I think The Chronicles of Narnia movies, for me. Those books have been an emotional touchpoint for me since I was a kid, and even now at age 42 I read them every few years (to my kids now). But thanks to [spit] Douglas Grisham [/spit] they were bowdlerized for film, with very important scenes and language and symbolism removed or ignored or changed. Gah. It was a fine cast but it was just a travesty the way they shit all over C.S. Lewis’ stories.
No, it was worse. Much, much worse. I grew up on cheesy variety shows and you have no idea how bad it was by comparison.
Good point, it would only win for a very narrow range of people. I should have nominated the prequels, with the Matrix sequels in second place.
The last season of That 70’s Show.
In my 20’s I was asked to go, one fine fall day, to a football game. It was being played in The Dome, and I’m not sure who was playing - us and Navy (?). (the whole day was a bust, we parked downtown and walked and walked up to the university and were admitted to the brand spankin’ new Dome, where we got an $8 hot dog and an $8 beer each. Sat up in the nosebleed seats on a hard aluminum bench with no back support. When it was over - joined the slow-moving crowd and tramped back down to the car. Still hungry, we had no money to stop and get something to eat. And so a beautiful fall afternoon was totally wasted.) Well, it was my first football game, and my last. In spite of my date explaining to me what was happening, I was so bored to tears I nearly fell asleep on my aluminum perch. I haven’t liked the Dome or football since then. Maybe if it was outside. Maybe a beer and a tailgate picnic. Maybe if we went with a bunch of friends. No, the day was a boring bust. I totally blame football and have pretended it just doesn’t exist, ever since.
The way I understand it is that the chute was sucked out the second it got up to speed (bad design). I doubt purposely poping the chute so you’d fall down the canyon bouncing down the walls and maybe ending up in the river rather than parachuting down in the landing zone on the other side is the safer option.
But yeah, it was anticlimatic. It wasn’t a motorcycle. I think they implied it was the Grand Canyon when it wasn’t. And it was over in the blink of an eye.
Emerson, Lake & Palmer’s WORKS album. I knew they’d never be able to equal, much less surpass Brain Salad Surgery, but what a letdown to eagerly wait three years only to hear that a shark had been jumped.
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The last season of Andromeda, a space opera dealing with the usual questions of cosmic significance and lots of special effects. The season before the last could have ended there, it was sorta wrapped up. But no, they decided to eke out one more. But they ran out of money. There was no budget, so the last season took place on some far planet …in a bar. One crappy looking bar, in what looked like an old-timey wild west desert town. When not washing beer glasses, the crew would ponder how they were going to get back on the Andromeda and start 'er up. Stooopid!
Tie: Star Wars Prequels / Lost Finale
I’m surprised that the Lost finale is in league with a movie series that shits all over the widely-loved movies that went before. But I think that the anticipation time between from when I heard Lucas was making Phantom menace to when it was released was much shorter than the six goddamn years of the producers teasing us with enigmatic riddles that were never addressed.
The Matrix Revolutions
I love The Matrix. Love just about everything about it. And though it had its faults (rave scene, recycled Neo/Trinity death scene), I enjoyed *The Matrix Reloaded *a lot–mainly for the incredible action sequences–and I thought by the end that they had laid the groundwork story-wise for a really interesting finale. And then came the big steaming turd that was The Matrix Revolutions. It’s not nearly as much fun as the first two movies, and it doesn’t even develop the more interesting ideas from the backstory into anything worth watching. So much squandered potential.
Kahoutek was the first answer that popped into my mind, too, though it wasn’t really a pop culture event or artifact–just an ususual celestial phenomenon. The reaction to it, however, was an event, and far from being a disappointment, it was a vindicating triumph. I remained skeptical throughout the period of anticipation, as my “Star Seed”-quoting friends were asserting “It’s the Comet” as the cause of every vaguely positive occurrence. Always too much of a nonconformist even for the nonconformist set, I maintained that flaming hunks of skyborne stone and ice were just that, and people themselves are what determine outcomes. When the “streak of light” (and in San Francisco, we didn’t even get that) proved a fizzle, my “negative energy” was determined to be the cause…
This.
I grew up on the Chronicles of Narnia and was fond of them even after I became an atheist. Watching the movies was… wrong. Like when you think there’s another step and there’s not and you fall on your face. I only saw the first one, because, well, I’m a quick learner.
You think that was bad… imagine being born in 1955, growing up a science geek, and spending a few DECADES thinking to yourself, “Where are all the cool comets?.. Oh well, at least when I’m 31, I get to see HALLEY’S COMET. THAT’s going to be COOL.” :(:(
Other than that – I’d say the Rankin/Bass Hobbit special. Big anticipation, huge letdown.
There’s nothing worse than the feeling that you’re watching a terrible movie crap all over a beloved franchise. Aside from the aforementioned ones, Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and Godfather III rank right up there.
Destroying a belove book with a crappy adaptation is its own level of hell. I’m looking at you, I, Robot.
But as far as pop culture events go, I gotta side with opening Al Capone’s vault.
What I (and most other fans) loved about Seinfeld was the story-telling technique. A-plots and B-plots, and sometimes even C-plots, dovetailed together in unexpected and hilarious ways. At its best it was nothing short of brilliant.
The much-anticipated series finale turned out to be… a clip show, framed by a script with a single linear story line. It lacked everything that had made the show great. What a letdown.
Meh. I, Robot, the movie, had less to do with I, Robot, the book, than The Musketeer, the movie, has to do with The Three Musketeers, the book. Meaning that it wasn’t even an adaptation…it was an unrelated killer robot movie that the producers stole some Asimov cred for by a simple title change. Because sci-fi geeks are so impressed by titles that they’ll never realize the story’s completely different.
I have to defend comets a bit here Kahoutek actually was pretty darn good as far as comets go. It was something like a one in 20 or 30 years comet. Problem is most people don’t really know what to expect comet wise. Second, unless the comet is a once in few thousand year one, its still going to look like crap from the city or if you just stepped out side from your living room a few moments earlier (you gotta get DARK adapted to see anything). Halley’s wasnt as good as Kahoutek (but still not bad comet wise) but you really need to far from a city for it to be decent and even worse it was only really well seen from the southern hemisphere. The further north you got the worse it was.
Oh yeah, part of the problem with Kahoutek was that it wasn’t nearly as bright as they thought it would be. Astronomers really were expecting it to be a once in a couple thousand years comet. But astronomers have learned that comet predictions, especially in conjunction with the general public’s view of them, is a dicey proposition.
My understanding is that the studio sat on the rights for the title for many years and never got anywhere with producing an actual adaptation. Eventually, the Asimov estate said they were going to seek getting the rights back since the studio was letting them idle and the studio hastily threw some “I, Robot” facets into a different sci-fi story they were working on so they could retain the rights.
I was born in 1954, so I know what you mean. I stayed up all night to try catching a glimpse of Halley’s, for all the good it did.
I think it’s sad you all had comet disappointment. As someone born in the '80s, the '90s had not one but two quite spectacular comet appearances to light up my teenage heart. Pity I bought a junkscope though… grumble.