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They Changed It Now It Sucks
"Some people just can't handle change!"
In cases where as long as it's still the same basic story and keeps all the best bits and characters intact, then it doesn't matter too much that Bob's bald, Alice doesn't die, the football game ended with a different score, and they cut the watermelon scene, right? It's a bit of a shame they screwed that bit up, but really, it's not as if the entire work is Ruined FOREVER, right?
Wrong!
...or so you would be told by many, many a fan.
For some people, the very act of adaptation is decay. A Film version of something should be a direct word-for-word transcription, with utmost care that the sets, costumes and people be reproduced in every detail. If a character who wears a homburg in the original now wears a fedora, that will be enough to ruin the character, and therefore ruin the film. It will be all you will hear about from these fans on message boards, with them going on at length to explain how his homburg visually defined his entire personality in a way that a fedora never could.
And don't you dare suggest that in changing it they made it better. The Fan Dumb isn't listening.
This trope is not only used in situations of Adaptation Decay. It is also applicable to ongoing series where a significant change is made between seasons.
Note: This is not Complaining About Shows You Don't Like, this is about a significant traditionalist fan backlash. If you seriously think They Changed It Now It Sucks about a work, IT DOES NOT GO HERE. ' Further, please resist the urge to add Justifying Edits and/or Natter below. They're always unnecessary, unwelcome and likely to spark an Internet Backdraft. Remember, Smokey The Bear says, "Only you can prevent flame wars!"
A common complaint of The Film Of The Book.
See also Translation Style Choices, Replacement Scrappy, Ruined FOREVER and Network Decay - the justified evocation of this trope.. Contrast Woolseyism. May overlap with They Don't Make Them Like They Used To. On the opposite end of the spectrum is It Is The Same Now It Sucks. When you have both It Is The Same Now It Sucks and They Changed It Now It Sucks, you wind up with an Unpleasable Fanbase.
For cases where the change goes explicitly against established norms of the series/movie/book/whatever, see They Just Didnt Care. For those where the change or plot detail is agreed by at least general consensus to be a legitimately bad one, see Wall Banger.
Examples
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Anime
- The DiC dub of Sailor Moon has a multitude of hatesites dedicated to it, by people who claimed to get up early to watch it when they were little, for any change made by the dubbers.
- However, even the most hardend purist will admit Dic had good music...
- In the Digimon fandom, the torches and pitchforks came out when, in the dubbed version, Takato Matsuda's name had been distorted into the horror that is... "Takato Matsuki." And the fact that "Takato" is pronounced with the stress on the wrong syllable, well, that's "rape" and "butchery."
- And on a semi-related note, it's stylish to call something by its Katakana spelling (eg; the cool kids know it's "Dejitaru Monsutaa," not "Digital Monsters." You see it most with attack names, though.) when it comes to names and attacks, even the ones written in English. But let the dubbers do it (eg. Diablomon becomes Diaboromon) and again... butchery.
- Not to mention that since Japanese is a pitch-accent language, where every word has a pattern of high and low tones, and not a stress-accent language, there was never any such thing as "stressing the right syllable" in the first place.
- Despite the change to Takato's name, the dubbers left the hiragana on the awning over his family's bakery, so it still says "Matsuda" (まつだ).
- Readers of the Fullmetal Alchemist manga can be horrifically cruel towards the anime. Even the slightest deviation from the manga plot is bitched about (They killed the Buttmonkey? NOOOOO!), and several Fridge Logic moments that only become apparent once you read the manga are declared as massive Plot Holes, any and all changes to the characters are deemed Character Derailment, and god help you if you mention the Gecko Ending or The Movie. To be fair the last one is often complained about by people who have never read the manga.
- And now that a remake based on the manga has begun airing, BOTH sides of fans are complaining about it; the original anime fans because it exists, and the original manga fans because it's changed a few unimportant details here and there. It's like some kind of fan complaint house of mirrors, where each complaint reflects images of all the others, forever.
- By far the largest complaint against dubs are the fact that they don't sound the same as the sub. Meaning that no matter how good the dubbing is it can never be as good as the sub simply because the viewer saw the sub first.
- The English dub of Code Geass has fallen into this hard. Lelouch/Zero's voice, in particular, is a point of contention, due in large part to his English VA "not sounding enough like" his Japanese one. What makes this ironic is that while portions of the American fanbase seem to hate Johnny Yong Bosch for not attempting to mimic Jun Fukuyama's performance, many Japanese fans, upon hearing clips from the US dub, stated a preference for Bosch due to the fact that his performance is more natural (whereas Fukuyama's performance was considered more forced and "draining").
- Which in turn is an example of Mis Blamed, because it's the director that ultimately controls how an actor delivers his lines, not the actor himself. As Spike Spencer put it, "What I do is deliver the line how I think it should be done, then the director tells me that I'm wrong."
- On the flip side, there is a large segment of fandom that immediately jumps on people who prefer to watch subtitled anime as idiot purists that should just learn Japanese instead of "reading" the show. Regardless of the fact that, unless they're just pirating fansubs, these people are buying and supporting the *exact* same release the dub fans are watching, therefore nobody is forced to watching anything they don't like. Sub vs. Dub wars - they never end.
- For these reason it might be better to ask someone who didn't watch a show subbed first when asking about the quality of the dub.
- Supposedly the director of Cowboy Bebop even thinks the English version of it is better.
- One theory is that people who get incensed when the English dub "doesn't sound enough" like the Japanese version simply miss when the Japanese voice acting is bad. Some people have pointed out that the more you understand Japanese, the better English dubs sound.
- Another theory would be that they haven't seen other dubs. You think English dubs are So Bad Its Horrible? Compared to what other dubs are...English actually has it easy.
- Can the Prince Of Tennis fandom PLEASE stop bitching about how the Rikkaidai team was changed in the anime and how anime Sakuno sucks for being a Dojikko and not a Yamato Nadeshiko in training?
- A purely ridiculous example is Knuckles being referred to as a "mole" in Sonic The Hedgehog: The Movie. Ignore the fact that it was only said once by The Ditz (who probably didn't even know better). Ignore the fact that the appearances, elements, etc. were more faithful than any Sonic adapation up to that point. Or that the anime in question was produced before Knuckles's game was even released in the first place. To make things worse, this is occasionally Mis Blamed on the dub.
- There are many Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann fans that go absolutely berserk anytime the official translation has the name or pronunciation of any person, mecha, attack, or other terminology deviating from what has become popular among the fandom, even when 90% of the time they're at least as accurate. Strangely there are some people that realized this (thinking the fan-sub ones were simply better, not more accurate) but are still mad that the official translation didn't adopt them just because the fandom was accustomed to them.
- Also, Kyle Hebert is a damned hero for going though eight episodes of people declaring him guilty of the crime of not doing a 1:1 copy of Kamina's Japanese voice.
- Another example would be with the three different renditions of the "Simon the Digger" speech from episode 11. People complain that the English and movie versions of the scene are worse than the Japanese original because the acting isn't the same. Thing is, both versions are actually better than the original, as both have vastly improved acting quality, and the movie version has improved animation.
- Another major offender among fans tends to be Team Gurren/Gurren-dan's motto. With the most popular fan-translation going "Go beyond the impossible and kick reason to the curb! That's the Gurren-dan way!" And the dub rephrasing it as "Kick logic out and do the impossible! That's the way Team Gurren rolls!" Several fans got up in arms about this, despite the fact that A) It conveys the point just as well as the preferred fansub text, and B) There were several different ways fansubbers translated the line, and some of Kamina's rather absurd lines tended to be difficult to translate.
- Gundam fandom underwent an epic shitstorm over the design of the Turn A Gundam. Designed by famed American tech designer Syd Mead, the Turn A has very little in common with the "classic" gundam style used by the rest of the franchise. To this day, If you try to start a discussion about Turn A in a Gundam community, there will be at least half a dozen people who will say they refuse to watch Turn A solely because the design is "ugly".
- The anime adaption of the game Valkyria Chronicles has recieved a lot of flak from fans of the game for some admittedly fair reasons (character exaggeration, key chraracters (Leon and Kreis) being omitted, mood whiplash, changes to key events (lupus and batomys anyone?), changes to some characters, an unwanted love triangle shoe horned in, and needless angst) and some not so reasonable (having the squads at 10 men each rather than 20, getting the armour wrong, not including certain recruitables in squad 7, putting some characters in the wrong 'classes' they were listed as in the game, and killing off some of said recruitables)
- Pokémon- The show that people complained about on a regular basis that 4Kids' localization was overdone, and then when it was turned over to PUSA, an utter outcry among the fans that the voice actors were replaced with cheap imitations?
