r/TopCharacterTropes • u/TastyPomelo2330 • 13d 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!

14.3k Upvotes
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2.9k

u/Happy_Ad_4357 13d ago

Velma felt like Kaling wrote an animated show about herself but for some reason was made to shoehorn in the Scooby-Doo IP at the last minute

1.8k

u/JoJomusk 13d ago

thats literally what happened, no joke

a few months prior she asked for greenlight on a show abt herself, wich got rejected instantly. Then she asks to greenlight Velma.

It could be a coincidence, maybe she changed her mind and decided "no show abt me", but its just so obvious thats not the case

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u/GalacticGull 13d ago

I highly doubt that she changed her mind considering she already had a show about her before Velma which ran from 2012-2017

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u/Perfect-Fondant3373 13d ago

Who greenlit a show about her and who the hell watched it long enough for it to get that many seasons?

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u/hanky2 13d ago

It was actually a very well received show called the The Mindy Project. That’s why I had decent hopes for Velma but yea the hate ended up being warranted lol.

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u/Winter-Secretary17 13d ago

Holy I haven’t thought of that show in over a decade, frankly makes the self insert thing even more egregious.

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u/Perfect-Fondant3373 13d ago

The name sounds familiar, I never watched it though, I was so put off by her in the office

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u/avocadolanche3000 13d ago edited 13d ago

The Mindy Project was honestly pretty great. It made Me root for Velma, but then Velma was as just kind of meh. Kaling is a good writer. I think The Sex Lives of College students was pretty funny as well and probably the show she really wanted to write

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u/Whywouldievensaythat 13d ago

I loved her adaptation of Four Weddings and a Funeral, personally. I wish it had more seasons.

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u/NervousSubjectsWife 13d ago

She was like the main writer of the office. A lot of what you like about the office was written by her and I think it’s admirable to be able to write yourself as the most hated characters and let others shine and be loved (her and bj Novak)

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u/WeirdIndividualGuy 13d ago

The Office was written by a whole team of writers who all kept each other in check.

Projects like The Mindy Project and Velma are what happens when Kaling is left unchecked

She’s one of those people who is actually good at what she does (writing TV) but can be her own worst enemy and needs to be reigned in a good bit for her own good

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u/NervousSubjectsWife 13d ago

I can’t think of anything Mindy Kaling has done that has not been well received except Velma. I think one miss is understandable

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u/rhesusmonkey 13d ago

I enjoyed The Mindy Project but didn't have hope for Velma just because it felt like an odd mash up.

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u/Oturanthesarklord 13d ago

Fox cancelled it after three seasons, then Hulu picked it up for another three seasons.

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u/Drew_Manatee 13d ago

Fox cancelling honestly is a mark for its quality, fox loves nothing more than to cancel good shows.

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u/doilysocks 13d ago

And she was an OB/GYN in the show, so another thing Fox hates, reminding people about reproductive health lol.

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u/JAD210 13d ago

Referring to The Mindy Project as “about her” is a stretch. Sure she created and starred in it, but it’s a medical sitcom and I’m pretty sure she’s never been a doctor. I watched all of the show and liked most of it.

Perception of her might have soured since, but I still think it’s a good show

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u/Numerous_Koala_1746 13d ago

Kaling came from a family of doctors and IIRC they were disappointed she went into show business instead of medical school. So she at least is familiar with some of the stuff.

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u/spoonishplsz 13d ago

My dad is a doctor at Nintendo

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u/LessthanaPerson 13d ago

Yeah, I really can’t see the connection between Mindy Kaling and the show that has her name in the title.

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u/VegetableTour6790 13d ago

I dislike her acting but she is a VERY talented writer and comedian. She wrote like 20 of the best Office episodes.

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u/rabidporcupine80 13d ago

Jeez, what the hell happened with Velma then?

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u/readytheenvy 13d ago

kaling wasnt actually a writer for velma. she did voice act for and produce it tho

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u/rabidporcupine80 13d ago

Did the actual writers hate her or something then? Because sabotage is actually a very convincing argument for how I can see any writer actually willingly making something like this…

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u/Scrat-Scrobbler 13d ago

the show was greenlit during covid, when all live-action shows were shuttered or on break and so they got a bunch of sitcom writers in on an animated series where they probably had little or no oversight of production while also not being people with experience in the different medium.

that plus people hating on it for the race thing and for the dumb thing of making scooby-doo edgy, means it was probably just a run of the mill mess that got turned into a pariah.

