How would you have changed or ended your favourite media? - A thread on what you would have done if you were in control of a show/movie/other franchise, avoiding shark jumps and other pitfalls.

[Becky McDonald]

Not every series gets a fairytale ending. Few even get a decent one. Some are milked dry whereas others are killed before their time or fade into the background. So I'm asking you faggots what would you have changed about your favourite media to give them a better, more fondly-memorable legacy?

• Columbo: Allow Peter Falk to enact his original plan of making a movie/episode every 1 - 2 years so we get a whole bunch of early '80s stuff featuring him. End the show for good well before 2003 when he plainly becomes too old to convincingly play him anymore. In the final case, let us finally see his wife (who would be a legendary Hollywood actress), who address each other by their first names, to dispel all the gay rumours and wipe the sour taste of "Kate" Columbo from our collective minds, as well as answering two of our most burning questions.
• Miami Vice: End after fourth season, make a bunch of TV specials that wrap up loose ends (like the second Lombard episode and Freefall), and give the rest of its fifth season to Knight Rider (which IIRC was cancelled in order to renew MV despite its ongoing popularity). Maybe bring Michael Mann back to direct a closing movie, so he doesn't make one in 2006.
• Stargate: Finish SG1 with "Threads", never introduce the Ori, and occasionally make TV/big budget theatrical productions with the old cast while Atlantis runs. Release a video game or two with a competent studio at the helm.
• True Detective: Let Pizzaman write his original story involving elite pedos without having certain individuals SHUT IT DOWN and put some talentless hacks in his place.
• Twin Peaks: Change what Laura Palmer said to "20 years" so the revival airs 5 years earlier and includes a bunch of the cast who died just before/during the time the revival aired, like the log lady, Miguel Ferrer and David Bowie. Also let us see the real Dale for a longer period of time instead of "Dougie" the retard who inhabited his body for the entire season.

 

[CAPTAIN HAPPY]

Game of Thrones.
Used literally any fanfiction for the ending instead of whatever the fuck Dumb and Dummer came up with.

 

[Swiss46]

Halo.
Just end it at Reach. Maybe I can accept halo wars 2 inexplicably being made after the series is over.

 

[The Magnificence]

Game of Thrones should have ended with Season 6. Jon rules Winterfell, Cersei rules some debatable portion of the Seven Kingdoms, Daenerys is finally moving on Westeros, all the fan favorites are basically where people want to see them aaaaaaand The End. It would have pissed people off, to be sure, but not as much as the next two seasons did. Would have given the show that permanent cliffhanger mystique that The Sopranos has leveraged for 15 frickin' years now.

Oh, and we would still have "The Light of the Seven" which despite it's origins being written for a TV program may be one of if not the greatest classical composition of the decade.

 

[John Titor]

Castlevania: Have Alucard form a demon hunting sanctuary with the Japanese hunters instead of that forced sex scene that went absolutely nowhere. Remove the serial killer plot twist that was obviously added for shock value. Have Varney be his own person instead of being Death's asspull disguise. Have the lesbian vampires do something interesting instead of talking about how gay they are.

 

[Psyduck]

Kingdom Hearts (Yes, i know): End it at 2. No prequels, no spinoffs, no ReMixes (as much as they improve the original games but im talking storywise here) no time travel, no "everyone is six people at once" shit.

All i can think of for now but im sure theres more

 

[Dojima's Dragon]

Prince of persia: instead of two thrones we've would gotten kindred blades or 3 but scaled back ( so no open world babylon and the day and night cycle ) also farah dies instead of kaileena

Yakuza: pretend 6 never happened or atleast would've been about kiryu and daigo instead of haruka and as for 4 saejima actually kills all the ueno seiwa men in the noodle shop massacre rather than RUBBER BULLETS

 

[GenociderSyo]

Heroes - Not sure WTF that final season was or the 5 episode writer's strike season....Or maybe I'm just still MATI over them killing Niki/Jessica after making such a big deal about them.

 

[CAPTAIN HAPPY]

Dragon Ball Z.
Boy, where do I even begin?

 

[Dysnomia]

Roseanne: Last season never existed. Well they actually made that happen with The Connors. But I mean really have it never made at all. No one wanted your American AbFab test kitchen, Rosie. Not even Jim Varney could save it. And that new furniture was hideous.

