For me this movie/show ended with...

[Zauriel]

Avengers: ENDGAME was the last MCU movie to make $1 billion dollars at the box office.

[Celgress]

For me

1.) The Terminator franchise should have ended with T2 Judgement Day. Although I did enjoy the Sarah Connor Chronicles all the movies that came after T2 are garbage, IMHO.

2.) The Alien franchise should have ended with Alien 3; a perfect nihilistic ending to a nihilistic series. Alien Resurrection was nothing but a twisted cynical cash grab.

3.) Sword Art Online ended for me with the first fourteen-episode arc. The first arc has all the poignancy of a Greek tragedy, it is a near masterpiece of emotional storytelling with a rare well-written anime female deuteragonist. The rest of the story was typical Isekai male-centric power fantasy trash.

4.) Tokyo Ghoul should never have had a sequel series. The original two-season anime series is a master study of racial hatred and the tragic futility of vengeance. Human society and ghoul society are equally just and unjust toward the other. There is no true black and white rather there are various shades of gray. The sequel series Tokyo Ghoul Re: is a typical anime quirky team teen drama that isn't funny or entertaining. Plus, the rare half-Ghouls are replaced by people who volunteered to become artificial half-Ghoul cops to exclusively hunt ghouls thus eliminating the "the torn between two worlds" aspect.

5.) The X-Files should have ended with season five followed by the first movie. From season six onward once the show relocated filming to LA a slide into more convoluted plots began that slowly derailed the series turning it into an incoherent mess. Also, behind-the-scenes drama led to various people leaving the show most notably David Duchovny. These absences necessitated the addition of new characters and related subplots that did not resonate with the fanbase.

[Brian Adkins]

I was really into STAR TREK in the 90's. But once I had seen TOS,TNG, and most of DS9 and VOAYGER- along with the movies and reading some novels. I was done for quite a while.
Just from burnout not due to being angry or confused or anything. About 10 years ago I went and watched the rest of DS9 and VOYAGER. Believe I had stopped around season 4 or 5 of each. One thing that stuck out to me was thinking, "THAT'S what happened to Sisko!?" lol Guess it did tie into his story but it just seemed silly. Someone told me he comes back in some novels and captains a ship of his own.

[Kirby101]

For me


2.) The Alien franchise should have ended with Alien 3; a perfect nihilistic ending to a nihilistic series. Alien Resurrection was nothing but a twisted cynical cash grab.
.

I so disagree. Alien 3 starts with Newt and Hicks dead. It makes everything in Aliens and Ripley's character arc moot.

[ChrisIII]

Yeah, there's the DS9 relaunch novels although I'm pretty sure the various CBS/Paramount series have overridden that continuity.

The Trek novels actually did a sort of "Crisis on Infinite Earths" thing with the CODA novels a while back (Although I haven't read them yet) to pretty much close the book on the novel continuity/relaunch era.

[Totoro Man]

For me

2.) The Alien franchise should have ended with Alien 3; a perfect nihilistic ending to a nihilistic series. Alien Resurrection was nothing but a twisted cynical cash grab.

honestly, I didn't even bother watching "Alien 3". it looked like a twisted, cynical cash grab! the fact that Newt and Hicks got killed between films simply reinforced that impression. the other obvious reason is that the first two films were so good that things could only get worse!

I think a lot of the "nihilism" that gets imputed to the Alien franchise has more to do with the reception history of the franchise than the actual content of the first two films.

the first two films were NOT nihilistic stories. you could argue that "Aliens" was bursting at the seams with different layers of morality. James Cameron's scripts often come across as so moralizing that he makes Puritan authors look nuanced and complex by comparison. and by that, I mean John Bunyan, not John Milton!

nihilism certainly played a larger part in "Alien", but even here we still see that the main character manages to escape and survive. we can still witness the moral outrage of the crew and sympathize with them at the betrayal and violence perpetrated against them by malevolent actors (Xenomorph, Ash, Mother).

[Celgress]

I so disagree. Alien 3 starts with Newt and Hicks dead. It makes everything in Aliens and Ripley's character arc moot.

It was the best ending for the franchise considering the nihilistic tone of the original Alien which Alien 3 matched with far better than Aliens, IMHO. In a cruel uncaring universe, there are no happy endings. I can understand if you disagree but thematically I think it worked.

[Celgress]

honestly, I didn't even bother watching "Alien 3". it looked like a twisted, cynical cash grab!....

Admittedly all the movies after Aliens (including the AVP stuff and Ridley prequels) have been cynical studio-mandated cash grabs. That said, I still contend Alien 3 thematically fit much better as an ending to Ripley's story than did the disjointed narrative mess of Alien Resurrection.

[ChrisIII]

Funny thing is there's an earlier version of the script where Ripley spends the film unconscious, Newt I think is sent away or something and Hicks and Bishop are the leading men. The Aliens also drop the face hugger/embryo stuff for "bodybursters" which are spread like a virus, and there's a cold war subtext. Not sure it would've made a good film, but it's an interesting what if?

It was probably made Ripley-less because they were unsure if they could get Weaver post as her career was at it's peak in the late 80s/early 90s.

It's been adapted into other formats a few times.

[MoneySpider]

For me, I sometimes get caught up in what happens in movies and TV shows and get upset about what happens to fictional characters in fictional universes.

I then have to remind myself... these characters never really existed, and these fictional events never really happened, so why am I so upset and invested in stuff that never happened and characters that never existed?

[hareluyafan1]

- Highlander
Every attempt to continue or expand this story beyond the first one has actively undermined it and/or made a total mess. There should've been only one.

I have to respectfully disagree with this. The Highlander TV series is awesome and I highly recommend watching it if you haven't already. I admit it had its flaws, but it introduced tons of great characters and additions to the lore. It is my favourite part of the franchise and while the original movie started the Highlander universe, the TV series perfected it.

Predator 1-3 are all great->good. The fourth entry THE Predator is pretty bad. I love the first AvP by the way, hate the second.

The fifth entry "Prey" is by far my favourite.

[Celgress]

For me, I sometimes get caught up in what happens in movies and TV shows and get upset about what happens to fictional characters in fictional universes.

I then have to remind myself... these characters never really existed, and these fictional events never really happened, so why am I so upset and invested in stuff that never happened and characters that never existed?

This is the ultimate goal for all creatives; the suspension of disbelief leading to emotional investment by the audience in their characters. If that is accomplished the creative did their job well.

[choptop]

Avengers: ENDGAME was the last MCU movie to make $1 billion dollars at the box office.

So because nothing has made a billion after that the mcu ended for you?

[Brian Adkins]

Yeah, there's the DS9 relaunch novels although I'm pretty sure the various CBS/Paramount series have overridden that continuity.

The Trek novels actually did a sort of "Crisis on Infinite Earths" thing with the CODA novels a while back (Although I haven't read them yet) to pretty much close the book on the novel continuity/relaunch era.

Oh,I know. But that's okay. Like others, I just make up my own head canon. lol Example: ST:VENDETTA happened.

[Brian Adkins]

This is the ultimate goal for all creatives; the suspension of disbelief leading to emotional investment by the audience in their characters. If that is accomplished the creative did their job well.

Totally agree!