# Fiction you warn people against?



## Violanthe

Ever stumble into a book you didn't want to read? Ever rent a video that you wished you had passed over on the video shelf? A book or film you would warn others against? What is it? And why should reader/audience beware?


----------



## Seregon

I have a movie. Orlando Bloom's The Calcium Kid. If you want cannon fodder, haters, take it. This movie is handing it out by the barrels.

You know those movies where you're sitting in the theatre, trying desperately to hide your face, hoping no one sees you in it, yet you don't leave because the movie is SO BAD you can't look away? I was doing that IN MY HOME. There was no on there to see me! It was HORRIBLE.

It's only really good if you like B-movies that aren't well put-together, advertised, written, filmed, or publicized. (Or acted in. Sorry, I love Orly, I really do, but... dear lord, what was this trainwreck about?!)

~~~~~

Next movie - The Wicker Man with Nicholas Cage.

I shouild've known from the Nicholas Cage part. My friends are still laughing about it. There are plotholes, errors, things that make no sense, etc. Yet you sit through the movie quietly, thinking that maybe, just maybe, something at the end will tie it all up in a neat little bow. But it doesn't. One of the biggest things was that the FIRST SCENE wasn't explained. It ties into the movie, but it was either a hallucination, a really elaborate set-up, or some dream. Also, a cop calls for help on a deserted island, and no cops show up. I know that at least in the US when you have a cop screaming for help, somebody follows it. The main character is submerged in water for at least six hours, hypothermic, during the night - yet doesn't die. It's never explained how a severe allergic reaction can be treated with olden medicine (I didn't know it could!), and the society of the island is never fully explained. This is all topped off by one of the final scenes, where they're beating Nicholas Cage, and instead of throwing curses at them, and fighting and bashing in heads, he utilizes language like, "AH! MY LEGS!", constantly verifying exactly which body part they're going after.

I thought that they only made up s*** like this in parodies.


----------



## Aiwendil2

I've read two books that I advise people to avoid like the plague. They are _A Prayer for Owen Meany_ by John Irving and _The Fountainhead_ by Ayn Rand. Strangely enough, both of these have quite a few fans. But if you ask me, they are vile, contemptible things that one should stay as far away from as possible.


----------



## Wolfshead

And ex-girlfriend dragged me to see The Polar Express a couple of years ago. I told her it would be rubbish but she didn't believe me. Needless to say she apologised afterwards.


----------



## Halasían

*Books:* In two words, or a name I should say... _Robert Jordon_

*Movies:* Hmm... many, but one that comes to mind was _Lost in Translation_. Thought it would be good, and there was talk of Bill Murry getting an award for his role. It was the most boring movie I ever paid to see. I fell asleep and was awakened when it was over.


----------



## Mike

I warn people against Eragon. And the Gor series (If you know what it is, you'll know why.)

For movies: King Arthur is one of the worst films ever made. Seriously. Alexander bumps it off for absolute worst, however. And, therefore, if any of my friends get the ursge to see these, I tell them they shouldn't if they want their television to stay intact. Because they'll shoot it if they do.


----------



## Wolfshead

Mike said:


> For movies: King Arthur is one of the worst films ever made. Seriously.


You a bit of a film nazi then? I've seen much worse films than King Arthur. Infact, I'm something of an Arthurian expert (done lots of work on the legend at uni), but I was able to set aside the worst historical inaccuracies (namely the Saxons invading through Scotland, in winter; and whatever the hell was going on with those woad people) and enjoy the film. Indeed it was probably the most historically accurate Arthur film yet made.

As great an actor as Clive Owen is I'll accept he was miscast as Arthur though.

Alexander was quite bad as well, but impressed me with how accurate it was. Apart from the accents of course, there weren't many Irishmen in ancient Macedon.


----------



## Mike

> You a bit of a film nazi then?


 
Let's just say I'm extremely anti-Hollywood. 

There are much worst films that fall into the "so bad it's good" category. This didn't make it. Therefore, "Ator: The Fighting Eagle" rates higher on my list than this does.



> Indeed it was probably the most historically accurate Arthur film yet made.


