“The fans had the wrong expectations!” - How legitimate is the argument?

[Kieran_Frost]

Like with comicsgate-folks were minding their own business and got attacked nonstop. They did what you said and it didn't work.
[examples, examples, examples]
Why should they be allowed to attack stuff they have no interest in but have issues with POC, LGBTQ & women doing ANYTHING?

Let's be clear, I'm not saying it's okay (on any level), I'm saying it's a reality of the world. And until those in-charge (either of the law, or whoever runs Twitter, Instagram, reddit, Facebook, etc) start doing something to punish online hate, the reality is: it happens. We can't stick our heads in the sand about it. So I say to them: either get off social media, or grow tough skin. These are the options. It sucks but that's the world. I do not begrudge any of them who leave social media, I get it, mental well being is important. But it's avoidable, if needed.

[Will Evans]

There is probably an area of immediate identification of when expectations are at fault of its something pre-release, before the story has a chance it be viewed and examined - complaints about Craig pre******** Royal, a black male lead stormtrooper in TFA or about the idea of female Ghostbusters definitely seem more like hallmarks of fan expectations being in the wrong. It’s the idea of judging a book by its cover, after all, which always comes with a shallow set of preconceptions.

But things get a bit grayer, and the impetus starts to lay more on the creators, whenever a franchise has goodwill from a previous entry/entries, has positive speculation and hype leading to its release... and then has backlash afterwards. Dany’s Heel Turn in Season 9 of Game of Thrones succumbs to a comparative failure more than a conceptual one - people are comparing her turn unfavorably to unexpected but well structured ideas like the Red Wedding, Sandor’s gradual Face Turn, or Cersei becoming the Mad Queen herself.

The Rose of Skywalker’s reception is kind of fascinating to me because I’m both someone who loved TFA and hated TLJ. On the one hand, there’s a bit of a “turn about is fair play” feeling I have to TROS, but on the other hand, I feel like TLJ fans are somewhat justified in calling foul and in arguing against the “incorrect expectations” accusation - in sort because I feel similar feelings were justified against TLJ as a sequel to TFA.

If you’re a TLJ fan who thinks “Hey, we were supposed to get Kylo as the new main villain, not Palpatine!” that’s justified, because TLJ quite clearly showed that as Kylo’s journey in the film... just like how I’m justified in saying “Hey, Rey shouldn’t find Kylo sympathetic on such little evidence!” because TFA built a solid and visceral antagonism between them that TLJ seems to ignore. If you’re a TLJ fan who thinks that Rey Palpatine/Skywalker sucks because it goes against the Rey Random story of TLJ, I’d say your justified because TLJ ignored Finn’s total story innTFA and refused to treat him like a male lead or as Rey’s most important companion (the Rey Skywalker vs Rey Random argument is different, in that I think that Rey Random is just a pathetic and inadequate answer that TLJ also executes horribly.)

Iron Man 3 is a bit interesting, in that both it’s own marketing and it’s own script want to juke expectations, and much harder than even TLJ and TROS did, since IM3 did it within one film.

Rey and Kylo were always going to be the two biggest character of the sequel trilogy.

They even use those two as characters in the Disney parks. No Finn to be seen at all.

[AndrewCrossett]

Dany's heel turn probably would have made sense if it had been given about one more season to evolve. In the show as aired it was too sudden, too inexplicable in the time and place and circumstance that it happened. She had basically already won. And instead of taking her anger over the loss of her dragons and Missandei out on Cersei and the Red Keep, she torched the citizens... including women and children... who had surrendered to her. You have to blame it on the Targaryen madness suddenly taking her right then and there, but again, that's a Diabolus Ex Machina.

[godisawesome]

Rey and Kylo were always going to be the two biggest character of the sequel trilogy.

They even use those two as characters in the Disney parks. No Finn to be seen at all.

And Darth Vader is a bigger character than Han and Leia, but that didn’t change their importance to the plot or to Luke.

Antagonists being huge, massively marketed main attractions to a film or franchise is nothing unusual, and in fact when Kylo was in that role for TFA, he worked fantastically... which is one of the numerous reasons why TFA was a better executed story than TLJ or TROS.

The problem is that TLJ and TROS don’t really want Kylo to be an antagonist, but a protagonist instead, and they can’t really picture him as the iconic supervillain he was designed to be, but instead try and hammer him into a companionship with Rey that just doesn’t work. In this case, the “expectation” being subverted is that the self-centered fascist built from the ground up to act as a boil and villain to Rey (and Finn), with a character defining moment of murdering his loving father to ensure we know he’s not Anakin/Vader and is in fact quite a bit worse in some ways even though he’s less matured in others, is, y’know, going to be treated like he did all that, and as the bad guy.

An accompanying “expectation” would be that our leads would remain the leads, and that the key relationship between them would be kept if for no other reason than it would better serve Rey’s story, as Luke’s relationship with Han and a Leia and Anakin’s relationship with Obi-Wan had.

And an overall expectation would be that *if* those expectations were to be subverted, they would be replaced with something more worthwhile, and have good explanations behind it.

