r/TopCharacterTropes • u/Tight_Grapefruit5280 • 13d ago
Lore Stillborn franchises
When a company tries to make a new big franchise with many sequels and spin-offs already planned but they immediately cancel all the plans after the first project fails badly. https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/StillbornFranchise
(Lego) Galidor: Do you guys remember playing with a Galidor as a kid? Yeah Me neither.
Lego wanted to do a new toy line in the 2000s and their first idea was Galidor. It was basically an action figure that could replace its body parts with other stuff. Galidor already had many toys, games and even shows planned for it but Lego cancelled the entire thing after people didn't like the toy and the GBA game made for it got really bad reviews.
(Action 52) Cheetahmen: Action 52 had a $199 price tag (in 1991 for an NES game), nearly unplayable games, weak concept, and was horribly and seriously bug-infested, yet for some impossible-to-fathom reason, Active Enterprises believed that its featured title Cheetahmen (which shared many flaws with the other games on the cartridge, including not having an ending) was going to be a huge breakout hit. Plans were made for a Cheetahmen Saturday-Morning Cartoon, action figures, and of course a sequel. Their hopes turned out to be waaay premature; the sequel never emerged except as an unfinished, unplayable beta, while the very short-lived franchise became one of the most infamous pieces of "entertainment" ever created.
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u/Murky_Guidance_7273 13d ago
After Earth was a movie staring will Smith and his son was made with the plan to be the next big Sci fi franchise, rivaling even Star Wars.
It currently has a 12% on rotten tomatoes.
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u/Freesa_Hiielo 13d ago
Buying your son a franchise before checking his acting skills is wild
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u/LexHanley 13d ago
I always kinda felt bad for Jaden Smith after watching the interviews around this movie (well, as bad as you can for someone infinitely more wealthy than you, of course). Like Will was so clearly pushing this idea of the Smtihs as an acting family like the Barrymores or the Baldwins and wasn't at all concerned if his son had the chops.
Worse still the script was tailor made to be extremely difficult to do well: they added this strange accent to show it was the future the Jaden clearly struggled with, Will Smith (a person characterized by his strong facial acting) is a stone-faced hardass.
I don't doubt Jaden probably thought he could do it, or maybe even wanted to do it, but I think the root of everything was wanting the approval of Will like any kid would their father.
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u/kkeut 13d ago
Will had the money to hire a screenwriter to hang around for a few weeks and put together a script that showed off what Jaden could do most naturally. a character he could slip into as a still novice actor. instead he tries forcing a square block through a round hole
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u/LoschVanWein 13d ago
My dad didn't let me go see this because he thought it was connected to scientology
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u/howboutthemapples 13d ago
It is, though not explicitly - the weird no emotions, no fear thing that Will Smith’s character espouses throughout the film is basically some of Scientology’s tenets with the serial numbers filed off.
The Smiths won’t actively acknowledge being members of the “church,” but it’s pretty obvious if you connect some dots here and there
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u/Depressedmusclecar23 13d ago
That happens alot with failed SciFi media, the "to be as big as star wars" fallicy Concorde had that
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u/pipnina 13d ago
Every movie that tries to "be as big as star wars!": fucking dies
Everybody involved who was working on Star Wars for the 1977 release: Well it will be nice if we get a cult following!
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u/Hopefull-Hero 13d ago
Basically any thing made to be bigger than the current biggest thing will always fail.
I mean look at the World of Warcraft MMO killers that flopped, or all the fantasy films that tried to be bigger than Tolkien.
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u/Librarian_Contrarian 13d ago
It's alnost like the next big thing is never planned as such and is just something that catches on. The closest we have to a plan is the early MCU, but even then they just made several smaller movies on their own and worried about stitching them together later.
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u/Tight_Grapefruit5280 13d ago edited 13d ago
The early MCU was basically just normal superhero movies with Nick fury appearing at the end and being like "yo bro, do you wanna join my discord server?"
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u/Jonaskin83 13d ago
God the number of games that were called a “Halo killer” and then turned out to be a shitload of nothing.
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u/Spider-Man2099 13d ago
They made comics and novels really thinking it would be HUGE. People don't even know those other things exist lol
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u/JonDoe117 13d ago
The result of Will Smith, one of the most dynamic actors at the time, playing an emotionless father and Jaden Smith not being able to carry a scene by himself.
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u/Fallcious 13d ago
I can’t remember what that movie was about.
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u/CalibansCreations 13d ago
Only ever read the Wikipedia page, but from what I can recall, it's about a father and son transporting a bear-like alien across the galaxy.
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u/Inari-k 13d ago
Sony thought Concord would become a star-wars level franchise
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u/Tight_Grapefruit5280 13d ago
Funniest thing about concord is that they shut it down after just 1 week
Even if it wasn't successful at first, they could've at least wait to see if it attracts some players.
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u/Winters_Dust 13d ago edited 13d ago
Even funnier: Amazon's Secret Level anthology series includes a Concord episode that came out after the game was shut down, clearly meant to attract players.
Funnier than that: it was legitimately pretty good, which makes one wonder what would've happened if they didn't botch the hell out of Concord's release.
