Hollywood: Shit or Garbarge?

Fantasy authors are getting crankier and louder in their criticism of the Hollywood Shit or Garbage Factory trashing their works.

Even The Hollywood Reporter is admitting this.

Fantasy Authors Are Not Playing: Creators Increasingly Call Out "Unfaithful" Adaptations

From 'House of the Dragon' to 'God of War' to 'The Witcher,' shows are getting smacked by creators for seeming to stray from source material. And there are reasons it's happening now.

Amazon Studios has to be at least a little thankful that J.R.R. Tolkien is no longer around.

First, the studio came under fire by best-selling fantasy author Brandon Sanderson for its Wheel of Time adaptation ("I had my problems with the show," Sanderson said last year. "I won't miss being largely ignored; they wanted my name on it for legitimacy ... it had a fan base that deserved better"). Then last month, the creator of the God of War video game, David Jaffe, savaged a first-look photo (above) from Prime Video's upcoming big-budget adaptation ("It is so bad in so many ways," Jaffe said in a YouTube rant. "Neither of these characters look very interesting or appealing. If this was God of War: Dumb and Dumber edition, this is what you would expect").

To be fair, Jaffe has been a critic of other God of War spinoff efforts since his involvement with the game ended nearly two decades ago, and he added that he trusts the Prime Video show's producer Ronald D. Moore to deliver. But given all the fandom debate that surrounded Amazon's first two seasons of its The Lord of the Rings prequel series, The Rings of Power, not having Tolkien rage-tweeting about the show's Harfoots has to be a blessing.

Prime Video is not alone in having a fantasy creator target its adaptation. The Witcher author Andrzej Sapkowski has repeatedly thrown passive barbs at Netflix's troubled series, saying things like the streamer "never listened to me" and "I cannot praise the show, it wouldn't be decent" (The Witcher also famously lost its star Henry Cavill amid still-murky circumstances, with the actor having hinted that fidelity to the source material was a core issue for him).

George R.R. Martin -- after years of dutifully holding his tongue over some things about Game of Thrones he wasn't thrilled with -- unleashed a dracarys on prequel House of the Dragon for its deviations from his book, Fire & Blood, amid a falling out with showrunner Ryan Condal. ("We got into season two, and [Condal] basically stopped listening to me," Martin said. "I would give notes, and nothing would happen." Yet Martin has sung the praises of new series A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, saying the show is "as faithful as an adaptation as a reasonable man could hope for" and playfully quipped, "and you all know how incredibly reasonable I am on that particular subject").

HBO recently had a slightly similar issue with an acclaimed Green Lantern comic-book writer Grant Morrison, who aligned with outraged fans taking issue with the showrunner of the upcoming Lanterns series joking "green is stupid." Morrison wrote, "What is this jockish dismissal of superhero conventions intended to prove anyway?" The showrunner, Damon Lindelof (who surely had to be amused at being called a "jock") drafted a sincere apology.

Why are authors just now beginning to call out Hollywood Shit or Garbage hacks for crap they've done forever?

The combination of audience fragmentation (where studios no longer need to draw the largest possible viewership on every show) and streaming services collectively serving up hundreds of longform titles a year now allows these stories to be adapted with a level of specificity and loyalty to the source material that wasn't realistic before.

I think they mean that since even a "hit" is only going to get a 2.8 rating -- where hits 40 years ago would get a 15 rating -- then you can afford to give the hardcore audience what they want, and they will no longer accept excuses that you had to water down the material to appeal to a mass audience. The "mass audience" is a dead concept.

...

But streamers are trying to balance making wide-appeal content and pleasing a vocal hardcore fandom that can often have an almost religious view of "canon" -- and now have authors potentially breaking ranks to join fans in their criticisms as well.

Hollywood is creatively bankrupt and will only greenlight movies based on names and IPs people remember, even if they don't remember them fondly.

The ultimate proof of this: They've rebooted the Faces of Death video nasties. This "movie," if you can call it that, seems to be about some creeps on the internet recreating gory deaths from the original Faces of Deaths videos, and the question is: Are they real or fake deaths?

Rebooting Faces of Death. What a world.

Speaking of dead franchises with only the glimmer of name recognition:

The budget for Marvel's last-chance movie, Doomsday, is said to be $400 million, with $100-200 just going to Robert Downey Jr. (Though I suspect that might be for both this film and the next one, Secret Wars.) The marketing budget is projected to be $300 million.

$700 million for a movie that most people don't even care about.

"The word is that Doomsday's budget is around $400 million which makes it one of if not the most expensive film ever made," Campea said. "I heard a little birdie told me, you guys will remember that Avengers Endgame was the first movie ever to spend $200 million on a marketing campaign, which was unheard of at the time. I've heard their marketing budget for Doomsday is just a little north of $300 million. Now, here's where it's interesting. If Doomsday is about a $400 million budget and if they are spending about $300 million on marketing, Doomsday will be the first film in history that will need to join the billion dollar club in order to break even."

Even worse, this movie that no one wanted opens on December 18th -- the same day as Dune: Messiah. (Or is it just called Dune Part III?)

