Most Boring Opinions in Geek Culture - Part II

[JellySlimerMan]

"X people destroyed games."

Lets put it this way, if enough people who watched movies ONLY watched bro movies or summer blockbusters, wouldn't people who are really into movies get annoyed at the fact that because that's where the money is, more and more of what those people like is made and less and less of what you like is made?

Yes, of course that happens, and the way better movies are made much of hte time is by alternative/smaller places. Until relatively recently, there wasn't enough of an indy scene for more interesting/innovative games to come out of.

I can't say for sure, but I feel like I've heard less and less of that argument in the past couple of years since we've had SUCH an influx of indy games to help drive the market in interesting ways.

So, hopefully those arguments will leave the list soon enough.

How can the argument EVER leave if movies/games appeal to the mayority that doesnt give 2 shits about their messages or be challenged? You may say that at least SOME idiot on his spare time and lack of resourses could do an indie movie, but what would be the point if your attention to detail and themes are ignored in favor of pandering to the lowest common denominator? why the lazy are rewarded (Sthepany Meyer and Michael Bay) but the virtous starve?

Now You may say that games will have it differently now with things like Steam and Kickstarter giving the audience some control of what and what isnt founded and released, but the public image of games isnt focused on the indie, its focused on the AAA because that is where the marketing its at its strongest. That is the reason of why non gamers think that games are the same "violent and pornographic" bullshit, because they see the same thing being marketed over and over to the point that they think that is all there is about games. Also, they are too lazy to research it even if this is the age where Internet SHOULD satisfy their curiosity about a work of art

3. Casual gamers have ruined gaming.

Commentary unnecessary.

So, once again, you are not going to try to explain why? getting lazy Movie Bro.......as usual.

5. Fratboy "bro" gamers ruined gaming.

Y'know what's ruining gaming, folks? Dicing the audience up into little teams so we can find one or two of them to blame.

That sounds like YOU are ruining gaming too, Movie Bro. After all, everytime there is a controversy that you are unable to research properly ("FPS suck and there is no sexism on Metroid Other M" Heavens To Metroid or "You are an entitled brat that its destroying gaming for demanding better writting" ME3 fiasco) you divide the people between the ones that loved your Overthinker show for when you actually OVERTHINKED issues, and the ones that are just drones incapable of thinking for themselves and that bash the SPAM or dislike buttom to anything that looks like a legitimate criticism.

 

[Crimson_Dragoon]

Surprised "Avatar has an unoriginal plot" didn't make it onto this list. That's about as boring and tired an opinion you can get.

 

[ZZoMBiE13]

51: Making huge self indulgent lists of things that annoy you, and then telling others to "get over themselves".

 

[Rogjah]

I may deserve a "Curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal!" for this one, but how about:
51) They need to bring back Firefly.
Or simply "They should never have canceled _______." I'm just particularly tired of the Firefly one. Yes, it was a good show and everyone who likes it agrees with you, but it's over, let it go. If you're jonesing for some Nathan Fillion, watch Castle.

 

[RJ Dalton]

It's funny, but I actually never picked Family Guy back up after it was first cancelled. When it was being revived, I borrowed a friend's DVD collection of the early seasons and watched them again and it just wasn't very good. The thing that seperates Family Guy from, for example, Futurama, is that Futurama's humor is intelligent and satirical. Family Guy relies on references (which are lazy), randomness (which is only funny the first time, and not so much after because you expect it) and fart jokes. It's good for a laugh the first time around, but it looses it's appeal quickly.

Actually, I kind of like Roger Moore as Bond. The movies he was in were never the greatest, but they were watchable and even managed to be fun (except for Moonraker and Octopussy). Yeah, I put Timothy Dalton as the worst Bond. I mean, Dalton's a decent actor, but the way he played Bond was just boring and the TD Bond films were basically just generic action films with Bond conventions arbitrarily stapled onto them. They barely felt like Bond films at all.
That said, though, I also liked Brosnan as Bond. I hated all of them but Goldeneye, which I recognize isn't really the best Bond movie, but I did like his performance as the character.
And honestly, I also George Lazenby's take on Bond, considering the thematic direction that "On Her Majesty's Secret Service" was taking. A proper followup to that film (as opposed to the screw-up that was "Diamonds Are Forever") would have made the James Bond series actually work as genuine art as well as fun adventure films. I'm actually planning out an essay to explain that, I'm so convinced of my position on it.