Beverly Hills 90210: I dunno. End it after college? Maybe abridge the college years to fit two seasons so it doesn't drag? That makes sense. It was just way way too long and started getting too convoluted. I know it helped a lot of people launch their careers, like Hilary Swank. But it sucked after Dylan left anyway. I think he came back a few times but it was never consistent. There's only so many love quadrangles, births and Steve Sanders being wacky that you can take before you've seen it all before.

Rock Star: I'll admit, I watched it for the cameos. But it should have ended when Chris Cole let an audience member sing before walking off stage. That would have been cool since he stuck to his principles in the end and wasn't going to let the band push him around anymore because they only saw him as a useful idiot. Instead we get a lame ass montage of Chris trying out a new career in several flavor of the month genres. Which implies he wasn't being true to himself and defeats the purpose of him walking off stage at a sold out stadium in the first place.

As soon as Chris realised he was just the metal equivalent of Johnny Bravo (his voice fit the band and nothing more), he became increasingly more disillusioned until he finally had the balls to say "fuck this I'm outta here". That was really cool. Then they totally ruin it with him being a grunge poser like he's desperate to be someone he's not.

That ending implies he was Johnny Bravo all along and just never realised it.

AI: Edit. The. Movie. Better.
And WTF was with the aliens at the end? It was like the beginning of a whole different movie. Except it was the end.

Alf: Why did you have the government capture Alf? I didn't even know that TV movie existed where he's freed. How many people saw that when it aired? Maybe they thought they'd get another season if they ended with a cliffhanger. But that's super risky. Especially when you put the lead character in dander of being vivisected by NASA.

 

[Peanut Butter in Peril]

Metroid:

• If possible, not kill off the Metroids in the second game. If not, at least fit in some sort of story point where it's learned they've been disseminated through out the galaxy by the Chozo for what ever purpose.
• Follow up on a lore point in Metroid Prime 3 where it's stated Phaaze, the origin point of all Phazon, has been around for millenia, launching Phazon Seeds to viable planets to create more Phaaze clones. Might expand to include worlds that mutated enough to avoid death or they weren't affected because they were already completely corrupted.
• Develop the plot point of the Galactic Federation's internal corruption/rogue faction as seen in Fusion (and Other M). There's no mention of it or follow up in Dread. It's seems like that would be an important thing to build upon.

 

[wtfNeedSignUp]

An actual end.
Have every show that was cancelled or sunk into terrible plots go back into the last good season and told the original authors to make a conclusive end for the main plot arcs.

 

[reptile101]

i always thought disney could make bank off of alternate timeline animations where the *bad guys* won since they love rehashing and remaking everything anyway

lion king scar wins

id say beauty and the beast but if you look at that movie in all honestly the bad guy did win as beast was a horrible fucking person and gaston was a great guy who just wanted to save someone he liked from a monster literally kidnapping people

of course that idea is prob long dead since they decided to start saying all the villains are actually just good and misunderstood

 

[Prophetic Spirit]

About ATLA:
I really wished the movie; you know, every cartoon has a movie as a final chapter. I read something about a redemption of Azula... damn, now i feel nostalgic for that idea

About TLOK:
Just... bring back Aaron. Probably TLOK could keep the same feeling of ATLA.

 

[jertzog]

Not my favorite show since I was a kid but end the Simpsons at season 11. Sneed jokes aside, it had a pseudo-finale clip show at the end and was about the point where the writers talents had noticeably deteriorated.
I keep putting off reverse-marathoning S11 to S1, probably because I'm worried I'd be tempted to watch further when I finished.

 

[Krokodil Overdose]

Addendum to Stargate: Universe never happens or is radically rewritten into something on-brand.

X-Files: end the mytharc with "Two Fathers/One Son." The show can continue with MotW episodes and maybe the occasional season story arc, but the matryoshka doll conspiracies just got ridiculous.

The Expanse: either do more seasons for the rest of the books or, if you can't do that, rewrite seasons 5 and 6 to focus on the builders, wormhole entities, and/or strange dogs. "Belter Chimpout Redux" was a major step backwards after season 4, and while there was a lot of good material (finally getting some answers about Amos was unusually satisfying) the larger story felt like a bland rehash.

 

[WonderWino]

X-Files: end the mytharc with "Two Fathers/One Son." The show can continue with MotW episodes and maybe the occasional season story arc, but the matryoshka doll conspiracies just got ridiculous.

