Your Biggest Experience With Hype Backlash

[J.McMillen]

Attack on Titan, Kill La Kill, and I'm assuming JoJo and Gurren Lagen might fall victim as well. I started watching Attack on Titan when episode 14 was released. The first episodes were great, as was the Battle of Trost arc. After that, downhill hard. Kill La Kill I didn't really care for all that much since the start. Mako is cool, but everything else is meh.

Gurren Lagen had potential, but I thought it was wasted on the whole 'Last monster failed? Send in a bigger one' routine every episode. The firepower of the protagonist went from zero to stupid about a quarter of the way through the series and never stopped. I've always been disappointed when perfectly good world building gets sidelined for bigger and bigger fights every episode.

 

[Ryan Hughes]

The Dark Knight

Not Rises, but the second film in the trilogy. I saw it several weeks after release, and it was hyped beyond any film I could remember, with both critics and my film-buff friends salivating at the prospect of seeing it a second time.

And I hated it. Really, I did hate it. Sure, Heath Ledger's performance was great, but it couldn't hide some very serious problems the film had. From the hack-and-slash film editing of the second act, to the pathetic attempt at a moral narrative completely undercut by the film's own characters, I began to wonder if Christopher Nolan was actually sane. Thankfully, by Dark Night Rises we all saw that he had gone bonkers, but I find it regretful that it took so long for most people to see that. Really, the incorporation of the "Noble Lie," and silly attempts to redeem this by talking vaguely about "what is needed" and "what is deserved," the whole film's philosophical narrative is nearly fascist.

 

[Nazulu]

SSB Brawl was easily the biggest hype for me. I loved Melee as I had been playing it since it's release for 8 years, so Brawl looked like the 2nd coming to me. Then I actually got it and couldn't believe how terrible the game play is. I was in denial at first, but then the disappointment in me just grew and grew the further I got into the game. I don't buy anything without researching it first now.

The other is the movie Avatar. I wasn't particularly hyped on it, but so much advertising everywhere was saying it was the greatest film ever made. Then actually watching it, all I could think of was "the greatest at fucking what!?" I didn't even find the visuals to be anything special either. I enjoyed it a little though.

 

[HalfTangible]

Spore.

It's the reason I don't preorder anymore.

 

[KazeAizen]

The entire Marvel cineverse.

The more people go on and on about it, the less I care.

Not that I can't appreciate what it's doing, but Christ alive, you'd think they're the greatest films that have ever been filmed in the history of humanity the way the internet talks about them. Even the mediocre ones get free passes despite having the same problems that people skewer other films for. Blegh.

Eh according to most people I meet the only good ones are Iron Man, Avengers, and Guardians of the Galaxy. All others have sucked. Or so says the majority of the internet comments on any videos related to them.

 

[ObserverStatus]

The Witcher

I only played for 10 hours, but that was long enough for me to figure out I wasn't going to have much fun. Before I played this game, all I knew about it I had heard from its fans on the BioWare forums. "This game is so much more sophisticated and mature than Dragon Age Origins, why can't Dragon Age Origins be The Witcher?" And foolishly, I decided that the hype *could* be right and bought the game on steam. Unfortunately, it turned out that being filled with a ridiculous amount of fanservice, and having an obnoxiously grimdark story was these fans' idea of mature. It was around the time that I discovered the reason the village was under attack by spirit monsters was that the local children had skinned a puppy alive, that I realized I hated everyone in the whole damn game. All the people in this game are dirty and terrible. CD Projekt Red's fans always praise them for being able to come up with stories that are more low key than that "only you can save the world" crap that always gets shoved into BioWare games, but if the Reapers or Darkspawn came to wherever it is The Witcher takes place, I wouldn't lift a finger to stop them, that world deserves to burn. The problem is, when you make a game that revolves around choice and consequence, you can give it all the moral grayness in the world, and it still won't be a compelling choice if you don't make the player care about the people who will get hurt if the player chooses "wrong." Almost every character I met was a dickhole, so I didn't care how my choices were going to affect that war between the elf terrorists and the government, or pretty much anything else. Eventually, when I got stuck in the first hub castle, trying to figure out how to make the story progress, I realized that instead of figuring it out, I could just quit. Not a whole lot was going on to keep me invested. Maybe if I had been 13 at the time, the fanservice would have been enough to reward me for my efforts, but in a good game, the gameplay itself is its own reward.

