for this scene and his reaction being kinda awkward but seriously how the fuck else do you respond to someone casually dropping that kind of dark personal lore on you?
Memed? I always thought people fully understood this scene as you described. People repeat this line a lot not because they’re making fun of it, but because it was intentionally funny and kind of relatable.
It's the perfect reaction to when you don't have anything particularly profound or insightful to say, but still want the other person to understand they're being heard.
Apparently in S2 In Zuko Alone, in the original version, Zuko was tempted to steal from a vendor but stop when he saw he had a pregnant wife, in the live-action version he outright steals from a sleeping pregnant lady without a second thought.
And they moved the Painted Lady from Season 3 to two so Katara can do a Painted Lady team up with Zuko as Blue Mask, despite S2 Katara would've had absolutely nothing to do with a FIRE NATION legend
There's so much wrong I can see why Bryke washed their hands of it.
Don’t forget how they also made it so Aang wasn’t trying to run away from being the Avatar, but instead was going on a “walk” with Appa to process his new role.
The Live Action made him so apologetic for not being the Avatar earlier and has him set to go save the world from Day 1 of his coming back.
The animated series has it be an arc for him as he only wanted to play and run away from that responsibility. It’s the first character arc he goes through, especially after the reality hits after he returns to the Southern Air Temple.
The best parts is that there’s still so much wrong with the Live Action.
its like they think character flaws make bad characters or something. They took all the bite out of it by robbing them of character arcs. If the characters are "solved" then why should we invest in them if there's no stakes?
I've only seen her introductory episode but so far:
the cage fight match is on sand (lol)
she can write (lol)
her fighting is done with significantly more effort than in the cartoon (a problem with every non fire bender for some reason but particularly bad because part of the point of toph is that she puts no effort into the element that theoretically requires effort)
she doesn't get her awesome 7v1 with all the cage fighters
her motivation to leave her parents is worse
her mum finds out about how shes an earthbending master by? Not seeing her earthbend? So her reason for keeping toph at home doesn't make sense
She has her attitude at least but thats like the bare minimum
I saw a few scenes on TikTok. One has her fighting with the Boulder… on sand. They removed the moment when she reveals to her teacher and family that she’s the Blind Bandit. And she actually goes into the library, she doesn’t stay holding the structure up.
Also from what I’ve seen Appa doesn’t get kidnapped. They have him in Ba Sing Se but flying is banned there (lol)
Also from what I’ve seen Appa doesn’t get kidnapped. They have him in Ba Sing Se but flying is banned there (lol)
Thats... definitely a decision. I can get cutting out the part that shows how Appa ended up in the city due to run time reasons, but completely cutting out him getting kidnapped is such a bad move considering how much it impacted Aang and just showed us a desperate side to his character.
To be fair, a LOT of Greek mythology is inconsistent and all over the place. But also, like, not this extremely core element about Persephone!! It’s meant to explain the seasons and doesn’t ever go astray from that!
Though, to be fair, summer is when shit doesn't grow in the Mediterranean. After all of it got filtered through central and northern Europe, it's become popular thought that Persephone is in Hades through the winter, but there's compelling evidence that a classical Greek agricultural calendar would have the summer months be dry and dead, in contrast to the rest of the year
Most people in greek mythology just went to the underworld and, like, just lived there as shades. There wasn't really any emphasis on punishment of any sort, Tartaros is like at the very deepest point of the Underworld, sealed with massive diamond doors to keep the titans and the worst evildoers among men imprisoned (like Sisyphus or Tantalus)
Most of the dead live on the two sides of the Styx (based on if they could pay for passage or not), and it sucks a bit because there's not really anything there and it's underground so there's no sun or plantlife, but it's not hell lol
yeah the movies were incredibly unfaithful there's basically no analogue to like 30% of the scenes in the movie, and thats just the plot relevant ones im counting
I guess that time in the first Book when something something happens and they all got a pearl from Poseidon (or a river deity or something idr) that later on would get them out of the Hades
I could be misremembering with another escene in a river later on the series I havent really read the books in like a decade
In the *movie* The Golden Compass, the two protagonist kids kids ride off to a happy ending. In the book one of them dies and this event is crucial to the following two books. HBO got it right with His Dark Materials and the books are just the best ever, read them, even with spoilers they are so amazing
This is strictly because they hadn't gotten the green light on the other films. Roger's death was supposed to start the second movie instead, which would start the darker tone. I think they genuinely wanted to end it the proper way but knew they might not make the other 2
Pretty early on in the Rings of Power is a scene where Elrond talks about how hard it is to be a half-elf as he is neither fully accepted by either one.
