I have a few: Star Wars, Star Trek, MCU.
star wars, for sure. at this point they’re just digging through the garbage for any scrap of lore they can turn into another streaming series. it’s less ‘new content’ and more ‘extended universe, but legally distinct.’
If nothing else, I like how directly The Matrix Resurrection lampshaded this. Thomas Anderson’s game company is forced into making a sequel to their Matrix trilogy by Warner Bros itself, and provides infinitely conflicting corporate views on being completely original and yet repeating the source material.
They couldn’t escape the sequel trap, but they could at least draw attention to it.
For shame for you to say that Star Trek has run on too long.
We need messages about cooperating to create a classless, moneyless society of benevolent people now more than ever.
A what?!?!?
Hell, even Star Trek’s hope for the future would do all of us a bit of good right now.
Just remember in ST humanity went through WWIII, a nuclear war before all the nice stuff.
Oh, believe me, that is something that has been on my mind recently…
In Star Trek, humanity evolved to become better because it had to learn the hard lessons of the past.
Sadly, in reality and today, I’m not so sure those “hard lessons” would lead to any betterment of humanity. World War III could end, and it would be like that alternative episode of enterprise, where is Zephryn Cochrane shot the Vulcan visitors in the face with a shot shotgun.
I’m terrified that we live in the mirror universe
And apparently India los so the eugenics wars because we have like a billion people and more a single Indian in star fleet in the first 50 years
Feel similar for Star Wars. I gave the sequels a few shots but ultimately don’t really care about them. However, the transition era between the Republic and the Galactic Empire echoes what is happening in the US this second.
I was (re)watching Clone Wars around the start of the year while making plans with my partner to leave our friends and flee the country. The way the Jedi Council treated Ahsoka towards the end while ushering in an era of fascism hit especially hard this time around.
They did her so wrong and then tried to say it was her final test. Such a cop out! Surely with all your sense of the Force you should have known she was innocent. But they didn’t see a Sith Lord right under their noses, either…
That the Jedi Council is incredibly hubristic and far less aligned with the light side than they think is a major theme of the prequel era.
CSI (and other shows that distort the public’s understanding of the criminal justice system—see the CSI effect).
Copaganda in general can just go away.
Good news: CSI: Vegas got cancelled last year.
If I don’t like something, I just don’t watch it. It doesn’t bother me if others enjoy it.
That’s fine for drama and written TV. But nah, reality TV ruined the world.
The Real World and Cribs on MTV led to Big Brother and Survivor - which as well as popularizing the format and leading to endless trash, led to The Apprentice, which revived Donald Trump’s image and brand and convinced millions of really dumb people that he’d make a good president.
In the good parallel timelines, the execs that suggested reality TV were laughed at and it never came up again. MTV still plays great music videos all day, the History channel actually talks about history, and barely anyone outside of the US knows the name ‘Kardashian’ or ‘Donald Trump’.
The problem is that reality TV is inevitable. People, generally speaking, like to know what other people are doing. Or like to see other people react to things.
The first “reality TV” program was Candid Camera, which technically got its start as “Candid Microphone”, all in the late 1940s. Of course things evolved from there into our current “reality TV” situation.
The real problem is that the line between “entertainment” and “reality” has gotten blurrier and blurrier. When we watch Godzilla we know that’s just entertainment, we know a giant lizard creature isn’t walking down the street.
It’s also funny that you mention MTV because realistically MTV should have died out years ago. In the same way that video killed the radio star, the Internet killed the video star. Why would I turn on the TV and hope the video I wanted to watch was on, when I could just go on the Internet and see it now. Of course MTV the television station wants to keep making money, so they pivoted hard into reality TV.
When we watch Godzilla we know that’s just entertainment, we know a giant lizard creature isn’t walking down the street.
Wait, what?
You need to learn from the IWC. No one hates wresting more than wrestling fans
I would like to know the demographics of the people who still watch the Simpsons. They are out there. There are many of them.
