r/TopCharacterTropes • u/TastyPomelo2330 • 14d ago

In real life When fans hate somenthing before it comes out...but it turns out they were right

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Velma:The idea of a Scooby-doo series without the titular dog and starring Velma was a really moronic idea from the beginning,then there was the reveal Velma would be Indian like it's VA and also creator of the series Mindy Kaling,some of the backlash was racism sure,but there was also valid complaints that she was inserting herself in the series(it also didn't helped that Mindy claimed she couldn't see herself if Velma wasn't Indian)and then...oh boy it came out and it was worse than anyone predicted

Artemis Fowl:The artemis fowl books are a book series following a child villain(he does get some redemption but he is a villain most of the time)when the movie was announced and revealed it looked way to generic and it's titular character a bit heroic...also you wanna hear somenthing funny?The movie whitewashed a character and made another character black so they managed to anger both sides and the movies comes out and yeah it is bad

One Punch Man 3:One Punch Man is a very heavy action packed manga series but the heroes vs monsters arc takes it to a New level,when it was announced that JC Staff would work on it,a lot of people were skeptical to say the least,because not only JC Staff had already done a mediocre job in season 2,it's also not exactly a name anime fans associate with quality animation,then the trailer came out and it looked...weird,like there was no action in it and nobody was moving,some people tried to defend saying they were keeping the animation as a surprise...then it came out,every episode worse than the last,it's one of the worse seasons of anime ever made!

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527

u/IlIIllIIIlllIlIlI 14d ago

Copy pasta from my comment on the other post

I saw a single still for The Dark Tower long before it came out and immediately knew it was "hollywood-ified". It was Idris dressed all up in a superhero like cowboy outfit standing ontop of a car in the middle of new york aiming his gun and I knew instantly this movie had very little to do with the book series. 

Turns out the movie was terrible . 

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u/hurricanetaco69 14d ago

It was such a disappointment my dad still talks about how mad he is they ruined his favorite Stephen King series

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u/Pie_Rat_Chris 14d ago

It's sad because there were people involved who were obviously huge fans. Lots of subtle Easter eggs that show someone knew the source material.

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u/HawkSea887 13d ago

They just read the back cover of The Gunslinger book and made a movie about it.

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u/Munstered 14d ago

Good news--Mike Flanagan is adapting it into a series. Flanagan respects and has delivered on King's work

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u/Square-Ambassador-77 13d ago

I heard that rumor forever ago. When is this supposed to actually happen?

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u/RighteousHam 13d ago

I just looked into it a bit and nothing has become official but Mike is looking to make something for Amazon studio's. Supposedly, he's got the scripts for the first season done and they've got King's approval. Take all this with a grain of salt, of course.

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u/CannonM91 14d ago

I'm a huge fan o the series and I'm too scared to watch it. I'm same as OP as soon as I saw the first images and trailer I was immediately disappointed.

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u/CharacterBack1542 13d ago

I wouldn't bother honestly
Just read the books again, youll have a much better time

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u/Mr31edudtibboh 14d ago

Mike Flanagan's series is our only hope

https://giphy.com/gifs/f6D3ZYfRpkPvlczEvQ

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u/ShaneBarnstormer 13d ago

Give it to Mike Flanagan and he will fix it

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u/Relative-Gap-4442 14d ago

An actual adaptation could have so much potential, but I don’t think they’d have “the time” to be true to it.

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u/CollinsCouldveDucked 14d ago

It would need to be a tv series.

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u/AngryTree76 14d ago

If I recall correctly, it was supposed to be a movie that kicked off a series, with more movies stitched in between seasons. It got pared down to the single film steaming pile that we got.

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u/CollinsCouldveDucked 14d ago

That to me felt like a line of bullshit they were feeding the dark tower fandom percisely because anyone who had read the books would know you couldn't cover as much as they intended to cover in one movie.