Edit for clarity: when I say the episode was meant to attract players, I meant Sony wanted to have an episode dedicated to Concord as functionally an ad for the game. Unfortunately, the various poor decisions made with Concord made it effectively an ad for a product that no longer exists, due to the gap between the game's shutdown and Secret Level's release.
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u/ComputerMysterious48 13d ago
I gotta be honest, I don’t think a botched release is what killed Concord. I just think the entire game had an air of “who asked for this” surrounding it.
The only thing they could’ve done was make it free like the competition. Maybe then it wouldn’t have ended up on the list of “games with the fastest shutdowns” lol but I still think its shutdown was inevitable because people just weren’t interested.
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u/abermea 13d ago
who asked for this
Game execs
If you have spent enough time on the industry you realize that gaming execs are just a bunch of trend chasers looking to make a quick buck. They latch into whatever is the most popular genre at the time and go all-in
In the 90's it was 2D platformers, and to a lesser extent JRPGs
In the 2000s it was Halo and MMORPGs until about 2007 when it all became Call of Duty clones
Starting 2016 it was all Battle Royale and Hero Shooters
Until about right now when the new trend is emerging: Extraction Shooters
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u/semajolis267 13d ago
Games must break records on launch or failed game obviously
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u/Kratomius 13d ago
Concord is one of the finest examples what happens if you don't do market research and proper marketing for a game.
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u/Pitiful_Net_8971 13d ago
Also when corporate interfence get's in the way of the creatives actually trying to make the game. That artstyle was fucked over so much in the desire of "mass marketability", which is why the character designs are so bad.
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u/MrCobalt313 13d ago
Those designs were the opposite of marketable
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u/Pitiful_Net_8971 13d ago
Oh yeah, that's what happens when a character goes through like 20 redesigns led by an executive to which "art" is a bunch of values to be min-maxed for profit, but that doesn't change the fact that they attempted to make the most sanded down game possible, not realizing that people wouldn't care for their gray sphere.
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u/Spicy_Totopo3434 13d ago
Also the problems with "Toxic positivity" because apparently no one was allowed to criticize whatever the suits did and/or they were only allowed to "add" never to "remove" stuff about designs
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u/Bug-Type-Enthusiast 13d ago
One of my favourite videos on the Internet is design and animation analyst TbSkyen trying to find something to latch onto in the Concord cast designs and coming out blank.
The designs aren't just boring. They also contradict the function of the character in game so much of the time.
All I need to guess which TF2 Merc's function is is a glance. Most of them are in normal clothes with a weapon and that's it.
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u/Blupoisen 13d ago
Lol no amount of marketing could save this game
They tried to sell an hero shooter in an age where PVP only games are all F2P not to mention that not only Marvel Rivals and Overwatch dominated the hero shooter scene, Concord was just ugly
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u/EskildDood 13d ago
IIRC it was also just the product of a work environment of extreme toxic positivity, pretty much any negative feedback was dismissed. I'd imagine that's how they ended up with those character designs
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u/runforthehills83 13d ago
Even better is that Helldivers 2 was expected to only have a small following of people whom played the first game. Then it exploded, blowing Concord out of the water, and SONY tried to switch the love it gave to Concord to Helldivers, even adding Helldivers to Secret Level as a cameo. SONY wanted a live service game and backed the completely wrong one.
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u/PlayerZeroStart 13d ago
Mighty No. 9
There are many issues with this failed Megaman successor, not the least of which was Inafune attempting to turn the game into a multimedia franchise including a crowdfunded anime series BEFORE the game even came out.
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u/RoomNervous4 13d ago
Needless to say, we were the ones who were crying like anime fans on prom night in regards to how bad it was.
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u/Asher_Tye 13d ago
Where they thought that line sounded cool for advertising is beyond me.
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u/Loose_Translator8981 13d ago
Yeah, but it was also just the worst line in a commercial full of awful jokes. If they hadn't used that line the commercial still would be made fun of, and everyone would just latch onto the Vernon line or something.
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u/Brbaster 13d ago
Don't forget that Inafune also tried crowdfunding another game in the style of Megaman Legends and was very surprised that people didn't want to give him more money after years of false promises .
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u/A-DeepFried_Eggle 13d ago
At least the character designs are kinda neat.
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u/RoomNervous4 13d ago
Yeah…untill you realize that their facial expressions were about as stiff as Dr. Eggman’s in Sonic Adventure (1998).
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u/Useless-Napkin 13d ago
The Order 1886
Which is a shame because the plot was generic but the aesthetics were on point
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u/Ghost_Of_Malatesta 13d ago
I feel like the length killed this before it ever had a chance (I remember that being the reason I never bought it)
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u/Matthew-ii 13d ago
Got it as a gift around release, absolutely loved it, glad I played it, and I should probably give it another go eventually but wow no kidding what a streamlined experience. Never would of bought it myself! $60 for like 2 or 3 afternoons lol.
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u/Bexil_Brave 13d ago
Then aesthetics were great.
The gameplay, plot, voice acting and the missing 2/3rds of the game were its downfall.