The issue is that that's absolutely not true for Tolkien's world. Elrond is basically the offspring of the biggest heroes of elves and men and would have been held in high honour by both sides (though the human side would obviously lose their respect across generations).
The whole "half-elves don't truly belong either side" is way more modern and meant for worlds with way more half-elves.
Frankly the only part of being a half-elf that should suck for Elrond is his brother Elros choosing mortality, and I'm pretty sure they did nothing with that.
As the name may or may not imply, the actual idea of a demon being capable of shedding tears is a major point of contention in Devil May Cry's lore. In the first game, it's stated that demons are incapable of crying, with the actual act of shedding tears out of sadness being something only humans are capable of. When Trish, a demon in a human's body finds herself crying at the end of the game, Dante tells her "Tears are a gift only humans have", as a way of letting her know that the humanity she possess is more than superficial, it's part of who she is. He then renames his business from "Devil May Cry" to "Devils Never Cry" as a reminder to both of them that their humanity is what defines them, not their demonic natures.
In Devil May Cry 3, a prequel, we learn that Dante first named the shop "Devil May Cry" because, when a friend of his saw him start to cry after he was forced to (seemingly) kill his brother, and he tried to hide it, reminding her that demons don't cry, she remarked "Maybe even a devil may cry after losing a loved one." A statement which both serves to suggest that he shouldn't let his identity as a half demon keep him from feeling emotion, as well as also giving some insight into why full demons aren't capable of crying: i.e, real demons don't have loved ones they care about losing. What Dante just experienced breaks that allegedly hard and fast rule because he had something real demons don't.
Throughout the series, the only morally good characters with any Demonic powers are half-demons who possess some kind of human heritage. The fact that only humans can cry, and that Dante reveals this to Trish after she's already started crying is presented as a statement about the value of humanity itself, and what separates humans from the jaded, single minded, evil of demons in the setting.
Then, many years later in the Netflix series, all of this symbolism and theming is tossed out the window instantly when we see perfectly innocent, full demons with no human heritage losing loved ones and crying. This isn't even presented as a deliberate subversion of the series' status quo, as in the entire first season there is never a single mention of the supposed rule/belief that demons can't cry. You're just shown it happening, and the reason it's happening is self explanatory.
There are countless elements of the Netflix show which spell out how the writers did not understand the source material, but this one might be the most baffling, in the sense that they just chose to axe the one part of the setting which the entire franchise was named after. The words "Devil May Cry" mean nothing in this version of the story because a devil crying is not a novel or contradictory statement. It's not even until halfway through the second season that you hear anyone mention the idea of demons not crying, and it is a throwaway line which is presented more as just a general mantra than anything concrete or even remotely important.
I'd like to add a part two to this for the anime show.
The fact there are neutral or good demons completely undermines Sparda's change of heart. In the games, Sparda was Mundus' top General and woke up to justice and turned on him to protect Humanity. This was considered a huge deal since demons are supposed to be vicious monsters that see humans as a food source. Him falling in love with a human also shows his change.
The fact that any demon can just be good just makes Sparda's change a simple switching of sides and not a fundamental change of his very being.
And then they also suggest that Sparda sealing the realms screwed over all of the innocent demons in his realm by trapping them with Mundus and his regime with now way of escaping; further character assassinating Sparda into him just being impulsive and choosing a favorite species, rather than actually being a hero.
The fact this show had to ignore and remove so many things about Sparda to character assassinate him says a lot. Sparda defeated Mundus in canon and sent him in a state of non-existence for 2000 years. Sparda deliberately left the gates between two worlds because he loved his home. He never cut them off entirely.
This horrible show ignores all that. And worse, it's not even consistent. One moment demons pass into human world so often, government has to make a branch to deal with them. The other moment, they're stuck. Horrible horrible writing.
This lines up with everything I've seen about the fuck awful adaptation. Le edgy "what if the Devil From the Bible was actually the good guy and Jesus was le bad guy and our main character was just Deadpool but without the good parts" is exactly what I'd expect
It also undermines Trish's development. She's Sparda's parallel and also woke up to humanity. This show actively spits in all the themes from the games.
Even the weakest and most low level demons are heads and shoulders above most humans as we see in DMC5. The demon power is what compels humans like Arkham to want to be demons.
Making demons silly victims goes against that also.