- What does the script have to do with the voiceacting? Localizing a few names and jokes is the responsibility of the translators, replacing the voice cast is the responsibility of the suits who refused to acquire the contracts of the old cast.
- A number of people have thrown an absolute tizzy over Asuka's last name being changed from Sohryu to Shikinami for the Rebuild of Evangelion series, despite the fact that it continues the maritime Theme Naming.
- Probably done to tie her closer to Rei (sister ship) :). Before, her ship name tied her to Ritsuko and Misato, and was doubly awkward for being an aircraft carrier name (instead of a destroyer like Rei). Especially because the Kanji for aircraft carrier includes the one for "mother" (more or less it's "aircraft mother ship") And hey, suddenly she's no longer a "dragon lady" ("shiki" has some other appropriate conotations).
- Emphasis on the fact that the name was changed to tie Asuka in with Rei, not the other way around. Many fans found this displeasing, especially in context of what happened in the movie.
- Your contributor once posted an excerpt of an email interview about 4Kids' editing of Winx Club to an anime forum, basically saying that a) it's necessary to make cuts for them to be able to show it in the US, and b) it's stupid to automatically consider the unedited version better, as for every bad thing 4Kids does, there's something equally as bad in the original. One of the responses: "It's one thing to say 'Sorry, but if we don't cut it we can't broadcast it. Take your pick.' And a competely different thing to have the chutzpah to actually sell changes as improvements. I'm asking everybody to imagine for a few seconds a Japanese licensee of a Hollywood movie on a press conference going like 'Well, we had to make some cuts but one the other hand this allowed us to fix some stupid mistakes the director did, so in the end it all balances out.'" We're supposed to think that it would be bad. (Link
 )
- While the 4Kids job on One Piece was an overall Macekre, the complaints on the voices seemed to be just extra spice to the soup when you consider how wacky the voices were in the original Japanese. The few of us that actually liked Sanji's English for portraying him as the dorky tough guy he is have fought many arguments about this. And of course most of these complaints stuck even through the FUNimation dub.
- Admittedly, some of the fanbase's grievances with Studio DEEN's adaptation of Umineko No Naku Koro Ni are legitimate. But when you have people complaining that they used the wrong music in a scene, you know this trope has struck with a vengeance.
- Death Note fandom splits less than equally into fans who think the scene on the roof is the best thing ever, and those who don't know what the anime producers were thinking.
Film
- Star Wars. Best exemplified by the Robot Chicken parody of the I Am Your Father scene.
Darth Vader: No, I am your father!
Luke: That's not true! That's impossible!
Darth Vader: And Princess Leia is your sister!
Luke: (bewildered) No! That's....improbable!
Darth Vader: And the Empire will be defeated BY EWOKS!
Luke: (totally lost) That's...very unlikely.
Darth Vader: And as a child, I built C-3PO!
Luke: (By now completely stoic): .....Huh.
(Later, with Vader sipping coffee and Luke smoking a cigarette)
Darth Vader: (matter-of-factly) And the Force? Oh, thats just microscopic bacteria in your bloodstream, calld midichlorians.
Luke: (getting up, bored and exasperated) Look, if you're not gonna take this seriously, I'm out. (exits)
- The X-Men movie, based on possibly the most sprawling, confusing and self-contradictory comic book franchise in all the land, had an infinite number of complaints leveled at it, from "Wolverine's like six inches too tall!" to "Magneto's too old!" to "Rogue's too young!" to "Since when is Jean Grey a doctor?!" to "How come Storm didn't freak out when she was in that elevator shaft, she's supposed to be claustrophobic!" to...well, let's stop while we're still young. Subsequent films in the series have just made things worse.
- Storm actually did freak out in the elevator shaft. That's her Big Scene, when she blasts her way free with lightning, and flies for the first time in the film, before delivering the worst line in the movie. But even so, Storm in the comic doesn't have claustrophobic freakouts on the regular either. She struggles with it depending on how severe the confinement is.
- One of the most ridiculous examples of this is fans complaining about Juggernaut being a mutant. Nevermind his relationship with Xavier being removed. Nevermind that his character was poorly used. How he got his powers is more important...even if those powers came from the magical, cursed artifact of a heathen God in the comics. They're wondering why the filmmakers didn't stuff a subplot like that into a movie canon that a) has never mentioned magic or any kind of superhuman powers other than mutation and b) is already staggering under the weight of Loads And Loads Of Characters?
- Not to mention that those people seem to have conveniently forgotten that the specific version of Juggernaut used in the movie is a mutant in the comics.
- Don't even get fans started on the Rogue/Iceman relationship with Gambit nowhere in sight.
- This phenomenon has caused many Harry Potter fans to have the exact opposite reaction to the film adaptations as many critics do. While film critics generally agree that the films got better from Prisoner of Azkaban (largely because of Dave McKean's art direction), when they stopped being obsessively faithful to every single scene and line of dialogue in the books, a lot of fans think that Christopher Columbus was doing a bang-up job and that ever since then it's been garbage, with Azkaban the worst offender ("They left out the Fidelius Charm! They left out the Marauders' backstory! Harry gets the Firebolt at the end! Nyaaaargh!!!"). Never mind that, with the length of the books spiraling out of control, something had to be cut. Even if the removed stuff gets non-readers lost.
- Or not, the last book has been split into two films. About damn time.
- There were fans who complained about the colour of Hermione's dress in Goblet of Fire. Is nothing too trivial for the Fan Dumb?
- Some were annoyed at what they saw as an attempt to pigeonhole Hermione into the Color Coded For Your Convenience token girl role, which is sort of understandable (although I doubt the costumers meant it that way; they probably just thought Emma Watson looked good in pink).
- And that Emma Watson's Hermoine was becoming attractive far too early (the second movie) when in the books it isn't a plot point until the fourth, nevermind how annoying it would be for the filmmakers to try and keep a young actress "ugly" through makeup just to ebb the fans.
- The film versions of The Lord Of The Rings have suffered from their fair share of this, notably with the removal of the last part of The Return of the King and the complete removal of Tom Bombadil (walking Deus Ex Machina, quintessential Wacky Wayside Tribe and unplayably strange person that he is) from the story.
- Not to mention Ghan-buri-Ghan and his Wacky Wayside Tribe.
- The Scouring of the Shire is something best not brought up in discussion with any fan. Also, a lot of fans will go off on a tirade if you bring up Arwen or Faramir. Or the Elves at Helm's Deep. Or...yeah.
- At first a lot of fans were furious that they would not even try to hide Dernhelm's true identity, and the battle against Angmar does lose a whole lot when Dernhelm's identity is known. But it wasn't long before the change was accepted and even seen as necessary. In the book you can hide Dernhelm's true identity (even if it does kind of give Merry the Idiot Ball) but on film it would have been very easy to tell that Dernhelm was actually Éowyn, and most fans agree that it would just have been ridiculous to expect no one to notice. In exchange for Dernhelm's identity being kept a secret, the film makers fleshed out the bond between Merry and Éowyn and depicted their friendship in a way that's true to the books, without having to add it as a separate subplot after the siege of Minas Tirith.
- One hardcore fan of the books wrote an in-depth article on her website complaining about the boats Aragorn stole from the Black Corsairs of Umbar to transport his zombie horde. The complaint was that the ships should have looked like Byzantine galleys and not Chinese junks, and that not only was the film inaccurate in this regard but wilfully irresponsible because giving the Black Corsairs an Asian theme played into the hands of Italian neo-fascists who use the Lord of the Rings as inspiration. Mmmkay...
- Foxtrot responded to this trend with a fictional conversation between two main characters and Peter Jackson, in which he said that a faithful adaptation would be 40 hours long "and no one wants that, right?" One character's response, some time later: "Figures our mouths would be too full of drool to answer."
- Batman Begins is commonly agreed to be the second best Batman film adaptation so far, but some die-hard fans are very, very angry that Scarecrow ran Arkham Asylum instead of teaching psychiatry, while others just accepted the Rule Of Scary. Others disparage the new tank-like appearance of the Batmobile... despite the fact that it's Batman Begins and it's a prototype vehicle he hasn't had any time to modify into something more "battish". And that he loses it in the sequel and shows he's quite adept with high-performance sports cars, too....