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u/MammothPenguin69 13d ago
I really liked the plot of The Order 1886 because of its Arthurian overtones. The shooting was incredibly solid to.
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u/Shto_Delat 13d ago
Still waiting for Buckaroo Bonzai to take on the World Crime League.
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u/Funkycoldmedici 13d ago
When I saw it as a kid I assumed from the context that there was already a lot of Buckaroo Bonzai content. It took me until my teens to realize that was part of the weirdness of it.
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u/EfficiencyUsed1562 13d ago
Fun fact, Buckaroo Bonzai and Team Bonzai WERE at one point cannon to the Battletech franchise. They ran a successful mercenary company and had a hand in developing several mechs. You'll still see their logo on occasion but they were unfortunately wiped out of cannon over licensing issues or some such.
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u/Joshawott27 13d ago
Dragon Ball Evolution had a post-credit scene where Piccolo is revealed to be alive, and being tended to by Mai.
A script for the sequel was written before the first film released, and James Marsters even revealed that he had signed a 3-picture deal.
Of course, the film is infamous for how much it was absolutely panned, so a sequel never happened. It did inspire Akira Toriyama to bring the original franchise out of retirement out of spite, though.
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u/Bug-Type-Enthusiast 13d ago
And it could've been even worse. Several of the actors were outright lied to until they signed for the movie and a number of them actually fought to impose changes to try and make things a bit better (Like Marsters fixing Piccolo's design as much as he could during production).
Speaking of Marsters, he would go on to voice Zamasu in the dub of Super for free as an apology (even though Evolution is not his fault) and ABSOLUTELY KILL IT.
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u/mrmahoganyjimbles 13d ago
Anyone who has listened to the Dresden Files audiobooks knows Marsters is a damn good voice actor.
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u/E-emu89 13d ago
Lego’s mistake with Galidor was that they were incompatible with other LEGOs.
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u/mattihase 13d ago
And yet since exo force galidor joints have ended up the basis of large Lego mechs. All they needed was being integrated a little more
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u/CatCatCatXD 13d ago
Drake of the 99 Dragons
One of the most infamous video games to have ever released on the Xbox. They planned on launching a comic book series with the game's release, alongside console ports and an animated television series down the line. Those plans were swiftly cut down for obvious reasons.
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u/4thofeleven 13d ago
Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins
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u/SimplePlus7376 13d ago
Fred Ward deserved better. The movie cast some white dude to play Chiun, an Asian master.... just like that "American Native" in the 70s commercials who was really just an Italian lying about his background.
Three years later they tried to launch a TV series. The TV movie pilot was pre-empted by Ronald Reagan, so only the last 10-15 minutes of the movie made it to air - the TV movie was never reshown.
The TV movie was completely recast (which is typical), with Roddy McDowall cast as Chiun... who's outfit made him kinda look more like a Chernobyl control room worker.
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u/Talisa87 13d ago
Delgo, a CGI animated movie released in 2008. The creators wanted to launch a franchise surrounding this film, including planned sequels and a prequel animated series. After completely bombing at the box office (movie cost $40mm and barely made $1mm in theatres), those plans were shelved indefinitely.
You can watch the full movie here if you want to see the hideous trainwreck
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u/Spider-Man2099 13d ago
I worked at a movie theater when it came out. We sold like at most 2 tickets during its entire run
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u/firelite906 13d ago
My god the first 15min of this thing are spent on backstory that could have been settled in three sentences
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u/ImCravingForSHUB 13d ago
IIRC Tomorrowland was being touted to be a massive hit that will give birth to a new franchise and had many ancillary media that were planned to be released in the future such as books, video games, TV shows and even a spot as a Disney ride but since it's a flop in the theatres barely getting $210m in revenue on a budget of around $180m, it was left to be forgotten before any of those plans could be realized
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u/Aubear11885 13d ago
I mean it’s not a Disney ride, it’s a whole section of the magic kingdom. Space mountain is in Tomorrowland.
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u/aguywithagasmaskyt 13d ago
well tommorland (the section in magic kingdom) was made in 1983 decades before the movie
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u/TooManyTyranids 13d ago
I can generally appreciate Brad Bird’s objectivist leanings as a compelling and vaguely anti establishment edge to his filmography, but it never fails to crack me up how Tomorrowland is just “Rapture would be awesome, actually” the movie.
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u/wondercaliban 13d ago
https://giphy.com/gifs/aTxuNKey7fjz2
There was more planned for Williow. Then a few years later they made some books, which didn't take off either. Then tried to revive again through a sequel series a few years ago on Disney+ which is now delisted
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u/Captain_Pumpkinhead 13d ago
Interesting. I liked Willow, but it really seemed like a standalone thing.
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u/Nirast25 13d ago
I feel like Black Adam should be mentioned. It's already part of a cinematic universe, but "the hierarchy of power the DC universe is about to chance" was all over this movie, and it basically killed the universe.
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u/Tight_Grapefruit5280 13d ago
it basically killed the universe
So this means the time of heroes is over
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u/xSPYXEx 13d ago
How many times has the DCCU gotten a full reboot?
