I’ve disliked movies and abandoned series for many reasons, but one of my biggest reasons is for retconning. For those who don’t know retconning means to “revise (an aspect of a fictional work) retrospectively, typically by introducing a piece of new information that imposes a different interpretation on previously described events.” J.K. Rowling is notorious for doing this with her books like changing Dumbledore’s sexuality and how Voldemort’s name is pronounced. Fortunately, the books are safe from these changes from taking much effect, but that’s not the same in other cases.
TV shows and other franchises retcon very often. In rare circumstances, it’s a good thing, but the only reason why it’s needed in the first place is that the writers didn’t do a good job in the first place. If something is so bad that it must be retconned then that’s an error with the writer.
1.) Character Arcs
The most common form of retconning I’ve seen is writers completely erasing character arcs so a character stays the same and/or because they can’t think of another character arc for them to have. Marlin’s character was completely lost in Finding Dory, Daniel became a totally different person in the Daniel X by James Patterson sequel, and Batman vs Superman decided to completely toss out Christopher Nolan’s Batman character arc. I really enjoyed Ben 10 Alien Force. The bad guys were very intimidating, the plot was good, and Ben, Gwen, and Kevin all had great character arcs.
Then in the next season, Cartoon Network decided to strip Ben of all of his character development and put him back to an annoying kid again. I boycotted the whole channel after that.
When you do a series especially a long one, it can be hard to come up with more ways for a character to change and grow. So don’t have the series go too long or really dive deep into your character to see how they tick and see what other areas they need to grow. Doing a character arc redo is so cheap.
2.) Unreliable Narrator Retelling
I love the original King’s Quest series as anyone who has known me for more than a few weeks does, so I was initially very excited when new King’s Quest games started to come out on Xbox and PC. Though I didn’t care for the new art style I was tracking with the first two games, but then the next game came out and after that, I said, “No I’m done.”
This game completely retconned King’s Quest II: Romancing the Throne. An entire game. Older Graham narrates the games and when his granddaughter asks him why this new game/story sounded different than the old one, he said that he just told her something different, but this was what REALLY happened. This was another cheap cop-out because now that narrator is revealed to be a liar. You can’t trust anything he says anymore.
3.) The Old Time Travel Loophole
I really like Marvel’s storytelling most of the time but in Endgame they got a little iffy on the time travel aspect. “Bringing back” Gamora severely affected the impact of her death and seemed to be like they wanted to have their cake and eat it too as in they wanted the emotional impact of her death but they also wanted her with Guardians of the Galaxy too. But then they also didn’t want anyone to go back and bring back Black Widow so they made an excuse so that couldn’t happen. A little too wibbly wobbly even for the Doctor. A lot of shows use this form of retcon frequently including The Flash.
4.) Just Anything and Everything Because They Can’t Stick to Their Guns or Drew Out the Series too Far
I’ve just completely given up on the DC Cinematic and Television Universe. I was hoping they would do a Marvel thing and connect the two but that didn’t happen and they keep redoing all of their characters so many times that by the time I get attached to one they’re recast as a completely different character. It’s frustrating and it’s why I’m just sticking with Marvel because they stick to their guns in their storytelling for the most part anyway.
I was very into the first three books of the Maximum Ride series by James Patterson and after the series was drawn out at the request of fans and consequently ruined because of retconned characters, I’ve abandoned even reading anything by the author.
I like to roleplay with my friends and we have a lot of events happen that may have not been what we like today because we’re older now, but instead of just erasing them and taking back we mold the story to work with what we have and it’s made good results so far. Marvel has done this more often than not like with Bruce Banner’s story.
Conclusion
Retconning is admitting that you made a bad writing move and are now scrambling to fix it, but more often than not it just makes the problem even more obvious and worse.
Has retconning ruined a story for you? What are your thoughts on retconning?
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