What was your biggest pop culture disappointment?

[Threviel]

Crystal skull and Civ3.

Civ 2 was a masterpiece that improved on a masterpiece. Civ 2 base game and mods is provably my most played game. Civ 3 and for that matter all civs afterward stank ferociously.

[Savonarola]

Crystal skull and Civ3.

Civ 2 was a masterpiece that improved on a masterpiece. Civ 2 base game and mods is provably my most played game. Civ 3 and for that matter all civs afterward stank ferociously.

I had forgotten about Civ 3.  Civ and Civ 2 were both so great that I went in with super high expectation and was so underwhelmed that never touched another Civ game.

[dps]

For me I think it was probably Star Trek:  The Motion Picture.  It wasn't really a bad movie, per se, but God was it sssllllllooooooowww.  And it really had nothing original;  I at least wouldn't have been excited to know ahead of time that I was paying out money to see an extremely padded version of the episode "The Changeling" with a couple of new characters that were given major roles, but no reason for us to care about them.  But I didn't know that going in, so I was excited about it.

The Phantom Menace is a worse movie in almost every way than ST:TMP,  but I wasn't as much of a fanboy at 37 as I was at 17.  Plus, one of the two advantages The Phantom Menace has over ST:TMP is that it's much faster paced, so you see its flaws more in retrospect.  (The other advantage it has is the special effects.)

[dps]

Crystal skull and Civ3.

Civ 2 was a masterpiece that improved on a masterpiece. Civ 2 base game and mods is provably my most played game. Civ 3 and for that matter all civs afterward stank ferociously.

I had forgotten about Civ 3.  Civ and Civ 2 were both so great that I went in with super high expectation and was so underwhelmed that never touched another Civ game.

Ohh, if we're bringing computer games into the discussion, forget any movie--my biggest disappointment was Master of Orion 3.

[Admiral Yi]

Good call on Star Trek.  Me too.

[Threviel]

On another note, something that lived up to the hype an also brought us all together is Europa Universalis.

[Admiral Yi]

On another note, something that lived up to the hype an also brought us all together is Europa Universalis.

Don't mess up a perfectly good bitching thread.

[viper37]

I saw this article at The AV Club in the wake of the final episode of Game of Thrones. I was wondering how Languish would answer this; what book/game/movie/television show/whatever do you think was the biggest disappointment?

For me it was "Highlander 2: The Quickening," starring Sean Connery at a low point of his career and Christopher Lambert at a high point in his.



I was in college when it came out; a number of my friends were monster fans of the original movie.  We had to wait a week after release because the one movie theater in Houghton, Michigan didn't release it until a week later and even the "Big" "City" of Marquette, Michigan didn't have a theater that played it as well.  (Which turned out to be fortunate, Marquette was 100 miles over bad roads away.  Highlander 2 was enough of a cinematic punch to the solar plexus as it was; journeying to see it would have been adding insult to injury.)

Rob Roy.

I was a fan of the Disney tv series when I was young (so looong ago... ), and was utterly disapointed by the Liam Neeson's movie.  What a crappy movie.  Even the end duel did nothing to redeem the movie.

[crazy canuck]

Ohh, if we're bringing computer games into the discussion, forget any movie--my biggest disappointment was Master of Orion 3.

[Barrister]

Maybe not the biggest, but it was big, and it's a good story...

It's 1995 in Winnipeg.  The Manitoba Theatre Company has a special showing of Shakespeare's Hamlet, starring... Keanu Reeves!  Now Keanu must have agreed to this at least a year in advance, when he was a B-list movie star known for Bill and Ted, or maybe Bram Stoker's Dracula, but in 1994 a little movie called Speed came out which propelled him to super-stardom.  But he was a good sport, honoured his contract, and came to Winnipeg.

So I get a ticket, sit down to watch... and he was terrible.  I mean, in a few actions scenes he did very well (he is an action star after all), but To Be or Not To Be was wooden as could be.  I recall he just kind of stood there and said it in an almost monotone.

So there we go - big movie star bombs in local theatre show.  Except of course he didn't bomb - by strength of Keanu himself every show was sold out, and went for big bucks through scalpers.

[Barrister]

On another note, something that lived up to the hype an also brought us all together is Europa Universalis.

There was hype?  I saw a box in a store.  I'd never heard of the game, but the theme was right up my alley.  I went home, researched it, then went back and bought it.

[alfred russel]

Star Wars Episode I raped my childhood. I recognized that everything I believed in and loved was just a gimmick to make money off of me. But a lot of people have this one.

Three others:

1) Eyes Wide Shut: I was in college and a film studies friend had convinced me Kubrick was the greatest director ever. So I was super excited to see this film. As it progressed, I was bored. I left thinking the problem must be with me: I must just not understand the greatness I just witnessed. After days of contemplation, I realized the truth that deep down I probably knew walking out of the theater: the movie blew, and Kubrick was a man capable of making shitty movies like everyone else. Our heroes are fallible, and more likely than not had their originial brilliance dulled by their success (if they were ever brilliant in the first place).

2) Bases Loaded for Nintendo: I got this game as a kid, and quickly mastered thrashing the computer. As many in my generation, I was a loyal subscriber to Nintendo Power. In Nintendo Power, there was a rave review for this game, and it mentioned that if you won the pennant in single player mode, "there was a celebration that made it all worthwhile". The problem was that to win the pennant you had to go through something insane like an 80 game season. But Nintendo Power said the celebration would make it worthwhile, so I did what was only logical and played out the 80 game season: finishing something like 77-3 and probably in first place by 25 games. But I geared up for this awesome celebration: which was a parade by 5 pixel guys that just kept repeating---I'd do a better job explaining but it is so lame it makes me angry to write about it. I realized that Nintendo Power was probably full of shit, and later realized it may not have been a fully independent source for reporting on Nintendo games. From this I learned to never trust the media.

Fuck Nintendo Power.

3) Pete Rose. I started keeping a journal at the time the first rumors of Pete Rose betting on baseball came out. The journal lasted about 2 weeks, but I found it years later and I devoted about half of it to rants about how wrong it was people were spreading lies about Pete Rose and that a man like Pete Rose should be trusted. Fuck you Pete Rose for ruining my innocence.

[Threviel]

Well, yes, there was hype. Perhaps only to the few on the forum, but I remember reading every word and listening to every rumour. There were long discussions ob the different release dates and languages and Sapura made some really good AARs. I have never been so hyped for a game.

[Savonarola]

For albums I thought Guns N' Roses "Use Your Illusion" Parts I and II were a disappointment.  It was released at a time in my life where two cassettes (yes, cassettes) were a major investment for me.  There are some stand out songs on the albums and there's probably a good album trying to get out, but there's nowhere near enough material to justify two complete albums.

Also The Smashing Pumpkin's "Machina/The Machines of God" was a let down.  I thought "Adore" was underappreciated, I liked it quite a bit; but "Machina" felt like a single followed by fourteen tracks of fill.  (Though by that point I could afford CDs, so I wasn't as disappointed.)

[Admiral Yi]

The Eagles' The Long Run.