Things in entertainment you'd like to see stop

[WonkyWarmaiden]

Stop having women get raped for character growth! It's a stupid, cheap and overused trope that needs to die a fiery death.
Surely writers could come up with something more interesting for lady characters to deal with instead of rehashing the same bullshit over and over again. Once in a while is fine as long as it works in context but not when every woman in a story eventually ends up with the same backstory.

Another stupid trope that needs to end is the whole will they/won't they crap between the male and female leads in a movie or TV show. I get that it's a classic plot line but it's gotten old. We know by now that 9 times out of 10 they will so it doesn't add any drama or tension, it just slows down the story and makes it boring.

 

[Fox12]

Absolute adherence to the Status-Quo.

The creative effort is generally stifled in various forms of entertainment over money making. Understandable, and I don't mind spending money on quality entertainment. But the entertainment industry as a whole doesn't like to take risks. Again, understandable, but damn is it depressing.

On one hand the consumer is part of the problem. But I think its more to do with the very intelligent people who make the big decisions who know exactly what we all like: Meagan Fox sucking a lolly pop if male. And if female... Sexy vampires?

Show some courage and creativity please entertainment industry.

There's an interesting film called seduced and abandoned that shows what it's like to try and get funding for a great film. The way the execs talk is mind boggling.

OT: The heroes journey, by Joseph Campbell. It's so limiting, but writers will actively try an make their stories fit into his weird little formula. I know, because I've met some of them. I can't understand why someone would want to follow a formula for writing, but it's done more harm then good.

Oh, and that godawful Wilhelm scream. It ruins any scene it's in for me. It actively breaks Emerson. It needs to go get murdered.

 

[Canadamus Prime]

The one thing I hate the most out of the entertainment industry today is that all entertainment has been reduced to a product to be bought and sold. Creativity takes second place or sometimes even a distant 5th place, to how much money the thing can make.

 

[syaoran728]

The "Adults Are Useless" trope tends to piss me off a lot if its not handled well. Something like Accel World where its recent improvements in technology that mean only this recent generation of children get involved I'm fine with. However, its when adults are useless just to let the main characters do everything(Seraph of the End to name a recent example) that I just lose interest.

 

[ObserverStatus]

I'd like to see fewer half-assed horror franchises that don't understand the importance of bringing their characters to life before they kill them.

 

[Sarge034]

I'd like to see actors and actress stop being praised like gods. Yeah, they make entertainment, cool. Praise the work and pay the person, what the fuck does it matter if they're getting married or breaking up?

 

[Sable Gear]

Absolute adherence to the Status-Quo.
It's fine for incidental shows like sit-coms where the gags are self-contained, but if you want to keep me invested, you're going to have to do more than introduce dilemmas and then have them all neatly resolved by the show's end.

I don't want every tiny detail to persist, but when someone undergoes life-altering trauma in one episode, only for it to be utterly reversed and never brought up again...kinda makes me not want to bother.

(Voyager was maddening to watch because of this; I dropped that show so quickly when it was still on TV)

I think you'd like Arrested Development if you haven't already watched it. A lot of their gags and sub-plots are really long-running but not in an obnoxious way, they're very tastefully done.

OT: I tend to stay away from most TV/movie media for exactly all these reasons. There's no enjoyment in it, I find myself getting bored because everything seems to be the same-old.

Unfortunately that sort of invalidates my argument here but if anything I think I'd have to agree with all the people who have previously mentioned the needless/token romance subplots. I was at a Q/A with an author once and someone asked why he wrote "ambiguously lesbian" female leads because they never expressed any romantic interest in any of the male characters. The author responded by saying something to the effect of "she's not interested and these stories don't need a romance subplot, it wouldn't add anything."

I really wish more people took that approach, usually it doesn't add anything and there are more interesting ways to make your audience invested in a character than tacking them on to someone else like some kind of vestigial limb.

 

[Atmos Duality]

I think you'd like Arrested Development if you haven't already watched it. A lot of their gags and sub-plots are really long-running but not in an obnoxious way, they're very tastefully done.

Huh. I'll keep that one in mind. Dunno what the show is about, but google is always just a click or two away.

OT: I tend to stay away from most TV/movie media for exactly all these reasons. There's no enjoyment in it, I find myself getting bored because everything seems to be the same-old.

Unfortunately that sort of invalidates my argument here but if anything I think I'd have to agree with all the people who have previously mentioned the needless/token romance subplots. I was at a Q/A with an author once and someone asked why he wrote "ambiguously lesbian" female leads because they never expressed any romantic interest in any of the male characters. The author responded by saying something to the effect of "she's not interested and these stories don't need a romance subplot, it wouldn't add anything."

