"Classics" that you were underwhelmed by.

[MrRetroSpectacles]

Movie: Star Wars: Return of the Jedi. *Ducks behind bullet/bomb/abuse proof wall.

Think about it. Teddy bears defeat the galaxies most powerful military (Arrows and logs? What does the armor actually protect from then?) Luke makes out with his own sister and no one bats an eyelid when the truth comes out later? Bobba Fett, the arch rival of Solo and most feared bounty hunter in existence is taken out of the movie by being accidentally smacked in the back with a pole? Luke decides that after defeating his father that he should just throw away his lightsaber, despite having been repeatedly told by everyone that the Emperor is quite powerful as well, because he's a nicey nice guy now?

There were less holes in the fu**ing Titanic.

Music: Foo Fighters

They have an incredibly defensive fan base from what I've experienced, but it dosen't stop me from finding all but three of their songs to be boring, and a little bit 'samey'.

TV: South Park

Seriously, what is the appeal? I have watched it and at times I do find it amusing, but then it just ruins itself with mindless stupidity and ridiculously bad language. They also make childish jibes at other TV shows, which are usually ignored. For some reason fans of the show feel that this is because the other shows know they're inferior. Family Guy is much better for jibes anyhow, they actually analyse other shows, albeit with an addition of random humour. (Take Two and a Half Men with the Ostrich audience for e.g).

I couldn't think of a game, San Andreas perhaps has it's bugs and other issues ignored for various reasons but overall it's the fun your having that counts. (This is why my addiction to Fifa 11 baffles me, since I never enjoy playing it despite winning most of the time.) That's it though, sorry for yet again clogging up a page with my boredom fuelled rantings.

 

[ABLb0y]

Portal and Half Life 2. Both boring, Linear shooters that don't deserve the hype.

 

[ezeroast]

sorry to say but"2001 a space odyssey" most of it was great but the last half an hour dragged on badly and the end scene didn't make sense to me. If anyone could fill me in i would be very grateful as the rest of the movie was really good.

 

[Verlander]

I wonder how many of these opinions come from academically minded individuals. There is a huge difference in how, say, a Bachelor of English will dissect a narrative and how a layman will.

"Blade Runner," I must confess, is a movie I have never seen. "Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?", the novel by Dick on which it is based, I have read and quite enjoyed. The point of the novel is how it's a postcolonial piece. It's a critique on specific paradigms found at the time it was written. Many of the points it makes - particularly the anti-war sentiments coupled with a frustration and acknowledgement of the necessity of the police - ARE still culturally relevant. Once again, I know the movie has been altered substantially from the novel but I have not seen it.

Anyway, education is important to appreciate things. Some people complain that this exposure "ruins" literature for them; others find the exact opposite. The latter finds a way to vocalize their dislike of a work, and can now not only explain why they liked something, but they can find new interpretations to further their enjoyment.

This is not to dismiss pacing (I can't stand anything written between Pope and the Modernists, for example), but there's no nice way to say this. You don't like it because you don't get it.

Surely anything that requires education to enjoy would automatically be discounted, as it's appealing to a niche audience, and the majority of people cannot enjoy it? For example, I enjoy well written books on the history of art, as well as advanced documents on computer science, BUT I cannot expect others to enjoy the same things as they won't have the foundations to even approach the material.

What I'm saying, I guess, is that if something demands from the audience, it cannot complain when the section of the audience that cannot give treats it with disdain...

 

[Your once and future Fanboy]

Game: the Mario series, never been a fan.

Movie: The Seventh Seal, it was some good parts here and there, but it shot itself in the foot with some really silly and annoying scenes. I just think its people who don't understand Swedish who think its great, because the subs are only covering 2/3rds of the dialogue.

Music: Coldplay, a good chunk of Springsteen's work, Rolling Stones, David Bowie, 2pac, Foo Fighters, Beth Hart, Patty Smith, Eric Clapton, U2, Nirvana, All of Metallica's work after 1998, Whitesnake and Deep Purple... To name a few.

 

[Cowabungaa]

Movie: Citizen Kane. Again, my fault. I was expecting something really clever but it felt like something average done to perfection... if that makes sense?

It was pretty much the first movie that first used a lot of cinematography techniques that are now considered standard. No surprise that they'd be a bit rough the first time. It was struggle to sit through the movie for me as well, but worth it as a history lesson.

I had the same thing with Ocarina of Time. It was the first 3D Legend of Zelda game, and thus a little rough around the edges, and you really notice that after playing Wind Waker and Majora's Mask first.

 

[Vibhor]

I've only got Deus ex to say.
I bought the game on a whim as a child. Didn't quite understood the game and decided to shelve it.
After a few years of internet I googled best PC game and most of the list said deus ex, which I coincidentally owned(GOTY version, no less).
The AI was pretty bad, controls were difficult(even more difficult was to remap them), the game was hard to get into,some missions were bugged and some were outright impossible to accomplish in a certain way.
Though I give you that the graphics were quite slick and the animations were above average.
I couldn't understand that why I wasn't able to get into the game(Usually they are very easy to get into for me. For example I played Tomb raider 1 on the PC in 2009)
Surprisingly, I started being obsessed about the game. Why I couldn't enjoy the so called best PC game? I googled for hours but to no avail. Soon my web history was filled from deus ex and I wanted to know how could I enjoy it at all. I even went out to buy the PS2 version(sucked more)
to play but still couldn't have fun.
It was a weird game. A game which made me obsessed without me even liking it.

