Good Fiction that You Hate

[Kingmaker]

This was prompted by watching the Nostalgia Critic's top villain songs. Specifically, He Had It Coming, from Chicago. While I think that Chicago was probably a good musical movie, I still hate it with the fiery intensity of a thousand flaming milk duds. Why? I'll get into that below.

The idea of this thread is to discuss works of fiction that are generally regarded as good (not merely popular or entertaining)--and that perhaps you even intellectually regard as good--but you still cannot stand. Also offer reasons as to why you hate it or think it is overrated, if you care to.
The two that immediately come to mind for me are:

Chicago (the movie, not the musical or the more controversial city). This one is related to personal trauma. Back in 2003, I was flying from Chicago to Anchorage, and the in-flight movie was Chicago. Not so bad, right? Wrong. I was connecting through San Francisco, putting my total flight time at over seven hours. Plus a four hour layover in San Fran thanks to a delayed flight. And save for the layover, Chicago was playing on loop constantly, using external speakers rather than headphones so there was no way to ignore it. As a thirteen year old who hated musicals, being forced to watch Chicago 4 1/2 times in the span of 12 hours was guaranteed to drive me crazy.

The Watchmen (the graphic novel). This is one I really can't explain. I'm not comic fan, but I read them occasionally. At the prompting of a friend, I tried to read the Watchmen in preparation for the release of the movie (which I enjoyed a lot). However, despite several attempts, I was unable to keep reading (I hit about 40% before quitting for good). I was bored throughout, and found it more pretentious than deep. Of course, I've had similar (though more extreme) reactions to other work by Alan Moore, so yeah.

So, has anyone else had similar reactions to popular works of fiction?

[Artemis]

Kingmaker - That's actually really interesting - I've found that Watchmen ages really well, in that the first reading is always a bit confusing and disorienting, but gets clearer and more enjoyable (but paradoxically more complex) the more times you read it. However, I can completely understand that it's hard to get into it, and sometimes a bad reading experience can sully all future attempts. Also, I'm not sure how old you were when you first read it, but I think the book requires a certain age to really get it - this age might be 18 for some people, but I think it's closer to 25 for most. I read Watchmen three times before I finally felt like I got it, and I was 20 at the time, but there are still great whacks of it I completely don't understand. There's a difference, I think, between getting and understanding, if you can dig it.

As for Alan Moore's writing being pretentious, that's a word I hear thrown around a LOT lately and (if you'll allow me a brief soapbox moment) I think we could use a little more pretentiousness in the world. It's a lot better than the alternative. Moore is certainly pretentious - he sets out to make something complex and weird and fucked up, and he expects people to read it. The thing is, people do. Pretentiousness can be a good thing, if you aim it properly. If you still want to give the old man a try, I recommend two more down-to-Earth stories he did for DC, these being The Killing Joke (Batman) and For the Man Who Has Everything (Superman). Both are examples of just simple, good comics writing, without any of what I think turned you off about Watchmen.

As for me... Harry Potter. Now, it's not that I hate the series - far from it. Anything that gets kids, especially American kids, reading books is inherently a good thing. The fact that they're reading fantastic, mythical fiction with a large group of characters, an overarching plot, and so many classic character and narrative archetypes you could (and I think some colleges do) teach a class on it, is even better. I am glad the books exist.

But god, for the life of me I just can't get through the fourth book.

I don't know what it is, either! I enjoy the writing, I'm engaged in the plot, but there's just a point where, if I set the book down to do something else, I know in my heart of heart's I won't be able to pick it up again. I've tried reading The Goblet of Fire twice - I'm not cruel enough to try it a third time. I've finished longer (Under the Dome, Stephen King), stranger (Blindsight, Peter Watts) and sadder (The Road, Cormac McCarthy) stories just fine, but there's just a hitch in tGoF that trips me up every time.