I prefer watching films in their original language. But I'm a hardcore watcher when I take to a movie. I don't just watch the sub, I actually go to the trouble of learning a little bit about the language so I can appreciate the elements of the script that don't translate properly into English (Japanese is an especially big case of where you loose a lot in translation, because there are so many elements to that language's grammar that add layers of meaning which can't be expressed in English the same way). That said, I'm not opposed, per say, to the idea of dubs, but I hate how lazily and bad some companies are about dubbing. Clearly not understanding what's going on and adding explanations to the dialogue that don't make any sense, adding absolutely ridiculous sound effects because they thought it'd be funny, randomly changing the dialogue to mean something completely different for no other reason than "we can," that sort of thing. Fuck, there's a special level of hell for the people who dubbed "Laputa" for all those horrible jokes they added in and the fact that they never allow the characters to shut the fuck up and thus destroy some of the more subtle and beautiful moments in the film. I'm not specifically opposed to dubs, because I can't honestly expect everyone to be as hardcore about it as I am (I'm a little bit insane), but I'm sure as hell opposed to bad dubs.
And there are some really fucking bad dubs.

 

[JellySlimerMan]

Movie Bob telling us that we need to shut up about our opinions again because they've been said an arbitrary amount of times? No thank you. And Superman IS boring, you want a character who doesn't have a stick up his ass and does the right thing because they're right? Fair enough, but did you have to make him a physical God? Man of Steel looks interesting interesting because Superman is portrayed as Human and not an invulnerable flying brick that never gets upset.

I will have your babies if you keep up the good pace, mate

1. Superman is too powerful to be an interesting character.

I know we're in this period where every hero has to be brooding and flawed and have deeply personal reasons for doing what they do. But can we keep one guy around who tries to do the right thing just because it's the right thing?

I am NO comic geek or a Superman sawy person, so tell me, What is Superman definition of "right"? what masses/democracy wants? what is "right" for humanity in the long run? making everyone happy ALA Ethical Hedonism kind of way because its "right" for everyone to be happy or at least live long enough for them to decide what they want to do with their lives?

 

[Sparrow]

I'm not sure I get your Mass Effect point, considering you were the one heavily debating on the side of the "Don't Change The Endings Because Art" fence for so goddamn long. Now that you're finished ranting about it we should too? Don't get me wrong, I agree we've probably come at that topic from every angle possible by now but... does that mean we should suddenly stop talking about it? On that note, I haven't actually heard anyone talk about it for bloody ages. I'm pretty sure people actively go out of their way to avoid ME3 discussions now, which kind of just leads me to think that your point (like a lot of your other points in the list) was simply included for circlejerk purposes.

I'm also just not sure what the whole Bond segment is about. Isn't one of the benefits of changing the actor that plays Bond every now and then is that you can change certain elements of him to fit the time period? I mean, Craig's Bond is very dark and gritty (which, let's face it, is a prevalent staple of recent action films) whereas Brosnan's Bond was a little campy and fond of one-liners (that's the 90s for you!) So, can it ever really be said that one Bond is better or worse considering they're different characters in a lot of ways? Of course that doesn't mean you can't prefer one or the other, but it just seems useless debating which one is better or worse when some Bonds are so different that the only thing they have in common is the name, profession and love for martinis.

Also, I'm pretty sure Sonic the Hedgehog games have been gradually picking up in quality recently. Don't get me wrong, Sonic '06 was undeniably bad due to numerous design choices and bugs but recent titles such as Sonic Generations have been steering the franchise in the right direction. I don't think anyone boards the circlejerk train of Sonic hate as frequently as you think these days.

And some of these just boil down to "your opinion is wrong because of my opinion." I get in a lot of ways you use that for humour, but at other times (see points 3 and 24) there's no punchline in sight. Maybe you don't have enough time to flesh our your opinions or you've got some kind of limited word count per article, but the old age retort of "your opinion is wrong because of my opinion" is something you'd expect to see in a forum post - not in a supposedly professional article for a respected website. I think, in short, it's impossible to tell when you're joking around and when you're trying to be serious half the time. The nature of the topic certainly doesn't help. I don't think combating venomous opinions with venomous opinions is going to leave a sweet taste in anyone's mouth. I guess maybe I'm going a little bit too in-depth about all this, but it just seems like the very point of this article is to point out topics that are only going to piss people off. Like I said before, I think the majority of people that were pissed about the ME3 endings have moved on now. Isn't bringing it up in an article based on who's right or who's wrong only going to open up the same can of worms all over again? It almost seems as if that's the end goal here. Carpet-bomb the article with a bunch of opinions that are going to do nothing other than inspire people to take to the comments and rant (much like I've done.)