Yeah they got weird about it after awhile, though I can see why they did what they did as it was technically central to the show, its just that it went on for so long they got to the point where they started running out of things to do with it so they started going out there with it. They really should have done more monster of the week stuff later on, maybe follow ups to previous episodes like they did with tooms. After all they did deliberately leave the door open with the flukeman still being alive and the werewolf from shapes being something that follows family lines every 8 years or whatever it was. Stuff like that would have been interesting to follow up on

As for mine...

Baldurs gate 3 would have not been a separate concept keeping the name like whatever the fuck the current developer is doing. I'd have designed a storyline more in line with the previous two - namely some kind of challenge to your character as the god of murder. Perhaps starting out with doing the same thing they did to bhaal originally - make the player mortal again and maybe have the big baddie either be another god trying to usurp you or a resurrected bhaal himself

Icewind dale 3: I would have created a third game in the franchise that was the same general size and level of content as the first two baldurs gate games were. It was always weird that they never really did anything with the location and just made it a comparatively short combat focused dungeon crawl

First wave: As low budget and simple as it was it was a decent series for its time. i'd have changed the weird pacing of the ending, included a few more episodes relating to the alien side of things, as there were only one or two episodes that even touched that, expanded on the characters more and put aside enough episode slots to do a decent 2 part final episode. I don't know what they were thinking when they came up with that final episode but that made enterprises finale look sensible - so you kill the big baddie in the stupidest possible way and go 'hey we won' and completely ignore the fact that a) theres no real reason to believe the invasion would stop just because you killed a guy that was hated by everybody and b) you're acting like your troubles are over and forgetting that even if the aliens call off the invasion your main character is still a wanted murderer as far as the cops are concerned. Came off as an oops we forgot about that moment. The one thing I would keep from that finale was fucking with the audience by falsely claiming he was actually an alien infiltrator that cracked up and started to believe his own cover the entire time. Except i'd have it made clear that he really was an alien. It would be the kind of twist that would fit with the series

Highlander: I would have done more with the background of the immortals, how the game started and why, and would have done more with methos and the kurgan

 

[Product Placement]

Highlander: Just ends with the first movie, no need for any more shit

District 9: Add the text "the pawns never came back" at the end

The Departed: Remove the Rat at the end

Terminator Dark Fate: I would have changed it so it was all about Sarah Connor hunting the Terminator that killed her kid, taking place over the years while he becomes more human and she becomes less human. Skynet would have stayed beat and they would be no replacement for it, I would not undo saving the world.

The Dark Knight Rises: Recast Catwoman or remove her from the movie, make Batman closer to the comic none of this him giving up shit, remove "robin" and remove the plot line about him losing the company or least redo so it makes some sense.

Ghostbusters 2: Make it different from the first movie, was no reason for them to start off at the bottom again as all it does is mean the movie fell like it is repeating too many steps from the first one.

Bram Stoker's Dracula: Replace Keanu Reeves and Winona Ryder with actors who can least do the accent they are meant to.

The Godfather Part III: Pay Robert Duvall asking fee, also find a better actress than your kid.

Zack Snyder's Justice League: Edit it down to closer to 3 hours, remove all the future stuff and anything with Martian Manhunter to start with.

Breakfast at Tiffany's: Remove Mr Yunioshi, don't care about the racism part just the character is painfully unfunny and doesn't fit with the tone of the rest of the movie.

Under Siege: Replace Steven Seagal with someone that has least some charisma and acting ability.

 

[Becky McDonald]

Some music ones:

AC/DC: Tell Mutt Lange to fuck off after BiB, release less, let the Youngs write more than they did, and stop asking Brian to scream in every song as it completely wore out his voice. What killed AC/DC's momentum is that they were, strangely enough, outputting too much. Yearly/bi-yearly releases is something bands do in their infancy, not when they already have several platinum records under their belt. A lot of the band's fans complain there was nothing which matched the calibre of BiB or its immediate predecessors. But they did make some solid tracks every single album. I feel they had enough material to make two really good albums in the '80s from the four (and a half) which they released, before Razor's Edge. Then you have that, Ballbreaker (with Big Gun from the Last Action Hero OST), and then a 13 year hiatus between it and Black Ice, which incorporates the best tracks from it and Stiff Upper Lip. Their final two albums can also be merged into one.