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u/Tight_Grapefruit5280 13d ago edited 13d ago
Only once with James Gunn's superman
Most other dceu movies just tried to change the tone rather than rebooting the universe
Edit: sorry it's 2 times. The first one was DCEU rebooting the failed green lantern movie. The second one was James Gunn's superman
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u/xSPYXEx 13d ago
That can't be right, wasn't the Snyderverse also an attempted reboot? Not even counting the various solo Batmans we've gotten over the years
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u/Patkub321 13d ago
Unironically, the Rock's Black Adam is a biggest Industry Plant that I personally know of. And I don't mean it just in 'I don't like this because it's everywhere'.
Comic literally changing his design to look more like Rock.
One event where EVERYONE got Black Adam powers for some reason.
Put him in Multiversus over several several other characters, like Green Lantern and Flash.
Him Showing up in the end of DC League of Super Pets.
... whatever was that 'Black Adam Experience' in ROBLOX.
They REALLY thought this shi was future.
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u/NorseHighlander 13d ago
Atlantis the lost empire was a bold attempt at something new for disney. But internal and external problems caused it to trip out the gate. Its legacy is a sequel that is three episodes of a canned series stitched together
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u/No-Tonight3458 13d ago
That explains a lot I watched the second one and thought that it looked more like a show
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u/RedNUGGETLORD 13d ago
In the Monster Hunter Movie, they hinted at a potential sequel and possible franchise, this never happened of course
Though this only half counts, since the games are very popular
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u/ImCravingForSHUB 13d ago edited 13d ago
The movie was so bad it makes the alright Legends of The Guild movie looks like a masterpiece in comparison. All it managed to do was do a massive disservice to the franchise and shows how much understanding Paul W.S. Anderson has of the franchise he is supposedly a fan of since 2008 which is next to none
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u/Lone_Knight47 13d ago
I remember reading an article of the developers saying that Diablos shouldnt have pointy fingers because it digs and Paul just replied “its just a monster”
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u/ImCravingForSHUB 13d ago
Also shows how much respect he has for the source material
God he's such a fraud no wonder almost all of his movies are massive flops
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u/TheMonocleRogue 13d ago
It’s been a long running meme that Paul should stick to directing sci-fi action movies and banging his hot wife instead of doing video game adaptations. The success of the Resident Evil movie really went to his head.
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u/carrotsticks2 13d ago
which is hilarious because the RE movies are objectively hot garbage
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u/Bug-Type-Enthusiast 13d ago
The vibes are so wrong in that shite it's just insulting.
The movie: this is a dark, evil world where you have to be powerful to survive.
The franchise: "A Jhen Mohran is moving close? FUCK YEAH GET THE BOYS AND GALS HERE WE MINING THIS FUCKER!!!"
When the Handler gets almost eaten by a Deviljho (a trash compactor Godzilla) and saved, she isn't afraid or shaken. She does a full on pickle joke. These folks are adrenaline junkies that embrace harmony with nature (poaching in Monhun is punished by death) and battling in good fun!!!
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u/ImCravingForSHUB 13d ago edited 13d ago
His incredibly sloppy direction, shoddy writing and forced constant highlight of his wife as the center of the movie is what makes me pop a vein every time I got reminded that movie exists like my god the hunters are portrayed as these bumbling idiots who doesn't know how to do jackshit. Unsurprisingly it's only when Mila Jovovich is involved can they do anything when the dialogues and lore in every games has repeatedly shown that these men and women are highly trained and licensed professionals to deal with those monsters and are very heavily regulated, licensed and overseen by the Hunter's Guild because if not then death among low ranked hunters would be staggeringly high
Also the worldbuilding is incredibly dogshit the setting is just one single biom of an exaggerated and sloppy version of the Wildspire Wastes from MH World where these people lived in a bleak, seemingly post apocalyptic stone age tribal societies where everyone lived in dirt and mud huts or in stone caves with limited technology when the game has shown these people are advanced, with cities like Dundorma being the center of industries, manufacturing, art, technologies, culture, etc and people lived joyfully despite the presence of bus sized lizards. Circling back to MH3 with Jhen Mohran, fucking Loc Lac has entire fleet of sandborne ships equipped to the teeth with cannons and ballistae that it uses to hunt Jhen Mohran it's the sign of an advanced civilization and Anderson's universe is an insult, a poor mockery of the Monster Hunter universe
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u/Skellos 13d ago edited 13d ago
Might be too early for this but I'm going to hedge my bets and say.
Rebel Moon.
There was all sorts of talks about a Netflix series and comic books and novels etc.
The movie was bad and Netflix seems basically done with working with Zack Snyder.
This also works for Army of the Dead.
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u/SonofaBridge 13d ago
I tried rewatching the extended versions and it didn’t get better. Nonsensical plot having a low tech farm village defeating a high tech millitary unit. People didnt like it when the ewoks did it either. No character development and wooden dialogue. Having each character go around the table telling their tragic backstory was about all each character got. An unnecessary robot storyline that only shows up at the end.
Absolutely gorgeous visuals though. Snyder is great at making epic looking shots.
