# Iconic but awful **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Tags:** movies\ **Created:** [October 11, 2021, 2:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iconic-but-awful/952285 "2021-10-11T02:10:56Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 9
**Author:** ![Gatopescado](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gatopescado/32/5711_2.png) [@Gatopescado](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gatopescado)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2021, 6:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iconic-but-awful/952285/161 "2021-10-12T18:24:58Z")
> [@terentii](#): > > I thought _ **Hawaii Five-O** _ (the original, with Jack Lord) was one of the coolest shows on TV. Watching it now in “strip” form five days a week, I can see just how bad most episodes were, in virtually every way—writing, acting, plots, continuity, editing, and so on. Ya know, I feel the same way about the original Star Trek now after watching them recently. Jeez! What crap stories, and recycled so often. It’s officially ruined for me now. > [@DCnDC](#): > > **The Blair Witch Project** > It didn’t invent the found footage subgenre, and it’s essentially unwatchable. Oh, Goddamn! I’m STILL pissed off about this! _I want my fucking money back!!!_ ---
**Author:** ![Slithy\_Tove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slithy_tove/32/18248_2.png) [@Slithy\_Tove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slithy_Tove)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2021, 6:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iconic-but-awful/952285/162 "2021-10-12T18:28:10Z")
> [@panache45](#): > > > [@Akaj](#): > > > > And can’t Speilberg move on from John Williams scores already? > > But all the other great composers are dead. Yet they live on, cribbed by the great John Williams. ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2021, 6:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iconic-but-awful/952285/163 "2021-10-12T18:33:33Z")
> [@echoreply](#): > > And, it’s hard to take a movie too seriously when every single scene has been parodied repeatedly, and your picturing Millhouse saying some of the iconic lines. I saw _The Godfather_ in a theater, during an anniversary showing some time in the '90s. When Don Corleone says the famous, “Make him an offer” line, my friend groaned, “I can’t believe they used that cliche!” ---
**Author:** ![xizor](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xizor/32/102_2.png) [@xizor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/xizor)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2021, 6:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iconic-but-awful/952285/164 "2021-10-12T18:54:45Z")
> [@dorvann](#): > > but the film kind peters out after the Basic Training scenes Very true, it is like 2 separate movies. I can watch through the “me so horny” scene and then lose interest. ---
**Author:** ![SenorBeef](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senorbeef/32/2220_2.png) [@SenorBeef](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SenorBeef)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2021, 7:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iconic-but-awful/952285/165 "2021-10-12T19:10:09Z")
> [@ParallelLines](#): > > I actually came to post Avatar, but for the additional fact that anyone with half a brain realized that all it takes is the spacefaring society to drop rocks from orbit and all the pretty blue people die. Let me make up a story: the US fights an insurgency in Afghanistan and Iraq for over a decade and have a difficult time maintaining order. That’s an implausible story, of course. The US has lots of nuclear weapons. So they would’ve just nuked those countries and killed everyone alive. What a plot hole. Oh, wait, but that happened and they didn’t? Weird. So you don’t just commit weapons of mass destruction to committing genocide just because you can? Would a corporation that dropped asteroids onto the only other planet with life we know about be totally in the clear and not get in trouble? Imagine, for a moment, that we discovered an alien species that were intelligent and looked like us and had their own culture. It would be the most interesting thing in the history of the world. People would be utterly fascinated with this new world. You’d have documentaries every day about this new planet. People would be transfixed. Do you think the people of Earth casually support the use of weapons of mass destruction against that planet just to make it easier to exploit them? If your answer is yes, why didn’t we nuke Iraq and Afghanistan? We’re certainly less interested in those places and people than we would be in a new world. Most criticisms of Avatar are actually really shallow or really inconsistent. It’s funny that the most popular criticism of Avatar is that it’s the same story as Fern Gully/Dances with Wolves/10 other stories, but no one criticizes those movies for being terrible because they’re unoriginal stories, even though they are, by the same logic, clones of the same story). It is one of the best examples of people being eager to criticize something to show how they’re too good for something big and popular that the dumb dumbs like. ---