- Likewise, many hardcore fans decry Burton's decision to have the Joker be the murderer of Bruce's parents in the 1989 film adaptation. More reasonably when the sequel rolled around, many fans were outraged at the Penguin's change from an eccentric professional criminal that was only slightly penguin-like in appearance (The origin of his nickname? He wears a penguin tuxedo) to a deformed subhuman that ate raw fish, had flippers, spewed black blood, and otherwise looked exactly like Dr. Caligari.
- And don't get anyone started on Batman being a cold-blooded killer in the 1989 and 1992 movies (he dispatches criminals and blows up buildings and such with reckless abandon). Although the early Bat-Man did kill, with a gun. Maybe this trope applies to the standard non-killing Batman.
- And then there were some real geniuses who complained when the murderer of Bruce's parents wasn't the Joker in Batman Begins.
- There were also the changes to the character of Ra's al Ghul and the total omission of his daughter Talia. Ra's convoluted (to say the least) backstory would have been very hard to fit into the movie, of course.
- On a similar note, certain fansites had some ongoing - and utterly hilarious - flame wars about whether The Dark Knight was going to suck... based on the fact that the Joker's appearance is from make-up rather than being "permawhite" due to falling into a vat of chemicals.
- Also alot of people thought that Heath Ledger could never play a decent joker. Well...he could.
- Why-Em-Em-Vee.
- It's amazing to see how much criticism the Watchmen movie received before its release. It seems people can't even wait to see it to start complaining...
- This is, of course, because the movie is based on an Alan Moore comic book, which have traditionally been subject to Adaptation Decay (or Distillation, depending on your viewpoint). Moore himself is quite vocal about how much he thinks the previous movies based on his works suck, which doesn't help matters. Furthermore, Watchmen especially has been long considered a work that any adaptation would struggle with effectively bringing to the screen whilst remaining faithful to the source material. However, this doesn't prevent the complaining from being very premature.
- Moore has said that even though he's seen one script (the David Hayter one) and can't imagine a better film adaptation, Watchmen is a graphic novel, not a film, and so something will be lost in the translation no matter how good it is, which is perhaps the ultimate example of the They Changed It Now It Sucks mindset.
- An interview with the director had him say something to the effect of 'I would think the fans would be more grateful to know that the storyline and moral ambiguity was kept intact then the fact that there is a giant squid at the end.' Of course, the replies for the remark had the fans arguing back and forth on if the squid or the story was important.
- Like the Genshiken example above, this movie also appears to have experienced something of a "They Didn't Change It Enough So It Sucks" reaction from several critics, who have argued that the fact that the movie largely sticks very closely to the original work (to the extent that many scenes are taken and film as if they were straight from the book come to life) means that the movie doesn't have enough space to develop as a work in its own right, as opposed to a faithful adaptation.
- What's this? No more giant flying space squid? An ending that nicely wraps up all of the plot points in a believable manner? Unthinkable! People will bitch and moan about how using Manhattan's powers in place of alien squids does not work as well because the people of Earth would be uniting against Manhattan, not for peace. So what, did the squids have nothing at all to do with the people of Earth uniting in the comic book? Oh, I'm sorry, graphic novel. 'Die hard' fans of the Watchmen comic seem to jump at the chance to berate the film, for very little reason, and don't understand that what works in a comic won't really work in a film...
- What most people really hated was the cutting of almost every recurring character. Watchmen lost a lot of depth when it was translated into a 2 hour movie.
- Thankfully, the Directors cut adds much more of the minor recurring characters
- The new Dragonball movie has already had fans starting to complain about the fact that Goku now goes to school, even though it's a minor plot point. Then the animal characters were taken out, which is a bit more understandable, although still pretty minor. (It makes you wonder if they'd have been able to make them believable though.) And of course far too many were complaining that Emperor Pilaf wasn't the villain because "he is the first Big Bad."
- People were in an uproar when the first brief images of Piccolo showed him to be a pale white. (Note that these early images did not give a very close look of his face.) Later images showed him to be a pale green, symbolic of how long it had been since he saw sunlight. When trailers appeared, it seemed like they did some color correction to make him more green, possibly to placate the fans.
- Lots of people have also been complaining about the hair. Goku doesn't have his distinctive hairstyle, Bulma's hair only has a blue streak, and Roshi actually has hair and no beard. Apparently the filmmakers considered making both Roshi bald and Bulma with bright blue hair, but why get Chow Yun Fat in a major role and have him unrecognizable and Bulma's hair looked just as goofy as Goku's original hair style.
- Now that the movie is out, it is safe to say that this trope has been averted. It doesn't suck because they changed it, it sucks because it is a bad movie. unless you like that sort of thing.
- To be fair, Dragon Ball Evolution was hated by almost everyone after it actually came out. That's what you get for trying to adapt a beloved anime/manga into a liveaction movie.
- I'm sure you meant to say 'That's what you get for trying to adapt a beloved anime/manga into a liveaction movie, badly.'
- Way before the 2009 Star Trek film came out, a segment of fans were already frothing at the mouth that the producers aren't exactly re-creating the crappy cardboard sets and cheesy 60's costumes of the original series (and I'm saying this as a Trekkie). Although it could also be down to the recasting of the original characters, even though the cast are in their seventies and DeForest Kelley and James Doohan are dead, not to mention Kirk was trapped in the Nexus for decades in Star Trek Generations, even before his bridge dropping.
- Most of the criticism of the Beowulf movie was based on this. The DVD includes an interview with Neil Gaiman explaining why he made these alterations, and they're pretty decent reasons.
- The Resident Evil movie series. Never mind that it's not meant to take place in the same world as the games, or that it might actually be GOOD in its own right, as soon as they added
a character one of the most blatant examples of a Mary Sue ever and a backstory for Nemesis, people wanted to kill ANYONE involved in this movie for taking a new story and plastering the Resident Evil name on it.
- Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Since the period of the film shifted from the 30s to the 50s, the villains (Nazis > Communists) and film influence (old Republic Film Serials > science fiction) changed, and some fans weren't happy.
- The upcoming remake of The Warriors has fans in an uproar, even though almost no details about the film have been released. It's worth noting that the original movie was an adaptation of a novel, and not a particularly faithful one at that.
- Wanted may or may not be this trope. The original comic of the story presents all the characters as former super-villains who finally joined forces, kill all the superheroes, made humanity forget about them and rule the world from behind the scenes. The film adaption is about a league of assassins killing people who could possibly become the next Hitler.
- Let's be fair: there's no way in hell that the comic would ever have gotten made into a movie it it stayed true to the comic.
- The only thing it has to do with the comic is the names and title. Literally nothing else is the same.
- The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy film adaptation was based on a new script written by Douglas Adams before his death, as opposed to direct adaptation of the original text. As a result of this, the film contained many differences in plot from the original radio/book/TV stories (each of which also had rewrites between adaptations; one joke in the fandom goes that there is no canon, only suggestions), which annoyed some long-time fans of the series.
- Even though the movie was written by Adams himself, which actually makes it Word of God, a God whose last message to creation was "Sorry for the inconvenience"...
- Douglas Adams has also stated that there is no definitive canon for his Hitchhiker's Guide series. The books are significantly different than the original radio shows, and the Douglas Adams overseen video game is different as well. Adams claimed that he liked to see how it grows and evolves as it changes medium.
- In-universe example is poet Lallafa, whose work was re-discovered long after his death and was subsequently, through time travel, brought to future. This resulted in him not being actually able to write the poems, which is why he was sent back to past to copy them so they could be discovered. Some argue that this makes his poems worse, while other argue they're the same.
- The Shining is quite different from the book, and gets a lot of Stephen King fans saying how much it sucks. Outside of them, it's considered one of the best horror movies ever made.
- I think you mean "among Kubrick fans it's considered one of the best horror movies ever made." Whether you prefer the King or Kubrick version, the Kubrick ending was straight lame.
- (*ahem*) Yeah, I don't think that's the entire fanbase.
- To a lesser extent, ditto for Carrie.
- Which is weird in Carrie's case, since even King himself liked some of the changes the film made and had stated that he wish he had thought of them
- And why is there any reference to Stephen King in the Lawnmower Man movie?
- The Star Wars Expanded Universe fandom suffers from this every time someone dies, even when a single character that wasn't even in the original movies was killed off. In recent years, the universe has dipped more into Anyone Can Die territory, leading to this happening frequently.
- The special editions, anyone? Anyone?! Not to mention all the prequel retcons... oh, Anakin wasn't a great guy that tragically fell - actually he was a Jerk Ass from the start. Also he's Jesus or something.