 

[Thaluikhain]

Eh, can't say that happens to me. There's always a bunch of people saying that the next X will change the way we see X forever, and it's almost always totally untrue, I find it hard to get excited about that sort of thing anymore.

 

[TheMysteriousGX]

Man of Steel.

I mean, after the good-if-it-ended-30-minutes-ago Dark Knight, or the entirely too long, dull, slightly silly Bane movie that had Batman in it, I was stoked for a bright, fun movie with the guy that catches falling airplanes and punches robots while doing the whole defendery, inspiring thing.

So yeah, a bit disappointed.

 

[L. Declis]

Easy. Citizen Kane.

The greatest film of all time. A masterpiece of film making. The golden standard by which all film are judged. When we want to label something as groundbreaking, we compare it to Citizen Kane. Heck, Bioshock Infinite is apparently the Citizen Kane of gaming. And I agree, it is, in the sense that they're both monstrously overrated, and not nearly as intellectual as people claim.

I was expecting to be blown away, but instead I was disappointed. It began with what must have been one of the clumsiest exposition dumps in the history of cinema. You're supposed to weave exposition into the narrative. The pacing was stilted and weird, some of the scenes made little to no sense, and the acting was a mixed bag.

The film wasn't bad, of course. Several of the scenes were very powerful, especially the ones dealing with Kane's second marriage, and Orson Welles commands the screen, sometimes saving the film from less competent actors. You really see him breaking at the end, and it hurts. Dorothy Comingore does a decent job as well, though some of her dialogue is rather weak. All of this can't save the film, however. I can think of numerous films off of the top of my head that a superior in almost every way. I understand that Kane was ground breaking, but objectively it just doesn't hold up as well as the critics would have you believe.

Bioshock Infinite is a wonderful game... And nowhere near as close as Citizen Kane is. Sorry, but it's true. Story telling for games still hasn't approached even the beginings of the height of other media, but that's okay; video games are still young, and we have Telltale's The Walking Dead Season 1, Portal and Spec Ops: The Line which are amazing pieces of media which I would hold up as a gold standard.

The exposition dump is there to then be taken apart by the audience; it also provides context for the rest of the story as the narrative jumps back and forth, and finally, it's meant to show this great man and then show what a broken thing he was.

The camera work, the direction, the acting, the narrative, the sets, everything is precise and near perfect; I cannot think of a single better camera shot than after his second wife leaves and he stands by the mirror.

However, I think that this is very much now a film for film buffs; it's intellectual wanking. To say it's bad is to not appreciate why it's good, to miss the point of why it is so beloved. And that's fine, everyone has things which are loved and they dislike. For example, you'll see I am not the biggest fan of Bioshock Infinite.

Also, because I can't think of a smooth way to put this in there, I think that the "Would you kindly..." reveal is possibly the best reveal in video games, and one of the best scenes for gutpunching the audience that I have EVER seen, in film or not (yes, even better than the mirror shot). This is why I think that eventually, video games will overcome film as superior.

 

[Casual Shinji]

I thought hype backlash was less finding something overrated and more the inevitable "backlash" of tons of people saying "it wasn't that good" after the initial hype dies down , its like a cycle.

I was thinking the same thing.

Nothing gets well praised without consequences it seems... unless it's on HBO.

As for not getting it... Breaking Bad. In a nutshell, it felt cheap. Not so much interms of story, but cinematic delivery. The constant montages and timelapses didn't feel at all appropriate in what is considered "the best show ever made". And as soon as I saw a guy with half his face blown off -- to the point that it reveals his skull -- walk out of a room and adjust his tie before keeling over, there was nothing in this show that I could take serious anymore.

Yeah sorry, but The Sopranos still reigns supreme.

