Entertainment recommendations that you regret following

[spacemutant IV]

Yeah, regret is too strong a word here, but I have been waiting for a chance to tell people about my experience with Disneys Beauty and the Beast for a while now. That review of Spielbergs BFG on this page reminds me of my thoughts on that movie.

It was my first date with a girl I had met on the internet. We had talked for a good while and were already beyond the getting to know each other stage when we first met, so we decided to cuddle up to a movie at home. She wanted Beauty and the Beast. It's the story about a girl who gets kidnapped by a monstrous beast and then develops feelings for her captor, FOR NO GOOD REASON AT ALL. He gets her, he doesn't permit her to leave, and then it's basically a hardcut to friendship and love. I think I permanently ruined that movie for the girl, as I was constantly making fun of it, not even believing what I saw. How this movie was enjoyed then and is considered a classic now, is absolutely 100% beyond me.

 

[bartholen_v1legacy]

Mappo and Icarium I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree. Out of all the duos in the series (many of which I think Erickson does extremely well), theirs is one of the best. To be honest, I don't actually remember what the reveal was, so maybe it was a let down or maybe it just seems so common knowledge now to me that I don't consider it a reveal.

Well true, "reveal" is a bit of a misnomer, since the reader and Mappo know it way before Icarium does. It's more of a thing that's revealed in inner monologue, and then built up to a character-defining moment in towards the end of the book. Maybe I was bored to death so my concentration was lapsing by that stage, but I remember nothing memorable about when Icarium discovers his past: that he's been circling the world for millennia, leaving entire civilizations devastated in his wake, cursed to lose his memories, regain them, only to lose them again. That's Grade-A gold Greek tragedy right there. And I didn't care one bit, and I actually though Mappo and Icarium's storyline to be one of the more engaging ones.

Felisin could have been okay if her development was more gradual. Inversion of the reader's sympathy is a very powerful narrative device if done right. Instead, she started annoying me around the time they got out of the city, and only continued to get worse. By the end I was so tired of her I just wanted her gone, to disappear from the story entirely. I couldn't give a shit if she turned into a bacon Tyrannosaurus shooting Jesus dildos.

As for the lack of a "big moment" for Apsalar: I wouldn't have minded if there was no "big moment". The problem is that there wasn't any kind of moment at all. As I remember, we just hear about it from other characters who go "oh BTW, that servant dude is her father and they've escaped together", like it's a battle report in ASOIAF or something. In fact I might have preferred an awkward, sudden reveal followed by showing how she's changed to some tearful Hollywood reunion. But we got nothing! Might well be that it's utilized brilliantly in the later books, but I'm past the point of giving it any more chances. It failed to win me over in over 1,000 pages, I'm not going to waste any more of my time on something like that.

Spoiler: More unrelated, incoherent ranting on Malazan

Fuck Kruppe. Up his rusty bum. His chapters were Jar Jar Binks levels of insufferable, and related to sweet fuck all in the rest of the first book.

The amount of glibbedy globbedy fantasy names combined with the lack of exposition combined with the lack of even the most basic descriptions of what any-fucking-thing is supposed to look like Sweet Jesus on a stick--- ahem, makes the books feel at times as if they were written 50% in some gobbledygook alien language, and the rest completely impenetrable, as flbidy thring from the land of flubba dubba shows up after having been introduced 300 pages prior in the chapter of Mxzyptlfk, and we're just supposed to remember what they are and what they look like. Very, very, very poor world building.

In fantasy it's common for things to be thousands of years old, but Malazan was seriously pushing it. It felt like the author just added more numbers to some things' ages to make them seem more important. Anomander Rake was supposed to be 20,000 years old, Icarium like 50,000, the Tlan Imass des Asnest Ir Aug'dan do Irnaith yarbedy barbedy blarb (I will never stop harping on how much fucking names like this this series throws at you constantly) something like 100,000 if I remember right and so on. To me this went over the edge and stopped being even remotely believable. At some point the mind just starts to compare things to the real world, and Malazan trips in that regard. Not only should these characters be long removed from anything even remotely resembling human emotion, the world should be in full on space travel ages if civilizations like the humans' existed 100,000 years ago. ASOIAF circumnavigates this by not referring to things' ages very often, describing them as just "old" or "ancient" instead, and leaving it to the reader to evaluate how old things are by how characters talk about them: The Doom of Valyria is basically mythology, while the reign of Aerys is still fresh in memory.