- The US DVD and Blu-Ray releases of Let The Right One In use a drastically different subtitle translation than the theatrical release, which lacks many of the subtleties from the original version's lines, removes most of the dry humor from the script, leaves out entire sentences, and flat-out mistranslates several lines (in one case, a character's name is called out, but it's subtitled as "I'm trapped"). To add insult to injury, they're not dubtitles; the dub is, ironically enough, derived from the original theatrical subs.
- Many Lion King fans disliked the fact that they put "The Morning Report" a song that isn't even 2 minutes long, into the Special Edition dvd. Oddly, many like the musical version, and there is an option to choose between the "Special Edition" version and "Original" version on the dvd.
- Fans of GI Joe are already complaining about the new movie and leaked plot details, going as far as to say that statements that the story is based on the comics (even coming from the comic writer Larry Hama himself) are out and out lies because: Ripcord is Black which is incompatible with stories Rip Cord had in the comics, Not everyone on the team is American, Baroness had a relationship with Duke and Cobra Commander wasn't a used car salesman but rather a former soldier and a scientist who works for Destro in the first movie. They will ignore the numerous plot elements that come from the comics story, and decry "it's not based on it at all."
- One review actually began with the line "If it doesn't feature the line "Cobra, retreat!" then it isn't a GI Joe movie." Naturally, the phrase "real fan" showed up within two paragraphs...
- The Silent Hill movie. Changing the main character was, among other things, met with such a reaction by the fans.
- Let alone changing the plot.
- The new Sherlock Holmes film directed by Guy Ritchie has been criticized for making an action film out of the source material. This is despite the fact that there are a number of action sequences in the Sherlock Holmes adventures. Holmes is canonically a martial artist, fencer, etc. and Watson is an army veteran.
- Frickin' third-degree sunburn. Many other things different than that, including Erik's complete backstory.
- The trailers for The Lightning Thief are out, and already the complaints are flying, particularly about Annabeth's hair being brown and, most of all, Grover being black. Hilariously, the complainers of the latter claims they're not racist, but the fact that the actor's race bugs them suggest otherwise. Just as you think people couldn't get any dumber, there's a couple of people complaining about Percy being in an elevator - which was in the book. Cue giant holes in the walls. And note that this movie is being directed by Chris Columbus, who made the two most faithful films of the Harry Potter franchise.
- To address the "racism" issue (from the perspective of someone who knows nothing about Percy Jackson): It doesn't bug them to have a black performer in the movie, what bugs them is that they've grown to know the character as (I assume) white, and when something as fundamental as their race is changed, it feels as though they've replaced the character they love with someone different, unrelated, an imposter. I know how it feels; as a huge fan of The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy, whenever I watch the movie, I watch the adventures of Arthur Dent and Mos Def, because the pasty-skinned, redheaded fellow supposedly from Guildford that I associate with the name "Ford Prefect" is nowhere in sight.
- True, but here's the thing; the books never say what race Grover is.
- It was mostly spurred on by all those pictures released of Grover being white...Plus, Annabeth's blonde hair was emphasized so many times it's awkward not to think of it as brown all of a sudden...
- To be fair, more of the anger against the movies is not against those two but more against the fact that Percy's age was redirected to 16 instead of 12 because it's so much cooler to have an older teenager (plus it also ruins the point of the turn-16 prophecy as well as implies the fact that five books will be condensed into one movie).
- To be expected from The Last Airbender, being based on a series that's more popular than the ability to breathe. Ignoring the claims of racism, many of the other complaints are getting ridiculous. It seems like with every new picture that's released, there is a very vocal retribution for such minor things as the color of Zuko's clothing, Katara's pulled-back loopies, Aang's grey colored arrow, Sokka not being a complete goofball (despite the series eventually portraying him as serious anyway), the severity of Zuko's scar, and the size of Iroh's belly. With more to look forward to when the Theatrical Trailer is released.
Live Action TV
- This happened to Doctor Who as the new series was in production. Fans found lots of things to complain about, one of the most infamous being the enlarged TARDIS windows. The series itself eventually made fun of this point, with a character commenting that the TARDIS can't be a real police box, because "the windows are too big".
- It happened all the time with the old series, too — remember, this is a series that's had nine complete turnovers in the regular cast and over a dozen different showrunners with wildly varying approaches. Years before the new series debuted, there was a running joke on one of the online discussion groups that the series was Ruined Forever when they added the time-travelling alien to a perfectly good show about a policeman walking through the fog and hearing a strange noise.
- A decent number of fans are now complaining about all the changes happening for the coming 2010 season. New Doctor, new companion, new TARDIS exterior AND interior, new sonic screwdriver, new showrunners. Apparently, despite the show going through constant change practically every other season
since 2005, all of this together is just too much, and the show is ruined.
- Knight Rider fans have a bad habit of becoming homicidally enraged at any changes from the original source material in the various Revival attempts of the series, even such changes as would be necessary to compensate for the fact that (a) it's no longer 1982 and (b) the Pontiac Trans Am has been out of production for several years. A new revival premiered in February, 2008, and, months before, fans have already taken note of several dozen reasons it is sure to suck. Of course, it did eventually turn out to suck anyway, but that doesn't make it right.
- Similarly, the 2003 "re-imagining" of Battlestar Galactica, generally considered excellent Adaptation Distillation and Darker And Edgier done right, was met with a lot of backlash by fans of the 1978 original, and even by one cast member, Dirk Benedict, who wrote a rant on how changing his Loveable Rogue character Starbuck into a woman (and thus making the character something other than Han Solo) had somehow destroyed the character and ruined the show forever.
- He's just sore Richard Hatch got offered a part and took it
- The Dresden Files made a lot of (author approved) changes when it made it to TV. Interestingly, it was the little changes that got lambasted the most. Harry Dresden no longer wore a trenchcoat (they didn't want him looking like an Angel ripoff) and didn't drive the same car (while it might look good in text a 6+ foot man cannot drive a compact. It just doesn't work).
- AND they changed his staff to a hockey stick to try and "hide" the fact that he's a wizard (kind of strange for someone who advertises in the yellow pages). At that point it's not a cosmetic change, it's a completely different character with the same name.
- Interestingly, the people who complained about the car change the most were invariably the people who had lampshaded that difficulty the most in bookverse fanfiction.
- Some of the complaints were downright silly, notably the brunette actress who played Murphy; she'd actually read the books before the audition, which made her more familiar with the series than the directors' first choice for Murphy.
- Unfortunately, this has also caused some bookfans to be prejudiced against the graphic novels, even though Jim Butcher wrote the script for one and was heavily consulted on the script for their adaptation of Storm Front
- Stargate Atlantis is currently experiencing a fandom that is divided between froth-at-the-mouth fans who enjoy the show and froth-at-the-mouth ex-fans that decry all of the advances made in Season Four. Stargate forums aren't happy places to be anymore...
- The fanbase currently has people who like or simply don't mind the new direction Stargate Universe is taking. Then the people who, at seemingly every new mention of Universe, are ready with "This isn't the stargate i grew to love!" or "I want Atlantis back!" Of course there's also 'OH GOD! That's it! I'm not watching it." But, of course, they will. Because while it's not necessary to watch a show to complain about it, it does help. This isn't the same show as SG-1 or Atlantis, nor it is supposed to be, but there are people who will hate it for not being SG-1 or Atlantis.
- Speaking of Stargate, the ninth season of Stargate SG-1 got a lot of flak at the beginning for even continuing on after the Goa'uld were defeated at the end of the previous season, and coming up with a new main villain — not to mention O'Neill leaving the show and Mitchell joining as the new leader of SG-1. Carter being temporarily absent from the show for the first five episodes didn't help matters either. The changes were so extensive that the Powers That Be had actually considered changing the show's title to "Stargate Command" and treating season 9 as the first season of a new show — it's possible that if they'd done that, the changes might have actually been better received.
- Anything from Super Sentai ported to Power Rangers that isn't 100% true to source is grounds for gasping and fist-shaking. Admittedly, some of it is worthy of decrying, but...getting in a tussle because the heroes don't say "Henshin"? Or that they don't have the same morphers? Check out Kamen Rider Dragon Knight, and you'll have numerous people hating it because it's not Japanese.
- Same vein as Kamen Rider, Kamen Rider Hibiki was Ruined FOREVER in the eyes of execs due to the fact it had a FEMALE rider on TV (Femme was officially the first female rider, but Shuki was the first to appear on TV), something that is considered "taboo" with Kamen Rider (most females who had to transform had to rely on an anybody can use Transformation Trinket or is a rubber monster). Needless to say, the exec associated the failure of the later season of Hibiki with a female rider being one of them.
