Star Wars was always my favorite sci fi universe for so long..
Now with what Filoni and Disney has done with it, i just dunno any more. I feel lost. I loved Andor and Rogue One though, but apparently they aren't the most popular?
Lord of the Rings - Started with the Hobbit and has been downhill since then
Technically, the hobbit existed before lord of the rings. It was a story Tolkien wrote for his kids, that he later expanded and continued into lord of the rings. Initially, the ring wasn't a ring of power, just a novel trick. And Gandalf wasn't all powerful, he was an old friend caught up in bilbo's shenanigans.
Now if you're explicitly talking about the movie adaptations, yeah. The hobbit kind of lost its magic compared to the lord of the rings movies.
The Hobbit movies being shit is due to greed and imcompetence by Warner Bros. They knew they had only a small time window to do these movies until the rights reverted and they fired Del Toro who was already deep in preproduction because they thought he was too slow. Which forced Peter Jackson, who rather did it himself instead of Warner ruining it completely, to start by scratch and do the movies under horrible circumstances. Scenes were shot without knowing where they fit in because the script was written during shooting, CG had to be shoddily used because Weta couldn't get practical effects and make-up to work quickly enough. Ian McKellen broke down crying because he had to do whole dialogue scenes in a green screen room alone. The making of also shows Peter Jackson being absolutely exhausted and disillusioned. It seems to have broken something in Jackson too, since he hasn't done any movies except documentaries since.
Thief. How the fuck did they mess up such a beautiful game.
Turok I love but it didn't have a super strong identity to start, so I can see how it went off the rails. Although re-playing 1 and 2, I was surprised that I actually prefer 1 after all these years.
You may be interested to know that there is an open source engine port of HoMM2 that released within the past year I think. I know many people are big on HoMM3 and lots of nodding work has been done on that game to keep it fresh and playable, but 2 was my entry to the franchise, so the FHeroes2 team deserves my endless thanks and admiration.
And as great a name as "Garden Warfare" is, the entire point of picking plants and zombies was to represent the mechanics. Plants don't move, zombies don't sprint. (Down in back, Snyder!) The game was all blank colored boxes until it felt good to play. Theming was applied on top of that, to humorously convey what those units could do. And couldn't do.
So of course the second sequel is a full-on CoD clone. A full-on rooty-tooty-run-and-shooty spunkgargleweewee affair. Because it's been at least twenty years since EA completely lost the plot.
The future of humanity is supposed to be a post scarcity utopia where people don't care about material gain, or at least where material gain isn't the goal anymore, but the current writers have been trying to... reduce that idea.
Several characters, Seven of Nine specifically, have been regressed rather than developed. Turned into something shallow.
Prey, the remake had nothing to do with the original. NOTHING! And in the original you played a Native American man who grew in ability by reconnecting with his ancestors to fight child eating aliens! How do you not make a sequel to that?