Modern Warfare 3-3 is legitimately one of the craziest quality whiplashes I've ever seen in any media.
I've never seen a series course correct from some of the frustrations so flawlessly only to drop even further than before.
BLOP Cold War was a clusterfuck but they pulled through and it felt like it off the back of MW was going to be unstoppable. MW2-2 picked up some of the slack with Vanguard too.
And then MW3-3 is just a turd.
Disney live action remakes. I know that they’re remakes but they have the option to change up the story by being more or less true to the actual source material yet they all seem to have a hard time separating themselves from the big golden age animated movies. So you watch them and it’s just like watching the kids’ movies you grew up with except they’re live action, bad and have none of the charm or expressiveness of the originals.
The part that angers me a little is that the live action versions, without fail, always include a new scene that did not exist in the original movie and the scene is often the best part of the remake.
It ends up feeling like, had the writers/directors decided to adapt the story in that way with the new angle, the remakes would flourish and even give reason for their existence.
My example is the new stuff with the Genie in the Aladdin remake. Yeah it wasn't amazing, but it was still neat to see because it was something *different*.
the 30 minute stretch of Cruella that's just 'The Devil Wears Prada as a heist movie' is great. every part that tries to tie in to 101 Dalmatians is the dumbest thing you've ever seen
* There are a lot of Pokemon movies but tenth one (Darkrai) is just a rehash of the second one (Lugia).
- Prophecy/nightmare from nowhere about legendary pokemon-induced doom ✅
- Ash gets a realization the prophecy/nightmare was talking about him ✅
- Legendary pokemon being territorial dicks ✅
- Third party pokemon wants to quell their fighting ✅
- Music with special instrument is magically the cure to quell the fighting ✅
As far as I know, the Darkrai movie [didn't rip off an 80's slasher movie to make its theme song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6aBpNMKtowE&t=10s) so at least it's more original in that regard.
Let's be honest, Pokémon Jirachi Wishmaker to Magearna were just the same plot repeated just so they can push the newest mythical Pokemon. Sometimes you'll get a break like with the Lucario movie but the Sinnoh and Kalos movies were extremely guilty of repeating the doing the same plot over and over again.
Even when they rebooted the movie timeline with Pokémon I Choose You they couldn't help themselves by pushing a new mythical into the spotlight with Marshadow, Zeroara and Zaruda.
The absolute king of this is Silent Hill 2. ***Every single game*** after 4 tried to just be SH2 again, not to mention the amount of indie horror knock offs that are just desperate to capture that lightning in a bottle again.
Nah, 3 tried to do something different by being a sequel to 1 and continuing the cult story. 4 did something different by changing the gameplay and focusing more on analyzing Walter’s character than Henry, the protagonist.
Every game after 4 was “new character goes to Silent Hill and has a psychological horror story representing their past. Also at the end there’s a twist about some dark secret they have.”
I personally disagree: To greatly summarize, 3 is more a merger of 1 and 2 together lore wise, while also being a very ahead-of-it's-time depiction of the pressures women face, from both men and even women who adopt the same systems of oppression as their own.
Silent Hill 4, while I personally hate it, is essentially a Team Silent take on "A Nightmare on Elm Street", with full slasher genre tropes on full, open-to-deconstruct display.
It was only 0rigins that legit just began to plagiarize the past games, VERY SPECIFICALLY SH2. >!Also, I have no idea why you were downvoted, that was not me! I very much welcome open Silent Hill discussion haha!<
For all of its faults, Downpour was trying to do something different. There was no cult in it and Murphy is introduced with him attempting murder. Furthermore, going off the main ending, >!he is closer to Harry and Henry since he got pulled into the Policewoman's SH and didn't go through with the murders.!< The game also gives much more info on why Murphy's backstory and how he was manipulated without the cult or magic, without being as plain as James or Henry.
Literally would have changed both the direction and the overall quality of the entire franchise.
They tried to kind of recapture its success with Command but it was way too late and that game was way too weird and clunky for its own good.
Assault legit was the closest to the game plan of SF2, with that latter game's walking tank combat. Weirdly ahead of it's time, with armoured core being a fan favourite.
