The Underrated and Overrated Thread

You know that movie you love but everyone else hates? Or that song that is pure awful but everyone adores it anyways?

What do you think, chumps of Doomworld, are the overrated and underrated bits of media you've come across?


For one, I thought the movie Sphere was actually pretty decent. Not good, per say, but decent. I thought the main cast acted well, and they represented the novel characters fairly, minus the throw away Navy crew members, who in the film were fairly pointless, other than being redshirts, not to mention: What the hell was Queen Latifah in this for? I'm pretty sure she was somewhat well established by 1996, so why a bit role like this? It's hard to call her a supporting character even. Some of the other novel departures weren't terrible, either. Although it would've been cool, there was probably a good chance of the squid looking too hokey on screen or look to closely as a rip off of the Abyss tendrils. And a few other things didn't seem to make sense either, such as making Norman Goodman/Johnson go into the Sphere early on. It was better than Timeline, anyways, and had a great soundtrack.

Also, Billy Idol's Cyberpunk album wasn't that bad. In retrospect, it may have not been the right move, but it's decent music, and Shock to the System has a badass vid.

Under:
William Shatner's "The Transformed Man" is a maddeningly perfect work of genius. The world wasn't ready for it. Perhaps it never will be.


Over:
The Doors are one of the most overrated bands in history. Jim Morrison was a drunk hack. Ray Manzarek carried the whole band.

Ed said:

Over:
The Doors are one of the most overrated bands in history. Jim Morrison was a drunk hack. Ray Manzarek carried the whole band.

I can't wait to tell my sister this. Lou Reed might be another somewhat overrated artist, but that could be just my opinion.

Overrated, doom, what a piece of crap game.

Underrated, duke nukem 3d, now that's a fps masterpiece.

Underrated: Watchmen, the movie. It's not perfect, it gets really silly in places, and the action scenes are kinda ridiculous, but it's pretty faithful to the comic, and it is pretty entertaining, if a bit long (but you know, it kinda has to be long).

Overrated: Avril Lavigne. Sorry, kinda out of left field, but I have a friend who just adores Avril, and I can't stand her music, and it tries way to hard in the "I'm not one of the popular kids, I'm such a rebel," attitude.

I genuinely enjoy Miracles by Insane Clown Posse and not because "lol fucking magnets". I like the sound production, the lyrics and the theme of wanting the world to be more than just a bunch of scientific formulas that can describe everything and leave nothing to the imagination. Kind of makes me understand religious people: it's just way more exciting to live when you believe that magic is everywhere in this bitch.

Overrated: Guinness beer. I swear, Guinness is the most fucking overrated popular beer in the world. Anyone who is only familiar with the more widespread brands of beer probably imagines that they're drinking some dark, heavy stuff when they drink Guinness. No you fucking aren't, I'm sorry to break it to you. I would liken drinking Guinness to drinking Miller Lite mixed with fucking flat Coca-Cola. Its color is darker than most other beers to try and cover up for the fact that it has no real kick or heavy flavor to it. And that's the essence of what Guinness is: a light beer, posing as a dark beer.

Fuck Guinness.

Underrated: Heineken. No, I'm not saying Heineken is a GREAT beer, but for a light beer, it's got a surprising amount of kick and tangy flavor to it. It certainly deserves to be rated a few slots above where most beer drinkers would probably rank it: among PBR, Budweiser, Miller and all the other watered-down white trash beers.

EDIT: I just remembered that this thread was specifically about overrated MEDIA. My bad for not paying close enough attention. Moving on.

Overrated:

The Shawshank Redemption is probably the most overrated movie I've ever seen. I hear more and more people cite it as the best movie ever created. I had seen the movie years ago and thought it was all right, pretty good. In recent years I have become much more interested in storytelling and movies, so when I recently sat down to rewatch the movie, I was hoping to really enjoy a masterpiece. It didn't happen.

