Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

The thread is pretty self explanatory, by nature this is going to involve a lot of things you will probably not like, so play nice.

Here's mine: I really like the terrible dub for Higurashi's first season and not in an ironic way, I legitimately think it was accidentally a prefect dub.

So, go with me on this journey here. Ten years ago when I was first getting into anime I was recommended Higurashi and told it was fantastic. I barely managed to sit through the first episode of the dub and just nopped right out of it. Everyone's performance is wooden or stilted, or just... off. At best the voice actors are passable and bland, and at worst they are legitimately uncomfortable to listen to with the biggest offender being Mena Lee as Rena Ryugu. However, she was also what later saved the dub for me. (I had always meant to go back and watch it subbed, but never got around to it. I'm not a big sub fan but that's a whole other thing and not the point here.)

Fast forward to last month, I was looking for a show to watch for Haloween and I decided to give Higurashi another go, thinking that it couldn't possible be as bad as I remembered. It was, it really was. But this time, I stuck it out more than one episode and something strange happened in the second one. There's a scene with Keiichi is questioning Rena about some of the strange goings on and won't let things go. She's very awkwardly trying to dodge around the question and eventually she gets super quiet and creepy and essentially forces him to drop it. This one line finally hits home and feels very real. Suddenly it felt like I was actually seeing the character for the first time and everything she had done and said before was just her poorly play acting at being a normal person. Every time Rena went unhinged, she felt like a real threat, like a real person who was tormented by something, but then would go back to her awkward stilted dialogue at any other time. This carries over to many of the other characters in the series as well, they are all a slight nudge from going postal and with them all having this awkward and uncomfortable dialogue makes it feel like they are all simply keeping up a front, trying to play at being "normal" without knowing what that actually is.

Is that what was intended with this dub? Almost certainly not. However, watching the show with this in mind makes it feel all the creepier and I love it to bits.

Abrams Trek, apparently...

 Just Tony wrote:
Abrams Trek, apparently...

Second this. I love that trilogy while I can't stand any other Star Trek incarnation, especially the first classic series and related movies. I consider JJ's trilogy among of the best movies that were released in the last decade or two, definitely better than any Star Wars or Marvel dullness . I watched the triglogy 5 or 6 times already.

You know those compilation boxes of "100 Epic SciFi/Horror/etc movies" for $20? Those things where you read the list of contents & there might be 10 things you've even heard of & only 5 of those are passable?
I love those things.

You can find some awesomely entertainingly bad (and I do mean BAD) gems in those things.

The political scenes in Episodes I and II of Star Wars are legitimately compelling.

That's not to say the movies are good; most of the protagonists are either horribly acted, written, and/or directed, and the majority of the fight scenes are superfluous at best (with major exceptions to both of the above criticisms, of course). However, the politics themselves are interesting and the film does actually try to make a point about the potential fallibility of American democracy, which is more than one can say for most Hollywood blockbusters released nowadays.

I love SeaQuest. As a kid I watched it religiously.

To this day I still have yet to meet someone who didn't hate it, aside from my own father who watched it with me. It had a talking Dolphin! How can people hate that?

 Togusa wrote:
I love SeaQuest. As a kid I watched it religiously.

I love it too, but it did fail to find it's audience.

 Togusa wrote:
I love SeaQuest. As a kid I watched it religiously.

To this day I still have yet to meet someone who didn't hate it, aside from my own father who watched it with me. It had a talking Dolphin! How can people hate that?

Man, I remember SeaQuest, I used to watch the reruns in the morning before school with my dad. I totally forgot about that show, I should really go give that a re-watch. The other one I used to always watch with it as they were often back to back was another that many people seem to have forgotten about, Seven Days. Where the character was part of a secret government organization that had a time machine that could only take him back seven days and would deposit him in a random location somewhere in the world. He used it to try and stop/mitigate major world catastrophes from political assassination's to natural disasters.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Flipsiders wrote:
The political scenes in Episodes I and II of Star Wars are legitimately compelling.

That's not to say the movies are good; most of the protagonists are either horribly acted, written, and/or directed, and the majority of the fight scenes are superfluous at best (with major exceptions to both of the above criticisms, of course). However, the politics themselves are interesting and the film does actually try to make a point about the potential fallibility of American democracy, which is more than one can say for most Hollywood blockbusters released nowadays.

Yeah, me too! I was glad that they delved a bit more into this in Clone Wars.

