Dork Age/Film


 * Highlander II the Quickening started a Dork Age from which the Highlander film series would (arguably) never recover. The TV series did all right for a time, until the end of the fifth season alienated many fans by introducing a demonic entity into the series (when no previous episodes foreshadowed it, or implied that such things existed in the Highlander universe), and killing off a popular character abruptly and anticlimactically in an Idiot Plot.
 * The Godzilla movies are claimed to have undergone a dork age during The Seventies, though one is hard pressed to explain exactly how the '70s flicks were any sillier than the films that preceded them, given that Godzilla was already setting Kong's crotch on fire, chatting up a storm with Mothra and Rodan, playing volleyrock, dancing in outer space and adopting a child during the '60s.
 * Star Wars, due to an Unpleasable Fanbase and having so many different projects going at one time, goes into a constant rotation of dork ages. In the mainstream stuff The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones were lackluster in how they were received. It was when Star Wars Clone Wars re-established a cool factor that the franchise has managed to recover. Even still, many people feel over-saturated in the merchandise, which led to a Critical Backlash against Star Wars the Clone Wars. However, that show appears to have grown the beard in Season 2, so hope springs eternal.
 * There's also a true "Dark Age" between 1986 (when the comic published by Marvel, and the animated series Droids and Ewoks were finished) and 1991 (when Heir to the Empire was published). George Lucas was uninterested in making new films, and both merchandise and the Expanded Universe stalled (notable during the period are only the Star Tours ride at Disney, the Star Wars RPG... and Spaceballs).
 * Batman was in it deep during the late '90s. Tim Burton left the franchise, as did leading actor Michael Keaton. Executive Meddling caused Batman Forever to be campier and more toyetic than its predecessors. Following that film, the new lead actor Val Kilmer left as well, and then the camp factor went Up to Eleven and we got Batman and Robin. That so-called "film" killed the Batman movie franchise for eight years until Batman Begins came out.
 * The Roger Moore James Bond era is usually considered a Dork Age among Bond fans. Plots became weaker and campier, with more focus on gadgets and locations than characterization or action. Although this era did have its highlights (The Spy Who Loved Me) it also had its dark abysses (A View to A Kill, Moonraker). The Man With the Golden Gun is a Base Breaker, with some considering it on par with Moonraker and other fans feeling it to be Moore's equivalent to Goldfinger and much better than made out to be.

For music fans, on the other hand, the Roger Moore era is most often fondly looked at as the golden age of Bond themes, from "Nobody Does it Better" (Carly Simon) to "Live and Let Die" (Paul McCartney and Wings) to "A View to a Kill" (Duran Duran).
 * For a long time, the Timothy Dalton Bond movies were seen as a Dork Age, with Licence to Kill being so gory and violent that many felt it barely resembled a Bond film. Nowadays, however, the Dalton movies are seen as prototypes for the Daniel Craig era, having had the bad luck of hitting about twenty years too early. In addition, the Bond that Dalton portrays is much closer to the Bond that Ian Fleming wrote: a stone killer and a womanizer with a hinted-at lust for violence. (Well, okay, all the Bonds are womanizers, but whereas Connery is the archetypal Bond-As-Playa and Roger Moore's just... well... Roger Moore, Dalton comes across as a sexual predator.)
 * Mae West lost a good chunk of her sex appeal when the Hays Code was imposed, but her movies remained passable. Myra Breckinridge and Sextette, made after she was convinced to come out of retirement in old age, are not.
 * Myra Breckinridge was a terrible film in its own right and only featured Mae in a single scene -- basically playing herself -- as a man-hungry talent agent-type who gives the eponymous hero/heroine (don't ask) lessons on mistreating the menfolk. Frankly, Mae is not the grossest thing in it -- not after you see the strap-on scene. Sextette... well, it was based on her 1926 play Sex, and having her be a Memetic Sex Goddess back then was quite a different matter from having the movie treat her like one when she's a frail, overly made-up 84-year-old woman paired with men young enough to be her grandchildren (such as 32-year-old Timothy Dalton, for whom this is a major Old Shame). Most people's reactions to the film are somewhere between a Primal Scene reaction and profound Squick.
 * Depending on your opinion, either Alien 3 or Alien: Resurrection. While in popular culture, Alien 3 is considered the turning point of the franchise, many fans of the franchise appreciate the Assembly Cut's character drama (with an Alien...) approach, leading some to believe that the latter example is true turning point. To support its quasi-popularity, many fans saw Alien 3 as a return to the themes and atmosphere of the first film, where the second was a subverted gung-ho action flick.
 * The Crow pretty much went into one after people realized that there was money to be made after the first film was successful. City Of Angels was poorly received by most, not helped by the fact that Dimension cut out at least 20 minutes worth of Character Development and important plot points, causing the film to feel rather disjointed at times. Crow: Salvation was considered a definite improvement, while most people see Wicked Prayer as So Okay It's Average. And now there's a remake in the works, and most people have very low expectations for how it will turn out.
 * Friday the 13 th lost its edge around the ninth film, when Jason turned out to be a demonic entity capable of body surfing. In terms of actual horror, the subsequent film, where he went to space, marked the lowest point in the decline (though some claim that film to be So Bad It's Good).
 * The Halloween series had the extremely poorly explained Curse of Thorn storyline from the fifth and sixth films, which tried to tie Michael to prophecies, an ancient cult and the like.
 * The Disney Animated Canon has seen at least two Dork Ages. The first happened between the late 1960s and the early 1980s due to the death of Walt Disney, and ended with the Disney Renaissance, while the second happened just recently, starting in the early 2000s. In the case of the latter era, the only true non-Pixar successes released at that time were Lilo and Stitch, The Princess and The Frog, and Tangled.
 * Some argue the Marx Brothers went through this after their switch to MGM. Zeppo got tired of acting and the studio forced the brothers to go from completely anarchic Rapid-Fire Comedy to more good-natured characters helping out a forgettable romantic lead between increasingly tedious musical numbers (Groucho called The Big Store's "Tenement Symphony" "the most godawful thing I'd ever heard"). Granted, there was still plenty of CMOF, it was just more restrained than during their years at Paramount.
 * Eddie Murphy had one starting with his 1989 flop Harlem Nights that lasted into the early-mid '90s, with many unsuccessful movies including The Distinguished Gentleman, Beverly Hills Cop III, and Vampire in Brooklyn (all of which he has since disowned), before he made his comeback with his 1996 remake of The Nutty Professor. He entered another one in the 2000s, where, with the exception of the Shrek movies and Dreamgirls, his films like The Adventures of Pluto Nash, The Haunted Mansion, Norbit, Meet Dave and Imagine That were all massive failures (Pluto Nash has become one of Hollywood's biggest flops, and many feel Norbit torpedoed Murphy's Oscar hopes with Dreamgirls). He got praised for starring in 2011's Tower Heist, but his 2012 follow-up A Thousand Words was universally panned, receiving a Tomatometer score of 0%, so only time will tell whether he'll recover.