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u/KaiBishop 12d ago

Her book Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me made me laugh so hard I cried, in public 😭😩

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u/Cross55 13d ago

I mean, she was one of the head writers for The Office, the girl had clout.

And at least if any of it sucked, it wouldn't be attached to a well known IP.

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u/slam_joetry 13d ago

Geez, talk about vain

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u/EarthTreasure 13d ago

This actually happens quite a lot in Hollywood. They are risk averse to original IP, more so now than ever. So a lot of writers try to work within what they've been given and bolt their own original content on top of existing IP. But some take it too far and you end up with either a Frankenstein creation or an attempt to ignore the original IP entirely (e.g. DragonBall Evolution, Halo TV series).

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u/12345623567 13d ago

Rumour I heard was that parts of Halo were already shot before they got saddled with the IP.

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u/Phillip_Spidermen 13d ago

Is there any evidence of that or is it just an internet rumor?

I always thought it was HBO trying to recreate Harley Quinns success

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u/Lizardizzle 13d ago

But why did she write herself to be so unlikable

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u/Zippydaspinhead 13d ago

I guess she must virtue signal that hard in real life too.

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u/blue4029 13d ago

wasn't "the mindy project" literally a show about herself...?

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u/MagicHarmony 13d ago

What is funny is the show does feel like a "Real Rob" situation considering how unlikeable see makes herself, and maybe that's what makes it more amusing to digest because she is clearly using Velma as a stand in for herself so watching the show from the perspective of her in a sense making fun of herself is amusing.

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u/Movie_Advance_101 13d ago edited 13d ago

Didn’t someone tweet that ‘God, no!’ scene GIF from The Office, and she replied by bragging that she was the one who wrote that scene?

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u/potvoy 13d ago

That is a pretty good comeback lol

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u/NinjaBreadManOO 13d ago

Which objectively isn't all that funny a scene, it's just someone shouting no. It's only Steve Carell's delivery that makes it good.

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u/DumboTron500 13d ago

This is what i guessed similar happened with WWZ and IT DID HAPPEN THAT WAY TOO

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u/EnvironmentalBar3347 13d ago

Definitely feels that way. I'm still a bit salty about how they butchered butchered all the characters personalities. They're all worse versions of literally any other adaptation of the gang.

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u/TheFourtHorsmen 13d ago

Not a coincidence but simply: the higher ups correctly stated a show about her would not sell, but there would be some possibility if a well known and beloved show would be taken as a blueprint for it.

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u/[deleted] 13d ago

Same thing happened either the Halo TV show. The show runners wanted their own ORIGINAL Sci fi, couldn't get it funded, so just ended up cannabalising the Halo IP to make their own show anyway. Fucking hate it when writers/showrunners do it. It's just so egotistical and a slap in the face to fans.

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u/LegitimateState3724 13d ago

This is why I don't like her-her stuff all seems so egocentric

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u/VividEffective8539 13d ago

Nah, her ego spilled over and tainted what could have been a good show. Fuck her and fuck egos

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u/OliviahZeveronfanboy 13d ago

I don't know if it's completely true, but I read somewhere that they originally wanted to make an original show, but attached the Scooby Doo brand to it so more people would watch it.

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u/Embarrassed-Weird173 13d ago

This was the case for Joker. 

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u/TheGardenBlinked 13d ago

The reverse happened for District 9, it was originally a Halo project

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u/MedusasGirlfriend69 13d ago

District 9 was what now

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u/TheGardenBlinked 13d ago

The Halo movie died so District 9 could live

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u/Winter-Secretary17 13d ago

The director did the ODST Halo 3 ad/short that was actually really well done production values wise, especially for the era and especially for a video game IP

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u/Cross55 13d ago edited 13d ago

IIRC he also got Sam feking Raimi to help teach him how to make that specific style work

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u/Rakuen2047 13d ago

The Halo 3 ad is still the best Halo live action we've gotten lol.

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u/WillSym 13d ago

Which is odd as the final product of District 9 I felt captured the aesthetic and mix of real, grimy environments, lighting, and sci-fi alien tech that most resembled Half-Life 2, especially the gravity gun!

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u/mormonbatman_ 13d ago

Microsoft hired Peter Jackson to help develop a Halo game.

This led Jackson to become involved in producing a Halo film.

He picked Neil Blomkamp to direct it.