In the vein of the prequels, I actually think that (with a caveat) Haden Christiansen is actually really good as Anakin. The caveat is that he can't be speaking . Whenever he has to spout any of that silly dialogue it's just a mess, but if you think of any of these scenes where he says nothing or very little and just acts with his expressions alone, they are all really powerful and well acted moments. Off the top of my head I can think of standouts of when he finds out Padme is pregnant and some parts of his fight on Mustafar.

gonna agree on Hayden Christian, fine actor who just had lousy dialogue

 Tawnis wrote:
The other one I used to always watch with it as they were often back to back was another that many people seem to have forgotten about, Seven Days. Where the character was part of a secret government organization that had a time machine that could only take him back seven days and would deposit him in a random location somewhere in the world. He used it to try and stop/mitigate major world catastrophes from political assassination's to natural disasters.

I randomly remembered that one a few years ago - downloaded it and binge watched it. Funnily enough Don Franklin was in both that and SeaQuest.

Dunno if it’s universal dislike.

Ghostbusters 2016. It’s perfectly fine, and enjoyable.

Star Wars prequels.

To be honest, there’s a lot of stuff not well thought of I enjoy. I don’t intend to be contrarian like!

McCoy era Who, yes Ace is a badly written middle aged chaps idea of a teen lass but Sophie tries her best and McCoy was proper good even if a bit like Peter and Jodie the scripts were wildly uneven

Superman Returns, again its kind of fanboy and has the worst Lois ever but I really think Mr Routh deserved another go

Megaman X4 was my drug back in 1997, and love it to bits, but apparently its one of the worst playstation games ever made? Pffff, whatever. This was basically my introduction to the Megaman series...

While I hardly watched it religiously - I have seen a fair bit of Seaquest and liked it just fine, mostly the Roy Scheider ones.

My guilty pleasure is Suicide Squad (2016). I'm not going to try to defend it, just say that I like it and my wife and I really enjoyed it in the theater.

 Ouze wrote:
While I hardly watched it religiously - I have seen a fair bit of Seaquest and liked it just fine, mostly the Roy Scheider ones.

I remember tuning out when Michael Ironside took over. Wasn't his fault, as the show was a trainwreck from day one due to production/corporate nonsense, but I remember being bummed when Roy left.

Thor: Dark World. While not brilliant cinema I don't understand it's common ranking as the worst of the MCU popcorn blockbusters.

 Eldarain wrote:
Thor: Dark World. While not brilliant cinema I don't understand it's common ranking as the worst of the MCU popcorn blockbusters.

Yeah, this. This movie instantly came to mind as soon as I saw the thread title. All the criticism leveled at this movie can easily be applied to almost all other mcu films but for some reason dark world gets singled out.

 creeping-deth87 wrote:

 Eldarain wrote:
Thor: Dark World. While not brilliant cinema I don't understand it's common ranking as the worst of the MCU popcorn blockbusters.

Yeah, this. This movie instantly came to mind as soon as I saw the thread title. All the criticism leveled at this movie can easily be applied to almost all other mcu films but for some reason dark world gets singled out.

I feel like Iron Man 3 gets pooped on more then Thor: Dark World.

 Eldarain wrote:
Thor: Dark World. While not brilliant cinema I don't understand it's common ranking as the worst of the MCU popcorn blockbusters.

Can I flip this on its head, to a degree - and I'm saying this as someone who has yet to watch TDW, so has no opinion on it - if it isn't the worst, which is?

 Eldarain wrote:
Thor: Dark World. While not brilliant cinema I don't understand it's common ranking as the worst of the MCU popcorn blockbusters.

Really enjoyed that film, lots of good fun to counterpoint some of the dakrer elements and well it helps I really like Natalie Portman..

Out Of The Two Of Us, Which Can Actually Fly?

Sif: I've got this completely under control! Thor: Is that why everything's on fire?

This is fun

 Dysartes wrote:

 Eldarain wrote:
Thor: Dark World. While not brilliant cinema I don't understand it's common ranking as the worst of the MCU popcorn blockbusters.

Can I flip this on its head, to a degree - and I'm saying this as someone who has yet to watch TDW, so has no opinion on it - if it isn't the worst, which is?

Its purely subjective but I thought Cap America was pretty weak all round and got bored with Guardians of the Galaxy 2.

The 2008 Hulk film is worse. It’s just.so.dulllllllll!

A few things already mentioned but something I love alot of people don't is Assassin's Creed.
It's rightfully gotten it's critics with some valid points, but I have at this point replayed almost all of them barring the first.
They are nice games to sit down with and play a podcast too.