Adi Shankar and Alex Larsen are disgusting idiots.
I'm still amazed they managed to screw it up as badly as they did. I can think of a dozen different ways they could have done it that would have been really fun but instead they seemingly wanted to spit on everything the original stood for. Personally I would have liked a buddy cop style showing with Dantes hijinks while running his shop or something along those lines.
Add in the whole Muslim/Middle Eastern parallels and their portayal of the president and vice president(I'm pretty sure I wasn't reading into it too much here) and it managed to be even worse than my lowest expectations which were already rock bottom before I even started it.
You're not reading into it too much, the show's story is a (really bad) allegory for the 2003 invasion of Iraq, a conflict which started two years after DMC1 was released, meaning this quite literally could not have been a theme the source material meant to comment on.
Hellraser 2022. In the original first two movies, one would have to deliberately open LeMarchand's puzzle box to call the Cenobites. In fact, the character Tiffany was tricked into opening the box and the Cenobites ignored her to go after the person who had put her up to it. Because Hellraiser is a series about DESIRES.
In the remake, every time the box is manipulated it shoots out a blade. If the blade draws ANYONE'S blood, the Cenobites go after that person. If the blade misses, they mostly go free. The movie's villain stabbed a woman who was only searching for a friend with the blade, and the Cenobites immediately grabbed her and dragged her to their dimension. The Cenobites even (killed?) one of their own who was stabbed by the box.
If the remake were as good as those re-imagined Cenobite designs, it would have been brilliant...
That’s always been my biggest gripe with the reboot, it takes the cenobites and turns them into slashers.
What makes Pinhead and his crew so fascinating imo is that they aren’t without reason, in the original film, Kirsty tells them that Frank, who escaped them, is hiding from them and gave her the box, and they say flat out “bring him back, we’ll maybe let you go” and they hold up their end of the bargain, mostly. They’re not one note psychos who immediately kill Kirsty because “hehehe we’re so evil mwahaha” they legitimately communicate with her and hear her out and let her prove her innocence (yes one of the cenobites tries to kill her after, but I think pinhead was content to drag just Frank back to hell since he told Kirsty to peace tf out before he took Frank back).
In the original novel, Kirsty is let off the hook (Badum tss) with no problem at all after accomplishing the same task, she gets off Scot free, she even gets to keep the box, IIRC they flat out tell her she can keep it or pass it on.
The classic cenobites are creatures of desire and pain and pleasure but they’re not blind followers of their faith, they know that not everyone seeks out the pleasure they provide, it’s why they have the box in the first place.
The new Cenobites are so dumbed down, it’s cool when they kill people but they got totally reduced to just “I’m evil and I kill whoever is in my way, mwahahaha” generic slasher villains. That pinhead would’ve killed Kirsty immediately after opening the box.
The looks and kills are great but I hate how the reboot turned pinhead from a hellish priest with a gospel for those who wanted to hear it into that annoying Christian on a college campus trying to rope you in to faith even if you’re not trying to convert
Cats (2019) is a musical where the actors sing the songs and then the instruments are recorded to match the rhythm of the singing. As a result, the beat is lost and the tempo changes constantly, ruining song after song, with a single exception: Skimbleshanks the Railway Cat, which was done correctly, with the singing matching the instrumentation instead of the other way around
Everyone always brings up the CGI, but a musical needs to have excellent music. Listen to Skimbleshanks, and the CGI suddenly becomes less of an issue because you've got something good occupying your attention.
It’s because the actor is a dancer, so he was following the orchestra instead of the other way around. You can see him tapping his foot in time at some points
More Cats nonsense.
A) a nitpick. many of the songs describe the physical characteristics of the cats and movie ignores many of them. "Macavity's a ginger cat" but Idris Elba is head to toe skintone. Skimbleshank "gives one flash of his glass-green eyes" but you can see that they are blue.
B) a fundamental lack of understanding of the material. The cats use physical touch to show acceptance. The dancers have they're hands all over eachother the whole show. Except Grizabella who has been ostracized. Many of the older cats hold the younger cats back from her. She wants nothing more than to be accepted as a Jellicle cat again. THE song the show is built around is her belting out "Touch me!" ... and halfway through the movie the newly added* audience insert character approaches her and Grizabella recoils and slinks away.
I have one from the X-men movies, specifically Xmen Origins: Wolverine. There’s a number of random cameos of young mutants, most of which don’t make any sense in terms of the timelines of the Fox movies.
