1. Sometimes What Fanboys (And Girls) Like Just Plain Sucks - Twilight
And finally, there's no getting around the fact that sometimes fanboys/girls/people just like things that out-and-out suck. We're going primarily with the Twilight example, but we're not trying to specifically pick on tween novels or works aimed at 14-year-old girls: it just happens to be the best example of something popular that really, really sucks. Yes, there are those who treat Twilight as ironic, cinematic junk-food to be laughed at incessantly, but the core fan-base is made up of hormonal teenage girls who take the series' mythology as seriously as gospel: that is the mindset which made Breaking Dawn Part 2 gross over $800 million worldwide. We're likely to see this hormonal hive-mind stir up again with the release of Fifty Shades of Grey next year, though the R-rating should make the fan-base slightly more tolerable at least. Yes, opinion on what's good and isn't is entirely subjective, and there's surely an inverse argument to be made against fanboy-baiting movies like Zack Snyder's Sucker Punch, which with its giant samurai and seductively-dressed femme fatales couldn't have pandered any harder to male gamers and comic book geeks if it tried, but at least that movie was a colossal box office bomb, and was widely rejected by its target audience. On one hand, perhaps studios are just trying to give fanboys/girls what they want, but on another, it seems somewhat patronising: fanboys should expect more from studios than lowest-common denominator nonsense that appeals to their reproductive organs and little else. Did we miss any major fanboy misfires? Let us know in the comments!
Stay at home dad who spends as much time teaching his kids the merits of Martin Scorsese as possible (against the missus' wishes).
General video game, TV and film nut. Occasional sports fan. Full time loon.