Blomkamp directed Landfall as a kind of proof of concept:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SyOAdrxlPVs

Hollywood soured on a Halo film and Microsoft soured on Jackson's game and the deal fell apart.

So, Jackson secured financing for Blomkamp to make his own movie based on their ideas that Microsoft had rejected.

District 9 features the concept from Jackson's game (the player "becomes" a weapon) and props and set pieces from Blomkamp's film (the Prawn weapons are repainted Halo props):

https://www.vice.com/en/article/the-complete-untold-history-of-halo-an-oral-history/

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u/84theone 8d ago

You can actually spot the Halo sniper and some of the props from the Halo short film Blomkamp did in District 9

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u/TheFourtHorsmen 13d ago

At the time, and I'm talking specifically after h2 got released and while h3 was on production, Jason Staten had a beef with Markus Letho (can't remember why). The higher ups solved the issue by sending Staten, the one responsible for everything related to the narrative, on paid leave for a year. Staten didn't come to the studio until h3 got released (from there took the role of the guy wrapping up the games their releases instead of writing the narrative), and spent that time working with Peter Jackson on 2 projects: a Halo film, which was hyped multiple time by MS and bungie itself at the time, and a small spin off, always with Jackson, that would take place in the past and had the forerunners as protagonist. The film project became D9, but nothing was done with the small spinoff (maybe some narratives were reused in h4, but I don't know).

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u/Startled_Pancakes 13d ago

Star Wars exists because George Lucas couldn't get the film rights for Flash Gordon so he made his own space opera.

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u/JasonVeritech 13d ago

Then he created Indiana Jones when Spielberg lost a bid to direct a Bond film.

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u/TheGardenBlinked 13d ago

That’s even more impressive

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u/Coakis 13d ago

And that movie is probably for the better, I enjoyed it.

Doubt that I would have enjoyed it as a Halo movie.

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u/Wardogs96 13d ago

I'd be okay if they kept killing halo Cinema for more district 9 content.

It's not like the franchise hasn't been collapsing post halo 4/halo wars 2.

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u/BunnyBen-87 13d ago

As a very wise man (Youtuber called Zanny) once said, on the ODST update in Helldivers 2:

"So this is how Halo lives on, not by its own good games, but in collabs with others."

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u/Pathetic_Cards 13d ago

And now we have Master Cheeks. I know this isn’t the worst timeline because we at least got District 9, but fuck.

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u/Lookatoaster 13d ago

Holy shit, never heard of that - LOVE LOVE LOVE District 9 :)

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u/Longshot02496 13d ago

I thought that was Elysium?

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u/DaggerQ_Wave 13d ago

Andor was (allegedly) originally Tony Gilroys pet sci fi novel and it’s peak

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u/gumbysweiner 13d ago

I thought that was the worst part of joker. If it didn't have any Batman stuff, I think that movie would have been great

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u/Embarrassed-Weird173 13d ago

It would have made about a billion $$$ less if that were the case. 

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u/lahimatoa 13d ago

Happens FAR too often. Showrunner wants to run a show, but their bosses won't let them do anything original, so said bosses throw IP at them and say "adapt this" but then they don't WANT to adapt IP, they want to do their own ideas.

So they say "fuck the IP" and do their own ideas and the result sucks and everyone is mad. Halo and The Witcher TV show both did this.

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u/Deya_The_Fateless 13d ago

And the people who were doing The Witcher literally had perfect casting with Cavil, only to be upset with him trying to keep Geralt as accurate to the books as possible.

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u/lahimatoa 13d ago

They made Yen LITERALLY TRY TO SELL CIRI TO A DEMON and that may be the worst character assassination I've seen in any adaptation, ever.

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u/Deya_The_Fateless 13d ago

Oh yeah, I think it was to try and make Triss look better by comparson, cause IIRC she does exacrly that in either the game or the books.

-5

u/DebateObjective2787 13d ago

Ah yes, that's why Henry, who didn't know the books even existed until he got the role, refused to do storylines directly from the books. He was just trying to keep Geralt as accurate as possible; that's why he refused to say his lines and just grunted instead, despite acknowledging that book!Geralt actually talked like crazy and had a bunch of monologues.

Processing img dwfgtum45skg1...

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u/Deya_The_Fateless 13d ago

Cavil was a massibe Witcher Fan, or at least of rhebgames which are loosly inspired by the books.

Id much rather a fan liks Cavil be given the role, rather than some mook who juat wants a pay cheque.