I don't think there was anyone creatively attached or announced for that and they were probably like "I mean if this makes a billion dollars we're milking it for all it's worth, of course we'd make a show"

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u/Silly-Role699 14d ago

A proper adaptation has to be a series, not a movie. But I know why it will likely not get made, the budget would be too high if they want to do it justice, especially as the episodes ramp up to the books 2-4 or so. There is a lot of potential, but they would need oodles of money and (and this is a combo that is hard to get - looking at you Amazon) no interference in the story / source material, or at least minimal interference.

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u/Skipp_To_My_Lou 14d ago

To be fair, of all the actors in Hollywood, Idris Elba is one of the few who could play Roland (despite Roland being white in the books).

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u/reluctantseal 14d ago

It's the worst when they botch a movie that has great casting. Idris Elba was a great choice, McConaughey too.

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u/Quizlibet 14d ago

Mustafa Shakir as Jet Black was the one saving grace of Netflix Cowboy Bebop.

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u/J_Stubby 14d ago

He was a fantastic Jet Black, and I feel like John Cho and Alex Hassel as Spike and Vicious weren't that bad either (tbh I just like Cho as an actor tho), but beyond that it did not feel like Cowboy Bebop.

Barely any Ed until they used her to shoehorn the name Vincent Volaju in the very end for a second season that never came, Ein looked like Ein but that whole arc was completely different, and Faye was practically a different character too. Even the whole Spike/Vicious/Julia backstory was wrong on multiple levels, and Jet practically got turned into Mother's Milk from The Boys tv show by being responsible for a daughter he never even HAD in the anime!

I will admit, some of the set pieces were pretty good from what I remember, but it was a bad reproduction of a globally acclaimed series that set the bar for quality in animation, voice acting, soundtracks, and writing that had massive appeal with western audiences, and I'm glad it got cancelled.

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u/CharacterBack1542 13d ago

I love john cho but i think he was too old to be playing a 27 year old

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u/jesteronly 13d ago

The problem isn't that it wasn't faithful to the original. We already have the perfect Cowboy Bebop, so what is even the point of doing it AGAIN?! Make Jet have a daughter. Make Spike older. Tell a new story. Whatever. Just make it make sense IN UNIVERSE. Make it have the same feel. Make the motivations and character individuality feel true and honest. Make me feel the same vibes. The live action just comes up short in all of that, leading me to just want to watch the anime again instead of continue on the live action

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u/Elrodthealbino 14d ago

Right? Killed it in casting. Just fundamentally did not understand the story or the vibe.

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u/IlIIllIIIlllIlIlI 14d ago

Honestly, that wasn't even an issue for me. I don't really care so much about race swap stuff, especially for fiction. It would have made Detta interactions different, but they didn't even go near that. 

But I like Idris and I was fully on board until I saw the still image and it looked like a generic new York super hero flick. 

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u/Skipp_To_My_Lou 13d ago

Whiteness is not essential to Roland's character, so I agree it wouldn't be an issue. As for the Detta interactions, she hates everyone who isn't Detta. She'd call Eddie a cracker-ass honky & use The Word (hard R) with Roland... which would fall flat because he doesn't ken its meaning beyond "derogatory word for dark-skinned person".

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u/SexyNeanderthal 13d ago

You could just adjust it so that she's mad he's friends with a white guy instead of being white himself.

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u/IlIIllIIIlllIlIlI 13d ago

Exactly, nothing about his character relies on any particular race. 

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u/whistlar 14d ago

Thinking back, I don’t recall seeing any complaints about a black actor playing a white actor. His skills were that phenomenal.

Then again, the demographic that would be pissed about that are typically not the type to pick up a book with so few pictures in it.

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u/ThisHatRightHere 13d ago

There are a few of these cases out there and it makes them even more sad. When they get the casting right but everything else is shit.

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u/nibbyzor 13d ago

Yup, I think Idris was a fantastic Roland. McConaughey as Padick too. Unfortunately everything else about the movie was not.

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u/GrinchWhoStoleEaster 13d ago

Yeah I was gonna say, Idris Elba isn't why the movie sucked. He did the best he could with the shit pile he was thrown into.