- Speaking of Power Rangers, they just started to re-air the first one. Of course, they changed it. Not the music.
- The Discworld TV adaptions. Many fans loved them, but in a classic example of Unpleasable Fanbase, there were some criticisms that Teatime should have been more obviously insane and less obviously insane in the same discussion. But Hogfather got off lightly compared to Colour of Magic, where, in addition to Rincewind being "too old", the creators committed the ultimate sin of getting rid of the aeroplane scene (a totally unnecessary sequence in which most of the comedy occurs inside Rincewind's head in any case). The fact that Terry Pratchett had approved these changes was claimed as evidence he doesn't understand his own books.
- Legend Of The Seeker is already getting this from some fans who object to, among many other things: changes to Richard's relationship with Zedd, moving Richard's father's death to after he meets Kahlan, and changing the main villain's hair color.
- MST3K was accused of this with every cast change, especially when Joel left.
- One story told in their Amazing Colossal Episode Guide was about a viewer who sent in a yards-long, computer-printed banner reading "I HATE TOM SERVO'S NEW VOICE," after Josh Weinstein left and Kevin Murphy took over Tom's controls in the second season. The crew hung the banner up in their offices, amused more than anything at the idea that somebody went to the trouble and expense of producing this massive missive instead of just sending a letter. Who knew that in these days, ventriloquy could be such Serious Business?
- Because of copyright issues, Iron Chef had to change the music. Some people now refuse to watch the show because 'it's not the same without the Backdraft music'.
- CBS Evening News post-Walter Cronkite, particularly as Dan Rather's tenure coincided with increasing ratings declines.
- Star Trek with each new project.
- Star Trek The Next Generation dared to have new characters, because the universe wasn't big enough for a captain not named Kirk.
- Star Trek Deep Space Nine is about staying in one place? Oh... it relied on its characters instead of the weekly Negative Space Wedgie.
- Star Trek Voyager ...admittedly, the premise of Voyager was well received. The complaints about the show are internal to its writing and not to the franchise as a whole.
- Star Trek Enterprise got this in regards to fanon. Among this was somehow believing Spock was the typical Vulcan personality despite him, his father Sarek and Tuvok of Voyager being about the only noble (and well acted) Vulcans in the franchise. Otherwise most other Vulcans encountered had all of the arrogance and nothing to back it up.
- And don't forget some fans that were angry that it contradicted the "fact" that Spock was the first Vulcan in Starfleet. Since obviously no Vulcan joined Starfleet between the founding of the Federation to Spock, and the all-Vulcan ship crew from TOS must have all joined after Spock. Yes.
- Pick a Game Show. Any Game Show. Chances are that any set revamps, rule changes, and new hosts (whether it's justified or not) will be hated by a lot of the fans.
- When Degrassi The Next Generation changes seasons, they change the opening credits theme. No matter how they change the opening credits Fans decree its wrong. When for the most part the themes aren't that separated from one another (same words, different singers/melody). With the exception of two seasons that completely draw away from the standard opening set-up, they are mostly the same but each season starts with a fan outcry to begin World War 3 over it.
Music
- When Nightwish lead vocalist, Tarja Turunen, left the group, she was replaced by Anette Olzon. While the band remains very successful, their more vocal fans are insisting that that Anette sucks and that Nightwish should get Tarja back.
- The problem here is that they didn't replace a singer with another one with more or less the same voice and singing style; Anette's voice is entirely different than Tarja, and this has required the band to change their own style to adapt. That's what has many fans in arms.
- Bob Dylan: Acoustic to Electric with Bringin' it All Back Home. As The Other Wiki will tell you, this was Serious Business.
- His 1979 conversion to Christianity and the resulting Slow Train Coming album led to a similar backlash.
- Bone Thugs N Harmony: Just about every new release?
- David Bowie: Let's Dance
- Electric Light Orchestra: Discovery
- Jewel, many times
- Kanye West: 808's And Heartbreaks
- Linkin Park: Minutes To Midnight
- Radiohead: Kid A and Amnesiac
- The Decemberists: The Crane Wife then again on Hazards of Love
- Tori Amos: her last four albums
- Village People The Renaissance Album
- Napalm Death: Harmony Corruption onwards, when they started to take on death metal influences (and later industrial and black metal).
- Some people don't like live recordings, because they feel that it "ruins" the songs that they love so much. On the flip side, though, people who do like live recordings generally don't want them to sound too much like the studio versions.
- Neil Young: Trans, to the point that Geffen sued Neil Young for not sounding like Neil Young.
- Queen's 1979-1982 period comes to mind. Freddie Mercury grew a moustache, the band released a disco single ("Another One Bites The Dust") followed by an even more disco-influenced album (Hot Space), incorporated synthesizers into the band after a "No Synths!" tradition in the studio, and in many ways alienated their hard rock fanbase, especially in America. Queen stopped touring in North America after 1982 as a result, and would not have a major hit in America again until "Bohemian Rhapsody" was rereleased and used in the movie, Wayne's World in 1992 after Freddie's death.
- It's important to note that the band was never against synthesisers, they just didn't need to use them because they could make their sound effects themselves and wanted to advertise that fact.
- They also remained huge in the rest of the world throughout the eighties and up to Freddy's death. The backlash was entirely in the US. In the rest of the world "Another One Bites the Dust" is not generally classified as Disco in the rest of he world either.
- Liz Phair: Pretty much every post-Exile in Guyville album, but 2003's blatantly, unapologetically commercial Liz Phair especially alienated her established fanbase.
- Metallica's self-titled album was a shift from thrash metal to a style reminiscent of more traditional heavy metal with a bit of hard rock influence. Cue the bitching.
- Cradle of Filth, when they switched over from black metal to... some other kind of metal.
- Cryptopsy: The Unspoken King
- The Mountain Goats post-Tallahassee, according to some.
- Even The Beatles came in for this; their change of style and approach in their later albums (particularly Sgt. Pepper onwards) gradually isolated the fans of their earlier, more traditional 'pop love-ballads' approach.
- Y'know what? Let's just say most artists on this page and call it a day.
Tabletop Games
- Among the Magic: The Gathering changes this has been applied to: The Sixth Edition rules changes, the Eighth Edition card face changes, removing Armageddon from the base set, making counterspells more expensive, moving from "Xth Edition" to "Magic 20XX", the Great Creature Type Update, the creation of Type 2, the name change from Type 2 to Standard... and so on.
- Among more legitimate complaints, this comes up a lot when Dungeons And Dragons editions are discussed. The base is not so much broken as it is shattered into a billion tiny splinters. Every single edition changed it and it sucked every single time.
- When people on the Privateer Press forums found out that one of the newest units for Warmachine was going to be plastic instead of metal, reactions were...mixed. Many people welcomed the change but a particularly vocal minority condemned it for straying from the "Full Metal Fantasy" aesthetic that the company had cultivated up to that point, among other things.
- It's either something to do with a feel of solidity, or the vocal minority use their Warmachine figures as sling ammunition and don't want to have to correct their aim.
- While the World Of Darkness/Storyteller System was never considered a very good simulationist system, the nWoD/WoD 2.0 seems to be simplistic beyond description: resisted rolls as we knew them are gone, there is only one difficulty (8), botches only occur under rare circumstances and aren't factored with decent skill level, weapons don't differentiate between accuracy and damage etc.
- Simplicity can be a good thing - look at the poster child for excessive complexity, FATAL.
- World Of Darkness fans are also notoriously partisan about particular editions of their favourite franchises, not to mention the fights between fans of old WoD games and fans of the setting-reboot versions.
- Shadowrun, Fourth Edition was announced. And there was much rejoicing. Then the fans found out that the mechanics that have been in place for the last 20 years would be dumped for a somewhat simpler, nWoD-like system (though not quite as forgiving as the system described above). Cue half the fanbase going into instant-fury mode, which developed into major war between the pro-SR4 fans and the anti-SR4 fans long before the game was even released. Things have since calmed down, but in some SR forums comparison between #4 and the other editions is tightly regulated, if not outright "discouraged".
- Earthdawn's Second Edition had this happen to it as well; in principle the changes to the system were instituted to fix the various broken things in the first release - ED players were subsequently upset that the update broke off backwards compatibility with said First Edition. "Show me the Lightbringers!"
- The new edition of Hero System (aka Champions) has caused a fair bit of brain meltdown in its longtime fanbase, who have declared it not only sucky but Ruined Forever, and that all of their old stuff has been rendered completely unusable and there's absolutely no chance for it to interact with older versions. The only actual differences are the removal of an almost completely unused stat ("comeliness") and a single power type that almost nobody used anyway.
