Overrated/Underrated Geek Media

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Overrated: Fritz Leibers Fafhrd and Grey Mouser series. I have tried on numerous occasions to read this literature and I just cannot get through his writing style. He's supposed to be this icon of S&S fantasy but I just can't handle it.

Huh. Did you start from the beginning or jump in somewhere in the middle? About halfway through the series, his life fell apart, he climbed into a bottle and the stories are rough, in every sense.

I found the first two or three books to be real romps, but cannot recommend the last few books to anyone.

 

[Clint_L]

I will go to the mats for the Dawn of the Dead remake - parts of it are better than their counterparts in the original, and apart from the opening scene, none are worse.

And then there’s all the rest of his stuff. Carry on.

Yeah, so I generally despise Snyder's films but I concur on this one being an underrated gem. Of course, having Sarah Polley, Mike Weber, Mekhi Phifer and Ving Rhames as your leads doesn't hurt. The open 10 minutes of this film is a masterpiece of condensed story telling. Underrated!

Overrated: Three Body Problem (the book). I discussed this at length in the "what are you reading" thread, but I remain shocked that it won a Hugo - it is bad on every level. The characters make no sense, the plot is absurd, and it is thematically confused. It is one of the worst books I have ever read, and I have read a lot of books.

 

[Clint_L]

Overrated: Fritz Leibers Fafhrd and Grey Mouser series. I have tried on numerous occasions to read this literature and I just cannot get through his writing style. He's supposed to be this icon of S&S fantasy but I just can't handle it.

Eh, most of that old swords and sorcery stuff is overrated because of nostalgia. It's not super deep or accomplished writing. More like popcorn entertainment. I agree - overrated. I still kinda love it, though.

Underrated: Last Action Hero, this movie gets a lot of hate, but I get that it was a parody of action movies and correctly gets the reaction to someone in our world ending up in action movie world.

Nah, it's terrible - very predictable and falls back on lazy tropes. Schwarzenegger is acting outside of his severely limited range.

 

[Ryujin]

Nah, it's terrible - very predictable and falls back on lazy tropes. Schwarzenegger is acting outside of his severely limited range.

But that's the point.

 

[Clint_L]

But that's the point.

Okay, but it's still a dumb movie that is poorly acted. And by obvious tropes, I mean that the way it makes fun of obvious tropes is, in itself, obvious and cliched. There's nothing clever happening, and Schwarzenegger is just not up to the job he is being asked to do. There are far, far better deconstructions of the action genre.

 

[payn]

Overrated: Three Body Problem (the book). I discussed this at length in the "what are you reading" thread, but I remain shocked that it won a Hugo - it is bad on every level. The characters make no sense, the plot is absurd, and it is thematically confused. It is one of the worst books I have ever read, and I have read a lot of books.

I didnt think Three Body was amazing, but it was thought provoking in way I haven't experienced in sci-fi writing in some time. So, I appreciated that. It certainly wasnt the worst of things ive read.

Speaking of overrated things; Snow Crash. That was a lousy read that was like a screenplay for a straight to streaming feature.

 

[MarkB]

Overrated: Three Body Problem (the book). I discussed this at length in the "what are you reading" thread, but I remain shocked that it won a Hugo - it is bad on every level. The characters make no sense, the plot is absurd, and it is thematically confused. It is one of the worst books I have ever read, and I have read a lot of books.

Yeah, I gave up on it partway through. Too much of characters not thinking through the implications, among other things.

 

[jdrakeh]

Unpopular opinion incoming....

Underrated: Batman Begins. A great introduction to Batman and perhaps the best superhero "origin story" film.
Overrated: The Dark Knight. This really should've been two different movies (The Joker Arc and the Two Face Arc) and, rather than recasting Rachel, they should've just axed the character altogether.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Speaking of overrated things; Snow Crash. That was a lousy read that was like a screenplay for a straight to streaming feature.

I don't think it's overrated, I think it was pretty important, and really closed out an era of SF fiction. I think it is, however, "of its time".

Like, when it hit in 1993, basically everything in it that wasn't satirizing cyberpunk was new, conceptually, to the people reading it, or the vast majority. It was wild.

But now? Pretty much everything in it is either just how life is now (whoops), or has been absolutely done to death in the media since, particularly since the cyberpunk/synthwave revival (which started in what, 2015?). But even just the style of storytelling is much more like how stories are told now than how they were told then.

And yeah, like, if you made a movie of it now it would probably be pretty mid and the only thing that would stand out would be the language-as-mind-virus thing. It certainly helps to illustrate how you need either ideas that remain shocking and provoking (which I think Frankenstein kind of does), even though they've been redone, or you need to tell a really good story and have strong characters - and I don't think Snow Crash is particularly strong there.

 

[payn]

I don't think it's overrated, I think it was pretty important, and really closed out an era of SF fiction. I think it is, however, "of its time".

Like, when it hit in 1993, basically everything in it that wasn't satirizing cyberpunk was new, conceptually, to the people reading it, or the vast majority. It was wild.

But now? Pretty much everything in it is either just how life is now (whoops), or has been absolutely done to death in the media since, particularly since the cyberpunk/synthwave revival (which started in what, 2015?). But even just the style of storytelling is much more like how stories are told now than how they were told then.

And yeah, like, if you made a movie of it now it would probably be pretty mid and the only thing that would stand out would be the language-as-mind-virus thing. It certainly helps to illustrate how you need either ideas that remain shocking and provoking (which I think Frankenstein kind of does), even though they've been redone, or you need to tell a really good story and have strong characters - and I don't think Snow Crash is particularly strong there.

IDK, there is like a small nugget of an intelligent idea pack around basically a cybperpunk version of Last Action Hero since its recently been mentioned. I dont think it was good then, I dont think its good now; I think its just bad.