r/TopCharacterTropes • u/Morr4Seiya • 7d ago

Hated Tropes (Hated)changing somenthing to be more "progressive" ends up being a bad thing

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Now to be clear,i am not one of these "anti-woke" losers that complain some people exist,and i am also not the type to complain about changing somenthing in a new version or adaptation,however there are cases where it did ended up being a bad idea.

-In the anime of Cowboy Bebop there is the character Gren,despite being short lived the character is very memorable specially thanks to his tragic story.Basically his story was that he was a soldier from the titan war who was a great friend with Vicious(the main bad guy)after the war he was emprisioned thanks to Vicious who testified against him and he was forced to take a experimental drug that caused him hormonal problems,giving him a feminine appearence and even breasts.

In the Netflix live action,for some reasons they decided Gren was going to be non-binary,which wouldn't be a problem(some people believe he was gay in the anime)if it wasn't for the fact that they also removed all the nuances and complexities that made the character memorable and interesting,instead of a tragic war veteran that was betrayed and had his body changed against his will,Gren is just kinda there.

-The original Rugrats cartoon had the couple Betty and Howard,Betty was a big and masculine woman while Howard was a smaller and nervous man,it was a genuine interesting relationship that stood out from the other couples who were the standard straight couple.

In the new series however they replaced Howard with a woman named Trish,two things,first off why?What was the problem with having a woman being the stronger in a straight relationship?Second why does Hollywood seem to think that every tomboy or masculine woman is a lesbian?

Overall not the worst thing but it is jarring that they had a gender reverse roled that was progressive and decided that wasn't enough.

-Oh man,this one pisses me off the most so i am gonna have to break it down

So back in the late 80s and 90s there was this anime called Saint Seiya also knows as Knights of the zodiac,it tells the story of knights who fight for the Goddess Athena to protect earth,being divided in the golden,silver and bronze knights,the anime was a huge hit in latin america and Europe and while it floped in the US it still has a loyal fanbase.

Being a fan myself i can't recommend it enough,now granted the story does have a fair share of flaws,and that's because the author was honestly just making stuff up as he went along(also a lot of side characters are poorly used or even forgotten about)still it is a great story you should check out

But then a couple of years back Netflix got the rights and decided to a 3D reboot,in this reboot they decided to make the story more "american" to try to bring more american viewers,now i could go on and on a big rant about how that was a bad idea and the execution was so terrible that it made me want to strangle someone but this post is about one specific change.

So Saint Seiya has five main characters,those are Pegasus Seiya,Dragon Shiryu,Cygnus Hyoga,Phoenix Ikki and finally Andromeda Shun.

While the other four characters were the standard masculine and brute male characters who were always ready to throw punches,Shun was smaller,more sensitive and even feminine looking,a pacifist who didn't liked fighting,but don't mistake that for weakness because Shun was loyal to his friends and was extremely powerful.

Then Netflix decided to change Shun into a girl named Shaun.

So wait,you have a male character who goes against every male stereotype and you turn him into just another generic female character?

When asked about it,the showrunner Eugene Son said he made that change because there was no girl in the group and having a all boys group wouldn't be acceptable nowadays

First off that's not true because Athena was also part of the main cast,yeah she wasn't the fighting type but she still helped quite a lot in the story even saving the knights on several occasions,second if you wanted to add a girl to the main group why not use Marin or Shaina?Hell,if you were going to change the story anyway why not turn Seiya sister into a knight?

Thankfully this monstrosity was cancelled(so much for trying to bring more fans)

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u/AnonOfTheSea 7d ago

Artemis Fowl.
You know that book about the child who kidnaps a fairy police officer for the ransom money, so he can afford to keep looking for his irish mob boss father, who went missing after crossing the russian mob?
Yeah, hes a hero now, and there's something about some kind of dark forces he's been trained to fight against.

Years back, I read somewhere that the last book or so of that series was ass because the author just wanted to be done with it, and wanted it to die. The movie convinced me. I could believe a certain level of miscasting, mischaracterization, or missing the point, but the level of catastrophic mishandling of every single character, plot point, theme, even genre... at some point, you have to start to consider sabotage.

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u/Keyg28 7d ago

Was just gonna say. The whole point being that Holly short is the first female police officer with this sexist boss and then in the movie they made the boss a woman… removing half the motivation for the plot in the story

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u/APreciousJemstone 7d ago

And it changes Root being hard on her because he *wants* her to succeed to her being hard on her just cause.