**Author:** ![Son\_of\_a\_Rich](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/son_of_a_rich/32/5439_2.png) [@Son\_of\_a\_Rich](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Son_of_a_Rich)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2021, 7:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iconic-but-awful/952285/166 "2021-10-12T19:11:59Z")
I thought you were going to pick the “hooked on sleeping pills”. ---
**Author:** ![kenobi\_65](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kenobi_65/32/13178_2.png) [@kenobi\_65](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kenobi_65)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2021, 7:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iconic-but-awful/952285/167 "2021-10-12T19:19:56Z")
> [@SenorBeef](#): > > It’s funny that the most popular criticism of Avatar is that it’s the same story as Fern Gully/Dances with Wolves/10 other stories, but no one criticizes those movies for being terrible because they’re unoriginal stories, even though they are, by the same logic, clones of the same story). To be fair, when I first watched FernGully, I did remark to my wife, “This is a fantasy version of _Dances With Wolves_.” 😃 ---
**Author:** ![ISiddiqui](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/97f17d/32.png) [@ISiddiqui](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ISiddiqui)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2021, 7:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iconic-but-awful/952285/168 "2021-10-12T19:26:45Z")
Not to mention FernGully was a kids movie and got mediocre ratings. And Dances with Wolves get savaged seemingly every time someone brings it up - at some point there was a huge backlash against DWW in the 90s. ---
**Author:** ![Akaj](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/akaj/32/145_2.png) [@Akaj](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Akaj)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2021, 7:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iconic-but-awful/952285/169 "2021-10-12T19:41:22Z")
> [@SenorBeef](#): > > Most criticisms of Avatar are actually really shallow or really inconsistent. It’s funny that the most popular criticism of Avatar is that it’s the same story as Fern Gully/Dances with Wolves/10 other stories, but no one criticizes those movies for being terrible because they’re unoriginal stories, even though they are, by the same logic, clones of the same story). I’ve never actually seen _Fern Gully_, but my main criticism of _Avatar_ is not that it’s the same story as _Dances with Wolves_ but that it leans on the same tired trope – it’s essentially a white savior story. The outsider from the “more civilized” race joins the natives and learns their ways, then ends up being better at their own way of life than they are – and just in time to save them from the rest of his kind. That said, I still think _Avatar_’s pretty awesome. I just roll my eyes while I’m getting blown away by the action. ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2021, 8:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iconic-but-awful/952285/170 "2021-10-12T20:18:32Z")
> [@SenorBeef](#): > > Let me make up a story: the US fights an insurgency in Afghanistan and Iraq for over a decade and have a difficult time maintaining order. That’s an implausible story, of course. The US has lots of nuclear weapons. So they would’ve just nuked those countries and killed everyone alive. What a plot hole. > > Oh, wait, but that happened and they didn’t? Weird. So you don’t just commit weapons of mass destruction to committing genocide just because you can? Would a corporation that dropped asteroids onto the only other planet with life we know about be totally in the clear and not get in trouble? That’s assuming that the general moral and political stances of early 21st century America apply in whatever year Avatar is set in. Certainly, there are plenty of societies have used genocide in response to low level insurgency. Is the society behind the corporation in Avatar more like the US in 2020? Or the the US in 1880? And “drop rocks on them from orbit” doesn’t necessarily mean a Chicxulub dinosaur killer. Something on the scale of the Tunguska strike would do nicely for that magic tree, and wouldn’t be likely to get any more attention back home than blowing it up with an atmospheric bomber, which IIRC is what they attempted in the movie. In fairness, this isn’t any worse an error than having space combat against enemies that are close enough to see with your naked eye, which has never ruined Star Wars/Trek for me. > [@SenorBeef](#): > > It’s funny that the most popular criticism of Avatar is that it’s the same story as Fern Gully/Dances with Wolves/10 other stories, but no one criticizes those movies for being terrible because they’re unoriginal stories, even though they are, by the same logic, clones of the same story). There’s a _lot_ of people who say _Dances with Wolves_ is terrible and unoriginal. ---