Mario for like most of the 2010s basically hinged itself on NSMB Wii since that was such a massive hit back then. If the game didn't have the same 2D gameplay, then it's 99% likely to at least share the aesthetics.
I kinda wanna say Star Fox, but that might not have enough of the "slightly different" and might just be more of the same, but I'm not an expert on the series enough for that.
I would argue though the Hallmark genre of movies is what you say. It's all just the same basic story again, but the same plot beats maybe remixed into different orders, different actors and different settings is enough to make it "different". A country music-themed one may not be different from one shot in Ireland, but the each feels more "exotic" to the people into it.
Kingdom Hearts was a really unique action RPG.
Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories was this weird card based action RPG thing. Legit never seen anything like it.
KH2 was a natural evolution of KH1 in many ways.
BBS, Days, and DDD are all chasing the KH2 high again, trying to fit a PS2 game on handhelds to varying degrees of success.
KH3 finally goes a step further in a way that feels meaningfully different, and half the fanbase hated it for not being KH2 again.
See, I saw the opposite reaction to KH3. I saw a lot of long time fans reaction being “Th…this is it? This is what we’ve been waiting for? It’s practically a PS2 game?”
Would MGS1/2 count? Since it is partly by design >!The S3 Program being a recreation of Shadow Moses purely as a test to see if the AI Patriots could damage control the situation!<
3 also follows the same storyline and 4 kind of retroactively made it because >!The Patriots AI keeps slightly remixing the same mission from 1964 that resulted in their creation.!<
TO BE FAIR, Evil Dead 2 being essentially a remake was because Raimi and co. just wanted to make the movie they couldn't originally, now that they had a full budget.
The actual reason is they wanted to reuse footage of the first movie to recap its events but they couldn't cause another distribution company owned the rights to that footage. So they simply abridged all of the first movie into the opening of Evil Dead 2 and everything after Ash gets hit by Sam Raimi on the camerabike is the real Evil Dead 2.
And it really feels like Olivia Wilde cast Harry Styles just so she could fuck him because boy...he is not good.
It's a shame, I really liked Booksmart.
Oh it most definitely is because that man can’t act for shit, at least Pine and Pugh were actually making the most of what garbage they got. Pine’s character reads unintentionally hilarious at times too.
Except the “Stepford Husbands” have to do all of the housework AND be their comatose wives’ caretakers for the rest of their lives which is somehow BETTER than mooching off their extremely financially stable spouses?
Is that not ODST, really? Side note, god I just wish 343 would stick to a story, I actually like a lot of what they're doing outside of the games, but the story for 5 and infinite were a mess, just stick to a narrative
Marvel and Civil War. Not just in its sequel, Civil War II, but in several event comics that followed it. For a bit, the YouTube channel Strange Brain Parts was doing a little series of Marvel events at the time, and if they fit the formula started from Civil War or not.
Funnily enough: Stellar Blade is just Goddess of Victory: Nikke again. Super hot cyborg women are sent to the surface of the Earth after it's been overtaken by hordes of monsters (In Stellar Blade, they're called Angels, while in Nikke they're Goddesses), and the >!super hot cyborg woman who "dies" in the prologue returns as a brain-washed boss who more-or-less rejoins you (as a gacha unit in Nikke and as a Sephiroth-themed Devil Trigger in Stellar Blade)!<.
The current storyline in AEW with EVPs Matthew and Nicholas Jackson and the New Elite is just "Mr. McMahon + nWo + the Four Horsemen again but done maybe more competently?" which is yeah probably gonna be better written hopefully but AEW was founded on the promise that it was an alternative to those types of stories and here they are doing 30 year old tropes of evil authority figures high jacking shows.
When you're combining that many different things I'm not sure you can still call it a "___ again" tbh. But certainly don't disagree about some of those similarities and how they kind of run counter to what AEW was originally pitched as. I've mostly enjoyed what I've seen of it though.
I’m pretty neutral on AEW for the most part. But I have xpac heat with the bucks. So knowing that they’re running an angle that im even seeing some fans go “this is a bit much” almost has me intrigued in a weird way
I mean, The Elite literally rose out of a group that was satirising the nWo (The Bullet Club). Something that The Elite took a step further and really leaned into to garner the popularity they (Omega, Bucks, Cody) have now. The Bucks in how they cut their promos right now, from tone to verbiage, etc, is clearly satirising the corporate speech Vince used for decades.
