Alright, this might be fun. Here we go. So, new MST in April, and I know that this is a moment that is huge in everyone’s hearts here. I also think it will not disappoint. It’s gonna be great, maybe different than what is expected, maybe something that will take time to soak in, but great. But, what I want to know about is a pop culture moment in you peoples lives that did disappoint. Video game, tv, movie, whatever. What’s the thing that broke your heart the hardest. Also, I want this post to be a safe space, so anyone is allowed to have hated whatever they want without repercussions.
For me, the first thing that comes to mind is the episode “across the sea” of Lost. Us diehard losties knew this was going to be the origin episode we needed, and instead it was just more vague half-implied and half-hearted explanations and pretentiousness that was the foreshadowing of the polarizing ending of the series we got. Just a huge punch in the gut after spending the whole season waiting for it.
Anyways…. your turn.
For some reason the first thing I thought of was the first Tomb Raider movie. I loved the game (well, I loved the memories I have of playing it with my daughter) and I really wanted it to be good. And it just wasn’t.
I would also mention the Seinfeld finale. I was a big fan and it felt like somebody pulled the plug and all the comedy drained out.
One other: the terrible Hitchhiker’s Guide movie, which may be unfilmable but they could have done something better than this.
Have at it!
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I have a long interest in UFOs, yeti, and other paranormal subjects, so X Files should have been a natural for me. Despite a great cast and appropriately spooky theme music, I never caught onto it, although it certainly was an important milestone for many viewers. Part of the problem was how the show began to realize what a pop culture sensation it was and seemed to take itself too seriously. This in turn lead a number of fans to take it too seriously (“If X Files says that the JFK assassination was connected to aliens, it must be true”).
The new ‘Star Trek’ movies. I just don’t understand how you could mess this franchise up but they found a way.
Howard the Duck. The Marvel comic was tremendous. As far as the film goes, George Lucas owes me my money back and lavish apology.
Lost In Space –
Before Star Trek debuted in the fall of 1966 there was this cool sci fi show about a family bound for a new life on a distant planet. A sinister bad guy who personified evil was there to mess them up and, of course, there was the neatest robot since Robbie in Forbidden Planet.
What happened to all that potential? “The Vegetable Rebellion”. Aargh!! Before Fonzie jumped the shark Lost in Space descended into the perdition of silliness that resulted in a chimpanzee with horns that said “Bloop!” and walking vegetables with revenge in their artichoke hearts. Oh, the pain, the pain…
As an old (very cranky) fart I lived through many Pop Culture disappointments so it’s difficult to highlight. I’ll just list a few off the top of my head and most would be people;
Vanilla Ice
Firefly cancellation
Barry Bonds
Charles Barkly
Alphas cancelation
Soupy Sales Fired
Curly Joe Dorita
Captain Lou Albano (face character)
Franchise Foods
Virtually any and all so called “Reality Shows”
Creepers, Creepers! They give me the creeps.
Peter Jackson’s “Hobbit” trilogy! After the triumph of making LOTR so perfectly, I couldn’t wait to see The Hobbit. And as I recall, the first movie met my expectations, although something about the fancy, hi-tech way they filmed it made it physically difficult for me to watch. But the rest of it…. they could have made it into a two- parter and been fine. But stuffing it full of terrible, non-canon filler, like that stupid love story, just to stretch it into 3 movies and make more money, was a horrible decision. The last two movies were a huge disappointment, and even Martin Freeman’s acting couldn’t make up for it.
Surge, and the awful CD of “rockin'” music that was bundled with it.
For me I’d have to say “Beavis and Butthead”(2011). Out of twenty two episodes only four are worth watching “Crying”, “Bathroom Break”, “Doomsday”, and “Supersize Me”. Also the thing that made the show awesome in the 90’s was them riffing music videos, but in 2011 we barely got any videos riffed cause MTV doesn’t show them anymore, instead we got clips of terrible MTV reality shows. BARF!