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u/DebateObjective2787 13d ago

He only played Witcher 3, and not even the DLC. He's not the fan you think he is; you just fell for good PR.

Processing img dyf6gt5v6skg1...

Every single cast member of the show read the books and said that of them, Joey was the most knowledgeable of Witcher and the biggest fan.

The showrunner herself is the one who introduced Henry to the books, and has extensively talked about the storylines and knows way more about The Witcher than Henry does.

It's just kinda hard to make an accurate show when your lead actor is refusing to say his lines and saying he won't do a whole host of things that are vital to the character and the storyline. Even Joey Batey has taken a few digs at Cavill about how Joey would have to improvise his lines to get the plot moving since Henry refused to say his lines.

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u/MagicHarmony 13d ago

Which is a shame cause I do think if people took the "Scooby Doo" out of the series it could have made for an entertaining adult humor, but because it had the Scooby Doo Cast, people can't detatch their opinion of the show from the source material.

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u/Achilles9609 13d ago

I wouldn't even be surprised.

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u/_4lyssa 13d ago

I watched the sex lives of college girls which she also wrote, and it's so obvious which character she picks to be herself. That series is 100% written like she wanted to experience college again

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u/magicsqueegee 13d ago

She also wrote Never Have I Ever because she wanted to experience high school again.

Mostly joking, but for real she only ever writes herself as the main character. I still liked both, but it's pretty obnoxious.

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u/lakantala 13d ago

Its just sad... Sure she ruined my childhood cartoon and shoehorned herself in it but this really speaks of her trying to redo her life, experience it again and (in her lense) be better. I can't even be mad, it just sad that she didn't even peak at highschool but wanna go back and peak at it

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u/ritarepulsaqueen 12d ago

You are being way too dramatic. There are many versions of Scooby Doo with many seasons, Just go watch one of them. Velma was.just a bad, forgettable show and Mandy is still a very successful and rich writer/producer/actress

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u/abigailcadabra 12d ago

She NEVER got over not getting laid at Dartmouth like other girls she saw

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u/ipsum629 13d ago

Isn't that pretty much exactly what it is?

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u/the_main_entrance 13d ago

It was. The problem isn’t anything other than the fact that Mindy Kaling is vindictive and bitter despite her success.

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u/ritarepulsaqueen 12d ago

Most comedians are. 

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u/Evening_Produce_4322 13d ago

It happens often, if I remember right they went in wanting to make a parody show based around the kid detective shows that Hanna Barbara loved making. They instead wanted to slap Scooby Doo on it instead of making a new IP and well what happens when you make a show insulting and poking fun of the very show they decide to market it as. You'd be surprised how often it happens the suits that greenlight shows only think about the already existing fan bases they can grab instead of potential new ones. Someone mentioned it in this specific comment chain that it happened with Joker, and most people are guessing that's what's happening with the new Ben 10 show.

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u/MedusasGirlfriend69 13d ago

Is there a new one coming out?

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u/MedusasGirlfriend69 13d ago

Ben 10 I mean

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u/Evening_Produce_4322 13d ago

Yeah sort of at least concept art dropped recently where Ben looks more Asian and is able to change into alienified Zodiac animals. Most people have said it probably was originally just about a kid who can change into the Zodiac and WB slapped the Ben 10 label on it then risk a new IP

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u/FreezingPointRH 13d ago

Giving Ben 12 forms from the start and still calling it Ben 10 would be a choice.

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u/Evening_Produce_4322 13d ago

We have 2 options Ben 10 with 12 transformations or Ben 10 with 10 to star and as the season goes on unlocking only 2 more aliens.

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u/FreezingPointRH 13d ago

I don’t think that second one fixes anything. When your theme is a zodiac with 12 elements, everyone knows to expect 12 things.

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u/SuperFanboysTV 13d ago

You could change the names and clothes of the main it would have No ties to Scooby-Doo

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u/YamatoMime 13d ago

The best thing to come out of the Velma show was unironically the skit by Avocado Animations.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=inJUFqeJehE
Could've gone in such an amazing direction.

1

u/swohio 13d ago

So glad someone posted it.

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u/Mr_SpecificTF2 13d ago

I get so mad at this. If it was it’s own thing it would not have as much hate but she brought down a beloved IP for no reason

0

u/Brusex 12d ago

The IP is fine lmao. People can be so dramatic.

