Legion World Forums LEGION COMPANION The Anywhere Machine Overrated concepts

I am convinced!

Climbing the corporate ladder can be overrated. Not everyone is made for that life.

I'm already having premonitions of the new Star Wars film being overrated. I don't know. Blockbusters and franchises in general just aren't that appealing to me. I always wonder about the other authors/creators who are kept out of the spotlight when they might deserve it: all because marketers just want to feed us the same type of thing we were consuming 30+ years ago.

I especially dislike prequels. Well, I don't automatically dislike all of them, but there are only so many things that can be done with a prequel because they are bound by the confines of the original movie or work.

That's how I feel, too. Of course, when it comes to Star Wars, a lot of younger fans did get to watch the prequels before they saw the originals. I never even made it through the first prequel. It looked pretty, but I was bored to tears.

Indeed. The Star Wars prequels took place enough time before the original movies that many surprises could still have been sprung; and Anakin's journey to becoming Darth Vader could have been an intriguing story. I lay the blame for the prequels' lack of success on other factors besides them being prequels.

I actually saw the The Phantom Menace in theaters when I was 3 years old and remember actually enjoying it a lot.

Obviously, when I rewatched the prequels when I was older, I saw how bad they really were, especially when compared with the original trilogy. I imagine many kids who grew up watching the Star Wars prequels might have less disdain for them than someone who watched the original trilogy as they came out in the 80's.

As far as the new movie, I'm pretty apathetic toward it so far. What I've seen isn't bad per se, but nothing about strikes me as something I absolutely must see. As is typical of any J.J. Abrams project, it looks flashy, but feels so empty.

3 years old!

I feel old.

This discussion makes me realize - good special effects are overrated when not accompanied by a compelling story or good directing and acting.

Geezer!



I actually find the original trilogy's effects hold up better than those in the prequels. Practical effects blend into a scene better than CGI in most cases.

Thirded, and add Wilco to that list.

I swear, I remember nothing about Wilco, except that they're less memorable than The Killers. But only because The Killers have a much more annoying lead singer.

Someone must remind me: Did the prequels keep that sort of muddy, dirty look in any of the design? That was one thing which made the original movie so refreshing to watch. Critics commented on it, and even ten-year-old me noticed that Luke's landspeeder looked as aged and dirty as my Dad's beloved Studebaker.

I remember the prequels being a bit "shinier".

Add My Chemical Romance to that list too.

My Chemical Romance is the only act I am familiar with, and I strongly agree they are overrated.

I have a cousin who loves them, though. But then, our musical tastes are worlds apart.

I hope Pov doesn't read the last two posts. He loves MCR. LOL

Then again, it'd serve him right. Damn hippie.

Oops.

I have to agree to disagree on that, Cleome. I think Brandon Flowers's Bowie/Ferry imitations are the lesser of two evils, compared to Jeff Tweedy's All-American little-boy whine.

I think Lady Gaga was one of the most overblown pop acts of the late 2000's. I remember how people said she was the next Bowie or Freddy Mercury.

Gaga is damn talented though. I think we might still see her very best in the years to come.

I like MCR and the Killers. I don't love them like some people, but a lot of their songs are solid.

I have a hard time connecting with any new music honestly. There's probably about 3-4 songs a year that I actually go out of my way to listen to. Lately Chris Stapleton has been a pleasant surprise.

My two cents on Gaga:

I freely admit I fell for the hype and ended up witnessing an artistic trainwreck. That said, her first album, "The Fame" and the EP that followed, "The Fame Monster", both hold up well. Even her next two albums each have a few diamonds among the dreck. What finally turned me off for good was her reinvention as an old-standards singer. I understand she was deeply in debt and had to do something to reverse her commercial fortunes, but to me it betrayed her as a philistine.

Funnily enough, I feel the same way about Bowie's mid-70s cocaine phase -- "Pin Ups", "Diamond Dogs", and especially "Young Americans" are all shitty, overrated albums IMO; ironically, though, the album that resulted from the peak of Bowie's coke consumption, "Station to Station" is a near-masterpiece, the only duff track being "Golden Years", which sounds like an outtake from "Young Americans". From there came the often-brilliant Berlin Trilogy, and the musically excellent but lyrically suspect "Scary Monsters", after which he went totally mainstream with "Let's Dance" (talk about overrated) and he lost me forever.

I actually thought MCR's early stuff had potential, back when they had more of a punk rock/90's hardcore influence. They became too pop-rock though and that wasn't my style.

The thing is that they were all saying that before anyone here had heard a thing. I've made a point not to have heard anything of her at all, simply due to the pathetic hyping.

Good point, Thoth. Hype can, indeed, be counter-productive. Ironically (but thread-appropriately enough), I resisted listening to Wilco for years because of all the hype they had in the early 2000s as being noble suffering artists who stood up to the big, bad music industry machine...and when I finally gave them a fair chance recently, their music turned out to be pure self-indulgent, pretentious, art-hole studio-wank. Which was exactly what I assumed it had to be in the early 2000s.

Same. I find that a lot of "artists" now have songs with vapid, shallow lyrics, which make it hard for me to fall in love with them. I prefer songs I can really relate to on an emotional level

My problem with modern pop music is less with the shallow lyrics (pop music has generally always been somewhat vapid) and more with how dull the actual beats and melodies are. If The Weeknd is what the epitome of 2015's pop scene is, that's frankly depressing.