Don't get me wrong, the movie is just fine and worth viewing, but it's so far from "best movie ever" material that it's borderline insulting to hear it mentioned as that. The characters are paperthin. Was the good guy guilty? Well I won't spoil it for you, but it was completely inconsequential and had no impact on the movie. The bad guys are bad with no redeeming qualities. There was never any suspense about anything. It's a nice movie with nice people, nice images and generally uninsulting in its performance. If you want to go see a really good prison break drama, go watch Escape from Alcatraz with Clint Eastwood. (Not Alcatraz, the series. NEVER watch that. Trust me) It's not BEST MOVIE EVER material either, but at least there is plenty of suspense.

Overrated:
Quentin Tarantino. His old movies are good, oh yes they are. He self-admittedly ripped off tons of other movies he liked, but he assembled the pieces together in a fun way. They had a big cultural impact and QT made pulp a fashionable mainstream. I kinda dislike the uncritical reverence of Pulp Fiction, but hey, it's great cinema. Buuut then Kill Bill happened and Tarantino started ripping off himself the most. In slow motion. The movie still retained some of the old appeal, but the references and homages didn't feel naturally woven into the movie's universe anymore. Instead, every idea got shoved down the audience's throat, because what if someone wouldn't get it? And it just kept going and going and going. Everything he wrote or directed afterwards is tired, self-conscious and unenjoyable for me. yet still universally praised. QT can do no wrong, it seems.

Underrated:
The Core. It's one of the most retarded movies I've ever seen. Every minute or so something extraordinarily, hilariously stupid happens and you wonder if it's just a massive prank. The script must read like a TV Tropes page for Hollywood stereotypes. It's like Ed Wood got a budget, or like one of those direct to video movies in which Casper van Dien hunts an intelligent killer tornado from outer space, but with AAA production. If Tcheky Karyo gave any less shit about existing in this movie, he'd have to actually start flinging shit at the camera. The Core is so bad it's good and it should be a cult classic. The only way it could get worsebetter is to replace Aaron Eckhart with Nick Cage.

Underrated: id Software's RAGE. I often get the feeling that the majority of people who bash it have never even tried it.

Overrated: Game of Thrones / Song of Ice and Fire. Those often get advertised as "the series where major characters die", when in reality the number of MAJOR characters dying is no different from many other fantasy works, Harry Potter included. Sure, lots of NAMED characters die, but it takes more to shock me with a character death than naming him "Joe" instead of "a random peasant / knight"

Caffeine Freak said:

Overrated: Guinness beer. I swear, Guinness is the most fucking overrated popular beer in the world. Anyone who is only familiar with the more widespread brands of beer probably imagines that they're drinking some dark, heavy stuff when they drink Guinness. No you fucking aren't, I'm sorry to break it to you. I would liken drinking Guinness to drinking Miller Lite mixed with fucking flat Coca-Cola. Its color is darker than most other beers to try and cover up for the fact that it has no real kick or heavy flavor to it. And that's the essence of what Guinness is: a light beer, posing as a dark beer.

Fuck Guinness.

Underrated: Heineken. No, I'm not saying Heineken is a GREAT beer, but for a light beer, it's got a surprising amount of kick and tangy flavor to it. It certainly deserves to be rated a few slots above where most beer drinkers would probably rank it: among PBR, Budweiser, Miller and all the other watered-down white trash beers.

EDIT: I just remembered that this thread was specifically about overrated MEDIA. My bad for not paying close enough attention. Moving on.

Something tells me the OP won't mind deviation for the sake of beer.

Kilkenny takes a shit on Guinness. I like Heineken, but it's too expensive. It's way better than the white trash beer, as it were, but it pales to some other beers in the same price range (here in AUS at least.)

Overrated: Facebook. It's great to be able to have a page where you can 'network' and all that jazz, but some people just go on and on about it. I hate that shit. I just see it as "spammy email with pictures".

Underrated: Castlevania: Dracula X on SNES. Sure the port wasn't perfect, but it wasn't so much a port as a brand new game. You gotta put yourself in the perspective of approaching it as it's own thing, which I tend to do with most games anyway. It really is a lot of fun and I reccommend it to anyone. (I'm so lucky I have a copy, that thing is worth serious money..)

Shaviro said:

The Shawshank Redemption is probably the most overrated movie I've ever seen.