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u/CaptainMills 7d ago

Yep. In the book, Root flat out tells Holly that, as the first female LEPrecon officer, she can't succeed just by being good, she has to be great. She can't be as good as the men, she has to be better than them. And he's so hard on her because he wants her to succeed and knows that she can. It's a very real issue and the book is not subtle about it at all.

Ffs the whole reason Holly got kidnapped by Artemis is that she was pushing herself so hard that she was out of magic and hadn't done the Ritual to get it back.

Turning Root into a woman is pretty much catastrophic for both characters and the entire story

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u/Ok_Ad_1232 7d ago

I mean there's a way to do it. But they didn't do it well. I imagine they cast Judi Dench to get an M from the James Bond movie vibe

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u/CreatorMur 6d ago

I mean the actress is great for roles like that, but it does simply not work with the story. I remember when the movie was announced. I was so hyped until I saw the trailer.... it might be a good movie, I don't know, but It's not a good adaptation

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u/Ok_Ad_1232 6d ago

i didn't say anything about the quality of the movie just aid what they were clearly going for even if it didn't work

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u/CreatorMur 5d ago

I didn't mean to imply you did. I haven't watched the movie, so I really can't judge it. But it's a great example why changing a characters sex/gender can change the story. Logically speaking it changed everything about Hollys normal life, work and personality

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u/Ok_Ad_1232 5d ago

The same thing happened when thye cast M as a woman in the James Bond stories it impacted his character but it was a successful attempt.

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u/TheUrbanEnigma 7d ago

Admittedly didn't watch the movie, but when I heard that I got pissed. It's more than removing story plot, it guts Holly's character. Holly is who she is because of her struggles and achievements. She was shaped by decades of training, effort, and determination in the face of discrimination and a culture of favoritism.

I can only imagine they replaced Root with Dame Judi Dench as an easy feminism inclusion card, but they completely lost Eoin Colfer's golden girl of feminism along with it. Completely missed the point and I am not interested in watching.

Then they made Butler black which... I take no issue with. I can't think of any part if his character that is drastically affected by his race, other than perhaps his "ability to blend into any crowd". I heard people calling it distasteful or racist because they "made the manservant black", but if you know the character, Butler does a service to whatever ethnicity he might be just by being a complete and utter badass.

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u/Tyrondor 7d ago

I think the biggest issue with how they handled Butler in the movie was his name. In the books he insists that everyone calls him Butler. He doesn't want Artemis knowing his real name and he doesn't tell him his real name until he thinks he's literally on his deathbed.

In the movie he doesn't like being called Butler because it implies the black guy is nothing more than a servant so he just hands his name out right at the start and that's what they use for the rest of the movie.

It just feels really out of character. Like most other characters in the movie.

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u/TheUrbanEnigma 7d ago

Wow, yeah, that's certainly a departure. I hadn't realized that even the script was harping on that point.

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u/DMMeThiccBiButts 7d ago

..they made Butler black? The guy who's consistently referred to as ambiguously eurasian and able to blend in to 70% of the world's population because of it, despite being a fucking tank?

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u/Omarlel 7d ago

Not only does it destroy the impact and incredible sentimentality of the scene in the books where he reveals his name to Artemis, but it even manages to completely fuck up the impact the meaning of the name itself is supposed to have on you.

Artemis (and the reader) don't know until the third book that the guy who's been the Fowl's nigh-omnipresent guardian angel and devoted protector, who faithfully served Artemis with almost supernatural effectiveness, is literally named Domovoi. And considering the Butler family is paired to their charges from birth, it hits that much harder.

He is his name, and the reveal where he's actively dying (and genuinely does die for a bit, tbf) is just completely gone. It just feels like a nominative determinism gag for those who know a little slavic folklore, rather than a "holy shit, this man has always been a selfless angel for Artemis, and now he's gone" moment like it was in the books.

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u/SmoothDiscussion7763 7d ago

to be fair his ability to blend into any crowd doesn't even really make sense when you realize he's just this huge guy that will stick out in 99% of the streets he's in.

also it's my head canon that he's basically agent 47 without the barcode

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u/DMMeThiccBiButts 7d ago

I always read it as he blends in racially, such that yeah you notice he's built like a brick shithouse, but you don't question that he's not from around there.