The Sherlock season 4 finale. The show had always required a small suspension of disbelief, but the interesting characters and stylized story-telling more than made up for it. However the finale was utter nonsense. The plot was rediculous and derivitive. The big twists lead nowhere. And then there’s the laughable explosion scene. As M&TBs would say: “So the result of his complete immolation is minor redness and irritation.”
Also, the Matrix 2 & 3… still good movies, but didn’t entirely live up to the expectations set by the first one, as far as story, effects and tone. Seemed like the filmmakers were too ambitious about outdoing themselves, rather than trying to tell good stories.
Also, The Force Awakens. Too heavy on the nostalgia, too light on originality.
AND… (last one) the Dresden Files tv series. Given the amazing source material, this had (and still has) the potential to be fantastic. But they changed most of the author’s original ideas to make it nearly unrecognizable, gave it a tiny budget resulting in cheesy-looking effects, and canceled it after one season (presumably because fans of the books couldn’t stand it, and it was too bad to attract new viewers).
Going back to “The Land of the Lost” it let you down twice.
A pretty solid low budget kids show that an adult could watch. For the first 3 seasons… then the 4th season started without the dad and they tried to lazily reboot the franchise, it did not work.
Then the movie with Will Ferrell, they took out the family aspect of it and just doing that, it hardly
felt like the original show at all.
The reboot of ‘The Powerpuff Girls’ on Cartoon Network.
Actually, whenever CN reboots an old show, it’s almost guaranteed to be a disappointment. Fortunately, the new ‘Samurai Jack’ is awesome, mainly because Genndy Tartakovsky, the shows creator, is doing it.
I’m going to totally trust in the “safe space” caveat, but for me, it’s Frank Zappa. After several mentions and host segments and tributes on MST3K, curiosity got the better of me and I borrowed a few of his albums from a friend. It was clever and funny, but it just wasn’t for me. I don’t know if it was because the music wasn’t my flavor or my love for Weird Al that made any other comedy-parody-type-music seem second at best, my experiment with Zappa was just that; an experiment.
About the Hitchhiker’s Guide ttU movie. I thought the BBC version was much better, and
more accurate. The cgi was better in the Americanized version (BBC Beetlebrox was especially
weak) but the (in Tolkien terms) subcreated universe was much better in the BBC. Not unlike the
terrible Hobbit movies, which completely lost the charm of the book in favor of typical PJ over
the top graphics and cgi, with one exception, the first bit, An Unexpected Party, was good, but once
they left Hobbiton just got sillier and sillier.
With Zappa you have to remember that he put out a lot of albums (over 60 in his lifetime, I think) and they range far and wide in style, everything from 50s style rock to jazz-rock and orchestral music. No one’s going to like all of it; whatever you heard wouldn’t be representative of everything he did, as there is no such thing.
For me, the big disappointment was the 1998 American Godzilla movie. I’m a big fan of kaiju movies, and that was a complete failure. Much more a remake of The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms, than anything to do with Godzilla. And, of course, they threw in a Jurassic Park ripoff.
I have to admit, for me a big one was ‘MST3K: The Movie.” Of course, I wasn’t aware of all the behind-the-scenes issues and challenges at the time. I only knew I was eagerly waiting for it to turn the whole world on to the magic and brilliance of my favorite cow-town puppet show. And I think the film itself was a reasonably strong version of the show, with better production values – and most critics did praise it. But I think even if it had been an utterly brilliant experiment, with FX by Industrial Light & Magic, it still wouldn’t have clicked with a wide audience. So I guess my disappointment was in realizing MST’s greatness could/would never be appreciated by the masses, and that it would forever be destined to cult status. Happily, I’ve since come to realize – that’s probably actually a good thing!
the last half hour of the Battlestar Galactica finale. the series had some low points and some truly outstanding moments, but ending it like that made me kick my fridge. and it’s still not speaking to me.
