There are a lot of movies in the world, and a lot of them are good. A great deal more of them are bad. There are some, of course, that are not nearly as good as their reputations proclaim them to be. Now, not all of these movies are bad - I've listed several movies that I actually do really like. But just because they're good does not mean they deserve the massive amount of hype and popularity that they have managed to claim. And so I present my top 7 overrated movies.
#7: The Dark Knight
"But Faceguy, you shining beacon of unadulterated manliness!" you're asking yourself, "The Dark Knight was a great movie! You yourself have said so!"
I freely admit that I love this movie. It is easily, in my opinion, the best comic book movie around, and has the elements of an absolutely fantastic film. So why do I have it on this list? The Dark Knight got a huge amount of publicity from the incredibly unfortunate death of Heath Ledger, and the fact that he gave an incredible performance as the Joker threw fuel upon the fire. Because of that, we managed to mostly ignore the poor performances delivered by most of the rest of the cast, as well as the mediocre writing and plot.
And yet despite its flaws, people throw titles on it such as "piece of art" and "masterpiece". The Dark Knight is good, but frankly does not deserve that much acclaim. It's a great movie, but still manages to be highly overrated.
#6: Saw
Now, there are a number of people who would disagree with the fact that Saw has that much in the way of publicity. "Au contraire!" say I! You don't get 5 bloody sequels off the ground if you don't have some popularity - in fact, you need a lot. Only a few other series' have 6 movies in their arsenal - Star Wars being the first that comes to mind. Comparing the first movies of each series, does Saw even compare to Star Wars? If you said yes, please post your address in the comments so I can come and BEAT SOME SENSE INTO YOUR HEAD WITH A ROCK.
I liked Saw, but it's not a good sign for a franchise when the director wanted to stop after the first of six.
#5: Close Encounters of the Third Kind
And now we get to the part of this list where I start bashing classics!
Steven Spielberg has a tendency of making some seriously strange projects. While I do have to give him serious props for being the mind behind Animaniacs, the best animated TV show of all time - even the future, he has also made several movies that make me wonder just what it was he was smoking at the time.
One of the most unexplainably overblown films that he has ever made was this Sci-Fi... adjective. I really don't know what genre this falls under beyond Sci-Fi. Drama? Mystery? Comedy? Romance?
Close Encounters is just strange. Truly chicken-on-face bizarre. From people who make massive replicas of Devil's Tower out of mud in their living rooms to spinning, glowing, flying top things, it's just one extended "What's going on?" moment. The weirdest is as the very end, which is about 10-15 minutes of no dialogue as people mill about among aliens before the aliens fly away. Yet despite the fact theat by the end you are bored and confused, look at the bottom of the poster. "One of the most spectacular movies ever made"??? WHAT?!?
Maybe it's because aliens stole my brain, but I just don't get it.
#4: Ben Hur
I know movie posters are occasionally biased, but to boldly claim that what you are advertising is "THE GREATEST STORY THE SCREEN HAS EVER TOLD" is going a little far.
I'm not going to go too deeply into this one, because it's one of those few movies that leaves me with such a small impression that I am relatively speechless. Ben Hur is long - probably one of the longest movies ever made. We're talking 212 minutes, which translates into just over three and a half hours. I think that director William Wyler mistook quantity for quality, which would explain a lot.
The thing that really gets me is how the movie claims to be "a story of Christ." That's a lie! Most of the movie focuses on this Judah Ben-Hur guy, with Jesus showing up once every half hour or so to say "Hey, look at me, JESUS!" before vanishing into his own (much more interesting) story.
In short, Ben Hur is long, relatively boring, and hideously overrated. If it weren't for Charlton Heston, I doubt anyone would know this movie even existed.
#3: The Matrix
I'm just going t0 say this once, alright? Okay, here goes... No science-fiction movie -especially one starring Keanu Reeves - should ever... EVER... start it's own cult/religion.