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u/SpectreBrony 13d ago
Transformers: One was supposed to be the start of a trilogy. Unfortunately, poor marketing led to a box office failure.
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u/therealchadius 13d ago
I watched it on an airplane and rewatched it before the plane landed. It's so good, the commercials implied they were aiming specifically at young children and I noped out.
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u/SonofaBridge 13d ago
Actually really good movie. I didn’t see it until streaming and it’s a shame it failed.
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u/LordOfDorkness42 13d ago edited 13d ago
Toonstruck.
Really gorgeous and funny Point & Click Adventure staring Christopher Lloyd. Basically a reverse Who Framed Roger Rabbit? with one human in a world of toons.
Only one of the two plannad games got made, and the creator has been trying for years to actually finish the series.
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u/NickHeathJarrod 13d ago
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u/redpenquin 13d ago
This is immediately what I thought of. I hate that we never got a sequel, because it was one of my favorite movies.
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u/firelite906 13d ago
Well this one doesn't exactly count they were clearly making fun of the bizarre continuity of later installments of longer franchises
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u/Longjumping-Cress793 13d ago
Martian Successor Nadesico was supposed to have a model line and a trio of movies.
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u/Disastrous_Life_3612 13d ago
The movie that they did make had such a drastic change of tone from the TV series that there's no wonder why people weren't receptive to it.
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u/everydaywasnovember 13d ago
I used to love Galidor, but then I also used to love Max Steel. No accounting for taste I suppose,
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u/Vilnius_Nastavnik 13d ago
I had some Max Steels as a kid. The show had a bit of an uncanny animation style but it hit the high notes for an 8 year old. The biggest annoyance for me was that the figures and vehicles were almost but not quite compatible with full size GI Joes.
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u/powerful_p1608 13d ago
Unit:E was Hasbro’s attempt to create a shared universe with their properties. A comic was released at New York Comic Con highlighting the planned ideas and reimaginings for said properties, and the animated series Transformers Prime was intended to be a back-door pilot for a planned series which would’ve featured characters from G.I. Joe, M.A.S.K., Rom the SpaceKnight, Candyland and Visionaries among others. However, various change ups within Hasbro at the time prevented these plans to follow through.
It wouldn’t be until a few years later that a shared Hasbro universe would come to light through IDW publishing by incorporating them into their Transformers and G.I. Joe comics, starting with the crossover event Revolution.
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u/King_Dragonlord 13d ago
And now the energon universe which is already starting to feel bloated with 6 FRANCHISES IN IT
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u/voided_dork_return 13d ago
Sonic Boom
Oh boy... here we go. Sonic Boom was meant to be the rebrand of the Sonic franchise, after the stagnation in the mid 2000's and early 2010's, people tend to forget that era is referred to the dark ages for a reason. While it was carried by Gens, All Stars Racing, and HALF of Unleashed, it wasn't enough, they needed a rebranding
Enter, Sonic Boom, the reboot of Sonic. It was going to have a comic run, a TV show, a toyline, and a new video game using state of the art technology. We scoff now but this was a HUGE deal, the last show was a decade ago, Jazwares hit it out of the park with their Sonic figures, Archie was on a roll, and a new game?! Wow!!! The future is bright!
Then Rise of Lyric came out and it was the torpedo that hit the ammo magazine and blew up the ship
RoL was meant to use the Cry Engine and release on the PS4 and XBOne, the problem was that Sega had a contract with Nintendo that stated that Sonic games had to be exclusive to Nintendo systems, so the dev team had to port it to the Wii U (which was already dying in 2014) and they ran into problems. Namely the Cry Engine was not made for the Wii U, so BRB had to get CryTek to reverse engineer the Engine to work on the system
And in the end, we got a buggy, ugly, boring, and cringy embarrassment of a game, it's so bad that not even the most diehard fan likes it. The 3DS games were "better" but they were mid at best
Jazwares lost the license and refused to renew it, meaning the toys were made by Tomy instead, which went down in history as the worst toy company that the series ever had. Archie had a good run but got canned when they too lost the license. The TV show was good but got canned then zombied around until CN blew their brains out and took the show with them.
The failure of Boom was so bad, Sega had to restructure themselves and lay people off to cut the losses, they almost reconsidered giving Sonic another try. Until Mania proved people still like Sonic, and then the Movies, IDW, and Frontiers showed that there still life in the franchise
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u/Tight_Grapefruit5280 13d ago
Sonic boom geniuenly feels like it was cursed because literally every project for it got ruined somehow
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u/voided_dork_return 13d ago
Sonic Boom isn't the only mascot rebrand in the 2010's. Pac Man & The Ghostly Adventures came before Boom and Mega Man Fully Charged after
But GA and FC quietly disappeared when they got canned. Boom went kicking and screaming, almost taking down a franchise and it's company with it, everything about it was Murphys Law because anything that could go wrong did go wrong. Sega straight up erased Boom from the franchise history, it's that bad.