Let’s just get this out of the way: Phantom Menace. Years of waiting for new Star Wars content and what do we get? Boring exposition, a goofy racing sequence and fart jokes! FART JOKES IN A STAR WARS MOVIE!
MST3K: the Movie
Granted, i loved it when I first saw it back in the late 90s, but mainly because I hadn’t seen very many episodes yet, and was just getting into the show. But, looking at it now, the film really hasn’t held up well, and it’s clear it got the shaft by studio interference.
buddy….can’t we just get beyond thund…i mean the fart jokes? there was so much more offensive things. like the whole flippin’ gungan race? i finally manage to cleanse my skull of the ewok abomination and whammo! ‘me-sa jar jar binks!’ curse you george lucas.
Man Of Steel hurt my heart. I was so disappointed. I left the theater more confused than angry. How could a multi-million dollar Superman movie get Superman so wrong? Why did the screenwriters overthink some aspects (the horror of a preteen discovering his x-ray vision) and totally ignore others that would have been quite interesting (Jor-El, do you think that maybe your son would like a hologram of his mother too?)?
Sliders after season 2
mine would be ang lee’s hulk movie. Hulk dogs? Plus the movie was so boring. At least ed norton one was an improvement. The main one for me was the super mario bros. movie. I was not expecting an alien from la wannabe film. i remember leaving the theater and thinking what the hell was that.
Hmmm….
I’m not sure I’ve ever been really disappointed by any pop culture recently. (Sure, I was sad they cancelled the original “Battlestar Galactica”, but I was 12.) I enjoyed the PT, TFA & R1. I liked “Hitchhiker’s Guide”, “Crystal Skull” and the “Seinfeld” finale. Some things I liked better than others, but I’ve been picky in what I watch, so I stay away from things that look like they’ll rot.
I will say I have been disappointed by the “Doctor Who” revival, at times. Yes, they now have great production values, and some of the episodes (like “Listen” and “Heaven Sent”) have been classics. However, they go for “darker & edgier” far too often, the whole “lonely, lovelorn, angst-ridden Doctor” characterization has gotten really tired, and they’ve gotten up three Companions who are the Doctor’s one-and-only-and-everlasting-can’t-do-without-her soulmate. And, ye gods, why did they turn the Master into the Joker? (Sounds like I just blew my original point out of the water, huh?)
Anyway, most of my big disappointments have come from real life.
Two instances come to mind. First, there was the movie Serenity. It took everything I found appealing about Firefly (the space Western concept, the implementation of free trader SF elements), and jettisoned it in favor of what amounted to Star Wars Lite. I was also displeased on how the Reavers had been made into a Prozac regimen gone wrong. I confess that I experienced some schadenfreude when it flopped at the box office.
The other one is Andrew Cartmel’s reign of error as script editor on Doctor Who. The fanbase likes to blame John Nathan-Turner for the show’s decline, and he certainly contributed his share of blunders. But Cartmel is just as complicit by bringing in a bunch of hacks who clearly had no idea what they were doing (Pip and Jane Baker were the only writers he hired who had previously written for Doctor Who). Then there was Ace. From her whiny, “I have no mum!” introduction to her fake-sounding teen slang, there was hardly a moment she was on-screen where I didn’t have the urge to pimp slap her. I suspect the only reason she’s held in such high regard is because she replaced Mel. I really felt sorry for Sylvester McCoy. He clearly had the acting chops to be a great Doctor, but was hindered with substandard material.
One thing that gets me is when movie studios decide to do a big screen version of an old drama or action/adventure series (like Dark Shadows or Starsky and Hutch), and then turn it into some kind of comedy/parody. It’s hard for me to understand who the intended audience is. People who are old enough to fondly remember the originals probably wouldn’t want to see them mocked, and people who are young enough to enjoy it wouldn’t know, or care, enough about the originals to want to see the films. The originals aren’t high art, but at least they’re interesting enough to watch for awhile, and a good filmmaker could probably come up with something in the same spirit that would work on the big screen.