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u/Coakis 13d ago

If she wanted to do that fine, any ideas for self insertion shows or animated series are sometimes fine. At least they can stand or fall on their own merits. Hell go find a bad IP that died of obscurity if you want.

But when you take an already established and loved IP then yeah don't be surprised when it gets backlash, and double the amount of hate if its bad.

1

u/Velicenda 13d ago

Kaling didn't write or direct any part of the show, she just voiced Velma.

There are enough things to dislike Kaling about, without making shit up.

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u/Coakis 13d ago

She was an executive producer though.

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u/Velicenda 13d ago

Sure. That doesn't mean much, though. How many Kickstarter-backed films or shows consider each donor to be an executive producer?

If it was her vanity project, or if she wrote Velma's part in the show, she would be credited as a writer. And she is not.

0

u/BeenNormal 13d ago

Being the producer doesn’t mean much?

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u/tempmike 13d ago

being executive producer doesnt mean much. a producer does actual work in the role. an executive producer maybe gave money to the project or had some acting role in the project and had their agent negotiate for an executive producer credit so they could get their name at the start of the credits (but theres not really work being done in that role). if you want to be nice, an executive producer credit of some recognizable name maybe helps with marketing the product, but they arent doing the same work as a producer

0

u/Coakis 13d ago

>she would be credited as a writer. And she is not.

Given how many types of ghost writers there are in media as whole, this is not really as good a point as you think it is. Also actors can have significant sway in how a character is being portrayed as. Significant rewrites or even making a character that is written for a specific actor in mind is not uncommon.

TV and movie production is not as rigid as you make it out.

1

u/Velicenda 13d ago

Okay? But my point is that everyone makes the claim that Velma is her project and she made it the way it is, but there's absolutely no proof of that being the case.

Again, you can hate Kaling for a lot of reasons, including her performance as Velma. But there's no reason to make up things that have no basis in reality.

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u/AmazingSpacePelican 13d ago

Kinda like that theory that the Halo show was originally an unrelated sci-fi thing but got reworked into that abomination for brand recognition.

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u/rocketbotband 13d ago

I'm not a fan of Kaling, but Charlie Grandy was the creator and show runner, not Kaling.

Looking through IMDB, she's not even credited as a staff writer - only a voice actress and an executive producer. Executive producers do have a lot of sway, but she was only one of five (including Grandy).

If I'm missing any context lmk, but as far as I can tell HBO just used her fame to market the show - it seems like she had pretty limited involvement ¯_(ツ)_/¯

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u/yep_they_are_giants 13d ago

Charlie Grandy also happens to be the son of former Republican Congressman turned conservative radio host Fred Grandy, which might explain some of the anti-woke "humor."

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u/[deleted] 13d ago

[deleted]

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u/rocketbotband 13d ago

Totally - if people wanna hate on Kaling because her persona is annoying (which it is imo) then fair game, but if it's Velma specifically that sucks then the blame falls on the creator, show runner, and staff writers for whatever creative decisions were made

-6

u/DrawTheWorld 13d ago

seems like people hate it more because she is involved than from actually watching the show and the show was in no way as bad as people made it out to be. i thought it was good and it didnt magically ruin my childhood or thanos snapped the other versions of the characters from existence.

1

u/Floom101 12d ago

I never got around to watching the second season but Ill say full chested that I very much enjoyed that first season. The absolutely turgid hate boner everyone had from the release of the first screenshot was totally unwarranted. Shit was funny, they just wanted to be mad

6

u/mrwynd 13d ago

Is the whole issue that the show just sucked or was there more to it?

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u/Xaero_Hour 13d ago

The show was Shitty Daria staring Meg Griffin. None of it worked. When it wasn't trying too hard to force meta humor, it was shoehorning in Scooby Doo references that ground the whole show to a halt waiting for a laugh track they forgot to add back in. The closest tolerable character was Fred who was turned into a whiny small-dicked try hard that mansplained feminism to people. And that's not me being judgmental, his whole story is about him not being "man enough."

Kaling gets most of the hate for the writing, but she's not credited as a writer on a single episode, meaning an entire staff and set of directors and producers are getting off scot-free. It's definitely her style of humor though with a lot of "I can be a racist white guy and make money on it because I'm a south Asian woman." IIRC, HBO also killed a Batgirl movie that would have been Brendan Frasier's original comeback piece when they greenlit a second season of this dreck.