To me, beyond that it’s classic wrestling storytelling as The Bucks “New Elite” clearly has Okada as the Omega sub and Jack as the Hangman sub so that eventually Omega and Hangman can return and team up with somebody (prob FTR) to face the “New Elite” and destroy it.
Super Sentai/Power Rangers whenever they do a prehistoric/dinosaur theme. Kyoryuger did extremely well and whenever Sentai seems to having a down-era, they quickly greenlit a dinosaur-theme Sentai to play it safe and appease the overseas heads at Hasbro so they use that Sentai for a Power Rangers series so they can milk the nostalgia of the very first Mighty Morphin series again.
Speaking of Sentai, Toei really love their Sixth Ranger to be either Gold or Silver, or in some cases both in their more recent series starting with Magiranger. They do something different occasionally with having a Orange Ranger in ToQuger and another Red Ranger in Kyuranger, but people were getting sick of Gold/Silver Sixth Rangers especially between Ryusoulger and Donbrothers. Made everyone sigh in relief that KingOhger sixth was white and Boonboomger being >!violet/purple!<.
To be fair to Sentai, the other dinosaur seasons aren't really trying to redo Zyuranger, as that would require Zyuranger to be as iconic in Sentai as it is in Power Rangers.
Zyuranger is a game changer for Sentai, it's the series where the mechs stopped being blocky and stiff and became more sleek, colorful and curved with better fight cartography. It's the first season with a mystic/magical theme compared to the heavy sci-fi/tech themed Sentai of the past. And most importantly, it's the very first season to have something that Super Sentai would never go without going forward, the sixth ranger (unless you count Carranger, GoGoV and to a lesser extent, Gingaman if you count the Black Knight as a ranger or a extra hero).
Soul Calibur 6 is basically the series' Mortal Kombat 9/2011 equivalent.
It attempts to squeeze in the first three games, maybe hints from the ones that followed but not quite (and especially barely a hint of stuff from the fifth game). But it mostly follows the story beats of SC1 it feels like (given how it ends with Kilik and Xianghua sealing off Inferno and the cursed sword, while Siegfried fights the possession it has on him from within).
Gameplay-wise it *feels* like a more modern SC2, but also a good bit of "there's hints of what we had from SC5 here".
I mean, I'd argue literally every franchise now just wants to be "The thing people liked but again". It's why I've really fallen off of modern TV and Movies, it's all just sequels, continuations, reboots, appealing to the lowest common denominator, etc.
Russell T Davies has returned to Doctor Who and he seems perfectly happy to just redo the themes and tone of his era all over again, like it's 2005 and he's the peak of Who that everyone loves.
Well I don't think he's the peak, in fact, he's one of my least favorite eras of the show and, frankly, I'm considering not even bothering with the upcoming series cause it seems so risk averse and populist.
…dude, he’s been back for four episodes so far, which he immediately kicked off openly and loudly with a pro-trans undercurrent before delving right back into weird high concept sci-fi and establishing a brand new plotline drastically different to anything the show’s done before which will be the overarching story arc going forward. Beyond simple callbacks and mythology gags he’s not repeating much at all so far and there’s no way in hell he could be considered risk averse or populist.
A better answer for this question would be Chibnall’s era, since he so transparently tried to shallowly copy RTD’s era and failed by nearly every metric.
The reboot Modern Warfare trilogy tried to be Modern Warfare Again while also riding the battle pass forever GAAS train
Modern Warfare 3-3 is legitimately one of the craziest quality whiplashes I've ever seen in any media. I've never seen a series course correct from some of the frustrations so flawlessly only to drop even further than before. BLOP Cold War was a clusterfuck but they pulled through and it felt like it off the back of MW was going to be unstoppable. MW2-2 picked up some of the slack with Vanguard too. And then MW3-3 is just a turd.
MW3R is such a shit show of a story...
Arguably The Force Awakens
No arguably about it lol.
No no, it's supposed to be slightly different, not just identical.
All three of them, honestly. TFA is ANH…again. TLJ is ESB…again but backwards. TROS is ROTJ…again.