Theater
- The ancient Roman playwright Terence adapted six Greek plays. All but the first contain "prologues" in which the playwright rants at the audience about criticisms of the previous adaptation. Apparently, the Romans accused him of "contaminating" the original plays by changing plot elements or tones, and at one point an audience even walked out after it became clear he had combined two similar but separate Greek plays into one adaptation.
- Stephen Sondheim just loves to tinker with his musicals even after their initial productions have finished previewing, resulting in different audiences seeing different versions of each show. None of these changes are supported by all the fans, but the most controversial is the addition of "Something Just Broke" to Assassins. Depending on who you listen to, it's either the master stroke that pulls the whole thing together, or a disastrous break in the dramatic arc that should never have been added and should be erased from existence.
- Even more controversial were the changes made to the 2002 revival of Into The Woods. Assassins, at least, has always divided both fans and audiences and has widely been regarded as a problem show; Into The Woods, on the other hand, is one of Sondheim's most successful, popular and beloved works as a composer-lyricist. The decision, then, to reintroduce a totally unnecessary (and not very interesting) sub-plot about the Three Little Pigs, as well as replace several existent and already excellent lyrics with new (and, according to some tastes, inferior) ones, seems baffling.
- Sticking with Sondheim, John Doyle's recent actor-musician revival of Sweeney Todd has enjoyed huge success and popularity with fans and critics alike, but its minimalist continues to rub some fans the wrong way. Some say that the score suffers in reduction from a full orchestra and ensemble choir to just eight actor-musicians; others found that Doyle's alienating production style prevented them from identifying with the characters.
- There's also the matter of the London version of Follies, which made several baffling changes. Ben's solo "The Road You Didn't Take" was cut. "Live, Laugh, Love," was replaced with "Make the Most of Your Music" (a song which changes Ben's part from baritone to tenor). The lyrics to "In Buddy's Eyes" were altered.
Video Games
Webcomics
- This seems to be the mentality of quite a few people about when the webcomic Megatokyo underwent Cerebus Syndrome. The comic basically switched its fanbase from "people who know about shoujo manga" to "people who like shoujo manga and/or character-based plots", so while the quality is still good and the update problem has arguably improved, it did cut a few people out of its main circle. And since these people are those who don't like things...well...
- The character of Fanboy in the Magic The Gathering webcomic UG Madness plays out this trope a lot, mimicing the Unpleasable Fanbase of the game, as seen here. The actual author of the comic, though, is more reasonable, as show in strips such as this.
- This mindset is satirized in this page of Shortpacked.
- There was quite a bit of backlash when Andrew Hussie of MS Paint Adventures began his new series Homestuck, with many people complaining that it was too slow-paced and not as funny as the recently-completed Problem Sleuth. Then the Wham Episode hit, and most of the vocal critics were shut up for a while.
- Lampshaded by this◊ Married To The Sea comic.
Web Original
- Often invoked by fans of evolving items on the avatar and forum site Gaia Online - despite the fact that the entire point of the EIs is that they undergo dramatic changes every few weeks.
- When the staff of the Japanese site Poupeegirl announced that they'd be replacing ribbon sales with the creation of a real-money "jewel" currency, the Live Journal community and Japanese forums exploded with outrage, fearing the jewel-only items would be the only special items available and the ribbon items would all be hideous things. The jewels were finally launched, and aside from a "jewel floor", nothing was really all that changed, since they could be exchanged for ribbons at a much better rate than bought ribbons. That didn't stop users from complaining even after the change simply on account of Poupee charging users for currency they'd essentially been paying for before the switch.
- Littlekuriboh used some home-made animations for the season 2 finale in Yu Gi Oh The Abridged Series. Of course, that meant ruining the spirit of the series, even if the episode still used around 6 minutes worth of clips from the original anime, and the animation was actually good. Plus he got some other (good) abridgers to voice a few characters, instead of keeping them all for himself. Sorry, but the series is Ruined FOREVER, kids.
- Lampshaded by "Yahtzee" Croshaw when the introduction of an original theme tune and new intro sequence for Zero Punctuation created predictable backlash; the weekly update to his website was titled "You Changed It Now It Sucks".
- In fact, every week, the video thread is evenly divided between "best one evar!!!!!!11" and this complaint.
Western Animation
- Any of the Robo Cop cartoons will do. Hell the second one gets more flak because Murphy simply has more gadgets, and he gets called "go go gadget cop".
- That nickname might have less to do with just the gadgets and more to do with one of the most commonly used gadgets was extendo-arms, and that the series liked to find excuses to turn him into an incompetent recipient of goofy slapstick. Let's face it, the cartoons are various levels of Adaptation Decay.
- Transformers has gotten this pretty much since Beast Wars. Despite the fact that the fandom itself has its own self-deprecating phrase for the trope: "TRUKK NOT MUNKY", regarding the complaints over Optimus Primal being a gorilla, which isn't actually a monkey at all. The more general term is "GEEWUN".
- We'll never know how the fans' heads exploded when they first saw the character designs for Transformers Animated, or when they found out it would have human villains, with the Decepticons being a recurring threat and not the only one, or the fact that Optimus Prime would be voiced by David Kaye (who before has primarily voiced Megatron), or that Optimus was a firetruck (until they realized he was technically a semi-truck outfitted as a firetruck. Then some were upset that he didn't have smoke stacks...), and let's not forget about Optimus not being the leader of all the Autobots. There are even people going berserk that the new Soundwave doesn't sound exactly like the old one (Frank Welker is expensive nowadays, one presumes). Transformers Animated, however, has managed to convert many of those same naysayers through much story, design, and casting Shout Outs that show that the writers had indeed Shown Their Work. Even so, some Fan Dumb just won't quit.
- In the live-action movie, many were pissed that Optimus was a Peterbilt instead of a regular trailer (which was done to prevent large amounts of mass-changing between vehicle and robot modes). Not only that, but Bumblebee was a Camaro and not the original VW beetle, Megatron was a jet, not a Really Big Gun...
- Though most of the "change" causing absolute fury in Transformers Fan Dumb is the prominence of humans in the story... y'know, humans, the dominant life form on the planet the story is taking place on? These fans consider it a change that the humans weren't shown briefly in the background occasionally as a catalyst for the story, while the camera stayed firmly on robots the entire time; in spite of the fact that many, many episodes of the original cartoon were pretty human-centric (Spike, Chip Chase, Carly, others). So, y'know, basically they were pissed that the movie wasn't Beast Wars. "Trukk not munky" indeed.
- I don't think there's anything Transformers after the original that DIDN'T get this!
- Given that the entire series is about SHAPE-CHANGING ROBOTS (y'know, Robots In Disguise?), Transformers is quite possibly the most ironic and idiotic example of this trope ever. Hell, the very backstory of them coming to Earth even involves them changing from a Cybertronian body◊, to an Earth body◊.
- The recent episode of The Simpsons episode "That 90's Show" is hated by many fans entirely because it was a an alternate backstory for Homer and Marge. This despite the fact that the show has never had anything even resembling continuity and has always operated on a sliding time-scale. What's even more ridiculous is that a lot of professional reviewers were actually getting away with massive amounts of Fan Dumb, like Robert Canning who literally spent four-fifth of the review bitching about this instead of the actual content of the episode, gave it a 3/10, and called it "an abomination". Simpsons' "continuity" is Serious Business.
- Another thing is that this is a massive exaggeration of the effect, claiming that it RetConned away every past event established to have happened. If you accept that the show has a sliding timeline (which it very obviously does), the only thing this changes is that Marge went to college for a short time and Homer formed a band between them graduating and Marge getting pregnant. So it's more along the lines of :"They made their Expansion Pack Past and use of Comic Book Time come with somewhat more obvious Ret Cons and they've thus thrown out all other previously established past events, now it suck".
- The seasons when Mike Scully was show-runner (9-12) are often denounced as a Dork Age for simply being weirder then the most. This also leads some fans to make the ridiculous claim other episodes were "realistic" instead of just not as strange.
- As if people aren't already displeased with the current state of the show, in season 20 the intro was permanently changed for the first time ever. It was remade to go along with the show's widescreen HD makeover. The completely newly animated sequence features various minor characters and gags that weren't there before.
- Which is itself wrong: this isn't the first time the opening change, it's the second: it changed the first time in season 2 and did pretty much the same thing the third opening did (added characters that were since introduced).