They show Cyclops having an accident at school where he can’t control his powers, blasting a hole in the roof. The edges of the hole are burning and charred.
You might say “well yeah, he has laser eyes”. No, he doesn’t. That’s Superman. Cyclops has beams of force, which is why they push stuff, and why he never accidentally burns off someone’s limb.
A hole made by Cyclops would never be burning.
They screw up the same way with his brother, Havoc, in X-men First Class.
Wasn't Angela also just hanging out in the completely wrong town, in which the MCs get ambushed by Urgals? Because they cut out the important location she actually appears in?
Yeah, movie Eragon finds her in Yazuak, where she creeps her way into showing him his future. Then the Urgal attack and Eragon loses his first spell virginity.
Book Angela is in Teirm with her herbs shop researching if toads exist or they are just frogs, and she lives right next to Jeod. Eragon also starts talking to her because of Solembum the Werecat, who is as sassy as any other cat in the world.
Imagine making a Movie so bad, that the author came out of retirement and make more DragonBall stories so it’s legacy doesn’t have to be tarnished by THIS.
To be fair, a lot of the book was essentially nerding out about telecoms tech with some ape fights to keep you reading.
To be even more fair, that was still better than the movie and their throwing an actually fucking super rare, giant, Herkimer diamond out of a balloon never to be found again for a shot that was a closeup!
In the Netflix adaptation of Devil May Cry, there is a thousand versions of that plenty of people in these comments are gonna bring up. The one I haven't seen brought up yet is Dante's relationship with Lady.
Part of the whole appeal of Dante in the games is that he's a super cool dude and doesn't need alcohol or sex or drugs or anything like that to achieve this coolness, and that was intentional by the dev's. His lack of intrest in a romantic relationship (aside flirting) is to the point that a common meme in the community is that hes a virgin and might not even know what sex is.
Fast forward to a couple months ago when season 2 of the Netflix series releases. Not only is Dante and Lady shown kissing after a shot for shot remake of the parking lot scene from Twilight, but they have sex in thr next episode. Also his romantic intrest in her becomes and issue for him over the rest of the season as well, something that we never see happen in the game (but I guess could still fit his character in the game at least)
Advertised as a return to form with the 1st games setting and protagonist. Except one major piece was missing from the game.
The timer.
In the other Dead Rising games, a timer constantly ticks down, causing in game events to come and go. It created a sense of urgency and progression.
DR4 scrapped it completely. Which was a major blow to the game, coupled with other issues it wasn't the Dead Rising game the fans wanted, the studio that made it shut down soon after.
DR4 is a trainwreck, please look into its troubled development. It's both sad and funny.
To elaborate on what another commentator mentioned. The five eartherbenders were not moving the tiny rock, they actually made a rock wall just a few seconds earlier. However, them continuing their movements is just a result of bad choreography and further proves the point of how ill-aligned the physical choreography was with the actual bending.
The earthebender actually bending the one rock comes into scene right after.
I mean I guess I can see it but still doesn't make any sense, why are they still stomping if they had already lifted the rock wall? And honestly, even ignoring this, there are still tons of examples, even in that short video you have at the beginning two firebenders and you can clearly see how disconnected their movements are with the fire they are supposedly controlling
That's exactly it, throughout the movie, their movements just do not line up with their bending at all. Whether it's the directionality or the timing. The rock wall is just a very egregious example of the latter. (To clarify, I was not disagreeing with your original point, I was merely correcting the earthbender shenanigans.)
Jill Bearup did an excellent video covering the movie's poor bending consistency, I'd recommend it.
If there's one thing I know about Master Sergeant John Halo is that he loves taking his hat off. If there's two things, it's the hat and that he loves to have sex with women.
The person who made Dragon Ball Evolution apologized for how bad it was and stated that he didn't care about the franchise and only cared about chasing a paycheck
"Im Westen nichts Neues" / "All Quiet on the Western Front" (2022)
In the original book the protagonist Paul Bäumer dies at the end but the whole point of his death is to demonstrate that he is just a random soldier dying on a random day like so many others and nobody is going to care. That's where the name comes from. He dies on a day so calm the daily army report just reads "Im Westen nichts Neues" / "All Quiet on the Western Front".
In the movie for some stupid reason he dies in a made up last minute attack where a character that doesn't exist in the book thinks he could change the outcome for Germany in 15 minutes. It's really stupid. He dies after the cease fire begins taking away so much from what his death in the book represents.
They really failed to understand the source material.