I've heard anecdotal accounts of The Shawshank Redemption's simple message getting people out of bad spots in their lives, so I can't bring myself to disparage it too much. Though I completely agree that it's very far from being the greatest movie ever made [sic], if you look at it as a movie and not an alleged panacea for personal issues.

Overrated: Fight Club. Irritating, pseudo-philosophical mumbo jumbo about angst and stuff, that fans of the movie insist is "deep". I don't like to put any stock in how a movie performs at the box office, but sometimes I'm convinced there's a correlation between bad movie and bad ticket sales. How it's become a 'cult classic', I don't know.

Underrated: Alien 3. Purely coincidental that it was directed by the same guy who directed Fight Club. It's a tense, well-produced horror movie with memorable characters, beautiful sets and a strangely appealing morbid tone. I think it's aged very well, and I think it nicely concluded the Alien trilogy, before Fox ruined the canon with Resurrection and those dreadful AvP movies.

Patrol1985 said:

Overrated: Game of Thrones / Song of Ice and Fire. Those often get advertised as "the series where major characters die", when in reality the number of MAJOR characters dying is no different from many other fantasy works, Harry Potter included. Sure, lots of NAMED characters die, but it takes more to shock me with a character death than naming him "Joe" instead of "a random peasant / knight"

Heh, I think you are underestimating the body count in ASoIaF, but it's not the bloodbath that shocks people and makes them hook more of the good stuff directly into veins, it's the out of the blue manner the culling happens. Movers and shakers die when you least expect it and entire unresolved plot tangents disappear with them, radically reshaping the dynamic of the entire conflict. Furthermore, the point of view characters aren't safe either and you get inner narration of their deaths. That is pretty much the complete opposite of your Harry Potter example where every death is highly climatic, but thoroughly utilitarian for plot reasons and none of the "inmost core" characters die. No dead Harry or Hermione. And if the Red Wedding didn't surprise you, that just means you had spoilers. :p

DoomUK said:

Overrated: Fight Club.
How it's become a 'cult classic', I don't know.

It became pretty much a generational manifesto. If you aren't in, you are out, so to speak. I don't feel Easy Rider or Rebel Without a Cause either, heh.

Overrated, it'd have to be Skyrim. I'd have to say, out of all the games in the series so far (that aren't mobile games or whatever), it's definitely the weakest. I could give each game a proper strength that it played to that none of the others really had, but not Skyrim. I halfway consider it a zombie game, given that about a third of what you fight consists entirely of zombies. I did play through the whole main quest and the major side quests, plus the two expansions at the time, and never really felt like I was playing the same game everyone else was. It wasn't bad, just seemed to lack any soul.

Underrated, Castlevania 64. I'll certainly give that the platforming could be wonky at times, but I think it was a pretty good game, especially considering the time of its release and a lot of the garbage that had preceded it. Plus, that soundtrack. It's sort of surprising that I've only ever heard it used once outside of the original game, Scythe's map20 used the Castle Center theme. I guess it's never been considered one of the N64's shittier titles, but it never really gets brought up whenever the console's history is, and I think that's a shame.

Underrated: Duke Nukem Forever, Star Wars I-III (*braces for impact*), Divergent.

Overrated: Call of Duty, Angry Birds, Coca-Cola, McDonald's, Metallica.

@Akira_98, Since I so strongly agree with your opinion on Skyrim, I now feel the urge to give Castlevania 64 a proper crack.

Overrated: UDoom
Underrated: Doom II

Overrated: Cyberdemon

Sure he has a lot more HP than the Spider Demon, but circle strafe and you won't even take a single hit, let alone feel threatened.

Underrated: Spider Demon

Without sufficient cover, you're dead in the water.