Instead, Kylo gets reformatted as an emo co-protagonist dressed like a lazy Renaissance Festival employee who’s self-centered world view is endorsed by the film having Rey ignore almost everything that he did to her and her friends and having her character get hammered into his story without regard to her own, while the film both does its best to replace Finn entirely in Rey’s orbit with him, which all results in neutering Rey’s character arc, which is also pretty bad when the film is effectively much more Luke’s film than hers, meaning that not only is Finn demoted, but that Rey is stuck playing second fiddle to Luke while having her story driven by a Kylo, instead of being complemented by his tale, as it was in TFA.

The problem is that LFL seems to have regarded Kylo only as far as his parentage and actor, instead of the story he had in TFA or the function he had in Rey’s overall story. He wasn’t designed to act as the male lead and companion to Rey, while Finn was, and trying to jam him into Finn’s place meant that we had neither a good male lead, nor a great main antagonist, all while Rey was getting screwed up as the female overall lead because she wasn’t getting developed well and having her story defined by a character now acting as a liability towards her instead of as an asset.

[anyajenkins]

Saying that without any proof is wrong. The main thing it sounds like is she underestimated how hard it was doing a series that films that many episodes more than anything else. By all reports she was very unhappy with the work schedule and that was making her hard to work with. Yes there was harrasement at the beginning, but from everything I have read it seems it had very little bearing on her actually leaving.

Yeah, that’s what I heard too. In the beginning, she did leave twitter over harassment from fans saying she’s wasn’t gay enough or some nonsense, but not much mention of that’s why she left.

[Kieran_Frost]

Dany's heel turn probably would have made sense if it had been given about one more season to evolve. In the show as aired it was too sudden, too inexplicable in the time and place and circumstance that it happened. She had basically already won. And instead of taking her anger over the loss of her dragons and Missandei out on Cersei and the Red Keep, she torched the citizens... including women and children... who had surrendered to her. You have to blame it on the Targaryen madness suddenly taking her right then and there, but again, that's a Diabolus Ex Machina.

I mean she's crucified people, burnt them alive, and murdered her own allies... is it such a reach that she doesn't show mercy? Her emotions and kindness has ALWAYS been fickle. We just didn't truly embrace the reality of it, and (I think) that was a very clever long game idea that George RR Martin started from the very beginning.

[Zero Hunter]

Dany's heel turn probably would have made sense if it had been given about one more season to evolve. In the show as aired it was too sudden, too inexplicable in the time and place and circumstance that it happened. She had basically already won. And instead of taking her anger over the loss of her dragons and Missandei out on Cersei and the Red Keep, she torched the citizens... including women and children... who had surrendered to her. You have to blame it on the Targaryen madness suddenly taking her right then and there, but again, that's a Diabolus Ex Machina.

To tell the truth there was always going to be a big part of the fans that were never going to accept Dani turning no matter how much time they had given it. In their minds this was going to end with Dani and Jon on the throne living happily ever after, and nothing else was going to satisfy them. That final season was rushed no doubt, but even if they had given it another full season I still think you would have seen a lot of the same gripes.

[SiegePerilous02]

I mean she's crucified people, burnt them alive, and murdered her own allies... is it such a reach that she doesn't show mercy? Her emotions and kindness has ALWAYS been fickle. We just didn't truly embrace the reality of it, and (I think) that was a very clever long game idea that George RR Martin started from the very beginning.

She's always had a ruthless side, it's just that the show didn't do the best job at selling her as being any more unstable than some of the others. Sansa and Arya had pretty ruthless sides to them, Dany just had access to better weapons. Being ruthless towards her enemies is one thing, her being able to turn on the common people of King's Landing so quickly needed more development. Over so short a timeframe, her slightly unkempt hair and being upset over understandable things (and not being paranoid- Varys really was out to poison her) doesn't do the best job of conveying "coin flip! she's mad now."

Especially as she wins the fight very quickly with one dragon, King's Landing surrendered after like 5 minutes before she gave the order to sack it, it just means she had the right idea to take Kings Landing as soon as she landed. Tyrion is an idiot, and Dany could have won the city with three dragons and all her allies and been of sound mind, thus no city destruction. Perhaps delaying the inevitable, but maybe something more natural could take place then. I think the books execution of her descent into madness is going to be far more effective if it ever happens (lol we're never getting that last book).

The people who named their kids Danaerys and Kaleesi and were freaking out that they named their daughters Dragon Hitler makes it somewhat worth it though

[AndrewCrossett]

I mean she's crucified people, burnt them alive, and murdered her own allies... is it such a reach that she doesn't show mercy? Her emotions and kindness has ALWAYS been fickle. We just didn't truly embrace the reality of it, and (I think) that was a very clever long game idea that George RR Martin started from the very beginning.

It would have been a valid story decision to have this happen... eventually. But in the show it was just... "Hooray for Daenerys the Good, liberator of... Whoops, there goes the orphanage... I guess she's evil now."

