Anything that's been "adapted" in the last decade or so: Witcher? Dog shit. Halo? Hell no. Wheel of Time? Fuck off. Amazon LoTR? Fucking spare me. Disney ANYTHING?!? I'd rather set myself on fire than validate the raping of all my childhood heroes.
Writers are an extinct species. All we have now are cultural vandals.
There have been some good adaptations though, even ones that did their own thing - like Foundation.
Most of human history has been this way. People telling and re-telling their own fanfiction or alternate versions of everything from Greek tragedies to the Bible to everything else.
There have been good adaptations. The Castlevania anime was great. The first one at least.
I think the bigger issue is the trend of putting a lot of money and effort into season 1 to make a good impression and try to get loyal fans, then to take all the money out for subsequent seasons and hope the fans stick around.
It's interesting that you mention the Witcher because I thought season 1 was way better than anything the games did. I could see how the structure in particular might not be for everyone. After season 1 it's obvious that everything went cheap- the lighting, the costumes, the makeup, the locations, the editing, the sound design, the CG effects, the writing. I normally don't even have an appreciation for costume design, but by season 3 it looked like they went to Spirit for Geralt's armor and Kohl's for Yennifer's dresses.
Arcane was another one. Season 1 was way better than anything League of Legends did during the few years I played. Season 2 was still... Okay, but the writing was terrible. The backgrounds went from detailed panoramas of piltover to just stylized colored fog. A lot of the characters seem to do things that go against their previously established motives or just do things that don't actually make sense but are required to move the plot along.
To bring it back to Castlevania- after the original series, the Nocturne series felt like a cheap knockoff. Which was a real shame because it was the same studio and I really enjoyed most of their other work.
Castlevania is fucking sick tho. Watchmen the series is arguably equivalent to the OG comic in terms of writing and artistic quality.
There are genuinely great adaptations out there.
Finally something I'm qualified to answer!
Family Guy - While more "Flanderization" when all the characters became parodies of their previous selves, the real thing is when all of a sudden every joke needed to be "explained". i.e. someone trips while running and then one of the character says "AHHH HE TRIPPED AND HE FELL". Ruined every joke for me, was done with it after that. Kind of one decision, I'm sure someone said "people don't get the jokes" and ruined the show for me.
House - When they suddenly swapped the cast out. Some people really liked it, for me that was the end of the original premise of the show.
How I Met Your Mother - Lily and Marshall's baby. Having a baby in a show is always kind of the "Okay the romance story is over and the writers are out of ideas" but it was done so badly. Lily was always an extremely selfish character, and she was insufferable through everything, from making the literal choice to have a child based on some fated chance to shaming Marshall for having the gall to - go to work to support all of them while she did... nothing? Did she even have a job? Constant guilt trips and manipulation, she was the worst character but their relationship was just straight-up toxic when she got pregnant.
That 70's Show - Having Donna stay home from college - 4 years of characterization thrown out the window. She was always a strong independent woman and now she's just apparently throwing away her future? She attends remote classes for a while then it just disappears. Then suddenly Eric has this big revelation later that him marrying her might lead to an unsatisifed future? It was all just very clear that the writers didn't know how to handle her being gone - a very common coming of age issue
X-Files - The move to California. Enough said.
Game of Thrones.
Which one of their many bad decisions?
Anything in the last 2 seasons?
Happy Days when they had The Fonz water ski jump over a shark.
Yep, I'm old, and yes that is where the term "Jump the shark" is from.
Except that isn’t true.
Yes the show peaked in the ratings the season Fonzie jumped the shark, but the show went on for another 8 years and the later seasons were when the show was better than ever.
Also the phrase comes from an interviewee on the Howard Stern show, talking about Happy Days, 20 years after the show ended.
That is when the show became so dumb I did not watch anymore, and it is what the phrase is from, I didn't say who coined it or when.
Also, Jon Hein coined the term in 1985, 8 years after the episode aired https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jumping_the_shark
No it didn’t., the later seasons the show got mature storylines and stopped being laugh track crap.
I remember seeing an interview with Tom Bosley, the actor who played Mr. Cunningham, where he points out that there were more episodes of Happy Days after jumping the shark than before, so it was hardly the death knell for the show.
Simpsons also has more seasons after they jumped the shark than before.
Not sure if it counts, but I loved the Lord of the Rings movies. Had high hopes for The Hobbit, but the way they portrayed Thorin completely broke it for me. Didn't bother watching the other two.
Cue Lindsay Ellis
Controversial take but Star Trek Voyager.
When I was a kid I loved it, it was my favourite Star Trek. then they introduced Seven of Nine and suddenly it became a borgfest.
I liked it because it was all new alien races, stuff that's NEVER been in Star Trek before...and then they were like "no ones watching, lets bring in the Borg."
I think you mean Seven of Fine
As I recall, the first introduction of the Borg was in the Delta Quadrant (when Q tossed the Enterprise there as a lark). So not including them would seem like a huge oversight considering their dominance.
This was also after First Contact came out, I assume that had something to do with it.
There was also still a huge host of episodes that had nothing to do with borg, aside from the occasional "We need to improve this technology because plot reasons, let's throw some borg nanites in it or something". It wasn't wholly focused on the borg.
Disagree
I have the opposite opinion. Voyager was my first trek as a kid as well. Upon rewatching it, the show actually isn’t great until seven shows up. It kinda drags ass until season 4.
Jessica Jones. Season one was fucking magnificent. Season 2+ is.... A second season of that show. My understanding is, that they changed the writing staff of the show.
The end of season one set up season two to be a hard boiled detective show. That would have been cool. Stand alone episodes with an overlying story arc
The Boys. Season 3. If the season finale had been episode 6 I would have returned, but the final 2 episodes went more Marvel than Marvel being so afraid to kill Homelander or Butcher. It made the plot armor way too had to ignore, and became obvious they were just going to drag things out for multiple seasons.
Dexter. 1 ep after trinity, I stopped. Decided lithgow had a perfect ending.
The 2nd episode of "Man in the High Castle" when you realize they just copied the setting and are going to ignore the key elements (and strengths) of the book.
I gave up on the adaption about 5 min into the second episode.
I started watching 'The 100.'
I gave up when the folks from orbit decided that they had to massacre the ground dwellers.
This was after a dozen of so other massacres.
I regret sticking with it until the end. Such a garbage ending.
Thanks. It's nice to know that I didn't miss anything.
If you haven't started it yet, look for "Pluribus." That's a good SF show
Eureka. The time travel, and that god fucking damn bunker
Mr. Robot. I loved the pilot episode so much, but by episode 3 or 4 it became glaringly obvious to me that the writers didn't understand computers.
That is a highly unusual comment regarding Mr. Robot
Not really decisions by the writers, but more losing the good cast members.
Misfits and Being Human UK
Doctor who. Every decision after Capaldi.
What do you mean? Capaldi is still the Doctor and no one will convince me otherwise.
Bob's Burgers around season 5 or 6. The tone changed and it was less learning about some ratchet ass setting and meeting the people in it and more about sticking to the established normalized rules for the setting. Mort kinda vanished.
South Park lost their ways in season 27 and 28. It's hard to say since it's one of my favorite shows.
I haven't watched it, but I'd say losing your way in season 27 is pretty damn impressive. It's like someone living healthily to 110.
I wouldn't say "unwatchable" but one thing I really didn't like about the King of the Hill revival was aging everyone up. Mainly because it made Bobby a relatively normal, not very funny adult which eliminated like half the comedy from the show.
Aww man, I thought Bobby was great in the reboot.
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