You remember seeing a great tank of a man, not that he was an outsider.

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u/Maleficent_Thought_4 7d ago

Then they made Butler black which... I take no issue with. I can't think of any part if his character that is drastically affected by his race, other than perhaps his "ability to blend into any crowd". I heard people calling it distasteful or racist because they "made the manservant black", but if you know the character, Butler does a service to whatever ethnicity he might be just by being a complete and utter badass.

IMO the big issue with making Butler black is that iirc it’s mentioned on at least one occasion that the Butlers have been servants for so long that it’s rumoured that the profession is named after them, which rightly or wrongly carries some very different implications if Butler is black.

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u/ElectronicPangolin96 7d ago

100%, and they cast a white actor as Holly (who is described as brown-skinned in the book). Just goes to show that they care more about looking progressive than being the real thing.

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u/Ok_Ad_1232 7d ago edited 7d ago

Thye cast Judi Dench because she's m in James Bond and they wanted that vibe with Holly being the rogue Jmaes bond. It didn't work but you can see the thought process.

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u/Layton_Jr 7d ago

Artemis Fowl has such poor physical abilities that he'd trip trying to go on an escalator. First scene of the movie is him surfing.

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u/Gmageofhills 5d ago

I'm pretty sure she was also of color in the books (its been years im working off of memory) which if true means she ALSO was literally white washed too.

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u/TheReaderDude_97 7d ago

I just saw the trailer and I knew it was Artemis Fowl only in the name. They showed Artemis surfing, sword fighting. Artemis in books almost has a heart attack climbing some stairs.

But seriously, in books, you see him progress from a villain to a hero. You see him grow and realize that he can use his brains for good. I loved seeing how his relationship with Holly develops slowly. The movie just made him a generic good guy.

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u/Logitech0 7d ago

They tried to paint him as a spy from a Spy Kids movie taking the mantle of his father, also his servant which is from a bloodlines of servants now is Black.. what are they trying to tell us?

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u/Blackfrosti 7d ago

This might sound weird, but I always viewed Butler in my minds eye as Cobra Bubbles from Lilo and Stich. I read those books as a kid and I think that was just my mental image of a super badass at the time, so it was so weird to me when people were mad he was cast as a black guy. I legit was like, "he's always been black?????"

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u/metheus-13 7d ago

You were not the only one, friend.

EDIT: Also, 10 year old me had no clue what Eurasian meant.

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u/Gamyeon 7d ago

Also, 10 year old me had no clue what Eurasian meant.

Same. I was VERY confused when a comic adaptation was published and Butler was drawn as a buff fair-skinned super blond dude (still buff though).

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u/Logitech0 7d ago

This kind of character come in two way: the huge black guy or the east european huge guy, so being confused is perfectly normal.

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u/High_King_Diablo 7d ago

They just tried to make Alex Rider with magic and slapped a different name on it. Stormbreaker was a terrible movie as well.

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u/quotes_and_asks 7d ago

Juliet was mixed, too. Can’t have a regular black girl, I guess, she’s got to be a little paler.

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u/Blackfrosti 7d ago

Netflix skin color

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u/Budget-Television793 7d ago

A huge point of Artemis's character is that he ISN'T cool. He's weird and creepy because of his fucked up childhood. And it makes him a fascinating progatonist, especially for books aimed at a younger audience.

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u/GenGaara25 7d ago

And removed most of his genius.

In the book, it's Artemis and Artemis alone who figures out the existence of the fairy race through extensive research. He's the one who finds Mulch and extracts the information out of him. Then uses that knowledge to capture Holly, then fight of and escape the fairy siege on his manor. The film changes it so generations of Fowl's have been researching fairies and Mulch just sort of lands on his lap. He doesn't do anything.

Also, it gets rid of his mother entirely iirc. In the book, Artemis' mother is sick and bedridden in the manor. With his father in the wind, it's up to Artemis to look after his family and rebuild his fortune. The resolution of the book is the fairies giving him half the gold he asked for but also providing medicine to cure his mother. That's the beginning of their alliance, they helped his mother. In the film she's already dead.

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u/Azou 7d ago

in the books the LEP actually bring in mulch during the fowl household siege after hollys capture because his kleptomania and breaking of their rules already prevents him from rules sickness.

