What film, show or game that is not necessarily 'underated' didn't have the level of social impact it deserved.
What film, show or game that is not necessarily 'underated' didn't have the level of social impact it deserved.
What's the antithesis of Arrested Development, Firefly or The Big Lebowski? Those may never have 'found their audience' but over time seemed to recognised by everyone. What are the deep cuts that you liked but it feels like everyone has completely forgotten they even existed.
Dredd, highly praised by fan and critics; Also a recent one Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves no buzz but high praise overall.
Better Off Ted is still my favorite sitcom. Corporate came along and tried to pick up the mantle, but I still prefer Ted.
I really enjoyed Equilibrium (2002). Is it derivative of 1984 and Fahrenheit 451? Absolutely. But so was V for Vendetta.
It's a B level film that still packs a punch today, particularly in a dystopian era of politics. The message of learning to connect continues to be relevant in a hyper connected, but shallow relational landscape.
The Man from Earth is not forgotten, it has never been recognized. I've never seen such a great movie. The plot: a bunch of techers talking. That's it. But that talk is mindblowing.
I'm going to throw out 2 series that were canceled early that I'm still salty about: The River that was on track to rival Lost in quality, and Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles which is another case where Summer Glau got screwed. Lena Heady has said if SCC didn't get canceled, she wouldn't have gotten Game of Thrones, which hits a lot different now than 10 years ago when GoT was good.
Star Wars Galaxies. It really was really lightning in a bottle. No other game has come close to recreating the social player-driven sandbox experience that was SWG. This was the first MMORPG I played to feature a classless build system and I haven’t played another game which does it quite as well. Honourable mention goes to the Jump to Lightspeed expansion, truly the coolest expansion for any game I’ve ever experienced. We will never be able to recreate the experience of SWG again, the culture of gaming has changed too much. It was a game where you simply couldn’t solo the entire game or hang around with a dungeon finder or anything like that. You had to interact with other people - you had to kick back and hang out in bars together, you had to ask someone to help you change your hair colour or style, you had to ask doctors to heal you, or tailors to make clothes for you in a style you liked, or settle for off-the-rack fashions bought from player-owned stores. Players would also take the role of bounty hunters to hunt down criminal players for credits. You’d get to know a lot of the people you shared a server with, you’d remember who was fun to team up with, or who saved your ass, or who gave you some buffs, etc. and it really made the experience unforgettable.
The first few Splinter Cell games should have had a more-lasting impact on gaming. Proper stealth gameplay in which lighting mattered for the first time (revolutionary), and the Spies vs. Mercs multiplayer still ranks among my favorite multiplayer games of all time. Then they made it into a (still good, but not the same) action series before letting it die completely.
Death Note, specifically for non-anime folks. It's really the only anime that I think even anime haters can love.
While the quality is uneven, it's still the #37 show on IMDb last I checked, and most people have never even considered watching it.
No spoilers please, in case anyone who reads this decides to give it a try.
Also, Steins;Gate.
Anarchy Online. The first sci-fi MMO, it was basically an unofficial Dune Online when it first released. Lots of very cool concepts, and is one of the deepest MMORPGs out there - personally the only MMO I know of with more depth is EVE Online. There are mysteries about the game mechanics that the player base don’t have an answer to even 22 years after the game’s release.
Comparable to EverQuest, Asheron’s Call, Dark Age of Camelot and even Star Wars Galaxies, all of which have a pretty thriving server emulation communities, nothing like that has ever really materialised for Anarchy Online, and while the official servers are still running, it seems like it’s only a matter of time before they’re turned off once and for all.
If you want to check it out, you can play the base game for free as long as you like with no real downsides except lack of access to expansion content. It’s very quiet though, compared to the hay day, and the economy is hilariously broken, but still an interesting peek into 23 year old MMORPG design.
Beyond good and evil.
It's sales were poor but the reviews were great. A fantastic adventure game with a great story and a world that felt so incredibly lived in. It had a bunch of interesting mechanics that focused on stealth rather than confrontation.
Playing it now the scope feels pretty small but it's still a very tight experience.
Vinland Saga taught me that being kind makes me a stronger man and having no hate for anyone, even those who have wronged me will make me a happier person.
It definitely did make a very big impact on many people, and it's where all the "i have no enemies" memes originate from. But I do wish It had an even larger impact than it did as it's an answer to the constant fighting and arguments that has taken over many of our lives.
Clerks: The Animated Series
It was a show pitched to ABC and was cancelled after only a few episodes. It’s a masterpiece of adult animated comedy that I consider far superior to Family Guy and the Simpsons. It’s not on Rick & Morty’s level but almost nothing is, however I’d confidently place this show in between R&M and the other shows I’ve watched as far as ranking.
You may watch this show and not enjoy it, that’s okay. For me though, this show was a big part of my childhood and defined a lot of my humor as an adult. The way the jokes are structured and even some of the phrases said in the show are still in my vocabulary to this day. I thank the writers for putting together so much comedy gold in a show that barely saw the light of day.
It’s absolutely worth watching at least the first episode if you’ve never seen it before. If you do, please let me know if you liked it as much as I did. I’d be interested to hear if you didn’t find it enjoyable as well.
There was a string of time between 2006 and 2009 where there were AMAZING new long format TV shows coming on... and promptly dying on the vine after a year due to bad advertising or ratings chasing.
Kings was a great TV show that deserved 4 more seasons.