To tell the truth there was always going to be a big part of the fans that were never going to accept Dani turning no matter how much time they had given it. In their minds this was going to end with Dani and Jon on the throne living happily ever after, and nothing else was going to satisfy them. That final season was rushed no doubt, but even if they had given it another full season I still think you would have seen a lot of the same gripes.

Anyone who expected a fairytale ending out of this pretty much deserved to be disappointed.

[SiegePerilous02]

Considering how lame the actual finale was and the characters who were featured in it were, I'm actually rooting for Dany to burn all that **** down in hindsight.

Either that, or I hope Sansa and Bran go to war against each other over something dumb and petty.

[godisawesome]

She's always had a ruthless side, it's just that the show didn't do the best job at selling her as being any more unstable than some of the others. Sansa and Arya had pretty ruthless sides to them, Dany just had access to better weapons. Being ruthless towards her enemies is one thing, her being able to turn on the common people of King's Landing so quickly needed more development. Over so short a timeframe, her slightly unkempt hair and being upset over understandable things (and not being paranoid- Varys really was out to poison her) doesn't do the best job of conveying "coin flip! she's mad now."

Especially as she wins the fight very quickly with one dragon, King's Landing surrendered after like 5 minutes before she gave the order to sack it, it just means she had the right idea to take Kings Landing as soon as she landed. Tyrion is an idiot, and Dany could have won the city with three dragons and all her allies and been of sound mind, thus no city destruction. Perhaps delaying the inevitable, but maybe something more natural could take place then. I think the books execution of her descent into madness is going to be far more effective if it ever happens (lol we're never getting that last book).

The people who named their kids Danaerys and Kaleesi and were freaking out that they named their daughters Dragon Hitler makes it somewhat worth it though

Dany’s arc suffers the most in the final season because the climax, falling action, and resolution to her personal arc happen so quickly and so unsupported, they can’t percolate and ferment into a really believable “spirit” of storytelling.

The concept of her fall would anyways have some who would poo-poo it... But as a concept, you’d have the same for a good father and original main character being executed at the start of the series, his heir, wife, and faction being slaughtered at a wedding, or an awesome new character getting a shot at revenge being denied it because he spends to long bragging by his only wounded monster and gets his skull smashed in.

For a better comparison in the season itself... the idea that neither Jon nor Dany strike down the Night King, that Bran mostly just waits as bait, and that Arya strikes the killing blow on the Night King has some major disadvantages as well, and the Battle for Winterfell wasn’t by any means heralded as a perfect execution... but it’s got the episode in front of it and the episode behind it to help shore up the stakes of its events and the payoff of its fallout, so it doesn’t get nearly as much complaint.

Dany’s fall would have benefitted immensely from more meat in the buildup to her attack on Kingslanding, more clear-headed and empathetic reasons to feel untethered from her allies, and better reasons to break and think of Kingslanding as her enemy - the often-suggested idea that Rhaegel being killed by a disobedient and panicked Lannister soldier *after the bells have been rung* being a strong example of that. And honestly, her story would have benefitted even more from an aftershock episode devoted to her mental states afterward, to tease her possible facing up to her actions and overcoming it, before *choosing* to believe her own lies and excuses.

[AndrewCrossett]

Arya killing the Night King was actually my favorite moment from the final season. Possibly because she was my favorite character.

[godisawesome]

Arya killing the Night King was actually my favorite moment from the final season. Possibly because she was my favorite character.

It had two major Ada vantages over Dang’s last minute heel turn: it *was* set-up more and the ramifications were addressed more thoroughly, but it also fits the characters a bit better in that Arya was a hero killing a villain - frankly, the more in-line with characterization an answer is in substance, the easier it is to pull off whatever subversion it is. The murderer in a whodunnit works better whenever his motivation makes sense.

[Swallowtail]

when I was excited about seeing Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard in the 2015 film adaptation of 'MacBeth' is it really supposed to be all my fault that I didn't enjoy the film because it failed to live up to my expectations? or could a considerable amount of blame be placed upon the people that made the film the mediocre mumble-core slog that it was? I can't help but think that if Kenneth Branagh or Roman Polanski were given the exact same cast and script it would have turned out quite a bit better!

You can acknowledge how big a role subjectivity plays in these things though. Because to go with your example, I would rather have a root canal than sit through Polanski's muddled, tepid Macbeth and it's inexplicable decision to make Ross the third murderer again, while I found Macbeth (2015) to be perfectly serviceable.

[Totoro Man]

You can acknowledge how big a role subjectivity plays in these things though. Because to go with your example, I would rather have a root canal than sit through Polanski's muddled, tepid Macbeth and it's inexplicable decision to make Ross the third murderer again, while I found Macbeth (2015) to be perfectly serviceable.

well, you got me there. I haven't seen Polanski's version in so long I probably just forgot how bad it was! Polanski is supposed to be one of those uber-directors and what-not...

I was just expecting the 2015 version to be -awesome- and it was just... serviceable. [as my brother joked 'disappointing is not the same as actually being terrible! at least Cotillard was great.']