He actually gets his book copy and info from a sprite that developed alcoholism in the back alleys of... mumbai? I want to say? And then cures her alcoholism with a concoction that also strips her memory

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u/ItsNotMeItsYourBussy 7d ago

It was Ho Chi Minh city

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u/Azou 7d ago

Ah yes it was! For some reason my brain was saying India or Egypt but thats definitely wrong and you are completely correct

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u/Forikorder 7d ago

He's the one who finds Mulch

it wasnt mulch just some unnamed fairy

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u/NoCivilRights 6d ago

His mother's gone???? What the fuck were they smoking???

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u/Strigops-habroptila 7d ago

The author said that he didn't even watch the film. Seems like he wasn't involved much.

The last book wasn't that bad, to be honest. He even wrote a spin off that was pretty fun. 

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u/DogOwner12345 7d ago

The books aren't exactly highbrow but they achieve something most fail at and thats just being enjoyable issues and all.

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u/ExaggeratedSwaggerOf 7d ago

The last book was a good send off. Artemis was a full on action hero at that point in the story. It was definitely an improvement to Lost Colony and Atlantis Complex. I also thought the ending looping back to the beginning of the series was kinda neat.

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u/_Panic_At_The_Costco 7d ago

I doubt that Colfer had much, if any, creative control over the adaptation.

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u/Enyawww 7d ago

I remember enjoying the last book. I was a kid, but I loved how it ended.

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u/Double_Cow_8238 7d ago

They just announced they are remaking this with the author involved so hopefully it will suck less

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u/555moo 6d ago

I saw that. It's also going to be a 2D animated show so they have more room to flesh out the pacing, so my hopes are generally high. At least higher than the movie, clearing that bar wouldn't be all that difficult.

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u/UnquestionabIe 7d ago

Just did a random watch of a video covering the series and general consensus isn't that the last book is bad so much as it suffers from an issue the series as a whole does: it's mostly episodic. Whatever was a huge deal at the climax of a book tends to get undone fast and hard at the beginning of the next to make sure the status quo is intact so there can be a new adventure with a fresh slate. The issue with that is the world building and characters are so engrossing that it grows frustrating to the long term audience. Granted there is decently done character growth that continues onward so it doesn't feel like constant repeats.

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u/EMlYASHlROU 7d ago

I actually liked the last book tbh

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u/halfachainsaw 7d ago

it hurt extra bad because we waited something like 15 years for this movie. it was said to be in development in like the early 2000s and just never materialized. to finally get this hot flaming piece of garbage was such an insult. this movie solidified my beef against Kenneth Branaugh. oh how I HATE that man.

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u/TheUrbanEnigma 7d ago

I only picked up in an few details of that movie, but... yeah, I knew they butchered it when Mulch was being interviewed by the government and Root was Judi Dench. Just really missing the plot, here.

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u/SmoothDiscussion7763 7d ago

also, butler name reveal early on really killed it

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u/Ace_of_Sphynx128 7d ago

Any mention of the movie literally makes me so angry, they literally ruined everything T-T

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u/Forikorder 7d ago

at some point, you have to start to consider sabotage.

not by the author though, the suits at hollywood decided a boy villain wasnt good box office material

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u/CosmicWolf14 6d ago

I didn’t read the entire series, but I got most of the way through, all the way back in middle school. I’m so glad I didn’t know the movie existed until months after it came out.

Did they at least include the armored fight against the troll by the bodyguard? I forgot his name, it’s literally been a decade since I read them.

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u/Budget-Television793 7d ago

Yeah, I lost interest in the series as it went. It definitely got to a point where they jumped the shark and had to make up wilder and wilder problems. I remember one about some demon dimension? That was odd.

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u/lovess_drugss 7d ago

question, is the movie really that different? I could never read the books so I know nothing, sorry.

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u/AnonOfTheSea 7d ago

The movie includes some of the settings from the book, and the characters share names.

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u/lovess_drugss 7d ago

lol, like Mulan from 2022? I think

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u/Human1549 7d ago

I personally think the last book was enjoyable and had a satisfying conclusion

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u/EcnavMC2 6d ago

Look, the Artemis Fowl movie isn’t bad. It’s a perfect movie to put on when you just want something to watch without thinking too hard about the plot and such.

That being said, I think it may be genuinely one of the most god-awful adaptations of anything ever made. They really should have just not made it an Artemis Fowl movie.