Jericho Was an amazing show, that got dumped by Network after the first season.. and the fans were so infuriated that they crowdsourced funding to send over twenty tons of nuts to CBS in protest, Which forced them to greenlight a second season for like..5 or 6 episodes (first season was 22 episodes, as comparison) and left it hanging on a painfully huge cliffhanger. before cancelling it again.. Netflix even came forward and offered to buy the series and continue it on Netflix (Which all the actors were 100% on board with), and as a final FUCK YOU to the fans, CBS refused. They hated the show, tried to fuck over its second season hard, and hated the fans... and still refused to sell the rights to someone who would let it flourish.
God, typing this out has made me realize how irrationally angry I still am at CBS over the absolute fuckery they pulled with that show that I cant even think of the other shows at the moment.
Go watch Jericho. Its still a fucking awesome show, despite how much the c-suite hated it.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again,
Only two seasons and it ended before it ever had a chance to get bad. The acting is phenomenal, sets are well designed, the background music choices are very unique for what you would expect in that time period. But it works! Cannot recommended it enough! If you can find it or “acquire” online I think it would be worth your time.
Network wasn't underrated but has felt more relevant every decade but has been talked about less and less.
Showgirls tells a compelling story about poverty, fame, power, misogyny, and abuse. This film is severely underrated but also it is forgotten by most people who do not go looking for the lowest rated movies to watch ironically.
The second season of Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex was really good and I find the story centered around a refugee crisis to be a much more compelling one. I feel like this season gets talked about less than the first and the movies, which are generally seen as masterpieces.
You didn't list books but I wanted to mention that Player Piano is one of the most precient books I have read and was written back in the 50s. Vonnegut is of course a well known and regarded writer but you'll rarely see his first novel topping lists even among just his own works, and so it doesn't get read and discussed as much as it should.
Great question btw, OP
Darklands (Video game)
It came out in 1992. Set in the 15th century Holy Roman Empire / Germany. It's a 4-character party isometric game that featuring real time combat, party members who aged and would die from old age, perma death, and fantastical elements based on historic folklore, Catholic saints, and alchemy.
I grew up playing the 3D version of Centipede on the Sega Dreamcast. The game was a fundamental part of my childhood.
For whatever reason, I've never spoken to even a single other person who has ever played it (aside from my brother).
The level design was crazy. Tons of replayability, a low barrier to entry, but so difficult in the later worlds I never got close to finishing it. Soundtrack and sound effects I never got tired of hearing. Yet, no one seems to have heard of it.
I never heard anything about ‘Crashing’ on HBO before just stumbling on it in the HBO app.
It’s a pretty funny show about a standup comedian trying to make it in NY while dealing with a divorce. It kind of feels like Louie if the protagonist had a positive outlook on life.
It’s not the greatest show ever, but it blows my mind that I’d never heard of it at all
The Nice Guys deserved more recognition for sure.
It had little no advertisement at all and it was overshadowed by a lot of other movies that came out that year: La La Land, Deadpool, Rogue One, Split, The Founder, Captain Fantastic... These are just some of the big titles that came out in 2016.
The only reason I saw it was because they put it on at my local movie theater one evening that I had nothing better to do: I went in with low expectations and came out having seen one of my top favorite movies ever.Inglorious Basterds. This movie is well-loved and has widespread appeal, but I feel like it doesn’t really have the respect that it deserves. I feel like Pulp Fiction, Django Unchained, Kill Bill and even Reservoir Dogs have had more cultural impact, but Basterd’s is, imo, the closest Tarantino has come to a perfect film.
I nearly didn't watch Am I Being Unreasonable because it appeared to centre around a developmentally challenged wee boy, and the trailer looked like it would just be him making sarky remarks
Couldn't have been more wrong. Fantastic twisting story, often hilarious, and the kid was nowhere near as prominent or annoying as expected.
Also Daisy May Cooper is just legendary anyway
Highly recommended, but I think a lot of people didn't watch it for the same reason I nearly didn't
I’m late, but Six Feet Under is the best show ever made. Ever. It’s perfect. The ending is the best ending to a show ever. Ever.
Even my partner, who was in school to become a mortician, hasn’t heard of it. So we sat down and watched the whole thing together. I had seen it all before. We cried together.
Go watch Six Feet Under.
(Also it’s got Gay Dexter which is great)
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I feel like your choice of “social impact” is mixed messages.
Mr. Freedom should be more widely known.
The Mick! I'm not good at explaining why shows are great, why people should watch them, or why they should have been more popular, unfortunately..but I had to link this anyway since I didn't see it mentioned. It ended with a seriously heavy cliffhanger that comes out of nowhere and then...Fox cancelled the next season that the writers were told they would have. So it just kind of...ended. They did a shit job at properly advertising it and totally dicked it around. This show was way better than I thought it would be and I even tried to watch it and ended up abandoning it because it didn't grab me, but I gave it another chance and stuck it out and I'm so glad I did. It deserved so much better.
I'm confused by the prompt. The Big Lebowski was an amazing movie with great social commentary, but it was poorly received and mostly only had a cult following.
Arrested Development was just okay, nothing special, but is talked about by everyone and absolutely overrated. It's social commentary is nothing compared to Big Lebowski.
The two are antithesis of each other.
And then Firefly I have no idea what that even is. Is that a YA novel?
So your question is what's the antithesis of all these unrelated things? Also what's not underrated but has inadequate social impact, as if Big Lebowski or Arrested Development did have adequate social impact??