Marvel is playing tough-guy and pretending they won't move off that release date. But of course they will. They have to do everything possible to give this piece-of-shit the best possible chance to make money. Warner Bros. doesn't really have to move Dune -- this is the third time they've milked this teat. They can afford to take a bit of a hit in the box office. (And to be honest, it doesn't sound like a crowd-pleaser, anyway: It's about Paul being responsible for literal billions of deaths as he's conned people into fighting his Space Jihad for him for ten years. Interesting way to go, but I don't know if that's going to wow the public. (Then again, I also didn't think the other two would wow the public but apparently they did.))

But if Doomsday fails -- and I think it will - that's the end of the MCU. At least it'll have to be let fallow for five or six years and only brought back as a full DC-style reboot.

Breaking: Disney will not have IMAX screens for Doomsday, because Warner Bros. already locked those down by contract for Dune Part 3. So that's a big hit right there.

So Disney is attempting to destroy the reputation of IMAX, so they can say "Who cares about IMAX? See our crap movie on a normal screen, you're not missing anything." Specifically, they've made up a new standard they're calling "Infinity Vision," and are saying that only 75 screens throughout the country meet that standard. And they're rolling this official new made-up bullshit standard on December 18, 2026-- when both Doomsday and Dune open.

They're basically trying to sabotage Dune to scare Dune away and make it move its release. But in doing so, they're burning goodwill with theaters by labeling almost all of their premium screens "Not up to Disney/Marvel standards."

This is the most arrogant, entitled entertainment company in history. And it should be of no surprise that they churn out almost nothing but substandard slop. Because absurd arrogance goes along with poor performance -- Dunning-Kruger. The incompetent are so incompetent and so unfamiliar with the standards of competency that they don't even realize they're incompetent.

More bad news for Disney:

Based on surveys of 7,000+ moviegoers conducted by Fandango, the summer of 2026 is heavily dominated by major franchises, sequels, and high-profile intellectual property (IP).

Here are the top ten most anticipated movies of Summer 2026:

Toy Story 5 (Disney/Pixar): Voted as the #1 most anticipated film, promising a new chapter for the beloved animated toys.
Spider-Man: Brand New Day (Sony Pictures): A new live-action installment in the Spider-Man franchise, highly anticipated by fans.
The Devil Wears Prada 2 (Disney/20th Century Studios): A sequel to the iconic fashion-industry comedy.
The Odyssey (Universal Pictures): Directed by Christopher Nolan, this is one of the few non-sequel films to break the top of the list.
Scary Movie (2026) (Paramount Pictures): A reboot or new installment of the popular horror-comedy parody franchise.
Moana (2026) (Disney): The live-action reimagining of the animated hit, featuring the return of Dwayne Johnson as Maui.
Minions & Monsters (Universal Pictures): The latest installment in the globally successful Despicable Me spinoff franchise.
Mortal Kombat 2 (Warner Bros.): The sequel to the 2021 live-action video game adaptation.
Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow (Warner Bros./DC Studios): A key entry in the new DC Universe (DCU) focusing on Kara Zor-El.
Insidious: The Bleeding World (Sony/Blumhouse): The latest entry in the long-running, successful horror franchise.

Notice anything missing? The Star Wars tv-show-turned-into-movie the Mandalorian and Grogu is missing from the list. It's beaten out by Scary Movie 6, for crying out loud. No shade to Scary Movie 6. But...for crying out loud, Star Wars used to be a bigger franchise than Scary Movie!

Would you like to see the fourth entry of a franchise that produced exactly one movie worth watching, 20 years ago?

Would you like to watch a movie featuring decrepit caveman retard Bobby "the Brain" DeNiro phoning in his 700th performance in a row?

How about a haggard and aged Ben Stiller, who hasn't been funny since Zoolander, whose face is now thin as cracked paper due to rigorous intermittent fasting and AIDS?

And how about notorious anxiety-ridden neurotic weirdo and donut licker Adrianna Grande?

Then boy, do I have the movie for you: Focker-In-Law. I dare you to watch this. It is without a single smile, let alone laugh.

A few weeks ago I mentioned the Malcolm in the Middle reboot. Given that it's Current Year and the show is produced by Disney -- and the producer himself has three gay children (out of four -- almost a clean sweep!) and thinks he needs to stuff more "representation" into a show formerly about straight people -- he's made some slight adjustments to the characters we thought we knew.

* A fifth sibling has been added to the mix. And They is a Non-Binary who lectures the dad when he gets Them's pronouns wrong.

* Stevie, Malcolm's black, wheel-chairbound, girl-crazy boob-obsessed pal, is now gay and married to a dude. I guess he was really good at faking.

* Malcolm's three nerdy male friends from school are now in an "asexual throuple."

Doesn't that just make you want to sign up for Disney Minus right now?

Please vote on whether you think these projects are Shit or Garbage? I'm compiling the data.

Here are two possibly decent projects:

The sequel to Godzilla Minus One, Godzilla Minus Zero.

Okay, so they're not great at titles.

Could this be the hot ticket of the summer?

They mention Chun-Li's thighs but do not show them so I believe, sadly, they did not find an Asian woman with thick thighs.

posted by Disinformation Expert Ace at 04:15 PM

| Access Comments