[watwut]

I don't think it is entirely. Even with safe and neutered, writing could have been much better then it is. The butchering that happened in Witcher or Game of Thrones was purely on writers. It is not just money men.

It is that contemporary screen writing is unable to engage with characters and complexity outside of, like, 5 stereotypical tropes. That they internalized set of rules about how to simplify things and just can't comprehend any slightly realistic psychology of adults or set of events.

The money men did a lot of damage and are the ones who set the rules. But the bad writing we see now is because writers insist on cproducing bad writing even having choice. Maybe all the good writers left, maybe it is something else, but they screw it up even when having freedom.

[drunkenmagician]

Yes, this exactly - the quality of writing on a lot of shows these days is absolutely abysmal. Not just dialogue, the plots - so much 'tropes copying', pointless or stupid 'reveals' or just plain dumb twists to make things edgy and exciting. I feel like the average IQ in Hollywood writing departments as dropped significantly in the last 20 years ... sad

[lacrimacida]

Well, it could get a level of magnitude worse with AI. And Im not necessarily blaming AI but how the industry will recycle the successful tropes and cheap out on everything else.

[nottorp]

Netflix series are already indistinguishable from each other. I don't think AI can make it any worse.

[mst]

One could argue that there's a selection effect during the up and coming phase that means a different subset of writers are the ones who make it to the top these days.

(I hear tell that as adaptions go The Expanse was relatively well done, though I haven't watched it myself as yet)

[watwut]

Personally, I liked the series. I never read the books, so I do not know whether it was faithful or not.