 
For the sole reason it had some Romans. But you're right on that part, every Arthur movie to date has had some wizardry in it, after all. But it's still rife with inaccuracies, and the characterization of the Saxons is entirely wrong, as with the Saxons arriving and the battle of Badon Hill happening immediately afterwards. Did they not hear about "the Saxon Shore"? Or the inviting of Saxons to England? Or the fact that not only Saxons came to settle in Great Britain (Jutes, Angles, etc.)? 

Plus let's not forget the scene ripped directly from Alexander Nevsky (Saxons on the ice.) As if we wouldn't notice.



> Alexander was quite bad as well, but impressed me with how accurate it was.


 
That would explain why Oliver Stone made it seem Alexander LOST the battle of Hydaspes.


----------



## Violanthe

Interesting you mention Jordan. I've stayed away from WOT specifically because I've been warned against it by so many folks.


----------



## Lindir

David Eddings is an author I frequently tell people to shun like the plague. As for movies there are so many really bad ones out there it's hard to chose, but I would seriously recommend anyone to stay away from Armageddon and Pearl Harbour - probably the two worst films I've payed to watch.


----------



## Mike

Yes, Pearl Harbour is also on my top ten list of worst films ever made.

Actually, any film made by Michael Bay in conjunction with Bruckheimer is usually a hyper-patriotic stinker.


----------



## Seregon

I'd like to add a movie:

Pulse. It was a grade F horror film - with, of course, the young, blonde, single girl who is incredibly dumb, yet still somehow makes it past the living dead - and the living - to survive at the end of the movie, while the black guy is one of the first to die. It goes on the theory that spirits can come through from their post-life state by use of a certain frequency, which, unfortunately, is complete rubbish to anyone who knows anything about modern physics, chemsitry, or particles. The closest thing to their theory scientifically, as I see it, is modern string theory butchered up very nicely and cooked on a low simmer for a few hours. Other than this, I just have to note that the writing was, in my opinion, less than convincing, and the acting not all that good, either. I do have to say, though, that the quality of the pictures themselves were quite nice, so - kudos to the CGI and film-editing crew. If only they could've taken more out.


----------



## Wolfshead

Lindir said:


> David Eddings is an author I frequently tell people to shun like the plague. As for movies there are so many really bad ones out there it's hard to chose, but I would seriously recommend anyone to stay away from Armageddon and Pearl Harbour - probably the two worst films I've payed to watch.


I really enjoyed David Eddings and would disagree with people saying he's rubbish.

Pearl Harbour on the other hand, ha! What a rubbish film. I particularly enjoyed Team America taking the **** out of it "Pearl Harbour sucked, a little bit more than I miss you".


----------



## HLGStrider

Generally due in part to me keeping more conservative company than most people my age, if I warn someone against something it is more for moral content. I'll watch just about anything all the way through just to see how it ends, no matter how bad, no matter how much I've stopped caring. 

However, I did quit WoT part way through the series when everything started to get ridiculous and Rand bedded his third lady with the others all still doe-eyed at him and I really didn't care about any one anymore. I warn people that "The Princess Bride" movie is infinitelly better than the book and you have to take the book with a grain of salt. 

But that's about it. . .


----------



## Hobbit-GalRosie

Well, I haven't really done any warning, but...

I'd definitely warn people about The Horse Whisperer. The movie was pretty good, nothing achingly special, the book it was allegedly based on was trash in every sense of the word. Sensationalist porn with brain-dead characters. I stuck it out to the end hoping that they or at least one of them might actually learn something from all the experiences, but no. They refused to be interesting.

Besides that, nothing much comes to mind. Dennis L McKiernan puts out boring hack work that follows Tolkien so closely in most cases that he can't surprise you, but it's only half worth warning against. Similar thoughts about the Dragonlance series and other stuff based on D&D though those have a good deal more artistic merit in many ways...and if I can mention Dragonlance and artistic merit in the same breath you know it means I'm comparing them to something really bad, lol.


