Seasonal Rot / Sequelitis / Audience Alienating Era Cleanup

I think there's a case here, even if the entry really needs to be cut down length-wise. Even Wandavision and The Falcon and the Winter Soldier were decently divisive, and there's been more and more criticism of the post-Infinity War content. I don't think Seasonal Rot and Post-Script Season are mutually exclusive.

I'll try...

• The Marvel Cinematic Universe started to enter one around Phase 4, after half a decade of box office dominance.
  • The phase got off to a decent start in 2021, with WandaVision being highly acclaimed. While Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, Loki, Spider-Man: No Way Home, and Hawkeye were all well liked, the MCU also suffered from some of it's most polarizing entries since Phase 2 - The Falcon and the Winter Soldier was divisive, Black Widow underperformed theatrically and was deemed an underwhelming send off to a beloved character, and Eternals not only became the second flop of the series in a year, but the first film to earn a "Rotten" score for the franchise amidst criticisms that Chloé Zhao's sweeping epic was too tonally clashing with the more goofy, action-driven superhero film. Even WandaVision became more polarizing as time went on.
  • The rot became worse in 2022, with Moon Knight, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, Ms Marvel, Thor: Love and Thunder, and She-Hulk: Attorney at Law being highly divisive due to an overreliance on Mood Whiplash based comedy, Special Effects Failure, and every show ending with a big budget CGI battle. While Black Panther: Wakanda Forever and The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special - both released at the end of the year - managed to avoid those criticisms, interest in the series had waned, compounded by the fact that in Phase 5, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania bombed after receiving negative reviews and just barely doubled its opening weekend box office, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 failed to match the box office intake of its predecessor despite positive reviews, and Secret Invasion received a muted response despite marking the return of Nick Fury.

Edited by Paperfly on Aug 10th 2023 at 2:34:45 AM

Yeah that looks better.

What metric are we using for "divisive" here? Because, just off the top of my head Ms. Marvel, Moon Knight, and Multiverse of Madness all performed well in terms of viewership and both critical and audience scores. Now that I check, Falcon and Winter Soldier, same thing. Moon Knight has a (slightly) higher audience RT score than Wanda Vision and Ms. Marvel has a higher critic score...so why is one listed as "highly acclaimed" and another listed as "highly divisive?"

Love and Thunder grossed 3/4 of a billion dollars and also has positive critical and audience reviews.

"Highly divisive" comes across as natter here if there's not some sort of identifiable criteria to back it up (bad RT scores, low earnings, low ratings, ect). I'd expect something that was "HIGHLY divisive" to...well, actually divide audiences and critics. As is, this reads a bit like giving a Vocal Minority more weight to their opinions than makes actual sense.

Edited by ArthurEld on Aug 10th 2023 at 11:08:14 AM

• Ms. Marvel, despite critical acclaim, suffered from low viewership numbers according to Nielsen, with 3 of the episodes (2-4) not even making it into the weekly top 10 (Even She-Hulk and Moon Knight had better luck in that regard)
• Multiverse of Madness was polarizing, with a 75% critics score on RT and a B+ Cinemascore, and had the worst multiplier of the MCU (till Quantumania)
• Thor: Love and Thunder was also polarizing, and I've seen a lot of dislike for it due to it's attempts at Bathos at the expense of Thor's characterization. It also got a B+ Cinemascore.
• I have no excuse for Moon Knight and Falcon and the Winter Soldier
• And regardless of their acclaim, their over-reliance on humor and big budgets has been polarizing.
• Nonetheless, I'll take another stab at it

