Jaws?
Were there any other horror films based on a “real” animal from the water (no creature from the black lagoon) before it?
Anything afterwards paled in comparisson. Gators, pirhanas, Deep Blue Sea, Open Water?
Indeed, it seems to me that there’s a continuous tradition of children’s fantasy set in this world (with some magic items from somewhere) going back at least to Edith Nesbit, including Edgar Eager. The only thing that’s new in the Harry Potter books is that they are huge doorstops, and I’m not sure that’s a good thing.
Moby Dick?
sort of?
I take issue with the OPs examples. Harry Potter wasn’t the first kid’s book about magic schools. There were other animated family series before The Simpsons. Besides the Hanna-Barbera early 1960s stuff, look up Wait 'til Your Father Gets Home, or Spielberg’s Family Dog. Both took a more adult (but not nearly enough) somewhat cynical take on family life, well before The Simpsons.
A couple of cases of the first being impressively good:
1.) The robot in Metropolis – she lpooks gorgeous, and the slow yet gliding way she walks is PERFECT. The first Robot in Sf cinema, and arguably the first modern robot. She was so good they stole C-3PO’s looks from her.
2.) H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds – as far as I can tell, the first novel with really physically-different aliens, with alien culture and technology, and the first invasion by aliens story. The depiction of the aliens, and their non-human technology (they don’t have the Wheel, and don’t use it in their devices, for instance) and their weapons (super anti-personnel gas, and the Heat Ray that practically foresees the Laser) are incredibly well done. (Kurd Lasswitz’ Zwei Plenete" came out at the same time, and concerns a very different Martian invasion, but his aliens are much more human. His visio plays out more like an episode of Star Trek, and is remarkable in its own right. But Wells is more “alien”)
When I tried to explain this concept to a friend yesterday, he said “You mean likje the Gong Show?” Good example–it was the first to bring bad entertainment to America, and even Simon Cowell couldn’t have done it better than Chuck Barris.
The Lord of The Rings series? Not the first fantsy novels but the firstto establish the “men and dwarves and elves against the bad things” format that is pretty universal these days…
But Airplane was preceded by the Zucker/Abrams/Zuckers movie Kentucky Fried Movie, which did the same thing, earlier.
I’m pretty sure that The Sex Pistols were not the first punk band, but I consider them a first and best of sorts.
Psycho. The first and best boy next door horror movie.
How about Led Zeppelin?
Oh, geez. Bob Marley. He was among the very first artists to slow down his ska into reggae, and is still pretty much unsurpassed as the master of the genre.
Switched On Bach - the first “musical genre (x) done on a synthesizer” album and undoubtedly still the best.
Magic: The Gathering.
Dungeons and Dragons.
The Today Show, on NBC.
MTV
The Narnia books predate Harry Potter–they were mostly set in the Narnia world, but they had fairly complex plots and were targeted at kids.
Highly questionable, as The Gong Show owes a lot to Major Bowes’ Original Amateur Hour of the 1930s and 1940s, which, while more serious, also had a bad talent appeal.
I’m probably the most devoted Magic player on the SDMB, and I’d have to disagree. It’s a great game, no doubt, but it has some pretty serious flaws. The biggest reason it’s so widely played is, well, that it’s so widely played. The huge tournaments, prize support and player base is far beyond any other collectible card game. It’s self-sustaining, but not because of its brilliance.
I don’t really know the genre that well (Magic is the only game I even kinda know the rules to), so I’m curious. Which collectible card games do you think are better than Magic?
Super Mario 64 – first 3D platformer, definitely still the best.
Definitely. Jaws is the last 30 pages of Moby Dick, with pulp added.
This is where I start hemming and hawing, as Magic is the only game I know well. Deckmasters, the “junior” version of Magic, has solved the manascrew/flood problem in an ingenious way (which was admittedly swiped from other, older games). Lord of the Rings (the new one; I’m not at all familiar with the old one) was by all accounts very good. Jihad still maintains a steady and fanatical base of players.
Then there are the utter shitgames, like Yu-Gi-Oh! (the game with
Best? Yeah. First? Nope. Dr. Adder beat it by about a decade.
Gertrude Stein. Once she did it, there was no point in doing it again.