So now, I understand most Harry Potter jokes and references. I can even make a few. But I don't get a lot of them. Also, I can never keep it straight which Weasley twin died and which one lived.

[Shroom Man 777]

Gundam? A lot of anime? Naruto and stuff? One Piece? Just because of how people seemed to regard it, how anime fans regard their stuff. Ugh, I dislike a lot of these things that seem very faddish. These very "rad" and "cool" and "stick it" things seem to cause some kind of innate gut reaction in me that makes me haet that kind of stuff that people tell me is cool. Which is probably why I like things everyone else thinks is shit.

GO SPEED RACER!

[Shroom Man 777]

I did like the animated rendition of For The Man Who Has Everything. But then again, I'm a sucker for Bruce Timm's DCAU.

As for Harry Potter, at first I hated it because it seemed so faddish and shit. And, also, because my stupid Christian school said it was demonic/satanic and shit. I didn't buy into the satanic/demonic shit, but I thought it was still shitty kiddy crap. Because I was a teenager and teenagers think that way!

But then, some time later, with nothing to do, I eventually ended up reading the book. They were pretty okay, so now I think Harry Potter's pretty cool. EXPELLIBRAINIUS!

Pretentiousness is kind of okay. It depends, though. Because people who act pretentious, but don't present their pretentious ways slickly, can still come off as pretentious and meh. Pretentious people who have the presentation skills to present their pretentiousness in a really cool way, on the other hand, make me happy. I mean, man, I liked the Watchmeng movie and I'm a total whore for shit like Blade Runner. Were they pretentious? I guess so! What other things can we list as "pretentious"?

[Artemis]

Said by Warren Ellis, one of my favorite writers of anything.

"We're deathly afraid of that stabbing word "pretentious," the word that students use to curse each other's ambition. It's a young person's word, a shortcut-to-thinking word. I'm a big fan of pretension. It means "an aspiration or intention that may or may not reach fulfillment." It doesn't mean failing upward. It means trying to exceed your grasp. Which is how things grow."

[Kingmaker]

I think I mean pretentious differently than you guys do. To my mind, pretentiousness comes when something tries to be deep, or complex, or "challenging" (what the fuck does that even mean? And that's a rhetorical question), and fails. Whether it is wrapped up in opaque symbolism merely for the sake of being artsy, or simply has an undeservedly condescending tone, pretension is at its core, a failed attempt a superiority accompanied by a sort of fatuous smugness. If I felt the Watchmen had succeeded (whatever that means), it wouldn't be pretentious. After all, you aren't pretentious if you really are better than everyone else. Neverwhere isn't pretentious. Citizen Kane isn't pretentious. American Beauty is pretentious. His Dark Materials is pretentious. Of course, these are my opinions and putting them forth has frequently elicited a response of "you just don't get it". Yeah, I didn't do so well in Literary Analysis.

Which is not to say that just because I find a work pretentious, I will dislike it. As I mentioned in the Book thread, I think that a lot of China Mieville's writing is extremely pretentious and yet I still like it (for the most part). No, what killed Watchmen for me was that I found it boring. It wasn't a matter of getting it or not getting it. I found myself unable to care about the events playing out, and I was completely uninterested in the characters. And that's the thing. I can and have read through some pretty awful things just to see how they end, but Watchmen didn't even have the appeal of watching a train wreck. It was just boring. Did I mention that I was bored?

GO SPEED RACER!

I don't think Speed Racer (the movie, at least--I never saw the anime) gets enough love. It was far and away the most entertaining thing I have ever seen.

My reaction to Harry Potter was always kind of on the high end of "meh". I mean, they're good, but they aren't that good. I'd put them on the same level with something like the Dresden Files (the exact same level, in fact. They're both a genre [boarding school/private detective] meets urban fantasy, and both have a wizard protagonist named Harry). Good entertainment with some worthwhile themes, but certainly nothing to be blown away by, writing-wise. Except that one scene in White Night. That was fucking awesome, and is up there with Fingolfin fighting Morgoth and the Gatling duel in Snow Crash for my favorite "awesome" moments in writing.