Disney live action remakes. I know that they’re remakes but they have the option to change up the story by being more or less true to the actual source material yet they all seem to have a hard time separating themselves from the big golden age animated movies. So you watch them and it’s just like watching the kids’ movies you grew up with except they’re live action, bad and have none of the charm or expressiveness of the originals.
The part that angers me a little is that the live action versions, without fail, always include a new scene that did not exist in the original movie and the scene is often the best part of the remake. It ends up feeling like, had the writers/directors decided to adapt the story in that way with the new angle, the remakes would flourish and even give reason for their existence.
My example is the new stuff with the Genie in the Aladdin remake. Yeah it wasn't amazing, but it was still neat to see because it was something *different*.
the 30 minute stretch of Cruella that's just 'The Devil Wears Prada as a heist movie' is great. every part that tries to tie in to 101 Dalmatians is the dumbest thing you've ever seen
* There are a lot of Pokemon movies but tenth one (Darkrai) is just a rehash of the second one (Lugia). - Prophecy/nightmare from nowhere about legendary pokemon-induced doom ✅ - Ash gets a realization the prophecy/nightmare was talking about him ✅ - Legendary pokemon being territorial dicks ✅ - Third party pokemon wants to quell their fighting ✅ - Music with special instrument is magically the cure to quell the fighting ✅ As far as I know, the Darkrai movie [didn't rip off an 80's slasher movie to make its theme song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6aBpNMKtowE&t=10s) so at least it's more original in that regard.
Let's be honest, Pokémon Jirachi Wishmaker to Magearna were just the same plot repeated just so they can push the newest mythical Pokemon. Sometimes you'll get a break like with the Lucario movie but the Sinnoh and Kalos movies were extremely guilty of repeating the doing the same plot over and over again. Even when they rebooted the movie timeline with Pokémon I Choose You they couldn't help themselves by pushing a new mythical into the spotlight with Marshadow, Zeroara and Zaruda.
How many times have they made Mortal Kombat (1) again?
3 times. 4, if you count the movie.
The absolute king of this is Silent Hill 2. ***Every single game*** after 4 tried to just be SH2 again, not to mention the amount of indie horror knock offs that are just desperate to capture that lightning in a bottle again.
I would go further and say every game after *2* just tried to be 2 again.
Nah, 3 tried to do something different by being a sequel to 1 and continuing the cult story. 4 did something different by changing the gameplay and focusing more on analyzing Walter’s character than Henry, the protagonist. Every game after 4 was “new character goes to Silent Hill and has a psychological horror story representing their past. Also at the end there’s a twist about some dark secret they have.”
That description you gave about every game after 4 is perfectly applicable to 3 as well.
I personally disagree: To greatly summarize, 3 is more a merger of 1 and 2 together lore wise, while also being a very ahead-of-it's-time depiction of the pressures women face, from both men and even women who adopt the same systems of oppression as their own. Silent Hill 4, while I personally hate it, is essentially a Team Silent take on "A Nightmare on Elm Street", with full slasher genre tropes on full, open-to-deconstruct display. It was only 0rigins that legit just began to plagiarize the past games, VERY SPECIFICALLY SH2. >!Also, I have no idea why you were downvoted, that was not me! I very much welcome open Silent Hill discussion haha!<
For all of its faults, Downpour was trying to do something different. There was no cult in it and Murphy is introduced with him attempting murder. Furthermore, going off the main ending, >!he is closer to Harry and Henry since he got pulled into the Policewoman's SH and didn't go through with the murders.!< The game also gives much more info on why Murphy's backstory and how he was manipulated without the cult or magic, without being as plain as James or Henry.
Star Fox 1, remade into 64 and Zero.
Shame Star Fox 2 never came out, that game catching an audience would have been great.
Literally would have changed both the direction and the overall quality of the entire franchise. They tried to kind of recapture its success with Command but it was way too late and that game was way too weird and clunky for its own good.
Assault legit was the closest to the game plan of SF2, with that latter game's walking tank combat. Weirdly ahead of it's time, with armoured core being a fan favourite.
And 64-3D
Mario for like most of the 2010s basically hinged itself on NSMB Wii since that was such a massive hit back then. If the game didn't have the same 2D gameplay, then it's 99% likely to at least share the aesthetics.