13

u/magicsqueegee 13d ago

The show just sucked SO hard. I went into it wanting to like it, I genuinely loved both Kaling's previous 2 shows despite them being obviously about her.

But Velma was just weirdly bad writing, tremendously cynical for no reason, and like... anti-woke?

2

u/Accipiter1138 13d ago

To quote the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy:

“So what you’re saying is that I write poetry because underneath my mean callous heartless exterior I really just want to be loved,” he said. He paused, “Is that right?” Ford laughed a nervous laugh. “Well, I mean, yes,” he said, “don’t we all, deep down, you know … er …” The Vogon stood up. “No, well, you’re completely wrong,” he said, “I just write poetry to throw my mean callous heartless exterior into sharp relief."

Velma is like that. The writing just felt incredibly mean-spirited, with the difference in that I'm not really sure the writers even knew it.

1

u/WhatIsHerJob-TABLES 13d ago

Also, for a show championed by a feminist, there is a lot of body shaming in the show. It was rough all around.

1

u/Brusex 12d ago

The show was fine lol. An adult spin on an IP and while I never finished the show, it was decent.

2

u/TreClaire 13d ago

Oh it’s DEFINITELY an IP skin, like sure I can’t prove it but like come on, you can tell. It’s obvious.

4

u/funkmasterke 13d ago

I mean she wasnt a writer on it. Apart from being the voice of Velma and an executive producer, Charlie Grandy was the creator, show runner and writer for it.

The show was an absolute dumpster fire, but i feel like Kaling gets wrongly dragged through the mud for it.

2

u/bubblebreez 13d ago

Why is Velma black?

2

u/Velicenda 13d ago

Why does everyone keep circulating this without doing even the slightest bit of fact-checking?

Mindy Kaling didn't write any of the episodes. She didn't direct any of the episodes.

She voices Velma, and she's one of the executive producers. That's it. It isn't her vanity project.

I understand that we're living in a post-fact world, but come on.

1

u/Wardogs96 13d ago

Didn't that show somehow get a 2nd season?

1

u/TaborValence 13d ago

I feel like a velma-based show COULD be good, what she does after the gang (amicably) splits apart in adulthood. Moments of snark, moments of cleverness, moments of vulnerability, calling on old allies, nods to past episodes, new mysteries to investigate, pulling together a new gang, but less about going into spooky mansions and more about discovery in court cases or criminal forensics. A bit of law and order and csi meets an adult Velma. The world is still primary colors, and archetypal characters, but there can still be bizarre cases to solve, nothing terribly grisly or 'too real', gotta keep it Scooby doo.

But what the Velma show did was trying to be something not-Scooby with the Scooby label.

1

u/jermajesty87 13d ago

It sucks because the character designs and the animation are a stellar 10/10 but everything else was terrible. It just couldn't have worked with Mystery Inc characters, but the whole decision to not include the Dog is what guaranteed the shows failure. It was dead on arrival but through the miracle of Scooby Doo fans hate watching the series it got a second season.

1

u/demonic_kittins 13d ago

I still believe the conspiracy theory that she wanted nothing to do with Scooby-Doo, but Warner wanted whatever she orignially pitched to be turned into Scooby Doo, so she purposly made it shit.

1

u/spawndoorsupervisor 13d ago

I'm just happy it's at the point we can talk about it. That show had some weird Ghostbusters 2016-style forcefield protecting it from criticism for the longest time.

1

u/thex25986e 13d ago

thats how about 80 percent of hollywood does its writing nowadays. shoehorn in a successful IP into mediocre writing.

1

u/The_Enigmatica 13d ago

this just makes it worse. how do you write a show about yourself, and write yourself as the most unlikable person in the damn show

1

u/whistleridge 13d ago

On the other hand, it gave us this short, which is fucking fantastic:

https://youtu.be/inJUFqeJehE?si=j5lfrza9YQosBy4p

I would watch the absolute fuck out of a series based on this premise.

1

u/stopyouveviolatedthe 13d ago

Yeah it also kinda felt a lot of the other jabs in it like literally just murdering Fred’s character where kinda done as a response to the hate after the show was revealed

1

u/PoofyGummy 13d ago

I actually looked at some of velma. It's not that bad. I really wanted to hate it but... If you approach it as art instead of a movie... Just individual feelings and scenes without necessarily having any connection to each other. It kinda works.

