Godzilla.

Platinum: i've never seen godzilla but by god will i try. the franchise-ification of godzilla dulls the original meaning behind the story in favor of a cheap characterless lizard that has a significantly weakened relationship to the original story's allegory and historical context. same with every godzilla property developed by americans. gatekeep that shit

how did i do is that a hot take, idk i've never seen godzilla

godzilla minus one might be up your alley, then? though they're working on a sequel, but that was set up at least.

undertale

Star Wars

Batman

Platinum: i am planning on watching a lot of the godzilla movies, including the original. i will see if this actually reflects my real opinion lol

Yeah, I will say that, historically, your complaints line up a lot with fandom commentary about the Showa era Godzilla movies and the American flicks.

But the Heisei-era flicks ('85-'95), personally my favorite era, mainly gets attacked for beamspam fights or choppy story quality. The Millennium stuff is all so different and disconnected that there's no real solid consensus that I'm aware of.

the heisei and millennium stuff (mostly) has that original movie as its founding principle in some way or another which helps to an extent

And basically everything after the 2004 'break' has been attempts to bring the series back to its roots and make Godzilla scary again or tell a weird sci-fi saga.

yeah.

like the heisei series follows Return of Godzilla which is just. "we're ignoring literally everything but the first movie"

and the millennium mechagodzilla duology, my personal favorites of the millennium movies, basically do the same

God, I love the Mechagodzilla duology, I just wish that they'd managed to keep the same main character.