Great Story Ideas Done Or Ended Poorly

I just watched the anime Legendary Heroes over the past few nights and was loving it until the end which left me baffled, then confused, then just disappointed. In a nutshell, the entire show was setting up all these plotlines and characters to collide and essentially had the big ending be done in montage. Upon further review it sounds like initially the show was banking on more seasons which don't seem likely due to poor ratings.

It got me thinking, what are some great stories or shows you have seen/read that had so much promise but just didn't end well or were rushed though and left you underwhelmed? Could be for budget reasons or just a lack of time but still they left you wanting so much more because of what they seemed to promise.

The other classic example for me is Xenogears which had a first disc that was among my favorite gaming experiences ever and a second that I will never forgive for the same reasons as above.

Th polar opposite of this would be Breaking Bad, which from season 2 through the end was just a perfect crystallization of storytelling and of amazing execution, no pun intended.

So, what do you think?

Take care all.

Dexter.

Stargate Universe

The film adaptation of Stephen King's IT.

Final Fantasy XIII.

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Originally Posted by Loony BoB

Final Fantasy XIII.

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He said great story ideas. :p

Gonna have to go with Heroes off hand. I don't even know how it ended because volumes 2 and 3 were god awful messes.

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Originally Posted by Vivi22

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Originally Posted by Loony BoB

Final Fantasy XIII.

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He said great story ideas. :p

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The premise of FFXIII was excellent. The fact that one of them could at any point have turned into a monster if they were too stressed or something? The rebellion of human against fal'Cie, of l'Cie against fal'Cie, of fal'Cie pining for the return of their gods and the idea of the two worlds and how the opposing people thought of each other, all that kind of thing had the makings of a great story for me. I don't think it was done awfully but I definitely think it's a story that did not even meet half of it's potential, which was a high potential indeed.

Battlestar Galactica had a trout final season. I became clear the writers were trying to be symbolic and mysterious with no real idea of how any of this was going to work for an ending. Also, even though the first seasons said the cyclons had a plan, it was clear that they had no plan at all. What a bunch of smurftroutty smurfsmurfs.

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Originally Posted by edczxcvbnm

What a bunch of smurftroutty smurfsmurfs.

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My new favourite insult for a collection of people.

>>> Hikaru no Go, worst ending ever for one of the best mangas ever..:luca:

Same goes for most of the Obata`s mangas anyways..

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Originally Posted by Loony BoB

Final Fantasy XIII.

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I don't even have to type things out anymore!

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Originally Posted by edczxcvbnm

Battlestar Galactica had a trout final season. I became clear the writers were trying to be symbolic and mysterious with no real idea of how any of this was going to work for an ending. Also, even though the first seasons said the cyclons had a plan, it was clear that they had no plan at all. What a bunch of smurftroutty smurfsmurfs.

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Yeah this is one of the best examples of a great story going no where in the end. I'd put Lost in that category too.

Believe it or not I've never watched Lost for that very reason. By the time I was ready to watch it, most of the series had been completed so I waited to see if people were generally satisfied with the ending and when they were horribly disappointed I decided to just not invest my time at all.

I guess that raises a subquestion for this thread, are these series/games/movies worth watching even if they disappointed? Or would you tell people to not even bother? For some it's almost a rite of passage to have to suffer through a great idea's bad ending.

Take care all.

Battlestar Galactica really can't even be put in the same zip code as Lost, let alone the same category.

Lost stopped going anywhere in season 2 and didn't even make any sense in the end. At least BSG answered the bigger questions they raised and had everyone reach their eventual goal. You can argue that you didn't like it, but it doesn't compare to how quickly and completely Lost went off the rails without ever even coming close to recovering.

The Mist. My brother and I really did like the idea of regular everyday insects being turned into giant monsters due to secret government experimentation but... (SPOILER)when it turned out to be just because of another dimension opening it ruined the whole movie for us.

The Matrix:

I like Reloaded, and some parts of Revolutions, but Revolutions as a whole is terrible and ends terribly.

It was clear they just didn't have anything really planned out. I'm 99% positive the first film was supposed to be standalone.


Metal Gear Solid:

http://i.imgur.com/C0AnEsz.gif

^ the only redeeming thing about MGS4.

Anything Kazuhige Nojima has written for Squenix, they all have such good potential but he finds a way to smurf up every story he has exclusively written the plot for.

Soul Taker was a cool story about demons and some wicked symbolism and design, then the author decided to make the story about space aliens.

Escaflowne was a great series about political intrigue and giant robot knights battling until the whole thing got derailed by the revelation that the story is really suppose to be about Sir Isaac Newton's search for Atlantis and his obsession with Fate.

Sliders was an intriguing series that was sadly cursed with inept writers.

Gonna get some Star Trek all up in this thread.

Voyager and Enterprise both had great concepts, and could have become timeless classics of the TV sci-fi genre.

Instead, Voyager quickly found its groove of comfortable blandness, and rarely had the courage to stray from its stale template. It ended on a particularly whimper-tastic note with an utterly forgettable, utterly predictable finale.

Then there's Enterprise, which had a pretty terrible first couple of seasons before becoming really quite awesome for its latter half. The season three turn-around in quality was too late in coming, though, and the show was cancelled abruptly during its fourth season. Instead of a decent ending, though, we got a god-awful hour of Riker and Troi pretending to be eleven years younger than they really were, with the actual cast of Enterprise reduced to interactive holograms in the background of a Next Generation episode from the early '90s. In terms of writing, story and tone, Enterprise's penultimate multi-part episode would've made a much more satisfying conclusion, even though a cynic might describe he plot as "Earth versus Robocop & the Moon Bigots on Mars".

Define 'great'? The trick is to guess the 'bias' of the reader. In an equal universe any idea should work. ;)