 

[DustyDrB]

I'm surprised that "___________ proves that video games can be art" didn't make the list. Yeah, Shadow of the Colossus has some artsy style and themes. But man, they really tried hard to sabotage that game with its controls.

 

[PunkRex]

Number 3: You know Bob, a few years back I would have proberly not agreed with you but... I tried reading some new SJ series a while back and... gawd damn, I could LITERALLY guess each page/event/character type. For example, peeps keep going on about Blue Exocist but as ive read Naruto/Bleach/D.Gray Man I can guess EVERY point, EVERY DAMN CHARACTER. Shounen manga tends to get more varied/interesting with its characters/settings around the 3rd volume but ive really struggled to make it that far in recent series. So much so ive retreated back into western cartoons... I COULDN'T BE HAPPIER, but I do wish some of the more grating sterotypes would just fall out of popularity already. I hear Bleach is kind of on the up with the latest arc, actual stakes, etc... could be fun.

 

[NinjaDeathSlap]

"Roger Moore was the worst James Bond." Really? not Timothy Dalton... pretty sure the worst was Timothy Dalton

If we're talking about 'Who was in the worst Bond movies', which a lot of people find difficult to distinguish from 'Who was the worst James Bond' then... I don't know. Neither had movies as good as Connery or Craig. Dalton's movies were forgettable, whilst Moore's were silly. I'd be inclined to say that Brosnan had the worst movies (with the exception of Goldeneye), as they were just as silly as Moore's without the charm of also being old fashioned.

In terms of which of the two of them was actually better as James Bond though, I'm sorry, but Dalton absolutely destroys Moore.

Maybe this is a generational thing, i really like the Brosnan movies (i grew up with those ones im only 24) and i cant stand Craig (to actiony) but Dalton was very carried by the supporting cast (loved his villains hated him)

For me, Dalton is my favorites because he's the only one who has actually made Bond into a believable character, rather than just an archetypal school-boy wet dream. Dalton seems to me like the one out of all of them who really put some thought into the role, rather than just "Oh hey I'm James Bond now, I'd better go and be James Bond and do all the things people expect James Bond to do". His exterior is more understated than the others, because he's a spy and it kind of goes against the grain for him to draw attention to himself (this is one area where I really don't like Craig, who in Casino Royale literally announces to the villain exactly who he is because hey, Bond is so awesome he can do that right? Urgh, just no), and yet he can do this without losing any of Bond's charisma. He's a suave as the rest, but without feeling the need to show off all the time, which actually makes Bond even more charismatic. He always has a coldness behind his eyes though which really makes me believe the sheer amount of people 007 has killed in his career. He's actually threatening, in a way which Moore and Brosnan never were. Even the audience can never really tell what Dalton's Bond is thinking, let alone the villains.

In a way though, I think Moore does get given a hard time. He's not terrible, and in a way I think he's a victim of his own success. In the end, he was just in too many of the damn things so people got sick of him.

 

[Redd the Sock]

Round 2

23) Yes, an orphened billionaire is relateable to us normal humans.

22) This still goes on? Put down the Jim Henson and watch what most puppets and animitronics actually looked like.

21) A big picture of examples please? Still, the 90s had Kingdom Come, so I won't write them off completely.

20) No, it got notiriaty for the sheer fanficishness of the whys and hows we got to the new status quo. It's hard to look at something that pretty much stops trying to fool us.

19) Really thought this would be higher.

15) Given the funky art styles of comics these days, I miss this being the worst thing I saw.

14) No it ruins a game that is designed about being hard, one which some people fell horrbily put off by because playing isn't fun but winning is (they'd have never survived the NES days).

11) More like the mediums themselves are overlapping. Why do I need a remake of series X when I have the DVDs for series X right here.

5) Funny, you pick on them enough.

4) Holdover from when dubs were aweful most of the time and that was if they didn't rewrite most of it.

3) Manga doesn't go on forever? Two words: One Piece. Also include jokes about X/1999 never ending (just stopping unfinished) or the 17+ years it's taken to adapt Evangellion.