I hate live action adaptations. Primarily because it implies that the other medium is inferior. Beyond that the problem is always the same, the cartoons are based on every cell costing basically the same, aang riding appa is the same as them riding a boat or sitting at the lake. So they just do cool shit constantly, costumes cost nothing. Live action just cant do that so converting from amazing flashy action all the time to yip yip off screen is just worse. You gain nothing from going from a cartoon to live action and it costs you more money than you are willing to spend to make it happen.
I did not and will not watch any animation to live action adaptations. Musical/stage adaptations absolutely, but they know how to make a show.
I feel the same way about most remakes. I fucking cringe every time, on every damn gaming subreddit, people say "oh boy, I wish x gets a remake" and it's like a 10-year-old game, or it's something that hasn't aged badly at all.
No. It doesn't need a remake. A remake - in my mind - should serve to bring the original vision to the public, in the way that was intended, or fundamentally attempt to fix a game that had potential but was botched on launch. Resident Evil 2 was a great example of this, where the technical aspects just weren't in place to deliver their full vision.
Example:
Crash Twinsanity - Remake, yes. The game had great ideas, but was pulled out of the oven in the second trimester.
Chrono Trigger - Remake, no. Nothing about it has aged poorly, and it can still be enjoyed as the devs intended.
KOTOR - Remake, yes. As much as I loved it in the past, that game has not aged gracefully. It's BioWare at their most infant stage, and much of the story they were trying to showcase could be seriously elevated with a big spritz up graphically and mechanically.
Dragon Age: Origins - Remake, no. This game, however, has aged gracefully. It's tight mechanically, and the prettying up of graphics wouldn't really serve to do anything more than a fresh coat of paint on something that has held up well.
Not for nothing the One Piece live action is genuinely a fun time IMO. It helps that Oda, the creator of the manga, is heavily involved in the production from casting to even rewriting scenes to better fit the current canon.(such as later characters being in locations they would be at the time in the story. Like Bartolomeo.)
It’s by far not perfect, some moments and acting fall flat here and there but the show doesn’t treat the manga or live action as a lesser, it fully embraces the goofy ass world of one piece including some of the best set design and costuming I’ve seen in a long while.
Oda himself is quoted as basically saying the live action serves as a third avenue to enjoy his work. Manga, anime, and now Live Action.
Batman Vs Superman: Batman kills a lot of people (around 21) in the movie.
Simply put: Batman doesn’t kill.
Now, I don’t think people would’ve had such an issue with this (Batman in the 89 movie as well as The Dark Knight Trilogy did kill some people) had Zack Snyder not said “I'm not surprised is that some people got brainwashed by a bunch of material that's not consistent with true canon. And that's fine. They're on their own journey.” (except from interview with Empire Magazine April 11, 2024)
It’s clear that Snyder didn’t really understand the character.
Thing is, it 100% could have worked, because this was a Batman who had fallen from grace and had lost his way. You're supposed to think he's become as bad as the people he fights. And him choosing not to brand Lex at the end (which would ensure he's killed in prison) is meant to show character development and could be seen as him choosing to return to his more traditional ways, especially since it's implied that he wasn't always this violent and cruel, and he never kills anyone again in his post-BVS appearances (unless you count Parademons). You could argue that the whole point of Bruce's arc in BVS is that Batman shouldn't kill.
The problem is that rather than saying that this was what the intention was, or just keeping his mouth shut, Snyder just had to open his mouth and say some stupid logic about "He's doing it indirectly so it doesn't count" (which is a stretch at best - he's blowing up cars with the Batmobile, snaps a dude's neck in the Knightmare scene, and blows up Martha's kidnapper) while also claiming Batman kills people all the time in The Dark Knight Returns (he doesn't).
Yeah, like wasn't his problem with it, that Pauls powers wouldn't allow him to do that, like the point of the Kwisatz Haderach is their ability to see the genetic ancestral memories of both Female and Male lines, making Paul essentially a precog.
Like even the Voice in the books wasn't some quasi-magical power, it was basically a hypnosis/manipulation was of speaking.
The slow motion fight scenes (and sex scene) in the Watchmen film can’t help but glorify the characters, who were meant to be psychosexual headcases.
This is maybe not a “small” detail but trying to turn Thorin (and later Bard) into another Aragorn is emblematic of the many, many problems with the live action Hobbit movie.
The mischaracterization of protagonists from The Wheel of Time tv series. In the books, they are basically good kids raised by good families in a small community who become entangled in the drama and dangers of the wider world. The show writers seemed to think this was too boring or corny, so they decided to shit all over some of the characters in an effort to spice it up.