----------



## Thorin

As far as authors go, I have been disappointed with the few John Saul novels I have bought. I can't fathom how this man could make and sell so many novels with his mediocre and somewhat immature writing style. It's like reading what Stephen King might have been like in the seventh grade. In the book I am reading, he ends most of his chapters on cheesy, melodramatic repetition. Kind of like this:

"It just couldn't have been real!"

"Could it?"

Good grief!

As far as movies go, it depends on what we are warning people away from. Simply bad movies as far as plot, character, etc or extreme violence, nudity, language etc...the latter doesn't make the movie 'bad' as far as the former goes but could be considered 'bad' morally.

If 'Alexander' and 'Pearl Harbor' are the 'worst' movies you people have watched, you haven't watched very many bad movies. I would say that alot of the 'slasher' flicks from the early to mid 80s rank up there as some of the worst movies. Movies like 'Basket Case' and 'They Live' are pretty hokey and have some of the worst effects and acting I've seen in a long time.

As far as modern movies go, "Closer" with Clive Owen, Jude Law and Julia Roberts ranks up there as a pretty bad movie. I've never felt sexually violated and offended by a movie before that had no nudity in it as I did watching this one. Even movies with graphic sex like 'Basic Instint' or 'Body of Evidence' couldn't hold a candle to it for graphic sexual language. The language and the plot was just plain dreck awful and the movie didn't really go anywhere but leave you feeling icky and depressed.


----------



## Ithrynluin

Judging by their IMDB ratings, those movies don't seem all that bad, though I'll take your word for it.

If you ever feel masochistic or are just in dire need of some abominable acting, I'd recommend Webs, and some other jewels the name of which I seem to have erased from memory. 

And the latest one I've seen:

Night Skies, about the alleged 'Phoenix Lights' UFO phenomenon, though it falls _just_ short of the "worst movies" category.


----------



## Seregon

I actually saw the movie 'Webs' once. It was pretty good for a B film, although I definitely wouldn't recommend it, I don't think it would stick out as one of the worst movies.

I know that some people like him, but personally, I warn everyone I know about anything Truman Capote's written. I hate his writing style. Very poorly done stream of consciousness that really seems more like prose to me.


----------



## Ithrynluin

You think Webs was pretty good?  In that case, I might just give Capote's writings a try, and find I like them.


----------



## Seregon

I said good for a B movie. Meaning I'd never rent it, or watch it in a theatre, but I wouldn't vomit if it was on TV.


----------



## Rhiannon

HLGStrider said:


> I warn people that "The Princess Bride" movie is infinitelly better than the book and you have to take the book with a grain of salt.



Not better...just different. The movie is a fairy tale. The book is a satire. Once I realized that everything made sense and I could go on loving them both without being all confused.

I warn people off of Jordan as well--and I was so enthusiastic all through the first six books (I was younger and less critical then, and very forgiving) before the entire plot came to a standstill and stayed there through another four volumes (which I still read, out of a misguided sense of loyalty, before abandoning the series entirely). 

I warn people that George R.R. Martin uses an insane number of POV characters--I just couldn't handle it, however much I enjoyed his writing and wanted to know what happened.

I'm going to start warning people off of Pamela Dean (because so many people are in danger of picking up her unsurprisingly obscure books)--her writing is so laden with references and forced cleverness and the plots are so slow that it's just maddening. And her characters don't act like real people, they act like carefully constructed character portraits, with assigned flaws and tastes, and talk like the nerdiest literary person you ever met magnified by a hundred. I'm friends with some very nerdy, very educated, very literary people, and they _don't quote Shakespeare every other sentence_. And they sometimes watch bad TV and write X-Men fanfiction. Also, the settings for her books are incredibly outdated--I'm slogging steadily through _Tam Lin_ at the moment, which is set at a college attended by a remarkable number of people who seem to think that quoting Shakespeare at each other counts as conversation, and I want to know who (in 1991 when the book was published) was still wearing velvet dresses with lace collars that pinned on? It's all so incredibly annoying, because the concepts Dean works with are just brilliant--she has these fabulous ideas, and then she just kills them by writing about them.

I've been warning people off of _Pan's Labyrinth_, not because it isn't one of the most amazing movies I've ever seen (because it is), but because I know they couldn't handle the violence. 