1) Probably, but it's an issue of suspension of disbeleif. You know Batman won't die (at least for good) but since a lot of things could kill him you can put that out of your mind. Hard to do that with a character that traditionally needs Krytonite (or magic depending on when you're reading) to be hurt.

 

[Casual Shinji]

As long as these "boring" opinions keep finding ample grounds to be based on, I don't see any reason to stop mentioning them from time to time.

And I guess our ego's defenses have recently evolved from saying 'your opinion is wrong' to 'your opinion is boring'.

 

[PunkRex]

3. Not...really. That's actually being kind of ignorant, Bob. If you're talking about DBZ clones you might have a point, but manga is way more varied a medium than that.

I do believe that shounen, shoujo, etc have their cliches but that tends to be true for most media, obviously its how there handled that matters. To many artists in shounen manga especially seem to emulate their roll models, put me off ALOT of new series. I don't care that im a 'shounen fag' or what ever 4chan wants to call me, what I care about is being able to guess page for page the first few volumes of an entire series.

 

[NinjaDeathSlap]

I may deserve a "Curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal!" for this one, but how about:
51) They need to bring back Firefly.
Or simply "They should never have canceled _______." I'm just particularly tired of the Firefly one. Yes, it was a good show and everyone who likes it agrees with you, but it's over, let it go. If you're jonesing for some Nathan Fillion, watch Castle.

I also think that the people who really, genuinely want Firefly back don't understand that it's precisely because of its brevity and cult status that we raise it up so high. It never got the time do 'do and Elvis', fall victim to its own success, become bloated and stale, and then shit itself to death. If they brought it back now they'd only be doing it for the purposes of milking nerd nostalgia, and that means they wouldn't just bring it back for a couple of seasons, they'd bring it back forever, and that would be the absolute worst thing for it.

 

[JellySlimerMan]

14. Easy mode ruins games.

It's a game, not the SATs. Get over yourself.

Its not about difficult, Movie Bro. But then again you are no stranger to use strawmen.

43. Mass Effect 3's ending was bad.

Seriously, folks, at some point we're going to have to accept that every possible variation on this point has been made. Many times. There's no meat left on the bones.

Because demostrating with objective observation and facts (because one CAN obtain opinions based on facts, did you know that Bro?) that such a pathetic excuse for "artistic integrity" can be harmful for the future of gaming is TRULLY A BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORING OPINION!!

Either that, or you are covering your ass by making sure that the ME3 fiaco doesnt involve you anymore since you defended it just as well as Colin Moriarty did (Protip: You failed just as hard)

http://awtr.ca/long:mass-effect-3-and-the-art-of-criticism-or-why-colin-mor

Just like with Heavens to Metroid, you want to divert the converzation so people dont notice your failures. That would explain why your newer Overthinker episodes are framed in such a way like if you were expecting a new audience, because you knew your fans are loooooooooong gone

 

[Sixcess]

Y'know, I don't usually say this... but jeez, Bob, lighten up.

The opinions themselves may not be particularly original, but the wider discussions they sometimes spark might be. Just dismissing them out of hand is unworthy of a normally excellent pop culture commentator such as yourself, and the "I am RIGHT" tone is as off putting here as it was in "Why you are wrong about Sucker Punch."

Provoke me to think about things, but don't tell me what to think.

 

[Smolderin]

So I've noticed alot of people are a bit heated over some things Movie Bob said. This is just a friendly reminder, but remember these are his OPINIONS. Don't take it personally if you disagree with any of them. Feel free to state your own but I doubt your opinions are going to change his.

 

[Littaly]

For the most part, the list came off as a little boring and whiny, like it became the very thing it was trying to fight or something.

The point about Nicholas Cage sounded interesting though, I'd love to see that elaborated on in a Big Picture episode ^^

 

[sailor_960]

I'd like to make an observation if I could. Those of you who are citing #3 as being wrong based on the fact that Bob probably hasn't done his research (which is more what I assume you're doing since all of you seem to be immediately dismissive of it rather then inciting thoughtful debate) are standing on the edge of intellectual dishonesty. If you want those of us who read Western Comics but not manga to drop our generalizations about your medium of choice then you are going to have to do the same for us. This is an interesting debate, but it always gets bogged down in arguments that rely on generalizations.