Video games are the first thing the original poster mentions, so I’d be remiss not to add one.
Yoshi’s Island was a stellar SNES game that easily makes it into top 5 lists for that system. I played it endlessly and was endlessly entertained by it. When a direct sequel was announced for the N64 I was overwhelmed with anticipation. Taking home Yoshi’s Story on release day, confusion turned to crushing disappointment at what I could only conceive of as intentional, aggressive mediocrity. It single-handedly eliminated my status as a Nintendo fanboy who saw them as a developer who could do no wrong, and I approach all of their games from that point on with trepidation.
I figured this all could have been avoided if, instead of putting movie-like age ratings on games, they put on board-game-like age suggestions. Seeing the “ages: 3-5” on the box would have maybe saved me some heartache.
Matrix Revolutions. The first one may feel a little dated now, but it had a nice concept and thick mythology along with a good sense of style (for the movie).
The second one wasn’t great but still had a number of moments that worked and expanded the mythology at the expense of characters. But the last movie flushed it all away for special effects and mumbling bad philosophy.
My first encounter with “they just didn’t care”: The Super Mario Bros Movie. I remember being 9 or 10, sitting in a curiously empty theater on release day with my mom, looking at her, and asking, what’s going on? It left me so confused, too young to even really be disillusioned, that the eventual Rifftrax of it was part of the healing process.
You bring up an interesting discussion topic in and of itself. I think sometimes the parody/comedy approach works because even if you worshipped the show as a child, you recognize now that a lot of things about it are kind of corny or dated and ripe for parody. And as long as it’s done with affection, I think it can be enjoyable for fans of the original and also work for brand new viewers. I think ‘Starsky and Hutch’ is a great example of of how it can work well (‘Brady Bunch Movie’ and ’21 Jump St.’ would be others), and ‘Dark Shadows’ is a good example of how it can fail miserably (that film is just a dismal trainwreck.) Doing a nostalgic reboot straight-faced can be just as hit or miss: ‘Mission Impossible’ for instance (hit), compared to ‘Lost in Space’ or ‘The Avengers,’ for example (miss).
Slightly contentious answer? Cinematic Titanic. Not that it’s bad by any means, but it he first couple releases were so much less than I hoped for. MST3K (and Film Crew) had a sort-of organic interaction between the players that felt comfortable. CT was an ensemble of performers that seemed like they were trying to stay out of each other’s way. The live performances work because the audience feedback drives it, but the studio episodes don’t do it for me.
REALLY contentious answer? Major League Baseball. Didn’t have a home town team in Denver when I grew up, so all my friends that loved it were fans of arbitrary teams and I just couldn’t make myself care. By the time the Rocks showed up … welll … meh… (and this is why I don’t get on with guys in Crayola hats)
I have read all the postings made so far, and I didn’t see it, so can I claim it? The cancellation of the greatest show ever, Mystery Science Theater 3000. I am wonderfully excited about the upcoming reboot, although I may miss it because of becoming homeless.
Besides that, “reality tv” is vile, the proliferation of which I blame on the popularity of “The Blair Witch Project” and “Survivor”. Also, while not a fanatic for a long time now, I have always been strangely fascinated by “slasher” movies. The original “Friday The 13th” was so scary good, but everything following, both for the specific franchise and the genre itself, became increasingly predictable, tired, stupid and ridiculous (as the ’80s wore on…and on…and on…”It’s the eighties, do a lot of coke and vote for Ronald Reagan”- MST3k, episode “Hobgoblins”). In a word, formulaic.
Arrested Development season 4. I was so excited, but it was so flabby and unfocused it made me question my enjoyment of the other seasons (and I didn’t care for season 3 as much as the first two). One thing that gives me hope for MST3K is that Joel doesn’t act like TV held his vision back so he will stick to the pureness of the premise. And it’s a great premise.