[Artemis]

To my mind, pretentiousness comes when something tries to be deep, or complex, or "challenging" (what the fuck does that even mean? And that's a rhetorical question), and fails. Whether it is wrapped up in opaque symbolism merely for the sake of being artsy, or simply has an undeservedly condescending tone, pretension is at its core, a failed attempt a superiority accompanied by a sort of fatuous smugness. If I felt the Watchmen had succeeded (whatever that means), it wouldn't be pretentious.

I know you asked the question about "challenging" rhetorically, but, what the fuck, let's have some rhetoric about it anyway :p

I think what you're describing is pretentiousness coupled with poor storytelling. I think EVERYTHING should try to be deep, complex, and challenging, at least one some level. It shouldn't all try to unseat the Epic of Gilgamesh as the cornerstone of western literature, but it should try to carve out something that hasn't been carved out before. It's not that it has to be "tough" or "impenetrable" like a lot of people think - it's just a simple matter of raising your fist to the metric shit tons of everything that's ever been made before, and going "maybe this isn't new, or better, or even all that new a take on things, but it's MY take on things, and dammit, my take is worth reading/viewing/playing!"

I find people only call something "pretentious" if it doesn't work. When it does, we call it "ambitious." Your critique of Watchmen being opaque is fair, and I know plenty of people who'd agree with you, but if the story feels condescending, well, look at the characters that are telling the story - with a few exceptions, they OUGHT to be condescending! I guess another way of looking at it is that, for you, the ambition got in the way of telling an effective story. And again, that's a valid point. I just wish people would say stuff like THAT more often.

[Shroom Man 777]

I'd actually agree with your definition of pretentious, Kingmaker. When someone goes for artsy-fartsy and fails, you go *snort* "what a pretentious pile of crap" but when someone tries something deep and cerebral and succeed you go "woah, that was totally deep!" and shit and you offer accolades and stuff - you don't call it pretentious, but instead feel like your brain got bigger or something and had some sort of awesome intellectual experience. I mean, some movies can be obviously pretentious - but also, at the same time, entertaining and great because the pretentious crap is presented so amusingly.

I didn't find the Watchmen movie boring though. I loved it. Just listening to people monologue, and do stuff without a solidified plot, with just meandering and Rorschaching and rainy neon cities and old music and stuff.

Reminded me of BRADE RUNNER.

So, what other works do you find to be pretentious?

Lesse... Blade Runner was artistic. Definitely pretentious, but the pretense was just drowned in the beautiful presentation - the cityscape, the visuals, the synthesizer music, etc.

Pan's Labyrinth was also artistic. Fairy tale story, right? But the fairy tale is presented in such a wondrous fashion, and the "real life" moments were presented with visceral violence. The foreign language dialogue was definitely a plus.

Fight Club. Very much pretentious, but also very silly and fun due to its presentation. The pretense comes very much from the pubescent teen wankarchist shits who "rail against the materialistic urban culture" or whatever while simultaneously taking a fucking Hollywood movie as gospel.

Danny Boyle's movie seem to have lots of pretense in them - or is that really pretense, or just the silly camera angles that always happen whenever his movies are nearing the ending scenes? 28 Days Later seemed like a "artsy" zombie movie, same with Sunshine being an "artsy" version of Armageddon/Deep Impact and stuff. But he does it pretty competently, so it's a good ride.

The Matrix Sequels. Very much pretentious when everyone's spending all sorts of time philosophizin' nonsense.

I'd say Alejandro Jodorowsky is pretty pretentious. El Topo sure was. But, Jesus, it was also pretty damn incoherent and weird. So whatever pretenses it had was, simply, overwhelmed by the insane sights in that movie and so it was no longer pretentious and was, instead, just damn incoherent and weird.