 

[Hawki]

To name a few from various medias:

-Movies: Pretty much everything Marvel Studios has produced. I know everyone treats the MCU as the second coming or something, but sorry, to me, they're popcorn movies. There have been far better super hero movies produced, and they succeeded by being good movies, not by being advertisments for their own universe.

-Books: The Tomorrow series. This was really big back in the day, and no, I didn't like it. When I was urged to read the first book again a few years ago, I still didn't like it. Maybe the series gets better, but I'm sorry, I find the characters dull, the book is confused as to what its "message" is, and living in Australia, I've never felt threatened by the "Asian hordes" the book wants me to fear and hate, but also feel sorry for because...like I said, confused messages.

-Games: My feelings towards 'Half-Life 2' are more "meh" than anything else - I think it's a solid shooter, but I don't consider it that good a one. The puzzles are tedious, the characters are generally annoying (bar Breen), and while Gordon being a silent protagonist works some of the time (e.g. the Breencasts wouldn't have been as effective had he vocally responded to them), other times ("Gordon would never work with you!")...ugh. I wouldn't say I dislike HL2 in the same way I dislike the above examples, but it was one of the first games to spring to mind per the parameters of the topic.

-Anime: Dragon Ball Z. No, I do not like this very much. I don't like the padding. I don't like how death is pretty much a non-issue. I don't like how the message of the series is "if you're a saiyan, you'll do great, if not, tough luck"). I don't like how the nature of victory is based purely on power level. I don't like how the idea of a Super Saiyan was tossed aside for the "cool" factor. I...ugh. I liked DBZ once as a kid, and right now, there's some things I still like. But when I think of those things, I think of Goku begging Krillin to show Vegeta mercy, or Vegeta begging Goku to defeat Freiza, knowing that he's about to die (resurrection notwithstanding). I do not think of long pointless monolgoues about power levels and ki blasts.

-Machinima: Red vs. Blue post-season 6, and especially 'Freelancer'. Let me make something clear. I LIKED 'Red vs. Blue'. I liked its humour, its characters, its use of the medium, etc. What I don't like is the nonsense we got post-season 6 (and especially in season 9 and 10), which is basically fight after fight, vapid, annoying characters, a lack of any humour or charm, and...gah. Let me make this clear. I like Red vs. Blue. I do not like 'Freelancer', which is RvB in name only.

-Cartoons: The Legend of Korra. Jumped the shark at the end of season 1, was torn to pieces by the shark throughout season 2, so by the end of season 2 the shark had farted out its entrails. I've heard multiple people say it got better with season 3, but people have also said that RvB got good again with season 11. Forgive me for not having much faith in these assertions after everything I had to endure in both cases before giving up.

-Comics: The entire superhero genre. Yeah, I'm expecting flames for this, but while there've been a few superhero movies and cartoons I've enjoyed, I've never got into any comic superhero series. I've heard people say that superheros are the next version of the Greek gods (literally), but as far as the comic book medium is concerned, favorites that spring to mind are the likes of 'Maus', 'Calvin and Hobbes', 'Asterix', 'Tintin', etc.

 

[Evonisia]

Well I may as well use a recent example: The Fault in Our Stars. Not a bad movie by any means, but certainly not a good one. What kills the movie for me is that there is basically no conflict. Every story needs a conflict, and I don't accept "they have terminal cancer" as a device of conflict. At its best, cancer is a plot device, which surprise surprise is used at one point.

"You can't go to Amsterdam, you might not survive the plane trip"

Five minutes later

"Hey daughter we're going to Amsterdam. Squeee!"

The only great character in the whole film is the author who turns out to be an asshole and within five minutes pulls the "Cancer patients are defective" card, making him more of an asshole but not so fucking twee like the rest of the film around him.

Also GTA V, you had terrible shooting, you had a terrible plot, you distracted us with your amazing attention to detail to cover up the fact that your new features like Heists are barely fucking there. Some of the good qualities are only good because they aren't as bad as GTA IV's. Not a bad game, but given that it looked like so much fun before launch and got all the rave reviews when it came out, yeah, fucking hell.

I would also rant about the amazingly awful yet awesome The Babadook if I had seen actual people say it's good rather than critics (still a 95% Tomato rating, wtf?!)