 

[KafkaOffTheBeach]

Once Upon a Time in the West was supposed to be this great western, but I couldn't stand it. I hated the characters and it bored me to death. Sergio Leone has no sense of urgency (the opening scene of the movie is three guys waiting around for a train for ten minutes while a fly crawls around on one of their faces. That's it.)

This.
I love Sergio Leone, but that shit was ridiculous.
Funnily enough - I thought that the opening scene is, perhaps, on of the most perfect sequences in cinema history. Shame that the rest of the movie has to drag on with landscape shots of everything....he manages to make landscape shots out of eye-line close ups - which is an interesting and completely unique technique, but it draaaaaaaags it out until it no longer becomes a game of tension or attrition, but a genuine battle with the audience to assert superiority.
Whatever.
I'll just keep on watching the opening scene over and over and over again.

 

[pearcinator]

Subject is in the title but I got to say I watched blade runner and........
It was either really boring or I'm really stupid. And I don't think I'm particularly stupid because I have read the entire wheel of time series thus far and you need allot of patience to keep reading book 10.
that aside I don't understand the whole stigma around the movie. I walked in expecting a slow burn but talk about no burn. Instead of you know investigating and stuff he just roams around getting in arguments about philosophy with the replicant girl before very suddenly everyone starts very suddenly getting in gun fights. and then at the end it just ends. I mean the bad guy dies suddenly no kind of personal goal is achieved and the movies over. I walked in with the highest expectations yeah but I still never once enjoyed, was intrigued, liked the characters or anything that would typically constitutes a good movie.
I'm not saying it's a bad movie so don't get angry but I seriously didn't get it.
anyway what classics were you less then fond of.

When I saw the title I came in here to post Blade-Runner...but was beaten by you...the OP! For the exact same reasons (high expectations as its known as one of the best sci-fi movies ever and I LOVE sci-fi but it was a huge disappointment...)

 

[Moonpig123]

Portal.

Half-Life 2.

The Beatles.

Thus Spoke Zarathustra.

 

[DoctorPhil]

Beowulf. I thought: "cool, dragons, monsters, heroism and shit", but it was quite boring most of the time, especially the third part with the dragon.

Also something that deserves mentioning is the chapter about Tom Bombadil in the fellowship of the ring. It had absolutely nothing to do with the plot and it was the most boring thing i've ever read. It was nothing but Bombadil spouting semi-poetic crap.

 

[KafkaOffTheBeach]

The following films feature on the IMDB Top 250 list (http://www.imdb.com/chart/top), yet I would rate them average to poor. I have seen 212 out of 250, so some (like the Social Network) I haven't seen. I wouldn't recommend people to not watch these, but bare in mind that they are nowhere near as good as people say they are. The following are average to poor:

You do realise that the IMDB 250 is retarded though, don't you?
IMDB is good for hard facts, and shit for opinions and recommendations.

 

[Moonpig123]

All of Metallica's work after 1998

I don't think anybody considers St. Anger 'classic'. Although Death Magnetic was a step in the right direction, back to the glory days of Kill 'Em All, Ride the Lightning and Master of Puppets (...And Justice For All had too much filler material for me, although 'Blackened' and 'One' are fantastic).

 

[ExileNZ]

Subject is in the title but I got to say I watched blade runner and........
It was either really boring or I'm really stupid. And I don't think I'm particularly stupid because I have read the entire wheel of time series thus far and you need allot of patience to keep reading book 10.
that aside I don't understand the whole stigma around the movie. I walked in expecting a slow burn but talk about no burn. Instead of you know investigating and stuff he just roams around getting in arguments about philosophy with the replicant girl before very suddenly everyone starts very suddenly getting in gun fights. and then at the end it just ends. I mean the bad guy dies suddenly no kind of personal goal is achieved and the movies over. I walked in with the highest expectations yeah but I still never once enjoyed, was intrigued, liked the characters or anything that would typically constitutes a good movie.
I'm not saying it's a bad movie so don't get angry but I seriously didn't get it.
anyway what classics were you less then fond of.

I sorta had the opposite problem with Blade Runner - at high school I was forced to study the first 15 minutes over and over and over again, then the next 15 minutes, and the next... by the time I was done I hated it, but I had a pretty thorough understanding of the imagery behind it.

Watched it again about 2 years later and it was great, because I knew what it was talking about and could just concentrate on enjoying the story.

Also, did you watch the director's cut? It took out the voiceover and a lot of the information that brought with it. To be honest I found the regular version much more approachable.

EDIT: Shit, forgot my own letdown: The Hobbit. I was reading a lot of fantasy at the time and someone handed me a copy. 15 pages of fields later I gave up.