**Author:** ![terentii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/terentii/32/212_2.png) [@terentii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/terentii)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2021, 8:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iconic-but-awful/952285/171 "2021-10-12T20:26:59Z")
> [@Gatopescado](#): > > > [@terentii](#): > > > > I thought _ **Hawaii Five-O** _ (the original, with Jack Lord) was one of the coolest shows on TV. Watching it now in “strip” form five days a week, I can see just how bad most episodes were, in virtually every way—writing, acting, plots, continuity, editing, and so on. > > Ya know, I feel the same way about the original Star Trek now after watching them recently. Jeez! What crap stories, and recycled so often. It’s officially ruined for me now. I hate to admit it, but I feel the same way too. I can still enjoy some episodes (the good ones, like “Balance of Terror” and “City on the Edge of Forever,” but mostly I see the cheap production values and bad acting. ---
**Author:** ![Slow\_Moving\_Vehicle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slow_moving_vehicle/32/291_2.png) [@Slow\_Moving\_Vehicle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slow_Moving_Vehicle)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2021, 8:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iconic-but-awful/952285/172 "2021-10-12T20:27:50Z")
> [@Akaj](#): > > > [@SenorBeef](#): > > > > Most criticisms of Avatar are actually really shallow or really inconsistent. It’s funny that the most popular criticism of Avatar is that it’s the same story as Fern Gully/Dances with Wolves/10 other stories, but no one criticizes those movies for being terrible because they’re unoriginal stories, even though they are, by the same logic, clones of the same story). > > I’ve never actually seen _Fern Gully_, but my main criticism of _Avatar_ is not that it’s the same story as _Dances with Wolves_ but that it leans on the same tired trope – it’s essentially a white savior story. The outsider from the “more civilized” race joins the natives and learns their ways, then ends up being better at their own way of life than they are – and just in time to save them from the rest of his kind. And _Dances With Wolves_ got plenty of criticism on that score when it came out. ---
**Author:** ![Akaj](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/akaj/32/145_2.png) [@Akaj](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Akaj)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2021, 9:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iconic-but-awful/952285/173 "2021-10-12T21:19:46Z")
> [@Slow\_Moving\_Vehicle](#): > > _Dances With Wolves_ got plenty of criticism on that score when it came out. Which didn’t stop it from winning Best Picture. _Thelma & Louise_ wuz robbed. But I don’t recall seeing the same criticism leveled at _Avatar_, maybe because we don’t have the same sensitivity toward the Navi’i as we do for Native Americans. ---
**Author:** ![SciFiSam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/47e85d/32.png) [@SciFiSam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SciFiSam)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2021, 10:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iconic-but-awful/952285/174 "2021-10-12T22:25:26Z")
> [@Gatopescado](#): > > Oh, Goddamn! I’m STILL pissed off about this! _I want my fucking money back!!!_ I just genuinely didn’t get why it was supposed to be scary. Intentionally badly-shot, fine, that’s been done, it can work. But… then… something’s going to happen, surely? It didn’t. Then nothing happened again. And then nothing happened some more. The end was nothing happening. It was like horror as written by Virginia Woolf. Or someone’s nightmare directly translated to video. Other people’s dreams are always dull. ---
**Author:** ![Loach](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/loach/32/350_2.png) [@Loach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Loach)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2021, 10:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iconic-but-awful/952285/175 "2021-10-12T22:27:24Z")
> [@kenobi\_65](#): > > > [@Jophiel](#): > > > > Avatar almost strikes me as anti-iconic (which is maybe iconic in its own way). It came out, everyone went to see it, you had silly news articles about people going insane with grief that they couldn’t live on Pandora then it completely fell off everyone’s radar. Outside of threads about movies, like this, I never see it referenced, quoted, meme’d, on a t-shirt or any signs that people remember it existed. For the past umpteen years, if anyone says “Avatar”, there’s a 98% chance they’re talking about the Airbender anime thing and not the bajillion dollar earning, tech-breaking film. It’s a weird rise and fall and I guess testament to how forgettable the movie really was. > > An [Avatar-based attraction](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandora_%E2%80%93_The_World_of_Avatar) opened at Disney World in Florida in 2017 (eight years after the movie), though I don’t know how popular of an attraction it is. I was blown away by the 3D and special effects when I saw it in the theaters. The very thin plot meant I never had the inclination to watch it on TV. The ride in Disney is the best ride in any of the parks. I say that without ever being on Rise of the Resistance so take that with a grain of salt. The first time I went on it we got up early at the pre-opening time and still had to wait 90 minutes. Last summer when visiting family in the area Animal Kingdom was the only park we went to. With Covid set levels of guests it was still an hour plus wait. It’s an extremely popular attraction because it’s known to be a high quality experience. ---
