Bad Tropes

This weekend we tried to watch two shows made off of already established movie franchises. We are disinclined to watch either of them again. 

These days, we have a lot of remakes and rehashing of things. There are various reasons for this, but I don't think those reasons matter as much as what is done with them. In both of these cases, all of the characters were well-established tropes who showed little to no potential for interesting growth. While I am certain some level of 'character growth' will be written into both shows, I somehow doubt said growth will follow any kind of path save for the most obvious and typical ones. 

People who start out as enemies learn to work together. Person who is overly ambitious learns to be unselfish. Person who has a lot of reasons to seek justice and revenge finds value in peaceful solutions. 

Look. Just.

Okay. The ONE ADVANTAGE you really have when you're just revamping an already well-known story is that you don't have to work out the story part of the show. People know that bit. They know the general idea. They GET IT. 

With that in mind, the one place where showrunners and writers really CAN improve on the old thing is by making really good characters and putting them through the story. Interesting characters. Dynamic characters. FUN characters. Not just the same group of tired-ass characters that I want to be killed by their third line of dialogue. 

Stop that.