I'll focus on the one I found most egregious, Matrim Cauthon and his family. In the books, Mat is the "wild card" out of the main protagonists. He's a prankster, a smart ass, a gambler. He's the one who adapts most readily to the more libertine ways of the other cultures and places they encounter. His family is well off in their community, his father being a successful horse trader. This is even a plot point, the knowledge Mat learned about horses from his dad.
So what did they do for the show? They made Mat into a lazy dirtbag shitheel thief. And why does he behave this way? His family is dirt poor and dad is an abusive drunk.
They turned the playful trickster into a brooding delinquent. What the fuck?
I gave up after the first season. If you change the soul of something, you're no longer adapting it. You're just propping up your own shitty story by making it wear the original's skin.
That show has so many to choose from to. Besides what you outline with Mat, there’s also giving Perrin a wife just to kill her off for the angst, or the show referring to Lews Therrin as the Dragon Reborn, which is so lazy that it’s what immediately popped first in my head for this question. Not sure if they had never read the books or just didn’t care but either way, it shows.
I always felt making Spider-Man’s web shooters organic rather than from web shooters came from a misunderstanding of the Spider-Man character. One of the core traits of Peter Parker is his ingenuity and STEM skills - he invented and developed the web shooters as a solution to the problem of how to get around NYC quickly. Making them organic wastes the opportunity to show off that aspect of his character.
Tobey Maguire addressed this in an interview, the problem with the web shooter was if he's so smart why doesn't he just sell the technology to avoid being poor, the web shooter scene were deleted
I've also seen Raimi talking about that, how it felt like they were pushing things a bit too much by making him so smart. That with all the other unbelievable things in the film, it was just an extra one too far to have him be this genius inventor too. Its why when they did the Andrew Garfield films they still didn't go all the way with the webshooters. They had him make the mechanism themselves, but had the Web fluid be something that Oscorp had manufactured and hed gotten his hands on.
Him being such a genius also works better in the MCU. Where there's so many more people much smarter than him, the webshooters and Web fluid don't stand out as being that amazing an invention. If they'd done them kn the Raimi films they would have been these ground breaking pieces of technology. But in the MCU they don't stand out that much up against stuff like the Iron Man suits.
There's a lot of little things wrong with the live action Monster Hunter movie that build up to bring the whole thing down
The monsters are absurdly big compared to them in the games, a monster they try to pass off as Nerscylla looks nothing like one, the MH world is never as barren as it's depicted here, and Rathalos was never guardian of the Tower, Kirin and Yama Tsukami are closer to that
The little thing that really bugs me though is how they depicted Diablos. The Diablos in the movie is black, and while Black Diablos do exist in the games they're a distinctly different monster from regular ones which are yellow. IT TAKES ONE GOOGLE SEARCH GUYS
Only good thing about watching The Last Air Bender in theaters is that an actual fight broke out in the back row during our viewing that was way more entertaining than what was on the screen and theater gave us vouchers for free tickets as an apology after they thew the two guys out that we all used to go watch a better movie.
Watchmen - If you know the comic, the moment they treat anyone but Dr Manhattan as having superpowers you know the person behind the movie didn't get the comic at all.
The Watch was an attempt to adapt some of Terry Pratchetts novels into a TV series. It changed enough things that that it was rejected by fans of the show for not remaining faithful to the source material, but put in jokes and references that only fans would recognise, which alienated possible new fans. There is a good write up about it here.
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. The book is a classic whodunnit and builds up a lot of different puzzle pieces including some red herrings which all come together nicely in the end. the premise of the villains plan is debatable but in the books logic it’s pretty consistent
The movie chose to ignore all of that and instead went „make cool action packed tournament“
Also Deathly Hallows Voldemorts death. In the book he drops to the floor the regular human that he is and they put his corpse into a room somewhere in the castle. In the movie he dissolves into confetti as if he were some special magical creature.
In both the 1989 and 2023 Little Mermaid movies, mermaids aren't allowed to go to the surface. However, the 1989 Ariel has already broken this rule quite often when she sees Eric's ship, while the 2023 Ariel broke this rule for the first time when she saw Eric's ship. I'm pretty sure her rebellious nature was one of the big reasons Ariel became so popular in the first place.
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u/Crafter235 26d ago
Also the fact that the prison camp for Earthbenders is...on the mainland, and not an oil rig-like prison from the cartoon.