**Author:** ![ParallelLines](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/parallellines/32/3575_2.png) [@ParallelLines](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ParallelLines)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2021, 11:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iconic-but-awful/952285/176 "2021-10-12T23:40:15Z")
@SenorBeef, you’re free to love Avatar, but @Miller already made the points about the US of the past (and for that matter, post 9/11) would have dealt with the issue. The number of people who to this day say we should just ‘clean up the Middle East and take the oil for ourselves’ shows it’s still a popular POV. And yes, I was talking about taking out the Tree (and with it the lifeblood and history of the Na’vi) with a ‘tactical’ option, not an ELE for the world. Thus my ‘all the pretty blue people die’ rather than ‘turn the place into a dead ball of rock’. After all, what they want is in that area, and it’s easier to mine in atmosphere, especially if all you need is an airmask. 🤷‍♂️ It’s my personal peeve about Avatar, as others had already pointed out the issues with unoriginality, writing and acting. ---
**Author:** ![SenorBeef](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senorbeef/32/2220_2.png) [@SenorBeef](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SenorBeef)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2021, 2:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iconic-but-awful/952285/177 "2021-10-13T02:39:27Z")
> [@Miller](#): > > That’s assuming that the general moral and political stances of early 21st century America apply in whatever year Avatar is set in. So two things - I think this is a completely reasonable assumption. Modern culture is far less tolerant of bloodshed than it used to be. People are acting like because colonists just slaughtered the natives hundreds of years ago, that we’d have no problem doing that today or in the future - but clearly that’s contradicted by the actual reality wars have dramatically less casualties than in the past, and large scale genocides are not something that would generally be tolerated in the modern world. And it’s hard to imagine that trend reversing - it’s unlikely that our culture which has almost entirely gone away from being okay with bloodshed and slaughter will suddenly become comfortable with it again in the future. But even that’s besides the point. When you say “Avatar’s plot is dumb. Obviously they would’ve just nuked the planet from orbit, and since they didn’t, that’s a plothole” is not saying that being willing to inflict genocide via weapons of mass destruction is one plausible option for the characters, but that it is the _only_ plausible option, and since that option was not used, obviously the writing is bad and that’s a plothole. When a person tries to make that argument, they’re saying that the only plausible outcome is bombarding the planet from orbit, and since that didn’t happen, the writing is stupid. Any other plausible outcome - like, say, the one we saw in the movie, where a corporation, out of communication from Earth, was given enough force to act in self defense, but with a mandate to peacefully interact and study the native population, decided to act without authority to use an ad-hoc method of accomplishing their goals that would probably get them in trouble as soon as Earth finds out - clearly demonstrates that the idea that the only possibility is that humans immediately nuke the only other planet with life we’ve ever found from orbit - completely rebukes that criticism. The idea that the only possible reaction to humanity to finding life on other planets is to immediately kill all of it to take their resources, and that no other reaction is plausible, is absurd. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2021, 2:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iconic-but-awful/952285/178 "2021-10-13T14:18:10Z")
I’m not sure if the movie _Starship Troopers_ is iconic (It’s inspired a surprising number of sequels), but it certainly is awful. I hate the film for its complete disconnect in almost every way from Heinlein’s book, but it is absolutely gorgeous to look at. The science is brain-dead, though. ---
**Author:** ![needscoffee](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/needscoffee/32/1076_2.png) [@needscoffee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/needscoffee)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2021, 2:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iconic-but-awful/952285/179 "2021-10-13T14:40:28Z")
Is _Love, Actually_ iconic? I can’t stomach it. The story lines are contrived and nonsensical. A waste of a lot of good actors. ---
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2021, 2:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iconic-but-awful/952285/180 "2021-10-13T14:53:13Z")
I’ve always liked Love Actually (I’m a sucker for Richard Curtis films) but I can see the criticism. For one thing (as others have pointed out), several of the relationships are between men in power and women subordinate to them. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iconic-but-awful/952285.md?page=8) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iconic-but-awful/952285.md?page=10)