On the other hand, M. Night Shalymanwhatever movies like Signs just totally fails when their ending turns out to be bullcrap. Is that what he intended? Meh.



I guess works are pretentious when they don't really convey what they're trying to convey to you? An attempt at artistry that fails, because you are not wowed or engrossed or entertained, and it does nothing to you?

[Artemis]

The lesson here, I think is this: Stories are just idea delivery systems. Very good ones (the best, I think) and no less wondrous for it, but that is what they are, no more no less. However, if the delivery system fails, what you were trying to deliver fails as well. The story has to work, or your ideas never get where they're supposed to go.

[Shroom Man 777]

Da, comrade. That is why the delivery system has to successfully make it from launch phase up to atmospheric reentry and if the MIRV bus does not deploy right, then you cannot deliver effectively the thermonuclear -

Wait, what were we talking about?

[Artemis]

Boobs, I think. At least, that's what my brain defaults to.

[Shroom Man 777]

Man, I wonder what PREGRIN will make of this topic. We've had similar discussions before, even a big forum argument on something like this (in Comix).

I don't think Speed Racer (the movie, at least--I never saw the anime) gets enough love. It was far and away the most entertaining thing I have ever seen.

CHIM CHIM!

Truly, man. Jesus. It was awesome. The Wachowski Brothers redeemed themselves for the failure of the Matrix sequels with SPEED RACER.

[Booted Vulture]

Blade Runner for me. Maybe because I'd read the book before hand or seen all the things inspired by it since. But yeah, I was bored and it didn't make me give a shit about Deckard or Roy Batty. Batty may have had a good death speech but its less awesome when you remember the book had Deckard get all stressed out and parnoid about facing Batty but then just lasered him in the face in about second.

They also cut out the electric sheep.

Less extremely but also; The Dark Knight I enjoy watching it but come-one. Heath Ledger's oscar winning performance is just make up and a raspy voice. It's not really that hard to play creepy and it felt like Batman was a second stringer in his own movie. That's why I like Batman Begins more. It's actually about Batman. Plus sophisticated Ra's Al Ghul made a better villain than the Joker owing to the connection between him and bruce. Two Face would have worked better if he'd been a villain for more than three consecutive seconds.

[Vagrant Orpheus]

The Lord of the Rings films. Highly overrated as far as I am concerned. They looked nice, but to me they just bored me to tears. I do not like slinging the word 'pretentious around', and I don't think these films were pretentious, but I think that as "masterpiece film conversions" of "possibly the most highly regarded piece of literature ever" they did come across as striving to hold to something that they simply could never actually reach. Whilst I know that the visuals were excellent, the actors were impressive and the script very good for what is the pruning of a giant fuck off book, they never grabbed me.

Also, fifteen endings. Fuck you Return of the King,

[Booted Vulture]

Also, fifteen endings. Fuck you Return of the King,

Oh god yes. It would have been hilarious audience trolling though if they had ended it with the first ending you know when Frodo and Sam are trapped on a tiny rock surrounded by lava. (Convection? What's that?) And Frodo says. "This is the end!"

Roll credits there please.

Maybe show the eagle flyby behind the credits or something.

[Shroom Man 777]

Is Johnny Depp a good fiction that I hate? I know this is pretty out of the topic, but sometimes the formula of Johnny Depp + weirdo movie premise = awesome is getting borings. I mean, come on, it's been going on from Edward Scissorhands - which was from the nineties - and now in the 2010s we're still seeing Johnny Depp in weirdo movie premises that result in awesome. I have a healthy respect for the guy as an actor, since I love Jack Sparrow and shit, and I guess if I see Alice and Wonderland I'll probably shit golden goose eggs too just like in the true story it's based on, but I can't help but feel kinda 'meh' at another surreal colorful take on so-and-so starring Johnny Depp plus so-and-so other secondary star cast guys.