I kinda wanna say Star Fox, but that might not have enough of the "slightly different" and might just be more of the same, but I'm not an expert on the series enough for that. I would argue though the Hallmark genre of movies is what you say. It's all just the same basic story again, but the same plot beats maybe remixed into different orders, different actors and different settings is enough to make it "different". A country music-themed one may not be different from one shot in Ireland, but the each feels more "exotic" to the people into it.
Kamen Rider Gaim for Kamen Rider Ryuki.
Say it louder!
DMC2's plot (what little there is) is essentially a bit of a retread of 1 with Lucia being Trish, but not knowing about it this time.
Kingdom Hearts was a really unique action RPG. Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories was this weird card based action RPG thing. Legit never seen anything like it. KH2 was a natural evolution of KH1 in many ways. BBS, Days, and DDD are all chasing the KH2 high again, trying to fit a PS2 game on handhelds to varying degrees of success. KH3 finally goes a step further in a way that feels meaningfully different, and half the fanbase hated it for not being KH2 again.
See, I saw the opposite reaction to KH3. I saw a lot of long time fans reaction being “Th…this is it? This is what we’ve been waiting for? It’s practically a PS2 game?”
Would MGS1/2 count? Since it is partly by design >!The S3 Program being a recreation of Shadow Moses purely as a test to see if the AI Patriots could damage control the situation!<
3 also follows the same storyline and 4 kind of retroactively made it because >!The Patriots AI keeps slightly remixing the same mission from 1964 that resulted in their creation.!<
Evil Dead to Evil Dead 2?
TO BE FAIR, Evil Dead 2 being essentially a remake was because Raimi and co. just wanted to make the movie they couldn't originally, now that they had a full budget.
The actual reason is they wanted to reuse footage of the first movie to recap its events but they couldn't cause another distribution company owned the rights to that footage. So they simply abridged all of the first movie into the opening of Evil Dead 2 and everything after Ash gets hit by Sam Raimi on the camerabike is the real Evil Dead 2.
That shitty movie Don't Worry Darling from a couple of years back had major "Stepford Wives, again" energy.
My sister and I drunk watched that when it came out and it was the worst like baby’s first satire that’s also a vanity project at the end
And it really feels like Olivia Wilde cast Harry Styles just so she could fuck him because boy...he is not good. It's a shame, I really liked Booksmart.
Oh it most definitely is because that man can’t act for shit, at least Pine and Pugh were actually making the most of what garbage they got. Pine’s character reads unintentionally hilarious at times too.
Except the “Stepford Husbands” have to do all of the housework AND be their comatose wives’ caretakers for the rest of their lives which is somehow BETTER than mooching off their extremely financially stable spouses?
A huge portion of the Halo fanbase will never be happy till we get Halo 3: 2
Is that not ODST, really? Side note, god I just wish 343 would stick to a story, I actually like a lot of what they're doing outside of the games, but the story for 5 and infinite were a mess, just stick to a narrative
ODST is *really* different.
Marvel and Civil War. Not just in its sequel, Civil War II, but in several event comics that followed it. For a bit, the YouTube channel Strange Brain Parts was doing a little series of Marvel events at the time, and if they fit the formula started from Civil War or not.
The second half of Ghostbusters Afterlife It’s actually insane how forced it all feels
Funnily enough: Stellar Blade is just Goddess of Victory: Nikke again. Super hot cyborg women are sent to the surface of the Earth after it's been overtaken by hordes of monsters (In Stellar Blade, they're called Angels, while in Nikke they're Goddesses), and the >!super hot cyborg woman who "dies" in the prologue returns as a brain-washed boss who more-or-less rejoins you (as a gacha unit in Nikke and as a Sephiroth-themed Devil Trigger in Stellar Blade)!<.
It's so strange that Nikke spoils that part in the new event.
Weird because people currently keep comparing it to "neir again"
Jj abrams and his childhood
I wanted Diablo 3 to be Diablo 2-2 and not what we got if that makes sense
The current storyline in AEW with EVPs Matthew and Nicholas Jackson and the New Elite is just "Mr. McMahon + nWo + the Four Horsemen again but done maybe more competently?" which is yeah probably gonna be better written hopefully but AEW was founded on the promise that it was an alternative to those types of stories and here they are doing 30 year old tropes of evil authority figures high jacking shows.