Alien 3. While Alien and Aliens had a different feel to them, both were masterworks of their respective subgenres (sci-fi horror/suspense and sci-fi action. Alien 3 just didn’t FEEL right to me. Nobody knew about the script problems at the time, and director David Fincher has pretty much disowned it since. The franchise never fully recovered in my eyes.
The rock band Asia. I was a big fan of Yes and ELP in the 70s and thought the band would be amazing. I was wrong. It was appropriate that Asia was Prof. Bobo’s favorite rock group. R.I.P. John Wetton.
I remember when one of the local college-town stores had a big contest in preparation for the first-season-phenomenon finale of Twin Peaks, that asked us to betting-pool guess who had killed Laura Palmer.
With one basic change (that the second season eventually sabotaged), I had a theory for why it was Sheriff Truman, that was so perfect, you could even see hints of it in the performances.
And then David Lynch whined that it wasn’t “supposed” to be about the mystery anyway, turned loopy in the second season, made up crap and left the planet. :(
Dark Shadows originally came out of Tim Burton wanting to do a B/W Addams Family stop-motion movie (remember, kids, he “directed” Nightmare Before Christmas!), at the same time as Bryan Singer wanted to do a TV Addams reboot–and both, ahem, pretty much for the same “metaphoric” reasons–but both found the rights were tied up since the Addamses were still on Broadway at the time.
So, Singer went back and tried to turn the Munsters into a gay allegory, and Burton just turned Dark Shadows into a goofy-goth parody and had the Collinses do the My Family pose on the poster.
“An Unexpected Journey” was a perfect Jackson-era adaptation of the book…for about half an hour. And then the Seventh Doctor showed up with bird poop on his head, and all three films slammed down the accelerator pedal on a highway to hell, and told LOTR-trilogy fans to eat their dust.
One of our movie boards had a sudden thread of gay posters trying to debate who were the “hottest” dwarves (Kili, or Thorin?)–And given Jackson’s sudden 24/7 obsession with what jolly manly belching Vikings the Dwarves were, even to the point of pushing the title hero offscreen, I’m seriously starting to wonder whether Peter was taking bets too. 0_0 The whole made-up low-comedy pettiness in “Battle of Five Armies” of the weaselly guy who escapes in a dress just couldn’t have come from anywhere else.
(Never mind that for Jackson fans, “Heavenly Creatures” is still a thing, and he never did get to do that gender-surgery movie he wanted to do.)
Enterprise. There I was in college watching the premiere. I had read the novels, watched all the series [loved DS9], and then…and then, after the first act, the theme song.
It didn’t start getting good until the last quarter of the third season, and just as it got good in season four, it was canceled and we got “These are the Voyages;” the series started out horrible and ended horrible.
with all due and the utmost respect to #Pigkiller. for me the franchise veered into a fiery twelve car pile up with ‘Voyager.’ ‘Enterprise’ was just the poor schmuck that runs into the pileup because they’re too busy on their cell phone telling somebody about the carnage to avoid the whole mess. and i REALLY liked Bakula from ‘Quantum Leap.’
*A-HEM*
Highlander 2…….
As a huge Saturday Night Live fan since January, 1976, I’m no stranger to pop culture disappointment, though Like more periods of the show than most do. It’s like a very long form rollercoaster over the years. (btw, SNL’s my all-time favorite show, MST3K is a close #2) The disappointing parts, in part:
Only my mom letting me stay up to watch, not my dad and stepmom. And with the every other weekend schedule we had (my sister lived with mom, I with my dad and stepfamily), there would be this “Weekend” news show during SNL breaks. Finally I caught every week of SNL starting with the Steve Martin/Blues Brothers show.
Chevy Chase leaving the show. He was my favorite, his Gerald Ford sketches and falls and Update got me into the show in the first place!