Come to think about it, I might be starting to agree with Booted on TDK. It was an awesome film upon first viewing, very HOLY SHIT and shit since I gobbled the promotion like a fish drinking water, and I still think it's a damn good movie. But, looking back at it, I think Batman Begins was a superior superhero movie without the bigass pretension of being making some great statement or shit - it was simply the telling of the story of Bruce Wayne and how Batman began and shit. The story was thus tighter, and far more personal, and we got to see Batman batman.

Is it spelled pretentious or pretensious?

I think Quetin Tarantino films are a tad bit pretentious - but he does it with so much extraneous ridiculous bullshit dialogue and scenarios that they somehow get the pass for their ridiculous irreverent bullcrap. Man. BASTERDS. BEARRR JEWWWWW.

[Kingmaker]

I'd actually agree with your definition of pretentious, Kingmaker. When someone goes for artsy-fartsy and fails, you go *snort* "what a pretentious pile of crap" but when someone tries something deep and cerebral and succeed you go "woah, that was totally deep!" and shit and you offer accolades and stuff - you don't call it pretentious, but instead feel like your brain got bigger or something and had some sort of awesome intellectual experience.

I find people only call something "pretentious" if it doesn't work.

Of course. By (my) definition, pretension is inherently am ambitious failure. However, pretension is about more than mere failed ambition. Many things strive for greatness and fail. This doesn't necessarily make them bad, just not... great. I think the real issue is failed ambition combined with an certain attitude of smugness. It isn't just that a work fails in its ambition, it's that it is delivered in such a way that it is imbued with an entirely unmerited self-confidence. This crops up a lot in works that try to be didactic. Unsurprisingly, most of them come off as pretentious because most writers who are wont to try this are unable to grasp that what they have to say isn't nearly as deep or interesting or novel as they think it is.

Moreover, I think a work can be ambitious (and fail) without necessarily possessing the unmerited arrogance of a pretentious work. An example of successful work that was not at all arrogant was Neverwhere. Another is the Diamond Age. On the failure side, I think Anathem was an extremely ambitious book that failed to meet expectations but wasn't arrogant.

Another example of a work I found pretentious is Newton's Wake, by Ken Macleod (unrelated to the above rant, just popped into my head).

going "maybe this isn't new, or better, or even all that new a take on things, but it's MY take on things, and dammit, my take is worth reading/viewing/playing!"

Except, I think that often, the attitude of writers is less that and more "what I have is new, better, contains ideas you've never even contemplated. It is not merely worth reading, but is necessary to rise above your ignorant duncehood." And you know what? If that's really the case, good for you! But it probably isn't.

I didn't find the Watchmen movie boring though. I loved it. Just listening to people monologue, and do stuff without a solidified plot, with just meandering and Rorschaching and rainy neon cities and old music and stuff.

Well, I was talking about the graphic novel, actually. I (and I can't mention this around live people for fear of being assaulted) thought the movie was much better than the comic.

[Siege]

The anime Hellsing comes to mind. I've been told by any number of people that it's quite good, but it simply bores me to tears. I find the characters terminally dull, the animation at many points (but especially during the many, many conversations) is anything but animated, and the mockery it makes of how the UK is supposed to look according to its Japanese makers simply weirds me out. Random anime fights between random anime mooks take place in random anime buildings; everything appears interchangeable and the result is an utterly dull, utterly forgettable piece of junk that if you ask me is vastly overrated.

[Dakarne]

Hellsing is only good in the OVAs or Manga. The only redeeming feature about the original anime is ALEXANDER ANDERSON!

Quite a considerable chunk of anime is impregnable for me, however, and I think it's because I just don't get it. There's something immensely bizarre about Japanese culture that doesn't preclude it from making things that I enjoy, but does in fact mean that the culture often produces things that I think are just plain fucking weird. Moon Phase, for one instance. I can't honestly say I hate it, though, as there are very few pieces of fiction I do actively hate that don't deserve it; I just find it rather unrelentingly strange.

