Do Critics Call Merchandise Cameos Overkill In Franchises?

Lately I've been chewing on how spectacle and story wrestle in modern superhero films, and honestly I think 'overkill' gets blamed a lot more easily than it deserves — and also sometimes earns it. I love big, loud sci-fi popcorn moments as much as the next person; the roar of a theater when something finally lands is addictive. But when every beat is accompanied by an earthquake of visual effects and every scene screams for maximum stakes, the quieter human threads get flattened. Villains become set-dressing, motivations blur into explosions, and the emotional punctuation that should make a reveal land feels muted by the next big thing waiting around the corner. The weird thing is that some films manage the balancing act brilliantly. 'Logan' and 'Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse' show you can be bold with visuals while still letting character arcs breathe. Meanwhile, other blockbusters feel like someone stitched together highlight reels from twelve unfinished drafts. Studio pressure to please multiple audience segments and to seed future projects pushes writers toward adding more: more planets, more cameos, more subplots. The result can be a film that serves the franchise rather than itself. So is overkill ruining plots? Not always, but it's a corrosive temptation. I want spectacle that amplifies character choices, not hides their absence. When a movie gives me a reason to care between the big moments, the fireworks become icing instead of camouflage — and that's the kind of viewing that keeps me coming back.

Every time an adaptation goes over the top, I get a little giddy and a little wary at the same time. On the one hand, overkill—more chapters, longer runtimes, extra subplots, lavish set pieces—can feel like a love letter to the source. If those additions illuminate characters in ways the book couldn't due to pacing, or expand the world while staying true to the original themes, original fans can feel vindicated. Take the extended cuts of 'The Lord of the Rings': some scenes feel indulgent, but many fans appreciated the extra breathing room for character moments and scenery that matched Tolkien's sweeping tone. On the other hand, overkill that piles on without purpose can erode what made the book resonate. When an adaptation keeps adding spectacle at the cost of internal logic or tight narrative focus, it risks alienating readers who loved the book's restraint. I think of controversies around later seasons of 'Game of Thrones'—the spectacle was undeniable, but viewers who loved the books' intricate plotting felt shortchanged. Balance matters. If an adaptation uses excess to deepen context, reveal subtext, or give quieter moments room to breathe, it can please original fans. If it uses excess to cover weak storytelling, fans will notice. Personally, I love seeing a text treated reverently and expansively rather than slavishly. When creators collaborate with original authors or show intimate familiarity with the source—like how 'Dune' split its narrative to preserve nuance—overkill can feel celebratory rather than careless. Ultimately, what wins fans over is respect: for themes, tone, and the emotional truths of the characters. When overkill wears those values on its sleeve, I find myself leaning in with delight.

Overkill in manga—those moments when everything ramps up to eleven—can flip a character inside out in ways that are thrilling and messy. I often think of it like turning up the contrast on a photograph: some features pop with vivid clarity while others get lost in shadow. When an author slams a protagonist into an over-the-top showdown or drenches a flashback in graphic detail, it can accelerate growth by forcing choices that reveal who the character really is. In 'Berserk', for example, the extremes of violence and loss aren't gratuitous to me; they carve Guts' identity with jagged precision. That kind of overkill deepens trauma and makes later moments of tenderness feel earned. But I've also seen overkill flatten arcs when it's used as a shortcut. If every conflict is world-ending and every emotional beat is dialed to eleven, your emotional bandwidth gets exhausted. Characters can become walking tropes—rage machines, tragic icons, or plot devices—because there's no quieter space to show gradual change. Visual and narrative excess sometimes masks the internal work a character needs, turning growth into spectacle. On the flip side, intelligent use of excess—like the parodying overload in 'One Punch Man'—can comment on the nature of heroism itself, turning overkill into theme rather than just shock value. Personally, I love when creators balance both: they let the big, messy moments happen, but also carve out quiet interludes where characters reflect and breathe. Those contrasts are what make the loud parts meaningful to me.

I get a kick out of scores that crank everything to eleven just to shove the audience into a feeling — it’s loud, pulsing, and unapologetically theatrical. For me, the classic example is 'Requiem for a Dream' by Clint Mansell: that repeated string motif doesn't ease up, and its relentlessness becomes almost a character in the film, rattling your nerves long after the screen goes black. Another anthem of overstatement is the infamous BRAAAM moments inspired by 'Inception' — that low, brass-smashing thunder stomped into so many trailers that it turned into a cinematic meme and now reads like shorthand for “epic.” Then there are scores that swap subtlety for a constant surge — '300' pounds a soundtrack full of booming drums and choir to make every frame feel mythic, and 'Mad Max: Fury Road' drives you with percussion so relentless it risks numbing the emotional peaks. Hans Zimmer’s work on 'The Dark Knight' and 'Dunkirk' also deserves mention: the razor-string Joker motifs and the Shepard-tone ticking in 'Dunkirk' are brilliant tools, but their intensity can feel like emotional overkill if you’re craving nuance. I also love the trailer phenomenon where tracks from 'Pirates of the Caribbean' or library houses like Two Steps From Hell get repurposed until they announce “Big Moment Now” on autopilot. It’s fun, theatrical, and sometimes manipulative in the best and most exhausting way — I still grin when a choir hits at the right time, even if my cynic side groans a little.

Big finales often throw absolutely everything at you — exploding skies, rivers of energy, impossible physics and music so loud your heart aches — and I love unpacking why studios go that route. On one level it's emotional shorthand: when characters have carried a season, the only way to make the audience feel the payoff is to amplify every element — visuals, sound, pacing — until there's nowhere left to contain the catharsis. That’s why sequences in 'Dragon Ball Z' or 'Fate/stay night' turn into this electricity-fueled spectacle; the spectacle stands in for the weight of sacrifice, loss, or triumph that the show has been building toward. But there's also a practical, almost businessy layer to it. Final battles are the moments that get clipped, memed, and shared. A single frame of a huge move or an iconic pose fuels social feeds, sells OSTs, and boosts Blu-ray sales. From an animator's POV, finales are where you spend the most of your budget or outsource to premium studios because those scenes live forever in promotional material. Creatively, directors sometimes use overkill as a way to visually summarize themes — like how 'Neon Genesis Evangelion' alternates between frantic action and symbolic overload — so the sensory excess becomes part of the storytelling language. Of course overkill can backfire: too much spectacle without emotional grounding turns a final fight into noise. I always appreciate when a show balances amplitude with quiet moments — the quieter aftermaths in 'Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood' feel earned because the spectacle didn't eclipse the characters. At the end of the day, those over-the-top finales are a gamble: sometimes they deliver goosebumps, sometimes they just make me smile at how gloriously unrestrained anime can get.