Underrated: The Witcher 2
Overrated: Skyrim

Underrated:Hokuto no Ken, a great anime, i haven't watched all episodes,
but it's one of the best i've ever seen, Armored Core, another great game that dosen't have much attention, too bad because that is one of the best games i've ever played and Powerslave and Shadow Warrior, amazing games, one is set on Egypt, one of my favorite countries due to its history which led to this wonderful masterpiece and the other one is set on Japan, another of my favorite countries, which has lots of history like samurais and ninjas which led to great games such as Mortal Kombat and Ninja Gaiden.
Overrated:Coke because it got me addicted to it for 10 years but now is no more to me, Call of Duty, game responsible for the awful clones and insulting kids, new gen gamers because they don't know what was the 1º FPS game that was made and say CoD is the best game there is.

geekmarine said:

Underrated: Watchmen, the movie. It's not perfect, it gets really silly in places, and the action scenes are kinda ridiculous, but it's pretty faithful to the comic, and it is pretty entertaining, if a bit long (but you know, it kinda has to be long).

I kinda have to agree with this. It wasn't perfect, but it never hit a step that was all bad (Well, Malin Akerman could have been better, but she either over or under-acted as Laurie, and got on my nerves because of such. She's hot, though). And, don't kill me, but I liked the movie's ending better than the book's. Blaming Dr Manhattan and forming peace against him makes more sense than peace against big alien crafted by Stan Winston Studios. I still get that ending, but I like the move's version better. Although, I do feel the movie version, because of that change, had some plot holes elsewhere in the film.

Shaviro said:

Overrated:

The Shawshank Redemption is probably the most overrated movie I've ever seen. I hear more and more people cite it as the most movie ever created. I had seen the movie years ago and thought it was all right, pretty good. In recent years I have become much more interested in storytelling and movies, so when I recently sat down to rewatch the movie, I was hoping to really enjoy a masterpiece. It didn't happen.

Don't get me wrong, the movie is just fine and worth viewing, but it's so far from "best movie ever" material that it's borderline insulting to hear it mentioned as that. The characters are paperthin. Was the good guy guilty? Well I won't spoil it for you, but it was completely inconsequential and had no impact on the movie. The bad guys are bad with no redeeming qualities. There was never any suspense about anything. It's a nice movie with nice people, nice images and generally uninsulting in its performance. If you want to go see a really good prison break drama, go watch Escape from Alcatraz with Clint Eastwood. (Not Alcatraz, the series. NEVER watch that. Trust me) It's not BEST MOVIE EVER material either, but at least there is plenty of suspense.

Yes, that movie is bullcrap.

geekmarine said:

Underrated: Watchmen, the movie. It's not perfect, it gets really silly in places, and the action scenes are kinda ridiculous, but it's pretty faithful to the comic, and it is pretty entertaining, if a bit long (but you know, it kinda has to be long).

Overrated: Avril Lavigne. Sorry, kinda out of left field, but I have a friend who just adores Avril, and I can't stand her music, and it tries way to hard in the "I'm not one of the popular kids, I'm such a rebel," attitude.

Really? Avril Lavigne? What is this, 2003?

dew said:

Heh, I think you are underestimating the body count in ASoIaF, but it's not the bloodbath that shocks people and makes them hook more of the good stuff directly into veins, it's the out of the blue manner the culling happens. Movers and shakers die when you least expect it and entire unresolved plot tangents disappear with them, radically reshaping the dynamic of the entire conflict. Furthermore, the point of view characters aren't safe either and you get inner narration of their deaths. That is pretty much the complete opposite of your Harry Potter example where every death is highly climatic, but thoroughly utilitarian for plot reasons and none of the "inmost core" characters die. No dead Harry or Hermione. And if the Red Wedding didn't surprise you, that just means you had spoilers. :p

Unfortunately you're right - I had spoilers about pretty much every major happening in the books / tv series (damn you Internet and my friends who turned out to be real cunts about it), but I still think that saying that the "whole series" is full of such moments is an exaggeration.

Whenever someone talks about a MAJOR PLOT TWIST in ASoIaF, in 99% of times it refers to the latter half of "A Storm of Swords". That's where all the shockers happened, be it Red Wedding, Purple Wedding, Tyrion's trial and its aftermath etc.