Other than that, most of the World of Darkness by White Wolf. One of the most popular tabletop gaming lines out there, and each individual book seems to have more outright wangst on its own than the combined Harry Potter and Twilight sections on fanfiction.net being played to Linkin Park's Crawling. If I wanted to play something that bleak, I'd play through the bloody Tomb of Horrors.

[speaker-to-trolls]

This was prompted by watching the Nostalgia Critic's top villain songs. Specifically, He Had It Coming, from Chicago. While I think that Chicago was probably a good musical movie, I still hate it with the fiery intensity of a thousand flaming milk duds. Why? I'll get into that below.

I'm glad the Critic did that video, that song at the beginning of Muppets Treasure Island is boss and I'm glad to have been reminded of it.

I can think of a few things which are very popular and acclaimed which I really did not like, if not hated. Oddly on pretty much opposite ends of the scale.
On the one hand I have Tengen Toppen Guren Lagann, or that anime with the man in the open shirt and giant sunglasses shouting all the time. I hate that thing now and will hate it forever since I first saw it when an idiot friend of mine, who was drunk at the time, forced me and another friend to watch it, very loud, in Japanese, in the corner of my living room when we could have been talking to some of my sisters hot friends.
George, if you're reading this, I do resent that and haven't forgiven you for it, who am I?
I'm sure it has its charm, and I like some other flamboyant nonsense so I can hardly complain about that, but on the other hand... It's so over the top it's probably hit escape velocity, and maybe this was a consequence of only seeing it in japanese, but Kamina is an asshole. All he seems to do is shout, make pronouncements of his own greatness, abuse his friends and allies and inexplicably kill huge numbers of monsters due to... i don't know, 'manly fighting spirit' or something that probably doesn't translate very well. And shout. No one in their world seems to have an inside voice.

On the other hand there's Mad Men, which is the pride and joy of tv critics everywhere, but I just can't get into it. I think it is very well written, has rounded, complex characters and everything else necessary for a good show, but there's just something about it which leaves me unable to connect with it, i think the main guy is just too understated, to the point where he seems frustratingly detatched from everyone and everything else in the world. I don't exactly hate it but I find it very frustrating to watch.

[Magister Militum]

Blade Runner Heath Ledger's oscar winning performance is just make up and a raspy voice.

You are dead to me...



Fanboyism aside, I'll throw in anime in general as something I cannot stand. I don't know if its the case that I'm not exposed to enough of it, or if it's a case of culture shock, but I feel like my brain is starting to melt after being exposed to it for a prolonged period. Really, there have been only two anime series that I've found to be good and entertaining: Mobile Suit Gundam and, to a much greater extent, Legend of the Galactic Heroes. In the case of the latter, it appeals to me because its extremely well written and feels less animeish, which lends it to be some of the best science fiction I've seen in a while.

[Ford Prefect]

The anime Hellsing comes to mind.

High five, brosef. Hellsing is almost universally terrible; about the only thing you can say is good about it is that the mangaka has a pretty interesting art style, but it's largely wasted.

[Booted Vulture]

Blade Runner Heath Ledger's oscar winning performance is just make up and a raspy voice.

You are dead to me...

I don't know what you're talking about! Heath Ledger wasn't in Blade Runner...

(seriously though chaps, I am slightly confused.)

[Destructionator]

I've heard people sing praises about Cowboy Bebop and Firefly, and I gave them a try once and just ended up like "wtf". (Hilariously, I borrowed them from the same friend, who loved them, and Hellsing too.)

Hate might be too strong of a word; I just don't get the appeal.

[Magister Militum]

Blade Runner Heath Ledger's oscar winning performance is just make up and a raspy voice.

You are dead to me...

I don't know what you're talking about! Heath Ledger wasn't in Blade Runner...

(seriously though chaps, I am slightly confused.)

Gah, stupid editing errors. Replace Blade Runner with The Dark Knight.