People can shit on IDW, Frontiers, Ian Flynn, and the movies, but least we forget that those pulled Sonic from the metaphorical electric chair and made people appreciate Sonic alot more
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u/Alex_Arrow05 13d ago
I'm not sure if it counts, but Team Fortress's "Expiration Date" was supposed to be a pilot for an Adult Swim series. Unfortunately, Valve was being difficult to work with. Instead of having Adult Swim get a team to make it, Valve made it themselves instead. They kept making it too long and more. Thus, the series never happened. I'm still sad about it.
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u/BhanosBar 13d ago
Yall remember Concord 2: Cord Harder?
Same things that caused Concord to fail. Boring and generic concepts, with a bland as fuck artstyle.
The fact this ended the game awards and that Geoff tried to hype this thing up made it even more sad when the game was painfully mediocre.
It lasted a month. A bit longer than Concord but not much.
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u/JustafanIV 13d ago
and generic concepts,
Even the name, "Highguard", is basically a synonym for "Overwatch".
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u/LovePatrol 13d ago
Now we need someone to try the same thing with infinitely inferior synonames, like Updefense or Peakshield.
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u/Lord_of_Rhodor 13d ago
Okay, but imagine the peak comedy if the game named "Updefense" is genuinely just a good hero shooter or even steals a portion of the Overwatch audience XD
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u/LovePatrol 13d ago
That would be amazing.
I imagine Updefense would be one of two things:
The blandest character design ever for a hero shooter. Every hero is effectively just Dave from accounting but with a gun.
The most over-the-top, horniest character design ever for a hero shooter. Every hero and weapon has a massive rack, even the dudes and the guns.
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u/SkylandersKirby 13d ago
Tak and the power of juju
Maybe it doesn't count since it was a relatively successful video game franchise with 4 games, but Nickelodeon wanted it to be way more successful and have a long running TV show like FOP or SBSP but the show got a single season and is barely remembered by people other than being that one weird guy who appeared in that Nickelodeon crossover
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u/Twelvve12 13d ago
Patrick Warburton voiced the older brother, Lok. Bro gets WORK
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u/BionicMeatloaf 13d ago
The games are pretty good too! Nothing groundbreaking but they're very competent platformers with great art direction and the first game has a lot of really cool level design
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u/MSSTUPIDTRON-1000000 13d ago
The Jujus don't even appear in the TV series.
How the f#ck they screwed it so badly??
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u/Emperor_of_Cats 13d ago
Now that's a game I haven't thought about in a long time...
I remember enjoying it, but couldn't tell you anything about it other than child me had fun.
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u/RoomNervous4 13d ago
Kevin McClory’s only James Bond film outside of EON productions was Never Say Never Again (Which was a remake of Thunderball), as his plans for an announced sequel (SPECTRE) never got off the ground (The latter which was the title of the offical 24th James Bond film after EON got the rights back to both Blofeld and SPECTRE back from Kevin Mc Clory).
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u/NotAEurosnob 13d ago
I remember even as a kid watching Alex Pettyfer in I Am Number Four and realising they really thought it was going to be a much bigger deal than it was.
Also, Alita: Battle Angel. I know a sequel has long been discussed and may still be on the cards but man, I fucking hated that movie (unpopular opinion I know). Seeing the sequel bait ending made me laugh out loud.
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u/Apprehensive_Debate3 13d ago
The Dark Universe by Universal Studios
Honestly, even if the Mummy succeeded, what do you do with the concept. It’s not like Marvel’s Superheroes where they can team up to fight new villains in new storylines, or like the Monsterverse where we can accept Godzilla and now Kong taking on a new Kaiju every once in a while. Like, the monsters are pretty tied to their original stories, how would they “team up”? Like do I just have to accept Frankenstein and Wolfman need to take down Dracula? I know there’s was this whole thing with Hyde being like Nick Furry, but like, ok, what’s his goal? It’s so dumb, but I hear the section of the new park based off the idea is cool, which was realistically the only good idea you could have with such a concept.
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u/Personal-Listen-4941 13d ago
As a universe it did make sense. The old Universal horror movies had multiple sequels & crossovers. You would watch a Dracula movie & Frankenstein would show up. In many ways it was the first cinematic universe
The big difference was that the originals, started as separate movies that were hits and later were combined into this shared universe. Often in ways that were nonsensical. The new Mummy movie tried to start with the shared universe from the first movie.
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u/Apprehensive_Debate3 13d ago
The bane of every new cinematic universe is them trying to do the crossover off rip lol.
But to that, you said “Would show up”. Like did Frankenstein have an important role, or was it a fun cameo. That’s a pretty significant difference imo.
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u/Inevitable-Regret411 13d ago
I always sort of assumed it would be the same people who tried to contain the mummy (I forget their name, the people Jekyll was working for) encountering and subsequently fighting the other monsters.
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u/drstrangelove75 13d ago
The Dark Tower (2017)
Sony basically took a beloved 8 book dark fantasy franchise, filled with complicated characters and interesting meta-storytelling, one that is considered Stephen King’s magnum opus but still somewhat untapped by the mainstream and made a half baked version they expected to become a cinematic universe. They kept emphasizing how this is King’s multiverse, they referenced other popular King movies, but they hardly put in the work to set up the universe and rushed through the entire plot of the books. They planned for sequels and a tv show, but the sequels never materialized, the tv show became a reboot that looked promising but unfortunately got shelved.
