Did the things I liked as a kid suck?

[Dirty Hipsters]

When I was a little kid I fucking LOVED Ghostbusters. I thought the Ghostbusters movies were the greatest thing in the world. I loved the first movie, the second movie, the cartoon, the toys, everything. Recently Ghostbusters 2 popped up on netflix, and I hadn't seen the movie since I was about 9 year old so I decided to rewatch it.

What a piece of shit.

I mean, it's not the worst movie I've ever seen or anything, but it definitely doesn't live up to the original in any way. The villain is lame, the entire ending is boring, there's barely any ghosts in the whole thing, and almost all of the wit and charm of the original is gone. It's incredibly sad really since it was written by Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis just like the original.

So now I'm almost having a crisis of identity. What if it's not just Ghostbusters 2, what if all of the media I loved in my childhood was way worse than I remember. How can I be sure that Batman the Animated Series is just as good as my memory thinks it was, or the Animaniacs, or Darkwing Duck? What if Street Sharks really was the pile of garbage most people claim it was? What if the 1990s Spiderman cartoon doesn't hold up?

Now I feel like I have to go back through a lot of the movies and TV shows I loved as a child and rewatch them to validate my love for them all over again.

What about you guys? Have you ever had a moment where something you dearly loved from your childhood turned out to be significantly worse than you remember?

 

[Elfgore]

The 1998 Godzilla movie. I loved it as a kid. I watched it multiple times a week. I stopped watching it when I was like eight and watched it again at sixteen. I quickly realized a movie I treasured was total crap. Kinda a kick in the balls for me.

 

[Euryalus]

Did the things you like as a kid suck?

Yes, yes they did. All of them. Even that one thing. You know the one. You're a terrible person with terrible taste dirty hipsters

OT: I tend to find myself in the opposite position more. A lot of the things I hated as a Kid I love now, or if I loved them, I still love them.

The times where your opinions are vindicated are the best though.

I'm telling you man, I can go back to majora's mask again and again and it's never gotten old. I've seen it differently throughout my various playthroughs, but I've never not enjoyed it.

 

[Queen Michael]

In my early teens, I read a comic book series called Gloomcookie. I was amazed at how good it was, how poetic. When I reread it as an adult, I was struck by how very amateurish it was, both in terms of art and writing.

 

[Vault101]

snip?

1. yes they probably did suck

2. no it doesn't matter

I still love the oriinal TMNT movie...as an adult I can see how silly it is but I honestly like what they did with respecting the scource material. Some stuff I loved as a kid still holds up like the fith element, or Rockos modern life. Labrynth

and some doesn't..like the wild Thornberrys..I realised when I was about 13 that Eliza was a dumbass. Or George of the jungle which has only appeal for kids or "a caravan of courage" wich was...yeah...

somtimes the line between genuine goodness and nostalga is so blurry you don't know the difference...and somtimes a show you liked as a kid is really good but has no appeal as an adult aside from nostalga because...you grew up

 

[Vault101]

In my early teens, I read a comic book series called Gloomcookie. I was amazed at how good it was, how poetic. When I reread it as an adult, I was struck by how very amateurish it was, both in terms of art and writing.

in my teens my mind was BLOWN by V for Vendetta movie.....then I thourght it was rahter simplistic and the comic while not as flashy was more nuanced

Oh, and once upon a time I thought Xena was the greatest thing to ever appear on a TV screen. Recently stumbled across the DVD set and Jesus H. Christ it was corny as hell. Still fun once I'd drastically readjusted my expectations, but clearly one of those things where the people making it didn't take it anywhere near as seriously as the people watching it. Thankfully the music was just as awesome as I remembered [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8Y4SnKLMTY].

YOU TAKE THAT BACK DAMMIT!!!

..ok I havent watched Xena yet....but I want to...plus I can do corny..I even kind of like the first two seasons of TNG

*sigh* poor Tasha Yarr....would could have been

 

[Zhukov]

Probably.

I liked to read The Phantom [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Phantom] comics as a kid. Bought the newest issue every week like clockwork. Even at the time I considered them something of a guilty pleasure. Looking back, they were pretty shit. Although some of the art was legit good stuff.