 

[GabeZhul]

For me it was RWBY. The funny thing is, it wasn't even the general hype that got me to lower my guard, but that a friend of mine was positively gushing about the first season. Then I did some research on my own, and probably due to my own negligence I never really ran into much criticism, so when he came up to my place next week we both sat down and watched the series together (which was the fourth rewatch for him) I was suitably hyped up about it...
... and then I proceeded to cheerfully tear that thing apart.

Sure, I enjoyed it a lot (partially because of the company and our bickering about the flaws and problems I kept pointing out), but RWBY was deeply flawed on practically every level, be it animation, characterization, voice-work or narrative. The only thing I couldn't really complain about were the aesthetics, but even that aspect had slips every now and then. I haven't gotten around to watch the second season yet (partially because I am waiting for it to finish up so that I can get together with my pal again to watch it in one sitting), but my expectations for it are pretty much at ground level (especially because of small snippets of spoilers I have heard about the horrible love-triange-subplot in it). We'll see how that will turn out.

 

[Mezahmay]

Bioshock Infinite. That game was soooooooooooooooooooo boring. Yet people claim it to be the pinnacle of human achievement. Story wasn't bad, but that gameplay was just horrible.

Hasn't the last year or so been all about hating Bioshock Infinite a few months after release? I thought it was pretty good until I finally got around to playing the first BioShock. Infinite's flaws really popped out after that and pales in comparison.

 

[shrekfan246]

The entire Marvel cineverse.

The more people go on and on about it, the less I care.

Not that I can't appreciate what it's doing, but Christ alive, you'd think they're the greatest films that have ever been filmed in the history of humanity the way the internet talks about them. Even the mediocre ones get free passes despite having the same problems that people skewer other films for. Blegh.

Eh according to most people I meet the only good ones are Iron Man, Avengers, and Guardians of the Galaxy. All others have sucked. Or so says the majority of the internet comments on any videos related to them.

You and I have had vastly different exposure to Marvel fans.

-Games: My feelings towards 'Half-Life 2' are more "meh" than anything else - I think it's a solid shooter, but I don't consider it that good a one. The puzzles are tedious, the characters are generally annoying (bar Breen), and while Gordon being a silent protagonist works some of the time (e.g. the Breencasts wouldn't have been as effective had he vocally responded to them), other times ("Gordon would never work with you!")...ugh. I wouldn't say I dislike HL2 in the same way I dislike the above examples, but it was one of the first games to spring to mind per the parameters of the topic.

I've never been able to play much further than "Ravenholm". I just get bored and annoyed. I don't care what PC gamers think, Halo did those vehicle sections better, Half-Life!

 

[Rabbitboy]

Guardians of the Galaxy: It was a good film but nowhere near as good as I had been lead to believe. The "I am Groot" started to become a bit annoying after the first half of the movie. And when it was time for the big final battle I found it exhausting and just wanted to go home.

 

[Ihateregistering1]

Already mentioned, but Pacific Rim. I was hoping it would be the "Independence Day" of Kaiju films, but it just kind of fell flat for me. There was way too much filler between the first big fight and then the assault on Hong Kong, it had plot holes you could drive a truck through, and the two much more interesting and cooler looking Jaegers died in about 10 seconds.

Breaking Bad. I actually did like the show a lot, but everyone acted like it was the second coming of Christ. It was very good, but it wasn't THAT good.

 

[RedDeadFred]

Add another vote for Pacific Rim. I have no idea why people somehow consider this so much better than any of the shitty Transformers movies. Sure, the story/performances are a bit better and everyone loves Idras Alba, but the actual fights weren't even all that special. They mostly took place at night which is a mindbogglingly stupid choice for a movie that prides itself on those fights. Sure, it doesn't make it impossible to see, but it certainly makes it worse.

I might have enjoyed it more if it hadn't been so hyped up incessantly. I went in expecting the definitive monster movie that would set a new standard. What I got was a half decent popcorn flick that was fun in theatres, but not worth ever watching again. Now there's nothing wrong with those kinds of movies (heck, at least half of the MCU movies are like this but I still watch them), but I was expecting something more.