Haven’t watched it many years, went and found one of the tree house of horrors the other day because someone recommended it. It was alright
And there was one with a bear
I always have to pop up in these threads because I’m out there, and I’m not alone. I’ve been watching The Simpsons, more or less, non-stop since it first started airing.
When I was younger it played twice a day during the week with a new episode every Sunday. So when it comes to the earlier seasons, the ten or so seasons often viewed as the golden era, I’ve seen those dozens of times.
In the 2000s watching TV at a regularly scheduled time wasn’t as much of a priority and the availability of videos on the Internet began to increase, so I usually watched The Simpsons that way. When the film came out in 2007 I was there opening day.
As streaming services became popular in the 2010s I started to watch The Simpsons there instead. Although these streaming services rarely had a backlog, just the current season, but I had them all collected over the years.
In the late 2010s my roommates and I decided to watch every episode of The Simpsons but not in release order. We would just pick a random season and episode and watch a few episodes a week over the course of two years.
Now in the 2020s we sometimes get together to watch, sometimes watch solo. I’m personally much more strict about watching every week, they usually watch in short bursts and I don’t mind rewatching recent episodes.
But… Is it good? Yeah mostly. Not every episode is great.
The episode that aired this past Sunday isn’t anything special, a few funny moments but Albert Brooks who voiced Hank Scorpio and Russ Cargill (from the movie) voiced a new character and that was fun.
The Treehouse of Horror from two Sunday’s ago was much better, so if you want a recent episode then watch that.
No it isn’t ever going to be as great as the golden age of The Simpsons, but it’s still fun to watch and I still laugh, so that’s a win to me.
My kids are mainlining it most days (when they’re allowed TV). They’re pre-teens and they love it. I don’t mind so much, basically because nostalgia - and at least it’s not Teen Titans Go, which was so fast it gave me a headache
MCU has really run its course. They’ve jumped the shark
Jurassic Park, the last like 5 have been the same rehashed ideas along with “big dinosaur how we kill it?”
Jurassic Park is one of my most favourite movies ever. Although they come not even close to the first one, I still rewatch 2 and 3 from time to time. But Jurassic World is a disaster for me. The second one was already so bad that it caused losing my whole interest for the World franchise.
I still cannot believe how much they butchered this franchise and the initial vision for the book and the movie.
How about a bit different perspective?
What long running franchise should be taking out of the hands of idiots and given to people who are actually talented and creative?
The one exception is the MCU, that is definitely one that needs a break. I feel I’ve been watching the same movie over and over since the second Avengers.
The worlds of Star Trek and Star Wars are so vast that there are tons of stories that could be told. It just needs to be in the hands of someone that is actually good at their job and not a profit crazy committee.
Disney had an entire cannonical set of excellent stories to work with, but said ‘fuck it we’ll just do whatever crappy nostalgia bait JJ Abrams wants’… and we got a complete shit show.
Andor actaully reminded me of a lot of the ‘legacy’ cannon stuff, which is why it was so popular/great. Dark Empire, Thrawn, Jedi Academy… just had so much better story going on.
Which is a strange decision because Disney is at it’s best when picking good existing stories and doing a quality adaptation.
I love Star Trek dearly, I just don’t think we’re ever going to get a show that hits like TNG/VOY/DS9 (and even ENT/TOS) again - largely due to capitalism and the dramatic shortening of TV seasons. SNW is watchable and has some good bits in it, but it is forced to operate at a mile-a-minute pace, and either forced or poorly chosen by the showrunners to be Action Action Action about 90% of the time. I just need some breathing room!
That being said, Lower Decks and Prodigy both hit on a lot of what I love about Trek. Their cancellations (and the new ownership of Paramount, and Section 31, and SNW only getting 6 episodes for their last season) do not bring me any hope for the future.
SNW does have some great moments. I loved the “documentary” episode most specifically, because it was a neat spin on things that let them experiment a lot with the cinematography and documentary-style shots.
