Brain Bugs - Bad ideas that linger

[GloomCookie]

I thought I'd bring up a topic that is near and dear to me in that I want to discuss brain bugs. These are bad ideas that burrow into someone's brain and get stuck in, refusing to be dislodged, and this typically happens in a lot of franchises that have had enough time to develop a fan base.

A great example is Star Wars. The original Star Wars film in 1979 had a lot of elements that were clearly meant to communicate to the viewer what they were. Luke's landspeeder is clearly a space car. The X-wing is a space plane. But when it comes to the TIE fighter, it was like nothing seen on Earth, and with good reason. It was meant to be sleek and modern and powerful. Stormtroopers were meant to be highly advanced, capable of killing anyone in their way. The boarding action on Princess Leia's ship was clear enough evidence of this, given the stormtroopers got in and killed all the defenders in short order with only a few losses on their end. Obi Wan Kenobi mentions that stormtroopers were highly precise and took down a sandcrawler because of it. When they missed Luke and them, it was because they were ordered to let them go, a fact touched on by Princess Leia herself.

Yet you look at the modern Star Wars franchise and the brain bugs have settled in. Stormtroopers can't hit the broadside of a planet, and TIE fighters are flimsy tin cans that get slaughtered by the clearly superior X-Wing of the rebellion. Which... is odd. Why would the rebels, who can barely afford anything and are reliant on leftovers from the galaxy-shaking Clone Wars, be able to go toe-to-toe with the superior TIE fighters? From the way they're described, the X-Wing, in suitable numbers, should be able to wipe out fleets of TIE fighters with little effort.

Other franchises aren't immune to this either. Star Trek had lines put in by Gene Roddenberry in the 4th movie that hint money that was common in our time was obsolete, despite there being suggestions in later movies and shows that money in some form indeed does exist. Even the recent Picard TV show had a clear wealth disparity between Picard and Raffi, who was shown living in a shack out in the desert compared to Picard's vineyard in France. But you ask any fan of the show and they'll insist that money doesn't exist, that it's some sort of communist utopia because it's all post-scarcity, that no one wants for anything at all. 

Now of course some of these ideas like the Stormtroopers and TIE fighters we can point to and say that it's the result of plot armor, that the heroes need to escape to progress the story, but I fear that given enough time, brain bugs can seep into a lot of franchises and skew perception of the author's original intent, and that if it's allowed to go on long enough, could cause backlash from the very fans when their expectations inevitably run counter to the author. It's one of the reasons that George Lucas himself directed the prequel trilogy of Star Wars, knowing no sane director would take the job for fear of ruining Star Wars.

But I'd like some feedback. Am I overly concerned about this? Or is this a legitimate concern that a lot of authors should be concerned about? Is this just an inevitable consequence of trying to convey ideas and stories to each other? Or is it something that happens when fans misinterpret the original intent?