I've been warning people, not away from, but not to have too high expectations for Spiderman 3, aka 'Spiderman Loves America', aka 'a can of pausterized cheese product'. It's lots and lots of fun, but don't expect too much of it. 

I never warn people away from, but I only recommend Miyazaki's films (_Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke, Howl's Moving Castle_, etc) to select people that I know have the capacity to appreciate them--I once watched _Spirited Away_ with a couple of friends who just didn't get it (they claimed they did, but they didn't) and made fun of it all the way through. It was awful, because _Spirited Away_ is one of my comfort movies that's really special, and I couldn't watch it for months afterwards without hearing their obnoxious commentary in my head. I'm still mad about it, too, because I couldn't make them understand how awful they'd been. If you're aware that something is important to someone, you don't rip into it, even if you want to. That's just rude--it's like telling someone they have ugly children. As my mother would say, they seriously messed with my wa.


----------



## Violanthe

I read Wilbur Smith's Warlock recently and found that it fell very flat.


----------



## Squint-eyed Southerner

Oh my -- it's Necropost time again!



During the late 60's through the 70's especially, when it seemed the cover of every new fantasy novel was required to feature a blurb shouting "Not Since The Lord of the Rings!", "Equal to Tolkien!", or even (*shudder*) "Greater Than Tolkien!", I used to warn people who hadn't actually _read _Tolkien that they shouldn't take such hype seriously; my fear was that, after trying to plow through the latest hack ripoff, they'd think "If that's really what Tolkien's like, no thanks".

As far as movies go, I can think of many I'd not want to sit through again, but I kind of like the advice I heard from John Waters: if you're stuck watching a badly made or boring movie, shift your focus to some aspect that interests you -- pretend the movie is about lamps, say, and concentrate on those.

About King Arthur, I have to say I appreciated that they at least attempted to set an Arthur movie in a historical period in which he might actually have lived, though I was rather surprised they didn’t have his Sarmatian "knights" carry the lances they were famous for; it would have made for an nice connection with the "Medieval" Arthur.

I admit it featured a lot of hilarious moments, though. My favorite line: "Armor-piercing". 

But hey, is there another film in the history of cinema that makes a major plot point out of the Pelagian Heresy?


----------



## Sir Eowyn

Maya Angelou's poetry. I'd give it an F in a junior high remedial English class, and people think it's brilliant.

For films considered great, I really loathe Gone with the Wind.


----------



## Squint-eyed Southerner

I actually liked Part 1, but Part 2's a snoozefest.


----------



## Sir Eowyn

My main problem with it is Vivien Leigh, and the postcard cinematography. It all just screams for beautiful and relevant in a very sickly, overblown way. Also had a couple bad experiences with romantic liaisons who loved it as their favourite film. If I may issue a psychological warning, how those tend to be spoiled and erratic past belief, I say it here. I swear it wasn't irrelevant; there was some connection.


----------



## Squint-eyed Southerner

We all have our pasts.


----------



## Sir Eowyn

Ooh, don't we ever.


----------



## Ealdwyn

Sir Eowyn said:


> My main problem with it is Vivien Leigh, and the postcard cinematography. It all just screams for beautiful and relevant in a very sickly, overblown way. Also had a couple bad experiences with romantic liaisons who loved it as their favourite film. If I may issue a psychological warning, how those tend to be spoiled and erratic past belief, I say it here. I swear it wasn't irrelevant; there was some connection.


It's a movie I've enjoyed in the past, but I agree it's problematic on so many levels.


----------



## Sir Eowyn

If you mean Romanticizing the antebellum South, I have no problem with that. Stories Romanticize things, and that's fine. I don't hold ideologies against works of art, not ever. There is no "problematic" for me, just good and bad. And to me it's just a badly made film, with a kind of sticky ambience that borders on psychotic. Hard to explain.


----------



## Ealdwyn

Sir Eowyn said:


> If you mean Romanticizing the antebellum South, I have no problem with that. Stories Romanticize things, and that's fine. I don't hold ideologies against works of art, not ever. There is no "problematic" for me, just good and bad. And to me it's just a badly made film, with a kind of sticky ambience that borders on psychotic. Hard to explain.