Also they should've kept Shook Me All Night Long for the album after Back in Black. I think they realised this when they re-released it and made a new music video for it in the mid '80s. Maybe Shoot To Thrill as well.

Eminem: Delay Encore and instead release an EP in late '03/early '04 (with stuff that got leaked) to tide the fans over. Spend several more months making some proper tracks instead of the shit we ended up with, and release Encore sometime in 2005, followed by Curtain Call at the end of the year. Four year gap (it's cruel to have him lose Proof but he may have ended up dead without it or Elton John's help), then both Relapses come out in 2009 or 2009/2010 as originally intended, before following it up with Recovery. MMLP2 comes out in 2013 as his final studio album with a single disc and all the shit tracks cut out of it. Then he retires for good with a second Greatest Hits compilation, and starts releasing archive shit as new albums, polishing them up, adding new verses etc. He can still do features, feuds, collabs like Bad Meets Evil and standalone tracks, but his run of albums since Revival have only hurt his legacy.

Iron Maiden: Have them go in the more progressive direction they wanted after SSoaSS, except keep Bring Your Daughter (because it's fucking awesome). Adrian doesn't leave, Bruce doesn't leave, and Blayze tracks like Man On The Edge, Futureal and Clansman are sung by Bruce from the start. They can continue from there as they wish, Senjutsu was above average in my opinion (but the critics and audience loved it), so I have no qualms with them continuing the way they did. But for fuck's sake, let the album art designer for Dance of Death do what he originally intended.

Michael Jackson: It was all downhill from the Pepsi adverts (which happened at the precise midpoint of his life to the day, look it up). Change that, his entire second half career trajectory changes. He'd probably still be alive today. Also, burning his bridges with Quincy Jones likely did him no favours in the long run.

 

[BrunoMattei]

Terminator Dark Fate: I would have changed it so it was all about Sarah Connor hunting the Terminator that killed her kid, taking place over the years while he becomes more human and she becomes less human. Skynet would have stayed beat and they would be no replacement for it, I would not undo saving the world.

I'll do you one better: it ended at Terminator 2. Cameron came back in the late 90's/early 00's to do a Terminator 3 but it was entirely set during the future war and ends with Kyle Reese (played by Michael Biehn) going back in time to protect Sara. Then the series came to a complete end.

Zack Snyder's Justice League: Edit it down to closer to 3 hours, remove all the future stuff and anything with Martian Manhunter to start with.

I actually think the movie is great up until you get to the epilogue. It should have ended right when the big bad is defeated and there's the hero shot. Done. No epilogue. No Martian Manhunter. No Jared Leto Jesus Joker. No more. It ended.

I agree with the rest of your points for the most part. Under Siege would have been a classic 90's action flick had it not been for Steven Seagal. That would be an interesting Deep Fake project for a guy who can do it and has enough time on his hands.

How I would have ended various things:

Dark Souls 3 is the final Soulsborne game. From Software no longer made any more derivations of Souls and went on to do something radically different. That includes ignoring Sekiro. Fuck Sekiro. Edit: also, From Soft was able to take their time and give Dark Souls 3 the branching path world just like the previous games. That means all the cut content is in the game.

Not really an ending per se but in my alternate universe Halloween 3 was a major hit and propelled the series as an anthology horror series set on Halloween. There's no more Michael Myers or Lori Strode or a daughter or incest baby or whatever. Myers is relegated to a cameo at best in some of the movies.

The Alien series ended with Alien 3. Also, in this time line David Fincher had full creative control over Alien 3 and made the movie his way. The spinoff AvP happened instead of Alien Resurrection and was a hard R-rated movie based on the Mark Verheiden AvP comic. Predator 2 still happened but Fox released it in a more appropriate window instead of a week after Home Alone in Xmas time...

Mr. Show ended at season 4. There was no follow up mini season called With Bob and David.

Hellraiser ended at the 2nd movie.

Texas Chainsaw Massacre ended at the first movie.

The game Blood 2 was not rushed during development and was a major hit with a mod scene active to this day.

Edit: oh yeah, The Simpsons. I would end it with the episode Lisa's Wedding. Move it up from a season 6 episode to season 8 or 9 and that's it. That's the finale. It didn't go on for 20+ years and be fucking horrible to watch. Either that or the show ends with Lisa's Wedding and then we get the movie but it came out closer to the late 90's and written by the old writers.