- Not to mention that technically, there have been literally hundreds of different opening sequences when you take into account the various couch gags.
- Toonami got a lot of this; fans themselves are a broken base as to whether it sucked when (in Toonami's last change in style) TOM received a childish look and a face instead of a helmet (being a robot, it was assumed to be his whole head), the AI character SARA disappeared with no explanation and was replaced with robots similar in design to the new TOM, and the setting was changed to a jungle planet outpost instead of the spaceship Absolution. Of course, there was a similar reaction way back when after TOM replaced Moltar...
- Winx Club: Here's a YouTube discussion which has quite a few complaints about 4Kids cutting what amounts to a Filler scene. Your contributor has a friend who refers to said scene as useless and is thankful it was cut. Can't say I disagree...
- Some changes are preferred. On example is the hip-hop music used in the Halloween episode. Another liked change is with Stella, who was a stereotypical blonde bitch in the original, is A LOT nicer and more likeable in the 4kids version.
- Thomas The Tank Engine fans on hearing the show would be switching from models to CGI. Caused acts of Fan Dumb on You Tube.
- This is somewhat ironic considering that the show's target audience would be too young to notice the difference. Did I say "ironic?" I meant pathetic.
- There exists certain parts of the fandom that are absolutely furious that in Batman The Brave And The Bold Batman's parents died when he was mad at them over a Christmas present. There is also that the humor has devolved to Adam West-era puns, Batman practically having super strength, Batarangs being made of cellophane peeled from his chest logo (???), or that he's voiced by Hoss Delgado making him even harder to take seriously. (Of course, this is more about this entire thing being based on the Silver Age.)
- Fairly Odd Parents-Fans believe that about season 4-7 and the main character's Flanderization and Jerkassness.
- Mattel has announced that they will release 'Tween Dora' to appeal to older girls. Many are expecting Bratz Dora.
- Doug-Fans of the Nickelodeon version were and probably still known to trash the Disney version, because the biggest change made to it was Disney making it now!
- The changes weren't so bad, and the creators made explanations for the changes a part of the script. The show is set one year after the first series, so the characters are a year older, dress differently, have different hairstyles, different voice actors, etc., and the first new episode focused on Doug learning to overcome and deal with his fears of the changes in his life.
- Though The Spectacular Spider-Man is very well received by comic book fans and others, there are people who do not like the show for things such as the style, Shocker not being Herman Schultz, but Montana of the Enforcers, Venom's design, there may be other reasons I'm forgetting to list, but I'm obviously not forgetting about some of the more Militant fans of the previous series.
- Fans of Avatar The Last Airbender are already criticizing M. Night Shyamalan's soon-to-release film adaptation based upon set photos, casting news, and a single teaser trailer. Most arguments seem to focus on the choice of casting for the film, and some fans have even organized a RaceBending community on Live Journal. Whether this is fandom dumb or not is largely up to question. Nonetheless, the fanbase seems rather split in its opinions about the film.
- Futurama had a rumored new voice cast that thankfully didn't go through, possibly due to fan reaction.
- Or maybe because you know...replacing the entire cast would be really messed up.
- "Messed up" or not, the dispute was mostly due to the voice actors' salary demands, with numerous fans afraid and angry at the possibility of change demanding that Fox throw as much money at the actors as was necessary. Because who doesn't want to invest large amounts of cash in a series that had to be Un Cancelled?
- Many people didn't like the idea of Batman Beyond where Bruce Wayne wasn't the actual Batman. As far as Spin Off Babies go, this series is easily one of the best examples of it being done right.
- Ben 10 Alien Force gets this reaction a lot. While the original wasn't a classic, apparently Your Mileage May Vary isn't allowed to apply when it comes to declaring the franchise RuinedFOREVER. Just look at the series page.
- The Venture Brothers fandom seems to be heading in this direction. The changes made for season 4 are mostly par for the course for a show with so much character development (every season has kicked off with some sort of major change) but Brock Samson's departure from the regular cast has led to a vocal faction of fans declaring that the show is terrible without him.
- This might end up being a moot issue, though since Brock may or may not be back following the events of the most recent episode.
- To a lesser extent, Hank and Dean's new designs have gotten this sort of reaction as well.
- Strawberry Shortcake has gone through this a few times. When the 2003 series came out, fans of the 80s classic series wailed. When the series was revamped in 2007, fans bawled again. And when the 2009 relaunch came, fans of the 2003 series booed, hissed, and cried.
Real Life
- Fans of the Ford Mustang pony car adopted this attitude when the 5.0-liter Windsor V8 was replaced with the 4.6 liter Modular motor in 1996. Eventually, they came around, and the aftermarket heavily supports the Mod motors. Now, Ford is gearing up to introduce a 5.0 liter Modular motor in the 2010 calendar year, about a year or so after the new refresh hits dealers...
- The new Nissan 370Z has a feature called SynchroRev Match, which automatically blips the throttle during downshifting for effortless power delivery and to keep RPM's in check. Driving snobs cried foul almost from the word go, as they felt it would be the end of heel-toe downshifting, nevermind that A.)SynchroRev Match can be switched off, and B.) it's part of a sports package, so not ordering it will keep it out of the car (although it means that you won't equip your car with a limited-slip differential, 19-inch wheels and tires and bigger brakes).
- Let's not get started about the reaction to the 370Z's styling, especially the headlights and taillights...
- One more car related one. The Mopar Community universally said They Changed It Now It Sucks with a little Ruined FOREVER when it was revealed that the Dodge Charger would be resurrected... as a four-door sedan. Massive amounts of Fan Dumb ensued, never mind that the nameplate was defiled previously, that the Charger sedan is RWD and has a Hemi (not quite) like its celebrated predecessor, and that making the Charger a sedan instead of a muscle car gave Dodge the avenue to bring back another muscle car classic... needless to say, once the Challenger was brought back, all was forgiven.
- If someone sat somewhere just once where you normally do, even though there's nothing which makes it 'yours' in anyway, you probably felt a bit annoyed.
- The sheer number of references to most dubs of anime as "Macekres" on this very wiki. Sure, I can think of some anime that fit that bill to a T (the 4Kids version of One Piece), but ye gods.
- On that note, most everyone here constantly complains about even the most minor bit of Adaptation Decay. Because a movie that takes one small detail out of the book it's based on can't be loved or seen as a classic or good in its own right by anyone. Ever.
- When radio stations change formats, there will always be people complaining about the changes. I give you: Rob Sherwood's Story. The radio station in question is one of that market's most fondly-remembered stations, I might add...
- Opal Fruits turning into Starburst, and combining Lemon and Lime together to allow space for the blackcurrant.
- There's a certain amount of backlash against the switchover to digital cable, both that it's happening, and that it's not happening fast enough.
- Microsoft's Windows Vista was a radical change from previous Windows operating systems, but despite its many improvements and new features and the time since its release, allowing hardware to be able to support it comfortably and users to adjust to it, people still reject Windows Vista with very little or no reason (as expected).
- These same fans praise Windows 7 as "Vista done right", even though it continues using many of the features and changes Vista introduced, but doesn't change as much about the operating system than Vista did.
- Microsoft's beta release of their new OS, Windows 7, has already generated complaints about how some things were cut out from Vista or changed for the worst.
- Not to mention Vista itself, which broke all sorts of usage patterns that Windows users had gotten accustomed to over the years and forced you to relearn about half the operating system from scratch.
- As well as obsfucating simple tasks by hiding them behind several layers of menus when they used to be accessed immediately directly from the Desktop or Start Menu.
- Not to mention getting rid of some features completely, such as the slide-show view for image folders and a working defragmentor.
- And there was the whole business of requiring more powerful hardware than some brand-new machines had at the time. Many such systems were sold — with Vista, because Microsoft refused to give them any other option — anyway. That Dell actually sued Microsoft for the ability to continue selling machines with XP is telling.
- Distilling the Vista problem was the "Ribbon" interface for Microsoft Office 2007, due to get added to new versions of many of Microsoft's other programs. The internet raged with the voice of a thousand IT people who will have to retrain employees once they inevitably upgrade. It is, from a complete newcomer's perspective, better to be more graphical and icon-laden, but people have gotten so used to the menu system for over a decade it's quite jarring.
- As far as Windows 7 goes, the radical changes to the taskbar aren't getting nearly as much flak as you'd expect. Especially considering that if you're not in full Aero mode, you're losing window previews, which are now a critical part of the interface.