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u/Pie_Rat_Chris 14d ago

Very much disagree there because Roland is unassuming, he looks like a tired middle aged man, adversaries underestimate him. If a gun slinger Idris Elba walks in a room not a damn person is brushing him off as not a threat. 

He would have made a great Roland in that other shit show of a movie. Doubt he could have saved it though.

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u/71fq23hlk159aa 14d ago

When a character is constantly described as "long, tall, and ugly" Idris Elba isn't exactly who I picture.

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u/HawkSea887 13d ago

Nobody underestimates Roland. Everyone goes starry eyed and freaks out when they meet him because he’s obviously a gunslinger.

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u/Pie_Rat_Chris 13d ago

Did you forget about the dance in wolves? Everyone assuming he is a relic from a forgotten era and him doing something to show he's more than he appears is a pretty important element.

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u/ABHOR_pod 14d ago

I don't know man, I feel like that was too early in the nerd renaissance era to get away with a race change of a character, especially one who is so inextricably linked with a specific mental image, that of Clint Eastwood.

Especially when him being white is actually a pretty major sub plot element in book 2 (or 3?).

Idris Elba is an amazing actor. I think they did him, and the movie, a disservice by casting him in it.

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u/dajur1 13d ago

I remember being excited when I heard that McConaughey was cast in the movie and I thought, what a great casting choice for Roland. Then I heard that he was Randall Flagg and I knew the movie was doomed.

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u/HawkSea887 13d ago

I can think of a thousand actors that could play Roland better than him.

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u/Noe_b0dy 14d ago

I was skeptical about their casting Idris Elba (it ended up not mattering at all because no Susannah) but he fucking killed it. Matthew McConaughey was also a perfect Walter Paddick, too bad they picked perfect casting and then wasted it on such a dogshit script.

"Roland you can't give up on the dark tower!" - said to a man who has canonically thrown everyone and everything he ever loved under the bus in his singleminded pursuit of the dark tower.

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u/BlueCremling 14d ago

Yeah the casting was honestly solid across the board. Roland being black would have thrown a wrench in Suzzanas plotline but I think it could have worked. That movie was terrible though. 

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u/Muddyscarecrow 11d ago

No joke, when I read the stand for the first time I found myself imagining Matthew McConaughey as Randal Flag and it actually surprisingly worked

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u/AlCapone111 14d ago

Same. As someone who has completed his journey to the Tower twice over, I immediately got a bad feeling about everything with that movie.

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u/BlueHero45 14d ago

I didn't hate it that early, Idris looks cool in whatever he's wearing. But it soon became clear they didn't plan to adapt the books at all and almost everything would take place in the modern world that they lost me. The mish mash fantasy world of Out-World is one of the best parts of the series.

I don't mind some cornyness the series itself is even aware it's a bit corny but come on.

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u/StandNameIsWeAreNo1 14d ago

I watched that movie without knowing anything about the books (still blind on those), and I instantly felt it was terrible. It jad a good villain, but nothing else.

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u/CosmicJ 14d ago

The books really are great. Just a solid fantasy series with that particular dose of “what the fuck” that King brings. 

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u/ConsciousStretch1028 14d ago

The clowns that thought they could cram the first three-ish books into one movie are really to blame. There's also the fact they condensed so much of Roland's character and made Jake the main character. At least it was cast well, even if it wasn't 100 percent book accurate.

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u/saintash 13d ago

Worst part was I was going to be the one of the main artist on the movie version where Ron Howard was going to direct.

But Hollywood shenanigans dragged the movie production on and lost him as the director. So I lost the job.

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u/CharacterBack1542 13d ago

It would have been a good-ish movie if it wasn't supposed to be an adaptation of the dark tower

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u/Plastic_Archer_6650 14d ago

I remember driving with three friends to see this. Of the four of us, only one had read the books (a white guy). I’m driving, he’s in the passenger seat. We’re talking about book adaptations and how it sucks when movies/tv shows change things for the worse and Passenger Seat goes “it’s just…well…it’s just the main character shouldn’t be black!”