Back into the lack of description on anything: it makes really hard to remember anyone or form attachment when characters' appearances are described maybe three times total in one book. ASOIAF keeps reminding of us how central and even secondary characters look, and thus they stay fresh in memory even after being gone for a long time: Barristan is old and white-haired, Arya is scrawny and skinny, Sansa is pretty with auburn hair, Reek is withered and emaciated, Roose Bolton has unfeeling eyes, Ben Plumm's smile never reaches his face, Strong Belwas has a huge belly, Illyrio is fat, Wyman Manderly is fatter, Yezzan zo Qaggaz perhaps the fattest in all the world, Tyrion's nose is gone, Jorah Mormont is burly and hairy etc etc etc. I can hardly remember how anyone was described in Malazan. The priest had tattoos, Baudin was burly... ummm... Felisin was hot? The whole thieves (some were assassins) group was basically never described, so they all just became guys in cloaks in my mind. Someone was younger, someone was a bit more muscular, but still dudes in cloaks.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

Jeez I like a lot of the stuff in this thread.

Hard to say if I've consumed much media on recommendation that I ended up actively regretting. I can think of a couple, maybe, but with conditions.

1. PENNY DREADFUL*

I actually loved this show. Love-loved it. I'd ditched it after Season 1 thinking it was a slow burner that would never really reach its potential (and that leaned too hard on Eva Green), but I was lured back into Season 2 by my girlfriend/friends, and ended up adoring it. The show immediately went straight into Season 3, which was also excellent, until there was about three episodes left...at which point the show was abruptly cancelled, and pissed itself with a rushed, sloppy, infuriating ending. I think I might have been happier had I never picked it up again at all. Most aggravating series finale since Deadwood.

2. MALAZAN BOOKS OF THE FALLEN*

Asterisk because I don't feel like I ever gave them a real shot, and now that I'm 99% audiobook I don't think I ever CAN. Hysterically boggy, impenetrable series. I found it almost entirely impossible to relate to. I'd read a chapter three times trying to figure out what the fuck was going on, what epoch the story had decided to lurch into, and why I should care about anything that was happening since the story obstinately refused to root itself anywhere. It's quite possible there's real brilliance underneath it all, but I doubt I'll ever have the patience to appreciate it.

3. MYSTBORN

No asterisk for this one. Read on a recommendation, and oh brother. Brandon Sanderson is a big fat hack. "He pushed on a coin and pulled on a doorknob. He pushed and then pushed and then pulled and then pushed some more. A push and a pull and a push and a pull and a push and a pull and then a flip and then he pushed off a chandelier." Fucking brilliant. The characters are cardboard cutouts, it's 100% fussy magic systems. Like a nerdy technical manual masquerading as a series of novels.

 

[Rastrelly]

People kept telling me that the Honor Harrington books were good. So I read the first two.

Turns out they were not good at all.

Nerd-bait garbage with a great throbbing military fetish.

You're not into politics, aren't you?

Umm... I keep half an eye on politics, but no, I suppose I wouldn't say I'm "into politics".

I must say, I'm really not seeing the relevance of the question.

Because there are two key hooks HH series has - incredible political layout of the setting (the only other sci-fi managing to pull this off was Barrayar series) and a set of original overlook on "space as a sea" with believable quasi-scientific explanations to all of this, accompanied with prolongated yet, again, believable map of "arms race" and its influence on both wars, economy, and politics. There is barely anything else to seek, so you obviously are not into both of these hooks.

 

[Qizx]

Equilibrium: Like the OP, I found this movie terrible and dumb. The fighting was stupid looking, the acting was over the top (not a problem in and of itself), and the plot holes were gaping like goatsee. Seriously, for a society that has no emotions, the badguys in charge sure do show a lot of emotions, even the people who are supposedly on the drugs. And somehow, at the end, everyone revolts? Why? They were all still on their drugs. Killing the leader and toppling his statue doesn't suddenly remove the anti-emotion drugs from their bodies. Just, bleh.