When you're combining that many different things I'm not sure you can still call it a "___ again" tbh. But certainly don't disagree about some of those similarities and how they kind of run counter to what AEW was originally pitched as. I've mostly enjoyed what I've seen of it though.
I’m pretty neutral on AEW for the most part. But I have xpac heat with the bucks. So knowing that they’re running an angle that im even seeing some fans go “this is a bit much” almost has me intrigued in a weird way
I mean, The Elite literally rose out of a group that was satirising the nWo (The Bullet Club). Something that The Elite took a step further and really leaned into to garner the popularity they (Omega, Bucks, Cody) have now. The Bucks in how they cut their promos right now, from tone to verbiage, etc, is clearly satirising the corporate speech Vince used for decades. To me, beyond that it’s classic wrestling storytelling as The Bucks “New Elite” clearly has Okada as the Omega sub and Jack as the Hangman sub so that eventually Omega and Hangman can return and team up with somebody (prob FTR) to face the “New Elite” and destroy it.
Super Sentai/Power Rangers whenever they do a prehistoric/dinosaur theme. Kyoryuger did extremely well and whenever Sentai seems to having a down-era, they quickly greenlit a dinosaur-theme Sentai to play it safe and appease the overseas heads at Hasbro so they use that Sentai for a Power Rangers series so they can milk the nostalgia of the very first Mighty Morphin series again. Speaking of Sentai, Toei really love their Sixth Ranger to be either Gold or Silver, or in some cases both in their more recent series starting with Magiranger. They do something different occasionally with having a Orange Ranger in ToQuger and another Red Ranger in Kyuranger, but people were getting sick of Gold/Silver Sixth Rangers especially between Ryusoulger and Donbrothers. Made everyone sigh in relief that KingOhger sixth was white and Boonboomger being >!violet/purple!<.
To be fair to Sentai, the other dinosaur seasons aren't really trying to redo Zyuranger, as that would require Zyuranger to be as iconic in Sentai as it is in Power Rangers.
Zyuranger is a game changer for Sentai, it's the series where the mechs stopped being blocky and stiff and became more sleek, colorful and curved with better fight cartography. It's the first season with a mystic/magical theme compared to the heavy sci-fi/tech themed Sentai of the past. And most importantly, it's the very first season to have something that Super Sentai would never go without going forward, the sixth ranger (unless you count Carranger, GoGoV and to a lesser extent, Gingaman if you count the Black Knight as a ranger or a extra hero).
Isn't one of the main complaints about Dragon's Dogma 2 is that it is too similar to the first game and doesn't add enough new things?
Soul Calibur 6 is basically the series' Mortal Kombat 9/2011 equivalent. It attempts to squeeze in the first three games, maybe hints from the ones that followed but not quite (and especially barely a hint of stuff from the fifth game). But it mostly follows the story beats of SC1 it feels like (given how it ends with Kilik and Xianghua sealing off Inferno and the cursed sword, while Siegfried fights the possession it has on him from within). Gameplay-wise it *feels* like a more modern SC2, but also a good bit of "there's hints of what we had from SC5 here".
I mean, I'd argue literally every franchise now just wants to be "The thing people liked but again". It's why I've really fallen off of modern TV and Movies, it's all just sequels, continuations, reboots, appealing to the lowest common denominator, etc. Russell T Davies has returned to Doctor Who and he seems perfectly happy to just redo the themes and tone of his era all over again, like it's 2005 and he's the peak of Who that everyone loves. Well I don't think he's the peak, in fact, he's one of my least favorite eras of the show and, frankly, I'm considering not even bothering with the upcoming series cause it seems so risk averse and populist.
…dude, he’s been back for four episodes so far, which he immediately kicked off openly and loudly with a pro-trans undercurrent before delving right back into weird high concept sci-fi and establishing a brand new plotline drastically different to anything the show’s done before which will be the overarching story arc going forward. Beyond simple callbacks and mythology gags he’s not repeating much at all so far and there’s no way in hell he could be considered risk averse or populist. A better answer for this question would be Chibnall’s era, since he so transparently tried to shallowly copy RTD’s era and failed by nearly every metric.