I really wish more people took that approach, usually it doesn't add anything and there are more interesting ways to make your audience invested in a character than tacking them on to someone else like some kind of vestigial limb.

Agreed.
On the subject of romance subplots, I will add this: The episodes that tend to make me cringe the most are the Special Guest Romance episodes.

I'm not against characters having romantic relationships on principle, but if it's going to happen, please oh PLEASE do not try to turn it into some one or two episode showboat that ends with some contrived "forced tragedy". (oh hey Status Quo, what a coincidence!)

I admit I'm going meta here, but seriously; nobody is fooled by this anymore. Nobody is thinking "Hey, I bet that guest star will be a regular after this!" Not without outside confirmation anyway.

 

[happyninja42]

I'd like to see them stop always using artificial intelligence as the badguy. Seriously, every fucking movie that has it in it, they're trying to kill humanity. If they don't do the Ultron "I've done the math, and Humanity must die" angle, then they're an AI that started out as a war machine, and everyone is afraid of them because of that, just like SHort Circuit and Chappie. The only AI movie that didn't do this angle, was A.I. And it still had the "humans hate the robots" shit.

I also get fucking sick of the "he messed in God's domain" bullshit, for movies like Transcendence, or Lawnmower man, and other similar movies. Yes, please, let's further misrepresent technological advancement, and ALWAYS color it in the paint of fear and ignorance, planting the seeds in the common person brain that scientific discovery is evil, and we'd all be better if we just lived on a fucking farm. That good old "down to earth" lifestyle bullshit.

 

[Roboshi]

"Ghosts don't exist...or DO THEY?!"

This bullshit is seen all the time in american dramas where they will never, EVER pick a side on weither ghosts or supernatural things exist in their world (unless of course that's the entire premise like X-file or some "detective who is also a ghost" show).

You see this in the ones that get the huge audiences like the CSI's or NCIS, if a character says they saw a ghost hunt the dead, it will often be debunked before the final scene containing a "or WAS IT?" Scene like a picture falling or a memento appearing out of nowhere. It's just lazy pandering to try and cover all your bases to an audience where hunting ghosts can be considered a "real profession".

 

[jademunky]

Found footage movies. Seriously, it needs to stop right now.

It was fine and interesting the first time it was tried but after that, no. It's contrived, immersion-breaking and makes it impossible to see whats going on.

Worst example being Cloverfield where a giant 100-foot-tall monster is 20 feet away from the guy WHO KEEPS ON FILMING!

 

[Shoggoth2588]

Title says it all, what are things in entertainment you'd like to see stop? Could be anything, tropes, ideas, formats, cinematography, anything.

For me, it's the season ending cliffhanger or series non-endings.

-snip-

The second, the non-ending, is more of an anime thing.

-snip-

As far as perverted harem anime go, I really liked Rosario + Vampire but the ending completely ruined it for me. It had two seasons or series or whatever and while the first series had kind of an ending but kept the romantic portion somewhat ambiguous, it kept the series interesting to me. The second season ended and had a really easy canonical ending that it could have gone for but that would have provided closure...and FUCK THAT! There's a 12 year old witch whose feelings we can fuck with! More of a non-ending than a cliffhanger I know but still...

---

I'd like to see an action movie or play an action game that doesn't involve a useless, limp-wristed romance. The romance between Juno Eclipse & Starkiller, the romance between Anya & Marcus, the romance between B.J. Blaskowikz and...what's-her-name in New Order were all completely vestigial at best. The only time I can recall an action-romance working was in the original Terminator for reasons that are obvious if you've seen that movie. It's only a matter of time before Riddick is defanged by the woman he didn't realize he wanted in his life (then she's killed off and he becomes an even more unstoppable bad-ass)

 

[Lightspeaker]

The second, the non-ending, is more of an anime thing. This stems from the fact that a lot of anime is an adaptation of a manga or light novel which is still running at the time it was made, and unfortunately many studios elect to have their shows end without any real ending in the unlikely hopes that maybe another season will be made adapting more of the work in question (something which very rarely happens) instead of just doing what Full Metal Alchemist did and having the story diverge from the source material so it can have its own ending, and if it's still popular enough when the story proper ends then just remake the story again in the medium but as a full adaptation.