I thought they also blew up some of the plants/distribution centers so that people were low on the drug or ran out?

 

[Zhukov]

Because there are two key hooks HH series has - incredible political layout of the setting...

Maybe it got really sophisticated in book three and beyond but in the two I read the "political layout" consisted of "nanny states are bad m'kay" and "constitutional monarchies are the best" with a side serving of "fundamentalist religious cults are bad too m'kay".

... and a set of original overlook on "space as a sea" with believable quasi-scientific explanations to all of this...

Yes, that would be the nerd bait I mentioned.

... accompanied with prolongated yet, again, believable map of "arms race" and its influence on both wars, economy, and politics.

Didn't come up so much in the first two books, but I can see how the series could have headed that way.

 

[Hawki]

3. MYSTBORN

No asterisk for this one. Read on a recommendation, and oh brother. Brandon Sanderson is a big fat hack. "He pushed on a coin and pulled on a doorknob. He pushed and then pushed and then pulled and then pushed some more. A push and a pull and a push and a pull and a push and a pull and then a flip and then he pushed off a chandelier." Fucking brilliant. The characters are cardboard cutouts, it's 100% fussy magic systems. Like a nerdy technical manual masquerading as a series of novels.

I'm not going to harp on most of the stuff on this thread (i.e. "stop disliking what I like!"), but I think the push/pull analogy here is a bit simplistic. It's well established in the novels how allomancy works, so by the time the push-pull style is used in combat, the reader is well aware of what's going on, how allomancers (especially mistborns) are able to function.

 

[Lacedaemonius]

SA:O and AoT. I am so much happier with a series that disappoints from the first, so I can stop blowing time and investing in it. In both the cases of SA:O and AoT about half of the first season of each was incredibly engrossing and rather promising, and then both just died horrible, miserable deaths. SA:O stopped being entertaining in any way, and AoT become a cliche.

In games? Bioshock: Infinite. What an absolute donkey's ass of a game, from the hackneyed pseudoscience to the terrible design. Everything good about that game could be experienced in 5 minutes of walking around the world it created, listening to some music, and then hanging it up.

3. MYSTBORN

No asterisk for this one. Read on a recommendation, and oh brother. Brandon Sanderson is a big fat hack. "He pushed on a coin and pulled on a doorknob. He pushed and then pushed and then pulled and then pushed some more. A push and a pull and a push and a pull and a push and a pull and then a flip and then he pushed off a chandelier." Fucking brilliant. The characters are cardboard cutouts, it's 100% fussy magic systems. Like a nerdy technical manual masquerading as a series of novels.

I'm not going to harp on most of the stuff on this thread (i.e. "stop disliking what I like!"), but I think the push/pull analogy here is a bit simplistic. It's well established in the novels how allomancy works, so by the time the push-pull style is used in combat, the reader is well aware of what's going on, how allomancers (especially mistborns) are able to function.

I have to agree, and for me the action in those books were some of the most vivid in my mind. In particular,

Spoiler

Vin's fight against the Koloss army was thrilling. Even her first pewter-drag in the first book was interesting. Not to mention the character development of the entire crew, Sazed, and the world itself.

I understand not liking Sanderson's work, but ignoring his talents as a writer speaks more about the reader.

Team Fortress 2 - WHY DOESN'T ANYONE HELP THE MEDIC. WHY. MOTHERFUCKERS.

TF2 is a game that is dominated by two huge factors:

1.) Your class preferences, and what you personally are getting out of play. If you like the challenge of trying to carry a team of strangers, it can be exciting. If not, it's a horrible drag, which brings me to...

2.) ...The people you play with are everything. TF2 is only as good as it's made by the players, and I don't mean a group of a dozen friends either. Just working in tandem with one or two other people makes all of the difference. It is as you sort of allude to, the difference between the medic instantly killed, and having your medic act as bait for your spy buddy.

 

[Scarim Coral]

I have no idea what Moviebob and my mate sees in that Adultswim show "Tim and Eric".

Sure my humour is kinda on the loose end per say as in I can laugh at most humour and jokes (except for Family Guy) but that shows never made me laugh. I just never see the appeal of that show unlike Moviebob and my mate.