• The Marvel Cinematic Universe started to enter one around Phase 4, after half a decade of box office dominance.
  • The phase got off to a decent start in 2021, with WandaVision and The Falcon and the Winter Soldier being highly acclaimed. While Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, Loki, Spider-Man: No Way Home, and Hawkeye were all well liked, the MCU also suffered from a couple of missteps with Black Widow and Eternals. The former underperformed theatrically and was deemed an underwhelming send off to a beloved character, and the latter not only became the second flop of the series in a year, but the first film to earn a "Rotten" score for the franchise amidst criticisms that Chloé Zhao's sweeping epic was too tonally clashing with the more goofy, action-driven superhero film. Even WandaVision became more polarizing as time went on.
  • The rot truly began to set in 2022, with Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, Thor: Love and Thunder, and She-Hulk: Attorney at Law being highly divisive due to an overreliance on Mood Whiplash based comedy, Special Effects Failure, and every show ending with a big budget CGI battle. Even the generally well liked entries of Moon Knight and Ms Marvel faced the same criticisms, with the latter suffering from the worst viewership of all live action MCU shows. While Black Panther: Wakanda Forever and The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special - both released at the end of the year - managed to avoid those criticisms, interest in the series had waned, compounded by the fact that in Phase 5, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania bombed after receiving negative reviews and just barely doubled its opening weekend box office, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 failed to match the box office intake of its predecessor despite positive reviews, and Secret Invasion received a muted response despite marking the return of Nick Fury.

Edited by Paperfly on Aug 11th 2023 at 2:30:16 AM

My point isn't that they're mutually exclusive, but that the example's dismissing the latter entirely to focus on advancing a particular negative narrative that's sort of always been there. While there's legitimately more films that have been more poorly received and some other common criticisms, there's also a lot of evidence that financial success in particular has suffered for other reasons than quality, like people not feeling the 'need' to go (especially with the Covid hit to moviegoing looking more and more like it's permanent in general).

That's surprising to me, because I've been keeping track of Nielsen's ratings for streaming shows. According to Nielsen, the first four episodes of Secret Invasion have made it to the top 10 (though viewership has declined from the second episode onwards). By contrast, Ms. Marvel opening weekend saw 249 million viewing minutes, after which it dipped out of the top 10 before returning during the last two episodes

Yeah, Secret Invasion is one of the ones that I think has been fairly broadly poorly received. I can't speak for viewer numbers but a steady drop doesn't sound implausible.

Though regardless, I'm not sure it's all that relevant.

Edited by nrjxll on Aug 11th 2023 at 8:49:07 AM

I'd also point out that a considerable amount of online hate towards phase 4 and 5 projects comes from the fact that they're the most focused on women and people of color.

Yeah, that's very much an elephant in the room, no pun intended. I was actually thinking about that when Ms Marvel came up, and even more so WRT She-Hulk, because that has definitely attracted explicit criticism from those types and the other criticism rings a bit hollow because it's been equally characteristic of some of her best-known and received source material, unlike, say, Thor.

(OTOH, as I said before, I do think the MCU's reception is starting to legitimately run into some of the same issues that have marginalized the original comics, so I can't discount the existence of people without that familiarity disliking it.)

Oh absolutely there's a legitimate case here. I think it's just important not to fold criticism from the Usual Suspects in with actual proper complaints.

Like Ms. Marvel was definitely review bombed, just to pick one example, and that's kind of important to at least acknowledge.

Question: since the MCU is a film and TV franchise, why is it listed as Seasonal Rot and not Sequelitis? Is it because these installments aren't necessarily all sequels to each other and there's so many that it may as well be treated as a series of properties?

OK cool just checking

Edited by mightymewtron on Aug 13th 2023 at 4:17:29 AM

Yes that is why. The franchise consists of seperate entries despite the close connectivity and Continuity Lock-Out between all of them.

Edited by AudioSpeaks2 on Aug 13th 2023 at 4:11:07 PM

Should we be listing reception to Phase 5 in the example when Phase 5 isn't over yet? I was under the impression that installments don't get a Seasonal Rot entry until after they've completed.

I agree. I'd even say 6 months after the last installment of Phase 5.

From the description of Analog Horror:

Seasonal Rot is specifically for series, not genres, right? Am I correct in assuming the pothole would then be misuse?