There's also a limited number of series related to this that I think of as "okay, now go and read all of the manga". They put one single series of something out. Generally have some kind of big bad defeated in the climax but with the real ultimate villain walking away and then...nothing. End of series. No season 2.

The Sacred Blacksmith did that. As did Claymore. Its REALLY annoying. -_-

That fucking female elf that was only created just for the sake of having an infuriatingly stupid, flat and pointless romance subplot...

Actually I'm pretty sure that she was created largely because the writers took one look at the novel and went "holy crap there are NO major female characters in this? We MUST have one in". *shrug*


On the mention of AI above I'd like to expand it as follows: whenever doing anything to do with science or history either do some research or have an expert consultant, seriously. It is genuinely painful when you have an interest in the subject at hand to see it being totally mangled and misinformed. Either things are depicted horribly wrongly or characters make absurdly stupid comments.

As a simplistic example: I may be remembering this wrong because its been many, many years now but I seem to remember one line from the across the board horribly historically inaccurate Pearl Harbour in which they said something about "we can't outrun them so we'll have to outfly them" with regards to the A6M Zero fighters vs their P-40s. As someone with an amateur interest in history this is absolutely laughable, since everything I've ever read indicates that this is precisely the wrong way around; the Zero was a far, far superior dogfighter (in fact one of the finest carrier-based combat fighters of the war) than the P-40 but it didn't perform as well at high speed. Its a small thing, but it would have been so easy to get RIGHT rather than wrong.

 

[Private Custard]

The one thing I hate the most out of the entertainment industry today is that all entertainment has been reduced to a product to be bought and sold. Creativity takes second place or sometimes even a distant 5th place, to how much money the thing can make.

Says the guy with a Transformers avatar. A franchise that only exists to sell toys!!

 

[Thaluikhain]

A lot of good stuff mentioned already.

I'd add the hero that doesn't play well with others, either cause he's too cool for your rules, or he's too much of a prankster. You get a disciplinary hearing and have to get your act together for that because you are preventing the team from working.

 

[Canadamus Prime]

The one thing I hate the most out of the entertainment industry today is that all entertainment has been reduced to a product to be bought and sold. Creativity takes second place or sometimes even a distant 5th place, to how much money the thing can make.

Says the guy with a Transformers avatar. A franchise that only exists to sell toys!!

I'm well aware that Transformers was originally created to sell toys. A lot of 80's kids shows were created just to sell toys, but even then a lot more creativity went into them then goes into a lot of stuff nowadays.

 

[Zen Bard]

Wow...so many to choose from. A lot of good ones have already been mentioned. So I'll throw one in that's been on my mind recently:

The bold, angry, sassy know-it-all Millennial Chick. Sure, there are occasionally male characters like this. But for some reason, this trait is shoved mostly on to women.

I submit to you two examples; "Darlene" from Mr. Robot and "Gigi" from Denis Leary's Sex and Drugs and Rock and Roll. Two very different shows with two similarly irritating characters.

I know quite a few smart, talented interesting twenty-something women in real life and thankfully, none of them are like this.

"Strong" does not equal "obnoxious and annoying".

 

[Dalisclock]

There's also a limited number of series related to this that I think of as "okay, now go and read all of the manga". They put one single series of something out. Generally have some kind of big bad defeated in the climax but with the real ultimate villain walking away and then...nothing. End of series. No season 2.

The Sacred Blacksmith did that. As did Claymore. Its REALLY annoying. -_-

Yeah, that annoyed the crap out of me at the end of Claymore, when the big villian is defeated and just gives up for no reason that they've hit the last episode of the season. Well, since you knew you weren't getting a 2nd season, could you have least given us more closure then that?

I have the same issue with the original Berzerk series, which is even worse because it ends with Guts and Casca in a horrible, inescapable situation and then it just stops. Yet, you at least Guts survives because the very beginning of the series was set after that scene. Considering there was no second season, this is just really fricken annoying.

I'm kind of curious to see if the new OVA series is going to actually do this right, and maybe progress past the golden age/eclipse arc(I've heard there's a lot there after Griffin turns evil).

 

[Scarim Coral]

Two come to my mind-

Mid season break/ hiatus in tv shows. I tried of seeing this half arses break during production. Yes I can take it's exhauting works but come on! TV shows in the 80's and 90's never done that (as far as I know since I'm not exactly looking it up) so why now? What's next, weeks or month breaks after the first three episodes?

Talent shows. Real artists struggles achieve fame and they didn't get any shortcuts when getting there. Yes I know tha the queuing process is tedious but they still gettting more exposal than the non tv show artist out there.