Being a bit squeamish, I was shocked by the Julia Child sketch, especially after Aykroyd’s impression made me laugh so hard. I still hate that kind of sketch, but am charmed that Julia Child, herself, found it hilarious.
The 5th season, besides being minus Aykroyd and Belushi, just “felt” different. It wasn’t awfully bad, but the experience wasn’t the same somehow.
The first truly bad season, which I labeled the “Douminian Disaster”, though I was in a bit of denial about the quality of the show in the beginning.
Lorne Michaels return after the somewhat underrated Ebersol era. The 2nd of the 3 worst seasons made no sense, and was an odd bunch for an SNL cast. The material picked up, though, in the 2nd half of the season. Also, I didn’t like Dennis Miller’s stand-up comic style of Weekend Update at first. Now I rate him up there with Chevy Chase and Norm MacDonald.
Though the “Bad Boys” era (Sandler, Farley, etc.) was a letdown from the late ’80s excellence, it really got bad in the 3rd of the worst seasons ever, and the worst of the 3 in my opinion. It’s the only time I truly questioned why I was ever a fan of SNL in the first place! Plus, they could’ve had Letterman standout Chris Elliott as a recurring host, and they put him in the CAST?! Bad move, Lorne!
Penny Dreadful. How I loved the show – then all of a sudden, it seemed like after introducing cool new characters, a Jekyll/Hyde character and a hint that perhaps the mummy, it’s like they just threw up their hands and said “let’s just stop here, kill off the main character, and go away.”
Grrrrrrrrr.
Ironic that the now maligned idea of a prequel would have been the best way to make another Highlander movie.
I would have to go with X Files as my pop culture disappointment. Loved the first 3 seasons (3rd especially) and part of the 4th, but somewhere in there it started to go south, and when Duchovny left, if became unwatchable to me.
Godzilla (1998). Was accepting of it at the time even though it was not Godzilla as it should be. It’s still worth viewing as a giant monster movie and it’s grown on me. Plus, the animated series was enjoyable.
The 2nd X-Files movie
The Michael Bay Transformer movies
The Nightstalker reboot
The re-animator series after the 2nd one
Revenge of Puppetmaster/ Retro-Puppetmaster/ Puppetmaster: Legacy. I still need watch the latest two.
The Tim Burton Planet of the Apes movie
The Alien vs. Predator movies
When I found out CODE NAME: DIAMOND HEAD wouldn’t be going to series.
The remakes train–particularly the moment when Disney decided to hop on. Now that they’re on board I don’t see the train slowing down any time soon.
I was never a very dedicated Disney fan, and at least they’re also making original films (more than we can say for a lot of people), but I really don’t see what making a 2D movie live-action adds to the experience.
While I know the Twilight Zone reboots cannot compare to the original series, I nevertheless enjoyed the first season of The New Twilight Zone in the mid-’80s a lot. It had a good mix of odd, creepy, and funny episodes, along with some surprisingly good performances. Seasons two and three of that series, though, what the hell happened? Horrible, mostly poor writing. Only a few of the eps from those latter two seasons are even watchable.
The last three years of WCW. The NWO angle went WAY too long, and WAY too many members. Bret Hart used wrong. The list goes on. Oh, “The Finger Poke of Doom!”
Metallica – “Load”
Star Wars Prequels
Resident Evil movie
The most recent X-Files season
Vegas Vacation
PredatorS
On that note, the new “Vacation” movie, in which Rusty Griswold decides to take his wife and kids on a cross-country road trip just like his dad took him on so many years ago. A fine idea for how to relaunch a movie series, but the execution was just lazy (though I thought the Four Corners scene was kinda funny).
I’ll say this for the Hitchhiker’s Guide movie – Stephen Fry as the Guide was perfect, as was Alan Rickman as Marvin. The rest of it, meh, it was pretty much trying to film the unfilmable.