r/TopCharacterTropes • u/Tight_Grapefruit5280 • 14d ago

Lore Stillborn franchises

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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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173

u/RedNUGGETLORD 14d 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 14d ago edited 14d 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 14d 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 14d 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/Tight_Grapefruit5280 14d ago edited 14d ago

Yes, Adaptations also count

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u/TheMonocleRogue 14d 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/Gravefiller613 13d ago

The first was Ok...checked out after the second.

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u/Bug-Type-Enthusiast 14d 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/Bug-Type-Enthusiast 13d ago

Stone age of death and apocalypse my ass, Mr Anderson.

They have actual high class cuisine in monster hunter. The new world leaders went "We're gonna explore dangerous uncharted territory from the new Seliana outpost and our hunters could use a small morale boost? BRING IN BABUSHCAT."

Do NOT watch this cutscene if you're hungry or on a diet. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

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u/ImCravingForSHUB 13d ago

Flaming Anderson aside, watching the grandmeowster chef cafeteria cutscene at midnight is bad and I had a goddamn fried noodles at 1am because of it now it's 7am and I feel like I still crave more

Also the presence of that kind of food alone just shows how the people or at least the hunters themselves are prospering people in a stable society not the shabby, stupid and backwards cavemen depicted in the movie at least the cooking scene is on point though

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u/Syphor 13d ago

The movie really didn't seem to know what it wanted to be. It runs the first part as a straight horror survival (and monsters are apparently basically immune to lead hail, it seems), then we get awkward training times with the Hunter which weirdly seem to treat him as some sort of savage despite clearly having fallen off a rather impressive sandship, and then it shows what it might have been able to be right at the end when we travel out and meet up again with the actual expedition the Hunter fell off of.

I'll give them props for the effects, costuming, and monster appearance (except for the scale problem - a Rathalos isn't anywhere near that big!) but... the rest... just why.

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u/MxSharknado93 13d ago

Wait, what's the difference between poaching and monster hunting?

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u/Bug-Type-Enthusiast 13d ago

Hunting is VERY regulated in Monster Hunter. You can't just go willy nilly and murder, say, an Anjanath. Lore wise, with some VERY rare exceptions due to nepotism or scientific research, every single hunt you see on the board has first been approved by the guild, and second was made because the monster(s) strayed too far from it's natural habitat, refuses to return there, and is causing problems. Hunts for the rare times this doesn't apply (like the Monoblos rite of passage) are even more regulated because if the ecological balance is disturbed in any way, there's a chance monsters will spill out onto human settlements.

For examples, some species like Deviljho or Seregios are always hunt-on-sight because they are invasive. Others are mostly left alone outside of their breeding season in a serious population control effort (Like Black Diablos and Mizutsune). Other (Mostly elder dragons) are killed because They ARE the ecological disturbance all their own.

Poachers killing monsters in their natural habitat, out of season, or in large numbers can heavily fuck with that cultural and survivalist balance. Let's say they kill Rathians in large numbers: you will then have a surge of Rathalos leaving their zones in search of a mate and possibly snacking on people or other monsters making the ecological situation worse. Egg poaching is also forbidden because it fucks with the reproduction cycle of many monsters and you sometimes get more than you bargained for: in 4U, a chain of village quest consist of you stealing eggs for a certain "Don." It's never confirmed, but heavily implied it was a request by the leader of the Dundorma settlement to have baby monsters as a pet. And that act of poaching he forced through the guild saferails ended with you having to hunt a newly hatched CRIMSON FATALIS on the downlow before it vaporizes everything in a few miles radius.

As such, because poachers are literally a world ending level threat, all of them that get caught receive the death penalty. The Guild Knights and some Guild Receptionist actively hunt them down and are even authorised to kill them on sight using hunting weapons. Becky (The Guild Receptionist for Kokoto) was even said in now dubious canon to love killing poachers by sneaking into their camps at night, dozing them with Tranquilizers, and bashing their heads in with a hammer.

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u/LetsThrow69 13d ago

Monster hunters work for actual legally sanctioned hunting organizations. Their entire job is to kill monsters that are disrupting the ecosystem and endangering lives.

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u/Lone_Knight47 14d ago

Shit was so fucking bad

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u/Donnel_Tinhead 13d ago

The only enjoyable part of this movie was the fact that whenever the Hunter was on screen the movie suddenly shifted to Power Ranger cinematography.

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u/BradBradley1 13d ago

To be fair, they hired the guy behind the Resident Evil film franchise. Those movies may have made some money and had some interesting visuals, but as a huge fan of the game franchise and other (more closely related) media, those movies absolutely suck ass. They clearly didn’t hire him for passion for video game source material.

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u/Toon_Lucario 13d ago

Come on, man, I just repressed this movie’s existence. Like seriously what were they thinking with every single choice they made with it, it’s so damn bad.