The fact that so many people seemed to take this movie seriously makes me seriously concerned for the human race. Even today, I hear people seriously considering that we all might be inside a giant machine to create energy and, even worse, that THE MATRIX WAS A DESPERATE MESSAGE FROM THE REBELS TO THE REST OF US TO SPREAD THE MESSAGE OF THE TRUTH. I think my faith in humanity just died a little.
Nutshell time. The Matrix (Note: ONLY THE FIRST ONE) was a decent movie AT BEST, and most certainly not a message to humanity from more humanity that we need to start resisting reality. End of nutshell, moving on.
#2: Titanic
... I take it back. Can I go back to Matrix? Please? No? Shit...
Alright, here we go. Titanic told the story of the sinking of the Titanic in a more dramatic and personal way then had ever before been attempted. Captained by James "Mad As A Hatter" Cameron, this movie could have been an absolute masterpeice...
... If it weren't for the fact that it would have been better if written by a 12 year old. The writing on this movie is absolutely painful, and the poor acting only serves to highlight the agony. When the movie isn't being overdramatic and badly written, it's deviating from the main plot by showing us a bunch of nerds playing in a submarine.
The worst part, though? The bit near the end where Rose goes on for what feels like an hour of promising that she'll never let go of Jack... RIGHT BEFORE SHE DOES JUST THAT.
I'm not saying it's the worst movie ever, but... It's pretty bloody close.
Oh... oh God... no, please, don't make me - Oh, Jesus, put down that gun! No! AHHHHHH!!!
As you might be able to tell from the above passage, I have a certain reluctance to touch this movie with so much as a ten foot pole. You may have also noticed that there's a theme from the last two movies? Can you tell? Here's a clue.
Titani-er, Avatar told the story of the sinking of the- um, environmentalist Smurf things in a more dramatic and personal way then had ever before been attempted. Piloted by James "Deja-Vu" Cameron, this movie could have been an absolute masterpeice...
Catching on?
This movie suffers from many of the same problems that plague Titanic, except for the fact that it wasn't even a remotely original plot. It's Dances with Wolves. In Space. With Smurfs. And it cost some 400 million dollars to produce. Okay, yes, it was one of the most gorgeous things I've seen on film, but the rest of the movie was BALLS and the fact that it's as popular as it is fills me with RAGE.
So that's the Top 7 Most Overrated Movies list. I hope you enjoyed it, and thank you for reading.
Hey B, I have seen some of the films mentioned and I think I agree with most of the comments for the films that I have seen on your list. I do though love CEOTTK, then thinking about it couldn't quantity why but I do.
ReplyDeleteThinking about it some more though, it occurred to me that one way to judge how great a film is, is to do so with hindsight - the test of time so to speak and this is for the simple reason that any film is by its nature a product of it's own time and so there is a natural tendency to reflect the social, political and economic attitudes of its time and this is not necessarily deliberate.
Watch Ben Hur again and note when it was made, not too many years post WW2, Communism was a major concern, American industry was booming, notice how red the Roman Uniforms are and the film is arguably a self indulgent patriotic tub thumper.
Close Encounters made in the mid/late 1970s, Cold War possibly at its height, spies everywhere, distrust again between East and West, Spielberg (unwittingly perhaps) gives us a glimpse of two races making contact and discovering that there is hope...
The Matrix made at the time that the Internet really starts to hit public consciousness and then argues the case about what is reality. I don't buy the religion slant in the last two films and am not sure that they should have been made tbh. Franchise milking perhaps?
Titanic was, it has to be said rubbish. Saw and Avatar I haven't seen.
As for the Dark Knight - yes I think you got that one absolutely spot on. If HL had not died at the same time of the film release then there is no way it would have done as well as it did. If anything I found that they tried to do far too much with the film and it was around an hour too long. Ledger's performance was great without doubt and he made the Joker his own - but the film wasn't good enough to make me want to buy it unlike Batman Begins which did.