# What's the big deal about "Sharknado"? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [July 19, 2013, 4:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-big-deal-about-sharknado/663948 "2013-07-19T16:05:20Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 13\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Ranger\_Jeff](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ranger_jeff/32/2065_2.png) [@Ranger\_Jeff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ranger_Jeff)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2013, 7:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-big-deal-about-sharknado/663948/41 "2013-07-20T07:08:45Z")
Well, I’m up to 53 minutes of it. Cliches by DeCarload. Metaphors by Mixmaster. Ed Wood would have made this. I love the way the sharks just seem to follow the guy from 90210. ---
**Author:** ![Tanbarkie](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/a698b9/32.png) [@Tanbarkie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tanbarkie)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2013, 3:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-big-deal-about-sharknado/663948/42 "2013-07-20T15:32:40Z")
> [@deltasigma](#): > > OMG. So you honestly belief that this sums up what most people, even the people here find enjoyable about the movie? My post had very little to do with what viewers themselves find enjoyable about the movie, and much more to do with why SyFy makes them. Hint: it’s not because the guys making it think they’re actually making good movies, like Ed Wood did. It’s because they know there’s a newfound audience for intentionally shitty movies - which, conveniently, are also extremely cheap to produce - and like any good profit-generating enterprise, they are going for it head first (like Pete Rose). ---
**Author:** ![deltasigma](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e5b9ba/32.png) [@deltasigma](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/deltasigma)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2013, 3:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-big-deal-about-sharknado/663948/43 "2013-07-20T15:47:53Z")
> [@Ranger\_Jeff](#): > > Well, I’m up to 53 minutes of it. Cliches by DeCarload. Metaphors by Mixmaster. Ed Wood would have made this. I love the way the sharks just seem to follow the guy from 90210. Exactly. You can almost think of it like the old silent movie/Chevy Chase slapstick bit where you get some piece of paper/wrapper/etc. progressively stuck on one part of your body and then another - except with sharks . . . ummm, yeah sure. It’s not like that analogy is any weirder than anything in the movie. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2013, 4:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-big-deal-about-sharknado/663948/44 "2013-07-20T16:08:36Z")
> [@Balance](#): > > Tricky. **TroutMan** would be seriously outgunned. I hear **Gangster Octopus** is heavily armed. But always outguessed. Don’t you know that fish is brain food? ---
**Author:** ![Shawn1767](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ee7513/32.png) [@Shawn1767](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shawn1767)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2013, 4:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-big-deal-about-sharknado/663948/45 "2013-07-20T16:26:00Z")
I think it’s because when the screenwriters said “Hey, why don’t we have THIS happen…” Nobody said “nah, nobody would believe that.” It was a free-form experiment using the imagination of a 9-year-old boy. It was fun seeing how outrageously unbelievable it would get. ---
**Author:** ![lieu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/c2a13f/32.png) [@lieu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lieu)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2013, 4:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-big-deal-about-sharknado/663948/46 "2013-07-20T16:54:06Z")
> [@Ranger\_Jeff](#): > > I love the way the sharks just seem to follow the guy from 90210. There’s a plot twist… no Saturday delivery. ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2013, 5:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-big-deal-about-sharknado/663948/47 "2013-07-20T17:24:45Z")
> [@Shawn1767](#): > > I think it’s because when the screenwriters said “Hey, why don’t we have THIS happen…” Nobody said “nah, nobody would believe that.” It was a free-form experiment using the imagination of a 9-year-old boy. It was fun seeing how outrageously unbelievable it would get. Sure, but that’s also pretty much the description of “Mega Python vs. Gatoroid”, “Piranhaconda” or most of the other SyFy Original movies. After reading the replies, I’m leaning toward the “it got a lot of early buzz, and then generated its own buzz based on that.” ---