Oh, and once upon a time I thought Xena was the greatest thing to ever appear on a TV screen. Recently stumbled across the DVD set and Jesus H. Christ it was corny as hell. Still fun once I'd drastically readjusted my expectations, but clearly one of those things where the people making it didn't take it anywhere near as seriously as the people watching it. Thankfully the music was just as awesome as I remembered [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8Y4SnKLMTY].

Eh, it's just one of those things. I can't see anyone being so invested in their childhood pastimes as to be genuinely distressed to find a cartoon not being as great as they thought it was at age 9.

 

[TheMigrantSoldier]

I managed to get a good amount of enjoyment from "Hey, You Pikachu" and Shadow the Hedgehog. I replayed them and felt the precious minutes slip on the trainwrecks.

 

[jademunky]

Some things hold up better than others. The Karate Kid, for example, is still great. I recently rewatched "The Goonies" and "Robocop" a few months back and.......... I've gotta say that they were not as great as I remember. God I hate myself for even saying that.

Agreed on Ghostbusters 2 being disappointing as well.

 

[twistedmic]

So now I'm almost having a crisis of identity. What if it's not just Ghostbusters 2, what if all of the media I loved in my childhood was way worse than I remember. How can I be sure that Batman the Animated Series is just as good as my memory thinks it was, or the Animaniacs, or Darkwing Duck? What if Street Sharks really was the pile of garbage most people claim it was? What if the 1990s Spiderman cartoon doesn't hold up?

Some of them will suck, some of them will still be good. 'Batman the Animated series' and 'The Animaniacs' are still good (in my opinion at least), I don't remember 'Street Sharks' and the 1990's 'Spiderman' will most likely suck or at least come off as corny.
Though I will say that looking back, I am amazed at what some of the cartoons from the nineties got away with (particularly 'The Animaniacs', 'Freakazoid' and 'Rocko's Modern Life')

What about you guys? Have you ever had a moment where something you dearly loved from your childhood turned out to be significantly worse than you remember?

When I was younger I thought that 'Water World' was an awesome movie and I loved the original 'Pokemon' cartoon but now I realize that both of them were godawful piles of shit.

 

[kalakashi]

What if the 1990s Spiderman cartoon doesn't hold up?

I can confirm that the 90s Spiderman cartoon is still fantastic. Was surprised to see them on Netflix, warily gave them a go, and jeez, it all came flooding back; that blinding guitar intro, the robotic "Spiderman" voice that goes with it. Nerdy, geeky, socially awkward Peter Parker, 6 foot 4 with wavy locks, arms bigger than my legs, whose main dilemma is whether to be with hot sassy blonde Felicia Hardy or hot sometimes sassy redhead Mary Jane Watson.

I would recommend the series of episodes in which the symbiote binds to Spiderman, giving him the black suit and turning him evil/confident. I mean, it features both black suit Spiderman and Venom, and that's really the most you can ask for.

 

[Zhukov]

Oh, and once upon a time I thought Xena was the greatest thing to ever appear on a TV screen. Recently stumbled across the DVD set and Jesus H. Christ it was corny as hell. Still fun once I'd drastically readjusted my expectations, but clearly one of those things where the people making it didn't take it anywhere near as seriously as the people watching it. Thankfully the music was just as awesome as I remembered [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8Y4SnKLMTY].

YOU TAKE THAT BACK DAMMIT!!!

..ok I havent watched Xena yet....but I want to...plus I can do corny..

The show's tone swings back and forth like a pendulum on crack.

In one episode she'll be confronted with a maddened and brutalized victim of her past crimes, a vision of shattered innocence who causes her to question the veracity of her reform and threatens to tip her back into her old murderous ways.

Then in the next episode she'll team up with Not-Santa in order to save an orphanage in time for Not-Christmas while doling out justice with snowballs.

Oh, and then there's the lesbian subtext... thing. I suspect that it was originally accidental but after people started talking they just went with it. By the end, well... there's nothing remotely sub about that text. Not that I'm complaining.