- For that matter, Windows XP's revised Start menu -which was optimised for navigation by mouse and functioned quite differently to previous incarnations- forced users to relearn everything they'd been doing instinctively for the last half-decade, which must have rather offset any theoretical gain in productivity.
- In fact, computer operating systems of all varieties are a rare example of why the "They Changed It Now It Sucks!" brigade sometimes has a point; time that workplace users have to spend learning to use a new or altered function is time they no longer have in which to do their actual job.
- It is often stereotyped that senior citizens complain about everything that is current just because it's different from the stuff they were used to when growing up (TVs, phones, etc.).
- Television Without Pity. Bad Sign #1: Three original editors depart a year after Bravo buys the site. Then the site was redesigned to include a lot more widgets, style flourishes and assorted clutter. More editors left. And the site started covering a lot more reality programming, especially Bravo's Top Chef, Top Design, etc. and scaling back some of the previously in-depth recaps with more glib, bare-bones "weecaps." About the only things left from the site as it once was are the Supernatural fangirl bridgade and the recapper Jacob.
- Major League Baseball created the World Baseball Classic to try to promote the growth of the game in other countries, modeling it in large part after the World Cup and handling matters of advancing similarly in the inaugural event in 2006 (round-robin pool play, top 2 teams from each pool advance—then they had a second round of pool play, which differs from the World Cup, but whatever). Many people railed against the whole idea of the WBC itself, but only because they were worried that players could get hurt competing at such a high level when they would normally be in Spring Training. Because they wanted to avoid having it in the same year as the aforementioned World Cup, it was announced right away that after the inaugural 2006 WBC, it would be held every four years starting in 2009. Here we are in 2009, and pool play now looks like this: The four teams in a pool are matched up in two games. The winners of the first two games play each other next, and the losers play each other. The loser of the loser game (0-2) is out, while the winner of the loser game plays the loser of the winner game (both 1-1), with the loser being eliminated. Now, here's the really stupid part: The winner of the 1-1 game, now at 2-1, has to play the winner of the first winner game, at 2-0, with the winner of that game winning the pool. Remember, the runner-up from the pool also advances. What the hell? Instead of playing each of the other three teams once, one team has to play four games, and theoretically could end up not playing one of the other three teams (say A beats B and C beats D, then A beats C in the winner game, D beats B in the loser game, and then C beats D again in the 1-1 game, C has played four games and never got to face B.) Pool play is not supposed to work that way! Bring back the round robins!
- Facebook suffers from this big time every time there's
a major any change to their layout.
- Before the new layout was forced upon everyone they had it set up so that you could use either the old or new. If they had left it like that it would have saved everyone a lot of grief.
- Many of the complaints is that they turned Facebook into a My Space clone, when it used to be seen as the "anti-My Space".
- The newest complaint as of this writing (10/25/09) is the new News Feed. Minor graphical changes and massive user complaint.
- This was the reaction of many MySpace users when MySpace allowed anyone, not just 14- and 15-year-old users, to have private profiles. Complaints ranged from "If I want privacy I'll go to Facebook!" and "MySpace should be for users over 18 and have absolutely no privacy whatsoever!" In short: features that cater to users concerned about their privacy have ruined MySpace FOREVER!
- This also happened when LiveJournal announced that their invite-code system would be discontinued. From now on, anyone, just anyone, could sign up for a free LJ account. The expected influx of teenyboppers and fake anon accounts did happen, but LJ managed to survive. Mass exoduses have been threatened (and somewhat carried out, with users changing to new LJ-like services) every time LJ pulls something new, such as pop-up ads, Strikethrough '07 (suspension of thousands of user accounts after some trolls posing as Moral Guardians pointed out pedophilia content — which turned out to be, for the most part, fan fiction) and the sale of LJ to the Russian company SUP. Despite user complaints, LJ manages to carry on and is still the largest and most popular service of its type.
- Two words: New Coke.
- Ebay. Every change made, good or bad, if followed by endless ranting in the blogosphere and hastily-organized boycotts.
- "Sci-Fi/SciFi/Sci Fi/Sci-fi/Scifi Channel" changed its name to Syfy. No one cares that it's pronounced the same and exists mostly so they can have a name that can be trademarked. All they care about is having a focus for their hate of the channel's geniune Network Decay.
- And, in all fairness, because one of the network's stated motivations for the change was to distance itself from it's core fanbase, which they expressed in rather unflattering terms.
- Google's exploits with YouTube.
- Speaking of [You Tube], there's a new channel design forced upon all users from September 2009. Oh great... So far, no one likes it, saying it's buggy and slow and horribly designed. Many people are ditching Youtube over this.
- Australian Football has regular rule changes, all of which lead to massive fan outcry. Some work out for the better by most people's opinion (such as the rushed behind rule introduced in 2009) whilst others such as the "hands in the back" rule introduced in 2007 (explained in the other wiki) is almost universally hated.
- In a valiant but failing attempt to make water polo a higher scoring, more watchable game, the rules have (massively) changed about three times in the last six or seven years—the game was made faster (30 second shot clock instead of 35 for girls), the pool longer (30 meters instead of 25 for men), only one hand can block a ball for field players instead of two, and the meter markings were changed to 2-5-7. Recenently, they have discussed removing basic fouls since a water polo foul is nothing like a "real" foul in other sports. The result? Coaches storming out of meetings, USA Water Polo receiving death threat emails, and teams completely falling apart—really.
- In short, the sports and automotive worlds are very vulnerable to this trope, as its most ardent followers tend to be obsessed about maintaining and honoring tradition. Note the constant general skepticism and hatred towards younger superstar athletes, expansion teams, later car models, newer engine technologies, logo/uniform/style refreshments, rule changes, etc. even if said new things were in line with or analogous to past historic equivalents or end up saving its respective sport/team/company.
- Avril Lavigne's "Girlfriend" single was decidedly more influenced by pop music than her previous punk rock-y efforts. If one visited the official You Tube upload for said video after its release, you would find nothing but a river of flames, most having to do with how she "sold out".
- The amusement park at the Mall of America in Minneapolis/St. Paul was originally themed around the much more generally appealing "Peanuts" Characters (as Charles M. Schulz was a St. Paul Native), now it's themed after Nickelodeon, which has a considerably much more limited appeal, and also losing one of the mall's most defining Minnesota connections.
- Sun-Maid updated the appearance of their mascot, the Sun-Maid raisin girl, in 2009. People are already criticizing the move, complaining that the raising girl has been turned into an Amish Barbie doll.
- Perfume makers routinely reformulate classic fragrances for a variety of reasons, and feel no need to announce such changes. For the knowing user the best case scenario is that the new formula still smells reasonably like the old one.
- The Philippine military as a whole usually suffers from equipment shortages due to funding deficits, causing them to frequently resort to refurbishing and upgrading old equipment instead of buying new ones. The Philippine Marines did this en masse to their stores of old World War Two vintage M3 "Grease Guns," adding an integral suppressor, picatinny rails, and other upgrades to get it up to snuff with modern SMGs. Someone posted a You Tube video featuring one of these upgraded M3 SMGs and immediately incurred the uproar of classic gun fans because how dare the Filipino Marines use a practical way of solving a very real equipment shortage problem by ruining the M3 forever.
- vBulletin 4, just vBulletin 4. The changes to the style and features were not popular to say the least, going far enough to start a Hatedom for the software including multiple blogs against the company. But it was part justified, in that before the former manager left, there was a completely different set of screenshots of what the software was going to be like, which apparently many of the customers preferred to the finished product.
Misc
- If a design of a major website gets changed, it can likely cause upset and confusion.
- Not to mention usability issues when the change is rushed through because of complaints about the previous change.
- The Pirates Of The Caribbean rides in Disneyland and Walt Disney World have been changed to incorporate characters and music from the Pirates Of The Caribbean movies. Fans are divided on whether this is a good thing.
- TV Tropes. We keep changing
unintuitive and obscure as fuck awesome, quirkily-named tropes to simple and intuitive boring descriptive ones. TV Tropes is getting better through accessibility losing its soul through blandification! Ruined FOREVER!
- "Stuff Geeks Love: The Status Quo."
- The Irate Gamer's Breakfast Rants complain about how certain parts of cereal images changed. For Lucky Charms, it's the marshmallow shapes, while Cinnamon Toast Crunch has him railing against the box only displaying one of the three original bakers. He even ends the rants with "Face it, breakfast is ruined!"
Television
- Any time a channel faces Network Decay this will come up. Some channels can do it better than others. For examples see Network Decay naturally.
OH MY GOD! They changed the category folder graphics! TV Tropes is ruined FOREVER!!!
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