 Dysartes wrote:

 Eldarain wrote:
Thor: Dark World. While not brilliant cinema I don't understand it's common ranking as the worst of the MCU popcorn blockbusters.

Can I flip this on its head, to a degree - and I'm saying this as someone who has yet to watch TDW, so has no opinion on it - if it isn't the worst, which is?

Civil War, hands down for me (With the Ant-Mans as distant runners up, because at least the first one tries to be fun).

The gross misapplication of logic and widely distributed Idiot Balls required to make the plot (and the 10 minute hero face off) happen are just absurd.
It could be a deep and nuanced plotline (one that actually might need discussing in a world of superheroes) but instead its a rush to have what's basically a second act romcom 'fight' for no real reason, other than that the script calls for it.

Of the Thor movies, Dark World is probably my favorite, simply because it isn't constantly washing the tension away with bad jokes and has some stakes- Thor 1 was rather boring in that regard, and rushed to tidy up and ignore Thor's pretty egregious sins without any real introspection or sacrifice. He 'learned something today' in almost literally 24 hours, tossing out centuries of being a selfish, priggish, belligerent murderer with no regard to consequences because... love and tasers, or something..

 nels1031 wrote:


I feel like Iron Man 3 gets pooped on more then Thor: Dark World.

I couldn't care less about what Iron Man 3 did with Mandarin, but I'll never forgive that film for its misleading trailers. Most of the teasers, which have now conveniently been taken off the internet, played up the Iron Patriot being the movie's main villain (this was before Marvel had the Spider-Man rights, so I was excited for a new interpretation of the character), but it turned out to just be some extremis stuff I couldn't care less about! I still don't understand why they would blatantly misrepresent what their film was about when having Mandarin as the draw would have created just as much if not more attention. It's almost like they were trying to annoy me specifically.

Sense8, people just seem to really not like it for some reason

 Dysartes wrote:

 Eldarain wrote:
Thor: Dark World. While not brilliant cinema I don't understand it's common ranking as the worst of the MCU popcorn blockbusters.

Can I flip this on its head, to a degree - and I'm saying this as someone who has yet to watch TDW, so has no opinion on it - if it isn't the worst, which is?

Wichever one you enjoyed the least.

I really like the Ed Norton Hulk, and I also like Nicolas Cage's Ghost Rider movie from the pre-MCU era.

I also remember enjoying "Space: Above and Beyond" or whatever it was called when it was on telly, but I barely remember it now.

 Formosa wrote:
Sense8, people just seem to really not like it for some reason

It is just to many senses. Six would have been pushing it but doable and while on thin ice they may have gotten away with seven but eight? No it is just to much.

 nels1031 wrote:

 creeping-deth87 wrote:

 Eldarain wrote:
Thor: Dark World. While not brilliant cinema I don't understand it's common ranking as the worst of the MCU popcorn blockbusters.

Yeah, this. This movie instantly came to mind as soon as I saw the thread title. All the criticism leveled at this movie can easily be applied to almost all other mcu films but for some reason dark world gets singled out.

I feel like Iron Man 3 gets pooped on more then Thor: Dark World.

I like them both more than at least a dozen of other MCU episodes that gathered higer consensus. Iron Man 3 in particular is the only Iron Man I liked.

I'd like to add The Witcher, Netflix Tv Series, to the lot of things that everyone hates. Maybe not really everyone but I've heard from a lot of people, both from friends and from the internet, that the series was a mess. First season had its flaws, but I loved it a lot, to the point that in the meantime I've read all 8 novels, which I also loved. Looking forward to watch season 2, and I might even try the videogames in the future.

 Da Boss wrote:
I really like the Ed Norton Hulk, and I also like Nicolas Cage's Ghost Rider movie from the pre-MCU era.

I also remember enjoying "Space: Above and Beyond" or whatever it was called when it was on telly, but I barely remember it now.

I sought out a DVD of S:AAB a few years back, because I wanted to watch it again after 20-years; I was expecting a cheap nostalgia trip with a wonky 90’s sci-fi show, but it actually holds up remarkably well. It’s sort of a proto-Nu-BSG and it has a surprising amount of depth and intrigue. Unfortunately, I think it was a bit ahead of its time and didn’t quite fit the zeitgeist when it was released. Given all of the reboots / reimaginings and general demand for long-form streaming series at the moment, I’m hoping someone will pick it up again. It could easily be made into the next Expanse.