Respect the Character

So many recent entertainment franchise failures boil down to a simple failure by creators to respect characters.

Across movies, television, video games, books and comics, long-time fans of franchises have seen familiar and beloved characters badly mishandled. Newer writers decide the work of those before them is outdated or uninteresting. They twist characters they didn’t create into shapes that fans often find off-putting, if not outright grotesque. The writers demonstrate a clear lack of understanding of long-running characters and possess zero insight into what has made those properties…