Why Your Favorite Franchises are getting "ruined"

We all know the situation. It's been happening to all your favorite stuff. Your favorite book series, movie franchise or video game sequel. Whatever it is, if you've been around long enough, your favorite thing has been "ruined" or you've seen people complaining about it. Either way, there's a very simple reason for it. It makes money by guaranteeing that you have a lot of eyes on whatever product you are trying to push out.

Change a character's skin color, gender swap them, kill off a beloved character or have a detestable person be your hero in the story. There are a lot of ways to stir the nest of the internet, and to russle the jimmies of the public in general. Ghostbusters (2016) was despised by many who claimed that the writing was poor, and that the jokes were awful. Sony and actors would claim it was because the internet as a whole was sexist and the like. Ignoring that and looking at the numbers, Ghostbusters had a budget of $144 million and came out the end of the tunnel with $229.1 million. A solid profit of around $85 million. The Last of Us Part 2, while winning many awards and being subject to critical acclaim, was embroiled in several miniscule controversies that had many a gamer angry and ready to denounce Neil Druckmann and Naughty Dog altogether. Killing off a beloved character who you played as in the first game, alleged self inserts by Druckmann, and if you believe the angry gamers, having one of the worst endings in gaming history are just a few of the supposed tragedies. Despite all of this, it holds the title of being the sixth most sold game in all of 2020.

This particular scenario can and will be repeated ad nauseum because it works. Despite all the angry complaints people will lobby against the creators of whatever they love, it will make money with or without their support. You can blame it on hate watching, blind consumerism, or whatever else you can think of, all these companies will see are dollar signs. And if you think your anger is righteous, that you should boycott the product, and that everyone should agree with you, you will be labeled as a splinter faction. An extremist opinion that is only loud because you and yours yell it loud enough, and not because there are possibly entire communities united with you. In fact, they will use that against you, effectively creating a miniature culture war. They will point at you and say you are just bringing everyone else down. The mantra being hummed and sung, "let people enjoy things". Who is right? Who is overreacting? Who is lying? Who knows and who cares? At the end of the day, there is no way to stop your favorite thing from being "ruined". And that's okay. Whether it's out of a sense of personal attack or pure disappointment in the creative minds behind your certain things, it is important to remember two things. One, it doesn't affect your personal life. It's not the end of the world if a few things are ruined. The franchise can always improve and it can always get worse. Two, you can always just not support the product. Money speaks, as I hope I've made clear through this writing. No hate watching, no "reviewing", no anything that gets money out of your wallet and into the people who are infuriating you. Don't want a product to succeed? Convince everyone else who doesn't like it to just not support it. And if it succeeds anyway, then that just proves that there was more people who liked it than you and your community of disappointed fans. It sounds bleak but hey, there's always fanfiction!