I'm pretty sure it's only for works and not genres. But frankly that entire paragraph looks like it's complaining anyway.

Edited by greatpikminfan on Sep 6th 2023 at 9:03:58 AM

Deletus.

Deleted the paragraph. Thanks all.

I think the MCU is at least worth a writeup.

Also found this on the The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel page for The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel:

• Seasonal Rot:
  • A contingent of older fans view the Cold Steel arc as such, claiming that it doubled down on both Falcom's weaker writing aspects and used various overly used JRPG tropes, excess plot padding and rampant fanservice to the detriment of the plot while introducing multiple characters and plot threads and not doing much to properly develop them despite whatever potential they had. This viewpoint is not universal however, and there are many fans, particuarly newer fans that entered the franchise through the Cold Steel arc, that view the arc as a worthwhile and well-written addition to the franchise, with III often highlighted as being on par with the Sky Trilogy and the Crossbell games in these circles.
  • Among the games, IV tends to be the most divisive, this is due to the various plot reveals it makes such as the curse of Ishmelga that are seen as extremely contrived, undoing many of the tragedies in III such as Millium and Olivert's deaths, along with many events such as the Liberation of Crossbell mentioned as a side note or in the epilogue. In addition, many flaws seen in the rest of the arc are perceived to be present in full force such as introducing characters and plot lines but never developing them to their full potential, the harem-ish way bonding is handled, as well as the excess Padding. That said, IV does have its' fair share of fans that appreciate the fanservice and its' resolution of Rean's story, as well as key plot threads introduced in the Cold Steel arc, as well as the Sky and Crossbell arcs, on a high note in the true ending.

As the person that originally wrote this, Cold Steel games were VERY well received and made the Trails series popular in the west and it tended to be a vocal minority hatedom usually tied to the "modern anime hatedom" and the Persona hatedom that's not happy about feature from Persona Games entering the trails series and potentially negatively affecting canon(mainly due to romance mechanics). IV was seen to be a bit more problematic even among the trails fandom, but I don't think Seasonal Rot fits there, if anything sequelitis would be a better fit.

Anyone have any objections?

Edited by xie323 on Sep 7th 2023 at 8:04:40 AM

Posting to over here from the Death Battle cleanup thread for more feedback:

• Audience-Alienating Era: Among many Death Battle fans, Season 3 is considered to be an dark age among them. The reason for that is while it initially had a strong start with "Dante vs. Bayonetta", it quickly fell off afterwards, with at least half of the episodes having poor animation quality, an lack of research or bias towards certain characters, or both. While there were some good episodes, they were overshadowed by the amount of disappointing fights, culminating in the underwhelming finale of "Deadpool vs. Pinkie Pie". Not helping matters is that Death Battle X replaced 1 Minute Melee as a side series, and initial consensus was that it was inferior due to the experimental style. Fortunately, the creators managed to rectify the mistakes by improving their not just their research, but also improving the animation quality as well and introduced a hand-written style to further enhance the quality of their battles, and the Season 4 Finale, "Sephiroth vs. Vergil" is agreed to be a massive improvement compared to the previous finale, and Death Battle X also improved on everything else to the point that it's agreed to be on par with 1 Minute Melee or even superior towards it. While there are a few disappointing matchups, the rest of the seasons are nowhere near the poor quality of Season 3.

Anything wrong with it?

Idk if this is the right place to ask but here we go:

I've been wanting to write a YMMV entry about Daybreak II: Crimson Sin since the general consensus I've seen online was that it the weakest story in Trails game due to many feeling like nothing ever happens and having weak villains. However, there are people who like the gameplay as it fixes many issues that Daybreak I had. So I'm unsure if it counts as Sequelitis or a Contested Sequel.

I do believe that it fits Play the Game, Skip the Story if the gameplay is significantly well-received, but if that's not the case, then Contested Sequel might work if the game has an equal amount of both detractors and defenders with valid points for each side.

Bump, any opinions on the Death Battle entry?