As the documentary was the real ‘focus’ of the episode, the plot of transporting the enslaved alien creature/ship was allowed to be a self-contained story like old-school trek used to be, and I really appreciated the reflection on the morality of what they do as a crew, and as Starfleet.
There was a lot of TNG’s DNA in there, and I liked that.
Yeah, there is a lot to like in it, I probably wasn’t as kind in my original message as I should’ve been. I do love that they went more episodic with it, that’s for sure! And they have had a few episodes that were pretty lighthearted and funny, which is greatly appreciated. It straddles the line of A/B tier for me.
I’m glad that Strange New Worlds exists, but it’s totally fair to criticise.
I feel a lot kinder towards the writers and showrunners when I consider that we simply don’t live in the 90s anymore, and that the realities of media consumption have changed in a way that forces different priorities.
Back in the era of TNG, Friends, and the X-Files, it was totally reasonable for a show to air 26 episodes over 26 weeks. Seasons would run so long that writers were putting out bottle episodes just to stretch the budget. Yet it was profitable because people would keep watching - after all, there were only a few channels competing for the same limited airtime.
Nowadays we’re utterly drowning in media. The amount of content is almost infinite, and viewers are seemingly fickle, and quickly bored.
Being successful now isn’t about having a great long-running show, it’s about making a massive impact as fast as possible, and hanging on to that top-banner spot on Netflix or whatever platform for just a scant few weeks before people get distracted by the next thing. Only those first weeks matter.
And so, seasons get compressed and the budget gets concentrated, until shows are six episodes all coming at you full force like an airhorn blast of non-stop action and effects. They don’t want longevity, they want hype.
We can blame the industry, or we can blame society, or we can blame people’s viewing habits. Probably it’s a bit of all three. But it certainly explains a few things.
It’s almost a similar story to how the “Triple-A” gaming industry ruined games by optimising for the wrong metric, all while costing a fortune to do it.
Fortunately for gaming we have a thriving indie dev scene now, which is where the true joy, art and creativity can be found.
Perhaps TV is simply waiting for its own indie revolution.
I just don’t think we’re ever going to get a show that hits like TNG/VOY/DS9 (and even ENT/TOS) again
Given how much bad pressure and online criticism TNG, Voy and especially DS9 got, I’m surprised they even tried Ent. SNW was a great show, but don’t forget just how much fans and execs hated every single new series that came out. Your treasured classics were dragged through the muck regularly.
That’s fair, yeah! As much as I try to not let criticism impact my enjoyment of things, I’m sure it unconsciously has done so. I still don’t expect to be looking back and saying “Discovery was actually fantastic” in 20 years, but I’ll keep an open mind to it.
Every. Single. Fucking. EA Sports franchise
They ought to be arrested for it, but players are somehow still buying it.
Simpsons
You know what’s crazy? The show has existed for my entire life (I’m 36), but I’ve only seen like 5 episodes ever. And the movie.
When I was around 6 or 7ish, i was just getting into stuff like that and had seen the show a couple times. Then my grandma saw some thing on the news or at church or something and ranted about the show so much, about how vulgar and terrible it was. So my mom decided I shouldn’t be allowed to watch it. I was an obedient child, so I didn’t watch it. Then my older friend introduced me to South Park a year or two later, and mom hadn’t said anything about that show… I never really got interested in The Simpson again after that.
Bond.
Half of the plot points from all the movies have been enacted, attempted or discussed in the first year of Trump’s presidency by his cabinet, handlers, backers or string-pullers or funders. Fictional supervillains as entertainment are a distraction, dangerously so when the real thing is happening as we speak.
All of them. How about some new shit for once?
I still get frustrated when we get a big games conference to show off a bunch of trailers, and a streamer watching one will start rattling off “Oh. Soldier of Fortune remake? Bloodborne 2? God of War?” up to the title card. Then, when it’s some fresh new IP, not a sequel, everyone has a reaction of “Oh. Dunno what that is.”
Gamers are very much complicit in the terrible state of game remakes/sequels.