 

[Rastrelly]

Because there are two key hooks HH series has - incredible political layout of the setting...

Maybe it got really sophisticated in book three and beyond but in the two I read the "political layout" consisted of "nanny states are bad m'kay" and "constitutional monarchies are the best" with a side serving of "fundamentalist religious cults are bad too m'kay".

... and a set of original overlook on "space as a sea" with believable quasi-scientific explanations to all of this...

Yes, that would be the nerd bait I mentioned.

... accompanied with prolongated yet, again, believable map of "arms race" and its influence on both wars, economy, and politics.

Didn't come up so much in the first two books, but I can see how the series could have headed that way.

To avoid inducing argument - first books are setting the stage for the war which will break only in book four, and will eventually turn out to be a part of complex plot involving manipulating an engineering internal and external politics of almost every faction involved, including Manticore. Also,

Spoiler

Manticore, Grayson and Haven form Grand Alliance which is immediately tossed into state of war with Solarian League by SPOILER

.

 

[Hawki]

SA:O and AoT.

Forgive my ignorance, but what are those acronyms referring to?

I have to agree, and for me the action in those books were some of the most vivid in my mind. In particular,

Spoiler

Vin's fight against the Koloss army was thrilling. Even her first pewter-drag in the first book was interesting. Not to mention the character development of the entire crew, Sazed, and the world itself.

Much as I adore Mistborn, speaking personally, I thought the larger fight scenes kind of lacked the same 'essence' as earlier ones. It's kind of the nature of book 3, how everything is large and epic,* but even so, Vin's 1 v 1 scenarios (e.g. Zhane) were more interesting to me.

Funnily enough, concerning character development, I'd actually give the prize to Rashek. Not only is his character development retroactive (and actually done well), but he went from being one of my most despised characters in the setting to one of the most sympathetic by the end of it.

*My view of the original trilogy is that each book takes a different approach to the same overall story. Book 1 is an adventure tale, of a band of rebels overthrowing a tyrant. Book 2 is a political story, showing the fallout that comes from a power vacuum as various factions vie for control. Book 3 is the epic, as a last battle consumes the world as it nears its end. Personally for me it's 1>2>3, but heck, I like them all.

 

[Jute88]

SA:O and AoT.

Forgive my ignorance, but what are those acronyms referring to?

Probably animes Sword Art Online (meh) and Attack on Titan (never finished)

 

[happyninja42]

Equilibrium: Like the OP, I found this movie terrible and dumb. The fighting was stupid looking, the acting was over the top (not a problem in and of itself), and the plot holes were gaping like goatsee. Seriously, for a society that has no emotions, the badguys in charge sure do show a lot of emotions, even the people who are supposedly on the drugs. And somehow, at the end, everyone revolts? Why? They were all still on their drugs. Killing the leader and toppling his statue doesn't suddenly remove the anti-emotion drugs from their bodies. Just, bleh.

I thought they also blew up some of the plants/distribution centers so that people were low on the drug or ran out?

The way the movie portrays it, as he's walking out of the facility where he had the climactic fight, the people are revolting. Which would imply, at least by their editing, that it was an almost immediate thing. Which is just illogical. Even when he stopped using his drugs, he still didn't immediately start revolting. He continued to try and live his life like normal, and just also have feelings. He didn't instantly take to the streets and charge the gates like the Mongolian Horde or something. They gave no indication that this was "Some days later" or anything, so I don't buy that they just instantly revolted. It's not just having emotions again, it's also changing your world view to think "having emotions is a good thing, and I should have them".

 

[Ten Foot Bunny]

Without a doubt, the worst recommendation I ever followed was along the lines of "if you want a calm game, try Beautiful Katamari."

Oh fuck no.

I'm something of an achievement whore, and those achievements were a ***** to complete. Furthermore, I'm not a fan of media that screams "JAPAN!" I knew very well that Katamari was the very embodiment of that style, but I was willing to overlook it because of my friends' recommendations. Worst of all (and thank the gods I could turn it off) was the music, which was nothing more than a full-scale audio assault on my ears.

Nothing made me happier than getting 100% of the game's achievements, then deleting it off my hard drive 10 seconds later.