I yet have to read "Dance with Dragons", but "A Feast for Crows" left me yawning and disappointed. Hopefully, the upcoming book will be better, and judging by Martin's comments, it's basically going to be "A Storm of Swords II", which I hope it will :D

I don't really feel like getting into overrated stuff.

underrated: sparknotes. Call me shallow but recently I've been in love with the idea that a website has really thorough and accurate summaries for entire chapters of books is like free netflix for reading. I recently wrote a A+ paper based on the book The Jungle by Upton Sinclair, by reading the entire sparknotes chapter summaries cover to cover in just under an hour, then skimmed through the free eBook on Gutenberg.org for quotes. I became really fascinated with the story and will probably read the entire thing in the future. Public schools taught me at an early age that my reading comprehension is shit, especially when you're reading the old English garbage of Romeo and Juliet and Great Expectations at the age of 13. Books that are loaded with inner monologues that go on for many pages, and metaphors and analogies that that are tricky to interpret and futile to my shitty 13 year old attention span. Its actually really comforting to have a website where you can learn everything you need to know about a story in less than an hour without committing to spending a few hours a day for a week to read the whole thing. I'm sure many would argue that I'm throwing away the fun of interpreting things myself but id actually prefer not to sink so much thought and concentration into it and just let someone extract the valuable information from the story for me instead. Just this month I "read" Animal Farm, 1984, Great Gatsby, and Oliver Twist. Next on my list is Tale of Two Cities and Hamlet. I gotta look up some genres and find some recomendations to read next. Its nice to feel educated with literature :P

dew said:

It became pretty much a generational manifesto. If you aren't in, you are out, so to speak. I don't feel Easy Rider or Rebel Without a Cause either, heh.

I reckon if anyone consider Fight Club as a manifesto of some sort, they're entirely missing the point of the movie, especially considering how self-aware and ironic it is. Basically if anyone falls for the dogmatic crap it spurts out, you've fallen into its trap. I personally view it as a straightforward Nietzschean psychological battle within an individual in a confusing world that makes it difficult to anchor a self into something meaningful (yes it's a favourite movie of mine). If that's pseudo-philosophy then by god I'm a pseudo-philosophy student.

Overrated: Can't think of anything. Anything that's post-modern I guess. I hate that crap.

Underrated: On Her Majesty's Secret Service Bond movie. Every time I watch this, I cry myself to sleep wondering why George Lazenby didn't do another Bond movie; Diamonds are Forever was such a poor follow up to the movie.

Ed said:

Over:
The Doors are one of the most overrated bands in history. Jim Morrison was a drunk hack. Ray Manzarek carried the whole band.

Seconded.

Several years ago I saw an interview of David Crosby where he talked about a party at John Davidson's house and Janis Joplin knocked Morrison out cold with a whiskey bottle for acting like a drunk asshole.

Seemed to fit Apocalypse Now, though. Loved that movie.

Overrated:beer
Underrated:water

Heh, I think you are underestimating the body count in ASoIaF, but it's not the bloodbath that shocks people and makes them hook more of the good stuff directly into veins, it's the out of the blue manner the culling happens. Movers and shakers die when you least expect it and entire unresolved plot tangents disappear with them, radically reshaping the dynamic of the entire conflict.

Wow, this might just be the first explanation that finally makes this series interesting. Watching from the sidelines, hearing people going on about the violence and the sex, it seemed like yet another tedious pushing the boundaries on pseudo-taboos ordeal, but now you make me want to check it out.

Overrated - The Wall. No... just, no.

Underrated - The Waterboys' Fisherman's Blues. Kind of unconventional, but this album is just a masterpiece and so few people have heard of it stateside. Kind of surprising, really.

Caffeine Freak said:

Overrated: Guinness beer. I swear, Guinness is the most fucking overrated popular beer in the world. Anyone who is only familiar with the more widespread brands of beer probably imagines that they're drinking some dark, heavy stuff when they drink Guinness. No you fucking aren't, I'm sorry to break it to you. I would liken drinking Guinness to drinking Miller Lite mixed with fucking flat Coca-Cola. Its color is darker than most other beers to try and cover up for the fact that it has no real kick or heavy flavor to it. And that's the essence of what Guinness is: a light beer, posing as a dark beer.

Fuck Guinness.

While I generally that it's not a good beer, the foreign export stout is absolutely ace and what I consider 'real' Guinness to be.