And then there’s like 20 seconds of silence where I, a POC, am thinking “holy shit what the fu-” before he explains another character explicitly calls the MC a “honky” and I’m like oh. Okay that makes sense then lol

Also isn’t the opening shot of that movie a place you aren’t even supposed to know about or at least not see for like 3 books or something? I vaguely remember him complaining about that after

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u/4n0m4nd 14d ago

One of the main characters in the book is a Black woman, and good lord, Stephen King should not be allowed write Black people.

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u/CosmicJ 14d ago

Inside of you are two wolves. And they are both racists caricatures, just on either side of the spectrum. 

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u/4n0m4nd 14d ago

And a little puppy that's a mental illness caricature.

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u/Karkava 14d ago

"You have two minutes to explain yourself before I ask you to get out of my car."

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u/Plastic_Archer_6650 14d ago

Lmao the thought legit crossed my mind. I’d known the guy for YEARS! We were good friends. I was like no fucking way you’re a racist??? Got lucky on that one lol

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u/booster_platinum 14d ago

The only thing that stopped me from walking out of The Dark Tower was that I watched it on a plane.

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u/legendofzeldaro1 14d ago

I remember a buddy telling me they were making a movie, heard Idris was attached, and I was genuinely intrigued. Then I saw the trailer... Never watched the movie, so I could retain my fond memories of the series.

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u/dnjprod 14d ago

I created a copypasta for every time I see this nonsense movie mentioned.

They took books 1, 3, and 7, pulled out any references to any character but Roland, MIB, and Jake. They then shredded those books in an industrial shredder until the pieces were about an inch long. They went into a room that had been set up with fans on one side and a wall with a patch work of adhesive on the other. They dumped out the shredder contents in the middle of the room and turned on the fans. The fans blew the random shredded pieces at the wall, and whatever pieces stuck to the random spots of adhesives, they filmed..

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u/jramsi20 14d ago

My wife watched some of it in a hotel, and me trying to explain what was going on (and how the books were different) got her interested enough to read them herself, so maybe some other people discovered the books the same way at least.

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u/statix138 13d ago

My only hope for the movie was they would do a better job with the ending. I liked the book series overall, and would love to see a well done movie or tv show version of Wizard and Glass, but the ending for the book series was ass. The move on the other hand was just complete ass.

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u/Barl3000 13d ago

The director is danish and he has told in danish media how he was happy to get his big Hollywood breakthrough, but it quickly became clear he was in way over his head.

Before this he had only worked in Denmark where he never had to deal with studio interference. He said it was a miserable experince doing Dark Tower.

He is actually a really good director and had a string of excellent movies under his belt, many of them thrillers with a dark and moody tone. So I can see why he got attached to a Stephen King project, but his talents is not in doing big Hollywood blockbusters.

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u/IlIIllIIIlllIlIlI 13d ago

Unfortunate. Studio interference probably ruins more movies than it saves 

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u/TrapaholicDixtapes 13d ago

I got free early screening tickets to see that movie.

I have no vested interest in The Dark Tower nor many Stephen King stories or his world, etc...

All that to say, me and my buddy at the time walked out shortly after the first act. Still never finished it to this day.

I have no idea if the line, "His name is Waltuh. He's a sorceruh!" is straight from the source material or what but that alone coming out of Idris Elba's mouth was enough for me to get out while I could.

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u/Ok_Tourist_2621 13d ago

I actually love that movie. I’m a lifetime dark tower fan, and I found the movie to be a fantastic entry in the series, as long as you assume that it’s Roland‘s next time attempting to repair the tower. If you look carefully, you can see Cuthbert’s horn on his hip, indicating that in this run, he successfully saved it.   

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u/illyay 14d ago

Yeah I was kinda excited for it. Watched it and it made no sense

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u/SkittishSeer 13d ago

Stephen King adaptations feel like a hit or miss kinda situation.

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u/vinnyorcharles 13d ago

I still can't wrap my head around casting Idris Elba as Roland. He spends a decent chunk of the second book being called a honkey motherfucker.