 

[Verlander]

The following films feature on the IMDB Top 250 list (http://www.imdb.com/chart/top), yet I would rate them average to poor. I have seen 212 out of 250, so some (like the Social Network) I haven't seen. I wouldn't recommend people to not watch these, but bare in mind that they are nowhere near as good as people say they are. The following are average to poor:

You do realise that the IMDB 250 is retarded though, don't you?
IMDB is good for hard facts, and shit for opinions and recommendations.

Sure, all lists like this are. However, it's a reasonable collection of what common opinion holds as "good" regarding films, and a useful source that people on this site are familiar with.

The way I see it, Rotten Tomatoes/IMDB represent the worst, but most democratic selections, while magazine/journalistic website lists represent the best, but most biased lists. So I thought I'd stick to IMDB, as at least they give an easier to read, and more accessible list, complete with profile links.

Doesn't change my opinion on most of their "classics". I'm convinced that a few more of the ones I haven't seen aren't as good as they're rated to be as well...

 

[MikailCaboose]

Movie: Napoleon Dynamite. One of my friends told me to watch it. My final thoughts were "...this was good???"
One of the worst movies I've seen.

 

[supermariner]

2001: a space odyssey was boring, terrible and pretentious.
probably good effects for the late '60s
but it has not aged at all well
same goes to taxi Driver

it's goppingly awful
the issues confronted in it like underage prostitution and vigilante justice may have been original at the time
i accept that
but i was bored out of my own arse watching it

 

[Someone Depressing]

Game: Resident Evil: I hated it, everysingle bit of it. From the retarted plot to the buggy controls to the shit for brains camera. I guesse I hated it most for being the sequel to one of the best Video-Games ever to exist in the history of anything, and fucking up so hard.

I can't think of anything else, except from Bioshock. My friends called it unique and fun. I played it, and I told them that it's just another System Shock rip-off. They asked, "What's System Shock?". *Facepalm*

 

[TSED]

I wonder how many of these opinions come from academically minded individuals. There is a huge difference in how, say, a Bachelor of English will dissect a narrative and how a layman will.

"Blade Runner," I must confess, is a movie I have never seen. "Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?", the novel by Dick on which it is based, I have read and quite enjoyed. The point of the novel is how it's a postcolonial piece. It's a critique on specific paradigms found at the time it was written. Many of the points it makes - particularly the anti-war sentiments coupled with a frustration and acknowledgement of the necessity of the police - ARE still culturally relevant. Once again, I know the movie has been altered substantially from the novel but I have not seen it.

Anyway, education is important to appreciate things. Some people complain that this exposure "ruins" literature for them; others find the exact opposite. The latter finds a way to vocalize their dislike of a work, and can now not only explain why they liked something, but they can find new interpretations to further their enjoyment.

This is not to dismiss pacing (I can't stand anything written between Pope and the Modernists, for example), but there's no nice way to say this. You don't like it because you don't get it.

Surely anything that requires education to enjoy would automatically be discounted, as it's appealing to a niche audience, and the majority of people cannot enjoy it? For example, I enjoy well written books on the history of art, as well as advanced documents on computer science, BUT I cannot expect others to enjoy the same things as they won't have the foundations to even approach the material.

What I'm saying, I guess, is that if something demands from the audience, it cannot complain when the section of the audience that cannot give treats it with disdain...

You recognize that these books are "well written" but you "cannot expect others to enjoy the same things." That's fine. I don't think any one's ever said something along the lines of "all classics are good and if you don't like them you are a BAD PERSON" (actually, ok, a few decades ago they were pretty strict on how lit theory worked...). There's a difference between proclaiming a personal dislike of something and proclaiming a failing of the work itself.

Notice the comments so far. A good deal of them have been "I didn't like it," and then a good deal of them have been "it sucked because of ______." Now, both of these opinion styles have merit, but they amusing work on opposite ends of the education spectrum. As anecdotal evidence, I don't know much swing jazz. When I hear swing jazz I like or dislike, I preface it with how it is merely my opinion. On the other hand, something I have a deep understanding and mastery of I will not describe with opinions. I will use concrete terms and support them with arguments whichever way it lies.

The problem is when this is reversed. If I walked into a debate on, let's say Image Comics (note that I have never read any of their works) and start saying that they suck objectively, my opinion will be worthless. If I started talking about how I think that maybe Neuromancer could possibly mean this one thing... Well, it'd sound like I didn't know what I was talking about. My analysis would be taken as an opinion instead of an educated and nuanced view point.

This being said, I'm still a hypocrite. I have very little knowledge over certain things (Twilight, most famous mallcore / metalcore bands, WoW - as examples) but I still speak as if I have deep insights and do not lace my sentences with the aforementioned weakening modifiers. I still have some knowledge, but in truth most of my knowledge comes from contrasting it with other comparable works. Hey - it's not my fault it sucks too much for me to bother with it.

 

[Jmurray21]

game: dangerous dave...

seriously, who played this crap?

movie: pulp fiction wasnt that great, and probably "the birds"...

I agree with Pulp Fiction. that was going to be my pick.
Wasn't good in my opinion. It wasn't has funny or meaning full as I thought It was going to be. Samuel L Jackson was good though.