Well, yes. The historical revisionism, the romaticising of slavery, the blatant racism. But you can add to that the romaticising of abusive relationships, rape, etc. 
I've never read the book - I only know the movie and it's been many years since I've seen it - but from memory it's definitely problematic in a big way.


----------



## Sir Eowyn

Again, I have no problem with any of that --- or anything you could name, for that matter --- in art.


----------



## Squint-eyed Southerner

If we're going _there,_ lots of films -- and books and music -- become problematic. But sticking with film, the real difficulties arise when a great piece of filmmaking is in service to a repulsive ideology. Birth of a Nation and Triumph of the Will are a couple that come to mind.


----------



## Sir Eowyn

Well, exactly --- I can't but admire Triumph of the Will, as a great piece of film. But of course...

Without treading on the taboo topics, I can't say I care much for Tolkien in the way of "ideology." But gentlemen can disagree, and I obviously still love his books.


----------



## Rivendell_librarian

Being in a book group means you read books you wouldn't normally read. The advantage is the shared experience and the group meeting, the disadvantage is that it might not be your kind of book - though you can be pleasantly surprised. 

A recent book I couldn't take to was Unless by Carol Shields about a literary woman whose daughter drops out of college to live on the street. It was far too self referential and unimportant for me.

With films what annoys me are the pointless remakes which are often worse e.g. 3:10 to Yuma, Solaris.


----------



## Sir Eowyn

Yes, a lot of things seem to be baptized "relevant" because of some social issue or other, regardless of whether the author can actually write. I'll read anything if the prose is good. Literally anything.

Know what you mean about the remakes... even The Magnificent Seven is a con to me --- just see Seven Samurai. Infinitely better.


----------



## Olorgando

Rivendell_librarian said:


> With films what annoys me are the pointless remakes which are often worse e.g. 3:10 to Yuma, Solaris.


And don't get me stated on remakes of remakes (of remakes of remakes of …) 

Edit:
But where I think Hollywood really, finally, terminally lost it is when they started making films out of video games ...


----------



## Halasían

It's good reading through all the discussion here in this thread!

Just an aside from me... the threadstarter *Violanthe *would have really enjoyed this! I miss that woman. She was quite the discussion starter on this and many other Tolkien sites from 2000 on. I followed her 'Alternate Reality Writers Zone' site on speculative fiction until the end. The 'end' was back in 2011 or thereabouts. She suddenly dropped off the web. She handed over her site to someone else and it quickly died out. Haven't seen her on any of the sites that she posted on that are still around. I believe the reason mentioned on ARWZ was she got married and had kids and completely stepped away from her former single life. Please show up Violanthe and tell me I'm wrong?

Carry on...


----------



## Squint-eyed Southerner

Heh. I'm reminded of a great hullabaloo on another forum about the 2016 remake of Ben Hur. Lots of griping about a remake of the 1959 "original". 😂


----------



## Olorgando

Robin Hood and Tarzan have had more reincarnations than Dr. Who.

… Frankenstein, Dracula, the Wolf-man, the Mummy, ...


----------



## Sir Eowyn

Aye, and nothing beats the Robin Hood with Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland. She's still with us, 103 years old. Approaching Bilbo territory.

Of course, she's in Gone with the Wind, but no career was perfect.


----------



## ArnorianRanger

To quote...


Squint-eyed Southerner said:


>



Anyways, I was monumentally disappointed with _Washington Black_ by Esi Edugyan. The first 2/3rds or so were pretty good, the characters were well-designed and the writing was great. However, it ended in such a depressing way, with no redeeming element for the characters, that I came away with a hollow pang. There were also some questionable morals playing into it that I personally did not agree with, but as someone with a firm belief that stories are not just for entertainment but should have a point, to read something that seemed to say there is no point to anything I felt the book wasted what could have been a great story.

Thanks,

ArnorianRanger


----------

