I'm fine with the entire R1 crew all being wiped out.
In fact it's what I always imagined the fate of the (until then unnamed - "Rebel spies managed to steal secret plans ....") was, even before the film, it's what I expected.
They were designed to be the unsung "nobodies" of war, who don't get the credit, the medals, the kiss from the princess, the recognition, the glory, or any reward.
To the contrary, they are doing what everyone else writes off as a doomed, hopeless failed mission.
That's them, there is no one else for it, and they knew it.
Yet I do wish there was one scene that hinted that right before he's taken down, that K2 had secretly downloaded his memories (specifically of them) into the mainframe, and by extension, interlaced into the transmission and disc that everyone is after.
Last edited by Güicho; 07-17-2020 at 12:36 PM.
While not quite being killed off in the movies, Veronica Roth's killing of her main character in the Divergent novels was perhaps the worst example of tonally mis-reading your fan base. (Or she just didn't care about $$$ and wanted to tell the story she wanted to tell). It literally killed the franchise, killed the 3rd movie, and any chance of the franchise having a 4th film or TV series.
He's better dead than what the books did. I've read (listened) the book series and I don't recommend it as while the first book is good and the first TV season is close to the book they diverge wildly after that. No matter how bad you might think the TV show got, the books got worse. Doakes lives in the book series but is captured by a killer and has his feet, hands, and tongue all cut off. He goes around after this is some special chair and with a computer voice box and he just swears at Dexter all the time. It just becomes a running joke in the books. He never figured out what Dexter was in the books, that was La Guerta in the books and she was killed off in the first book by Brian- one of the three major changes in the first book with the others being that Debra find out then about Dexter and that Brian lives and is a recurring character in the series. The books really go off the rails after this as every book plot seems to involve the kids getting kidnapped. Dexter is training the kids to be serial killers. The dark passenger is actually an alien entity from space that possesses creatures to make them do violence and has been on earth for millions of years randomly possessing creatures (I'm not kidding, this actually a plotline in the 3rd book explaining what the dark passenger is). One book revolves around a girl whose fantasy is to be eaten by other people so she keeps trying to get herself kidnapped by a cannibal cult so she can be eaten. And the books, except the first, are narrated by the author himself who decides to give Dexter a cliche gay man voice with the lisp and everything. And the supporting cast barely exists in the books. Angel gets one or two lines per book max. La Guerta is killed first book. Vince barely shows up most books. Quinn doesn't exist. Debra is ever present but a wholly different character than her TV character and is utterly unlikable. Rita exists only as a reason for Cody and Astor to be around and they are little evil hellspawn. I only listened because I spend a lot of time in the car at work and devour audio books so I was desperate.
Ah, thanks for the detailed explanation. Since I wasn't into the fandom, I was only aware of some of the details (I did know about the actress going over to Fear the Walking Dead, but I didn't know they reworked their schedule for her, that was generous).
But yeah, the backlash against the show was very loud and long lasting, so I imagine those who were upset by the character's death weren't willing to accept any explanations. To be fair to them, there did seem to be a trend in shows of lesbians being killed by stray projectiles not meant for them (Lexa, Tara from Buffy, Denise on The Walking Dead), but I had a feeling the entire thing was a bit overblown, much like how I feel Tara's death wasn't malicious in nature. I just never looked much more into the issue.
The move to FtWD definitely sounds like it was a good decision on her part.
Laurel in Arrow - largely because not only did they fail to plan ahead to make it work when they came up with the grave idea, but also because they’d finally started writing that character the way they should have... and then killed her off. Laurel remains ground zero for how treating a female superhero as a love interest first can end up backfiring, particularly if the genre of romantic storytelling you’re used to telling is marked by sloppy, unbalanced writing - they basically screwed up the character for two season, started pulling her out of the nosedive in the third, but since she no longer fit the romantic interest archetype they wanted, they killed her off... and promptly took the fan favorite love interest and tried to make her fit the archetype instead.
This one may be a bit controversial or eye-roll worthy, but understand it’s more nuanced than what you might at first think...
Luke Skywalker in The Last Jedi.
I don’t actually object to the idea of killing off Luke, or with the general idea of him expiring while inspiring others with an illusion.
...But the context of the Sequel Trilogy, The Last Jedi’s stroy, and the real world development of the films made it a bad move. Rey didn’t get “the rub” from Luke in sufficient amount to honor her story as the new lead character and new Jedi, one way or another, the Skywalker were stuck with a school shooter neo-Nazi as the only new member of their family, and when Luke’s story was sitting on his butt while millions died, putting on a glorified smoke show to rescue a few dozen people and then pretending that smoke show was more inspiring than the younger heroes and Han destroying Starkiller Base and avenging the Hosnian System... his exit basically exists only to give him an overwrought epilogue that doesn’t help the story going forward, and honestly kind of devalues it by interrupting the story and giving him the spotlight at Rey’s expense.
And with the passing of Carrie Fisher, it also meant that the issues with the Skywalkers and Rey’s need for “the rub” only increased.
Like action, adventure, rogues, and outlaws? Like anti-heroes, femme fatales, mysteries and thrillers?
I wrote a book with them. Outlaw’s Shadow: A Sherwood Noir. Robin Hood’s evil counterpart, Guy of Gisbourne, is the main character. Feel free to give it a look: https://read.amazon.com/kp/embed?asi...E2PKBNJFH76GQP
I think it was a mistake to kill off Roseanne Connor on Roseanne.
I know many people like The Connors and that's great if you do. I've tried watching it a couple of times and it's just not funny to me without Roseanne.
Cottonmouth in Luke Cage. The quality of the second half of season one took a dive after his death. Diamondback made for a lousy main villain and was too over the top for my liking.
The big one that comes to mind for me is Laurel on Arrow. That was the moment the show lost me. Quite literally, actually. That was the last episode I watched until the final season. And it's not like Laurel was some great, well realized character. The writing had been shoddy and scattered, and they could never quite decide whether they wanted the character to be tough, a damsel, or just a dick. But it felt like they were finally getting a handle on what they wanted to do with her once they put her in the Canary outfit for good. Plus, the manner of her death was extremely, extremely lame and disrespectful to the character.
Plus, even the creatives behind the show ultimately agreed it was a mistake, because they brought the actress back to play a slightly different version of the same character. In this case, their early mistake ends up being a boon, as they are able to shed some of the baggage that weighed down Laurel and give her some more bite with the Black Siren role.
The other big, big one is Cordelia on Angel. Which they actually did twice, more or less. And for crap reasons both times. It didn't hurt the show as much as it could have, because season 5 pivoted so heavily on the amazing chemistry between Boreanaz and Marsters, and those two absolutely killed it. But you could feel the gaping absence almost any time they turned to another character to fill the same kind of role in the stories.
While I agree completely with your assessment of the back half of season 1, it's not like the creatives really had a choice on this one. They had Ali for the episodes he was in, but that was all he was available for. So either the character gets killed off or leaves, not to be seen again until a potential S2 where they MIGHT get the actor back. It's hard to blame the show for real world scheduling issues, even if they mishandled Diamondback.
Angel killing off Lilah, Cordelia and Fred all in short succession. The latter was the only one that lead to anything of worth because Illyria was a cool character and Amy Acker absolutely crushed it: helps that the original plan as for Willow to resurrect Fred in season 6 so Acker would play both roles.
The former two are inexcusable and a terrible, cliche waste of two great female characters. Lilah especially getting replaced by Eve was the biggest downgrade the show ever had.