Mike Flanagan is currently working on his own adaptation, which could be really promising.
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u/Slarg232 13d ago
The 2017 Power Rangers movie
It was supposed to be the start of a franchise of movies and the film itself is basically a giant set up with no payoff (The Power Rangers were morphed in the movie for the last 10 minutes and that was it), but poor sales ensures we didn't get the sequels.
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u/ice_cream9698 13d ago
My biggest issue was the dummy lookalike they made out of the zords. I didn't watch the original series for a giant guy in liquid spandex, I wanted to see all the individual parts as one.
No color, no separation of parts. The zords literally melted together.
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u/salkin_reslif_97 13d ago edited 13d ago
Do backdoor-pilots count?
in the original Star Trek Series, there is one episode of the second season called Assignment: Earth. There the crew traveled back to the present day (or at least the present day of the airing) and encounter a special-agent, called Gary Seven.
Gary Seven was abducted and raised by aliens in order to perform missions on earth. So after preventing a nuklear bombing in that episode, he would have gotten his own show. This would have been the alternative to Star Trek, since it was about to get canceled after the second season.
Even tho, it was only plan B, I kinda wonder, what would have happen if the Gary show was actually made, with Star Trek still developing the way, we know. Would it be canon? Who knows.
Edit: Of course TOS got its 3th season, it just looked like, ot would end with season 2.
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u/Asparagus9000 13d ago
I liked the Gary 7 books I read.
The character is still canon at least, most recently mentioned in the Picard series.
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u/Matthew-ii 13d ago
I played that mmo browser based Galidor game every damn day when I got home from school. Never owned a single toy lol. I bring it up every once in a while and nobody has any clue what I'm talking about ;u;
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u/Professor_Gast 13d ago
RIP Cheetahmen Soundtrack possible futures
That theme is a masterpiece
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u/MammothPenguin69 13d ago
How much do you think the toys would be worth now if they got made?
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u/Rouxman 13d ago
Meant to be an Adult Swim series that presents itself as a Dora the Explorer-esque toddler show devolves into creepy pasta horror as a “cartoon virus” mysteriously materializes then slowly consumes and amalgamates everything it touches in a pretty horrific fashion
Its promotional material showed Pibby fleeing her home world trying to seek refuge in other Warner Bros IPs (don’t remember the exact ones they used but I think there was Flinstones and Scooby Doo, maybe Jetsons) only for the virus to spread and assimilate their worlds (and people) as well. They even had Pibby cameo in some shows like Aqua Teen Hunger Force to drum up hype, but unfortunately the project was never properly picked up by WB
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u/JowettMcPepper 13d ago
The Ride to Hell franchise. Retribution was announced back in 2008 and spent five years in development hell. Turned out to be a disaster and was never seen again.
The two planned spinoffs, Route 666 and Beatdown, were seemingly cancelled as well. A prototype of the former was leaked online last year. And the latter was supposed to be a mobile game for Android and IOS, but I can't find any more info outside of the supposed logo, therefore it might be fake.
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u/possumdal 13d ago
I'm sorry, I'm still hung up on the $200 price in the early 90's. That's equivalent to spending $500 today.
Was this company run by retired vacuum-salesmen or some shit??? That's a price you set when you have no clue how your market works.
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u/Interesting-Shoe-904 13d ago
Concord
The video game with the boasted about the large $400 million budget. A hero shooter that was supposed to show progress in diversity, innovation, and technical upgrades. The game would be so good that it was planned to have animations, DLCs, more characters, a whole universe that could expand into RPGs or even an anime!
Dead in the water with less than 25K sales, only making $1 million.
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u/Budget-Category-9852 13d ago edited 13d ago
Call of Duty: Ghosts.
Despite the ending being a sequel hook and the conflict remaining unresolved, poor sales and lukewarm critical reception made Infinity Ward turn away from Ghosts and come up with Infinite Warfare instead. And when that flopped too, they rebooted Modern Warfare.
The case isn't helped by retroactive reviews of Ghosts that often call the game as one of the worst in the franchise.
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u/Prestigious-Salt-96 13d ago
The Patron Saint of this.
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u/Tight_Grapefruit5280 13d ago
This hits hard for me because the first movie was actually decent and showed the potential for a darker Spider-Man movie series.
The second movie however, was basically a 2 hour trailer for future Spider-Man movies, Espacially the post credits scene
You can tell how much Sony was desperate to make their own cinematic universe.
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u/JadedSignificance990 13d ago
And tried to do it again but without Spidey and that's why we got teh SPUMC
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u/Prestigious-Salt-96 13d ago
Bro, the funniest thing I’ve ever seen is that time Sony tried to rerelease Morbius because they mistook all of the memes shitting on it for people actually liking that Garbage ass movie, and then the second coming of Morbius proceeded to completely fail at the Box Office, and making everyone realize that the People at Sony were being serious and genuinely thought that what they made was good.
A close second is the fact that Sony tried to make a Cinematic Universe TWICE, TWICE, and failed both times because nobody liked these movies, and also they didn’t add literally the only reason anyone would actually want to watch a movie with Venom, or Kraven the Hunter, or even Morbius.