 

[Mossberg Shotty]

It's hard for me to comment, considering that I don't know how old you are, but you're probably right. The whole generational thing aside, most things just don't age well. In grew up in the 90's so pretty much everything I was exposed to was terrible. Nostalgia hits and it's time to quit.

What's worse is when you look back on something you played/watched a lot when you were a kid to find out that it's actually creepy as fuck, despite being made for kids.

 

[Weaver]

It's okay, the original Ghostbusters movie is still pretty good (I've seen it relatively recently).

As a kid I loved Dragon Ball Z, but going back and watching it the dubs are unfathomably bad. I can't believe I couldn't tell how stiff the acting was.

 

[Childe]

What we like changes as we change. Just because you liked these things when you were a kid doesn't mean that they were bad. In fact thats one of the beauties of free will, we are free to like whatever we want. Its only bad if you think that its bad.

 

[TheSYLOH]

some of them will still be good. 'Batman the Animated series' and 'The Animaniacs' are still good (in my opinion at least)

Batman the Animated Series is not good... it is great!
My opinion of that series has actually gone up the more I learned.
I would not have undestood the meaning of "Film noir" or "Chiaroscuro", but now I can recognize it.
Batman: Mask of the Phantasm, with it's character study of Bruce Wayne and analysis of the motivation of Batman in contrast to the Phantasm, was something that went over my head as a kid, now I get it.
Also it had a lot of implied fucking....

 

[Tanis]

I remember liking the original 'Nick Fury' movie, with David Hasselhoff.

This one:
Nick Fury: Agent of Shield
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119781/

It's shit.
O by the Gawd-dess it's shit.
It's bad, not even 'so bad it's good', just bad.

 

[Imperioratorex Caprae]

Let me see... sure a few things I liked as a kid are in actuality crap on a crap cracker... Thundercats was horribad but I loved it as a kid. I don't know why I even bothered to like it. Same goes for He-Man and a few other cartoons (mostly Hanna-Barbara era stuff). Later on, when Space Ghost, Sealab 2021 and Harvey Birdman all came to Adult Swim, I realized just how bad those old cartoons were (and how much funnier the Adult Swim versions were because of what I loved as a kid). I still love the Goonies, despite the horrible editing that is glaringly obvious to present-day me.

 

[Vault101]

[quote/]Then in the next episode she'll team up with Not-Santa in order to save an orphanage in time for Not-Christmas while doling out justice with snowballs.[/quote]

if youre trying to discourage me from watching youre doing a terrible job...

Oh, and then there's the lesbian subtext... thing. I suspect that it was originally accidental but after people started talking they just went with it. By the end, well... there's nothing remotely sub about that text. Not that I'm complaining.

*watches clip of Xena and Gabrielle kissing*

huh what? I didn't hear you....*replay* [sub/]why can't I have a gabrielle or a Xena?[/sub]

 

[Tuesday Night Fever]

Given that I'm a movie buff, I was kinda lucky, admittedly. When I was little my mom would often be away for long stretches of time traveling with my older sister for dance competitions, so I spent a ton of nights with my dad watching movies. He's a huge movie buff too, so I got ridiculously early exposure to a lot of classic movies that still hold up quite well today.

So before I was even a teen when I told him I really liked SciFi, he'd put together these marathons of classic SciFi movies. One night we might watch something like The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), The Thing From Another World (1951), War of the Worlds (1953), Invaders From Mars (1953), and Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956). Another night we'd watch something like The Thing (1982), The Terminator (1984), Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991), Predator (1987), and Predator 2 (1990). Another night we might watch the Alien series. Stuff like that.

And it wasn't just SciFi. Sometimes we'd marathon some James Bond movies. Sometimes we'd watch a bunch of 80's action movies with Schwarzenegger, Stallone, Willis, etc. Sometimes we'd watch war movies like The Longest Day (1962), Where Eagles Dare (1968), The Guns of Navarone (1961), The Dirty Dozen (1967), and A Bridge Too Far (1977). Or sometimes we'd watch old TV shows from when he was growing up, like Jonny Quest (1964-1965) and Combat! (1962-1967).

So from a pretty early age I already recognized that most of the TV and movies that were being made with me in the target audience were predominantly garbage.