**Author:** ![drewtwo99](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d07c76/32.png) [@drewtwo99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/drewtwo99)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2013, 5:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-big-deal-about-sharknado/663948/48 "2013-07-20T17:42:23Z")
I had no idea that this movie was even a “thing”. I happened to watch it at a friend’s house randomly a couple of nights ago. His roommate had downloaded it and we all watched and heckled it. I didn’t think it was anything spectacular or noteworthy, and I’m a bit surprised to see a thread on it here in CS! We mocked it and drank wine and had a fun time, but I wouldn’t really remember it very well after a few months, that’s for sure, unless people keep reminding me about it through continual references, which now seems likely. We all did laugh really, really hard when he busted out of the shark that just happened to have the girl inside. That did approach a magically-awful quality. The rest of the movie was just kinda stupidly lame though. I’m a big fan of bad movies, but they kind of have to be unintentionally bad for me to REALLY love them. ---
**Author:** ![DCnDC](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dcndc/32/2842_2.png) [@DCnDC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DCnDC)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2013, 6:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-big-deal-about-sharknado/663948/49 "2013-07-20T18:09:10Z")
It wasn’t nearly as good as _Two Headed Shark Attack_, starring Brooke Hogan and featuring Carmen Electra as a college professor (seriously!), not to mention the brilliantly written (and delivered) line: “Two heads means twice as many teeth!” Also had Jerry O’Connell’s brother and lots of scantily clad “college kids” standing near open water, conveniently spaced _exactly_ the same distance apart as the jaws of the two-headed shark. Truly one of SyFy’s best efforts yet. ---
**Author:** ![Ranger\_Jeff](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ranger_jeff/32/2065_2.png) [@Ranger\_Jeff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ranger_Jeff)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2013, 6:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-big-deal-about-sharknado/663948/50 "2013-07-20T18:09:42Z")
It struck me as a movie that was specifically made to be MST3K’d. “How bad a movie can we make?” ---
**Author:** ![deltasigma](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e5b9ba/32.png) [@deltasigma](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/deltasigma)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2013, 8:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-big-deal-about-sharknado/663948/51 "2013-07-20T20:01:24Z")
Well, humor is especially subjective, so maybe something is funnier if you’re laughing at it rather than with it. Maybe that’s part of the equation. I know I’ve never liked slap stick for example. As a little kid probably. I don’t remember. I can’t ever remember ‘getting it’ though. But then again, everything is relative. I remember one really awful movie with Kevin Sorbo - one of those special forces, secret mission type things. Anyway, one of the funniest scenes, and it was intended to be so it’s not just me, was when they find all these other soldiers who’d literally been torn apart. Some are still on fire. One guy grabs a flaming, dismembered leg and lights his smoke with it. Then there are a couple Japanese movies I’ve seen that fall into this category of being intentionally awful but cover that in a thick, sometimes bewildering layer of WTF?!?! Even so, they still generally tend to be worth watching. ---
**Author:** ![TroutMan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/troutman/32/6721_2.png) [@TroutMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TroutMan)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2013, 11:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-big-deal-about-sharknado/663948/52 "2013-08-07T23:30:56Z")
I had to revive this thread to note that a shark was found on an NYC subway car. I’m assuming it was because of some freak weather phenomenon. So much for everyone who thought this wasn’t scientifically feasible. > **[Dead shark found on New York subway; internet freaks out](https://www.dailyedge.ie/shark-subway-reaction-1026755-Aug2013/?utm_source=thedailyedge)** > > Nobody knows how it got there. ---
**Author:** ![standingwave](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9de0a6/32.png) [@standingwave](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/standingwave)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2013, 11:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-big-deal-about-sharknado/663948/53 "2013-08-07T23:52:14Z")
> [@muldoonthief](#): > > The only disturbing thing is that Tara Reid is still finding work. Hey, she got a crash course in marine biology… \*“So I look up sharks on the Internet and I see whale sharks. And I’m like it must mean a whale and a shark had sex. And then I think, well how does a whale and shark have sex? Because whales are mammals, and sharks are animals. They have nothing to do with each other.” \* _“So basically, the dolphins have sex with each other, but the sharks don’t. So I thought, then how is it such a thing? But the difference is that a whale shark is the biggest shark in the ocean. He’s also scary, and then you have the great white, who’s also scary. There are over 400 kinds of sharks but the whale shark is kind of interesting because he’s so mean – he’s like a killer.”_ _[Tara Reid Rambles Incoherently About Sharks On 'Shark After Dark' (VIDEO) | HuffPost Entertainment](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/07/tara-reid-shark-after-dark_n_3720868.html)_ [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-big-deal-about-sharknado/663948.md?page=2)