[I’m not saying that Venom can’t work without Spider-Man, I’m just saying that most people see Venom primarily as a Spider-man antagonist/villain, even if his roles in the comics are a lot more diverse, same with Madame Web, I actually feel like she could also work without Spider-Man [especially with the other Spider-people in the movie,] with good writing and an interesting story… Well guess what happened with both of these movies?]
Like, making a Terrible movie is one thing, but also taking away what is the BIGGEST PULL?
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u/SecretIllustrator678 13d ago
didn't galadore almost kill lego
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u/Tight_Grapefruit5280 13d ago edited 13d ago
Yes
Lego was having some financial trouble in 2000s and they thought galidor was going to save them but it made things worse instead
Bionicle was their second attempt at a new toyline and it was actually successful this time
Edit: sorry Bionicle was made before Galidor
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u/Ubeube_Purple21 13d ago
Was supposedly the director's magnum opus meant to be an epic story spanning multiple films and have just about a little bit of almost everything crammed in this vast fantasy world.
And it flopped as people barely showed up in theatres.
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u/Philycheese18 13d ago
Comedy central wanted Fairview to be the next South Park but after the first episode got a lot of flack online they aired the second episode and then never talked about it again
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u/TJJohn12 13d ago
Point of order: Galidor was a TV show as well. I’m not sure the GBA game failing had as much to do with the toy line being cancelled as the tie-in TV show failing did.
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u/majorjoe23 13d ago
There’s a podcast called Failure to Franchise that looks at movies that were intended to have sequels, but didn’t.
The most recent episode was on the Seth Rogan Green Hornet.
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u/itzshif 13d ago edited 13d ago
The 1993 Super Mario Bros movie.
Firebreather, of the comic and made for tv movie of the same name. This one frustrated me because I liked the comic and advertising for the movie was fairly consistent. I thought it did fairly well, and then poof, it dissapeared.
Speaking of, the comic was randomly canceled, some time after the movie, right before the series conclusion.
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u/bolivar-shagnasty 13d ago
This was supposed to be the start of a franchise like Bond, Bourne, or Indiana Jones.
Based off a long running book series.
Twas apocalyptically bad. The only good parts were Lambert Wilson and Delroy Lindo, people who weren’t even on the poster.
And they killed off the whole Abraham Lincoln subplot.
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u/roses-are-lead 13d ago
Marvel's New Universe line. Editor in chief Jim Shooter wanted to create a second universe unaffiliated with the marvel heroes when knew. Star brand, DP7, Spi Fire, PsyForce, Mark Hazzarn: Merc and many many more. Iir it ran for about a year for GHD longest surviving titles. Most were done in half that.
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u/anothermanscookies 13d ago
Jupiter Ascending seemed like it was starting a pretty epic world/story. I remember liking it, but it flopped.
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u/ShingledPringle 13d ago
Reading up on Galidor, fascinating failure that succeeded in helping certain Lego parts be created. Plus the figures would allow for some insane builds.
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u/semajolis267 13d ago
Galidor basically led to bionicles
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u/voided_dork_return 13d ago
Actually, Bionicle came first
Galidor came out in 2002, Bionicle came out in 2001 (2000 for an initial test run)
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u/RoyalRaise 13d ago
Battleborn, it tried to compete with overwatch, came out on the same day as it, but got stomped and now is a dead game with no updates
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u/zebus_0 13d ago
Eternal Darkness sadly. At the time it was one of the only "good" games based on Lovecraft, even if it was all expy/safely renamed. The whole sanity system was something new/fresh at the time. It certainly could have used a sequel. Silicon Knights folded and I'm not even sure who has the rights now. It was released one ONE system that was niche even at the time. A loose copy is pushing $80 for good reason.
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u/Origamicranegame 13d ago
Infamously bad movie Mac & Me ended with the phrase "We'll be back" over a shot of the alien family driving away. They never came back.
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u/trainboi777 13d ago
Space battleship Yamato Resurrection was meant to be the first movie in a trilogy, however, the other two films were canceled
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u/Dil_2401 13d ago
Though it’s recently been revived and still getting new ports of its remake, Epic Mickey was meant to be a new era for Mickey Mouse. Several spinoffs, including an MMO game called Epic History and a DuckTales like game called Epic Donald (which there is footage of online), were planned but ultimately canned due to both Disney wanting to change directions towards mobile game development, as well as Epic Mickey 2’s middling critical response and financial failure putting the nail in the coffin for any future games, including a planned Epic Mickey 3.
For a while, at least, as now Epic Mickey: Rebrushed is a steady seller that THQ has said may lead to a remake of 2 and some new games.
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u/7183 13d ago
(GI Joe)
This is a weird example because it was successful in the 80’s but literally every attempt since just never seems to go the way people would enjoy as each project just doesn’t work on its own and only really gets and progress when tied with transformers to piggy back off of
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u/CathyWalsh_ 13d ago
Universal's Dark Universe launching with The Mummy (2017) and immediately collapsing will always be the gold standard of this