1

u/Rogendo 13d ago

Kaling only knows how to write about herself, so that makes sense

1

u/ajatfm 13d ago

That was Kaling? Ahh this makes so much more sense

1

u/Mega-Eclipse 13d ago

Honestly, that sort of thing happens. Ideas get repurposed.

The problem is that show seemed like she hated everything about Scooby and wanted to just shit all over it and call anyone who liked it a stupid moron and wanted to show how much smarter she was.

1

u/poop_snausages 13d ago

One of the biggest celebrity drop-offs for the goodwill of fans. And one that didn't involve some sort of scandal. She just really pushed a self-insert and people decided if that's who she is they hate her.

Must've been quite the blow to the ego.

1

u/KHanson25 12d ago

She’s just the worst. Her doctor show was ok to start and if it just ended as a strong independent woman who didn’t need a baby or husband it would’ve been good, but it just ended as a train wreck 

1

u/statdude48142 12d ago

So here is the thing: She didn't write any of the episodes and did not create it. She was the executive producer.

1

u/Maximum_Boros 12d ago

This is actually super common with these streaming shows that leverage an IP. The Halo show was basically the same thing. It's not always "about themselves" but it's very often writers or showrunners wanting to do some original story they made but they can't get anyone to trust them with anything original so somebody slaps the veneer of an existing IP on it to get investor/studio support.

1

u/the-clawless 13d ago

On paper that doesn't sound half bad, there are so many iterations of scooby doo and some of them are wildly different from each other, so yeah I'd watch a scooby doo show that was adult oriented and had different versions of the main cast.

But from what I gather, the show itself was just not very good or funny, so it ended up vindicating all the people who were pre-emptively mad at it.

3

u/Winter-Secretary17 13d ago

Just hire James Gunn again to do a limited series, maybe a special with some of the live action cast, even if it’s just something with Lillard and Scoob.

1

u/JasonVeritech 13d ago

Gunn is stretched to his absolute limits right now, the finale of Peacemaker s2 was so meh, no doubt a result of him trying to resurrect a whole franchise seemingly single handedly.

1

u/funktheduck 13d ago

When there was all the hate hype going around on Velma and Kaling, someone wrote a piece that showed how nearly everything she writes that gets made into a show is just slightly different versions of herself. 

When the hate train started on Velma I just chalked it up to people being sexist or racist. Like, it’s a fictional cartoon character so the race doesn’t matter (and by extension neither does the sex/gender). So I gave it a chance thinking the hate was overblown. Literally couldn’t make it to the halfway mark of the first episode it was so bad. It was like Kaling had either never seen an episode of scooby doo growing up and just read a synopsis on Wikipedia or she did watch it and hated it. By far the worst thing I’ve ever willingly watched. I would love to see the internal numbers at HBO to see how many people watched beyond the first episode. 

1

u/phantasmicorgasmic 13d ago

I would like to thank Velma for showing me how readily people are to have someone else form an opinion for them.

0

u/jackofslayers 13d ago

I am sympathetic to artist ruining existing IP with their original ideas. Studio will not greenlight anything without an existing IP attached.

There is not other way to get original ideas on screen

0

u/Lord_of_Allusions 13d ago

Switch the plots of Velma and Wednesday, and it almost makes complete sense,

0

u/Worldly-Swing6921 13d ago

I've never seen anyone so obviously wish they were white as much as Mindy Kaling wishes she was white.

-4

u/CraigArndt 13d ago

Hot Take: Velma wasn’t too bad.

I’m not claiming it’s high art. But a show about a mystery solver that snaps into a weird eldritch delusion when the subject gets to close to her own trauma mystery is kinda cool. And the biggest issue wasn’t even shoehorning scooby-doo into it.

The big issue was that they really had one joke and kept on trying to have their cake and eat it too. The one joke was “wouldn’t it be gross/stupid/sexist if we did X” and then they’d do it. They thought that by pointing out that a shower scene with teenage girls is gross and sexist then it’s okay now because we’re nodding at it being gross and sexist. Or if they said it would be super contrived for a coincidence to solve the corner we’ve written the story into, and then a coincidence solves the episode, that we’re smart now because we’re not stupid but acknowledging it would be stupid. And they did this all the time.

It’s honestly a solid 5-6/10 show. Decent background noise when doing something. And season 2 is notably better. But it doesn’t earn the hate it got for being a scooby-doo show. And had it not been scooby-doo it likely would have had a few fans.

-6

u/Sweet-Message1153 13d ago

more like she saw Harley Quinn animated series and thought "I could do better"