User:Unpopular Opinions

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Unpopular Opinions

Title text: I wasn't a big fan of 3 or Salvation, so I'm trying to resist getting my hopes up too much for Dark Fate, but it's hard. I'm just a sucker for humans and robots traveling through time to try to drive trucks into each other, apparently.

Explanation

Everybody has their own preferences as to what movies they like and dislike, and when your like or dislike of a movie seems to be different than the majority of people, you could call your preference the "unpopular opinion" because your opinion is the less prevalent one. This often takes the form of "I hate this movie and I don't understand why everybody else seems to like it", but this comic is talking about the opposite form, which it categorizes as less common, namely "I like this movie and don't understand why everybody else seems to hate it." The comic points out that it's relatively common to hate movies others appear to like, but the converse, in which you like a movie others seem to hate, is much harder to find. One explanation for this may be that if a movie is already established to be bad, you won't end up watching it anyway.

To illustrate how hard it is to like a movie everyone else seems to dislike, the comic presents a challenge whereby you 1) identify a movie you definitely like, which 2) came out during your adult life (so it isn't tainted by childhood nostalgia), and which 3) the majority of other people don't like, as measured informally by having a popularity rating below 50% on the Rotten Tomatoes website (a website that aggregates reviews of films). Supposedly you will find it hard to find a movie that meets all three criteria. The rules prohibit a movie that the viewer finds "So Bad, It's Good" - the enjoyment of the movie must be genuine, for its positive qualities, rather than ironic enjoyment of its negative qualities.

The image in this comic gives an example of this effect, namely the movie Terminator Genisys, the fifth in the Terminator series, released in 2015. This series, about time-traveling killer robots, included the highly rated Terminator 2 (93% on Rotten Tomatoes), while Terminator Genisys is only 26%.

The title text refers to three movies in the Terminator franchise, Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003), Terminator Salvation (2009), and Terminator: Dark Fate (due out later in 2019). The Terminator movie series has featured both time travel and trucks driving or attempting to drive into people, and Randall apparently finds himself drawn to such movies. He hopes that Dark Fate will be a good movie, but has low expectations, considering the less than stellar ratings of the last 3 movies (69%, 33%, and 26%).

Transcript

[Ponytail, Cueball, and Megan are all looking at their cell phones. Cueball is in the middle, facing out, holding his phone in both hands, while the two women face towards him with only one hand on their phones. Ponytail is tapping on the phone as shown by small lines over her fingers. they talk to each other, but before that, there is the following text above them:]

Unpopular positive opinion challenge:

Name a movie that...

(1) you genuinely like (not "so bad it's good")

(2) came out in your adult life post-2000, and

(3) is rated below 50% on Rotten Tomatoes.

Ponytail: Wow, this is harder than I thought.

Cueball: ...Terminator Genisys?

Megan: Seriously?!

Cueball: I like time travel, OK??

[Caption below the panel:]

When people talk about their "unpopular opinions" about movies, they usually mean hating something everyone likes, but liking something everyone hates is much harder.

Trivia

• On xkcd, this Friday comic was replaced already on Sunday by a "disappearing comic", which temporarily was assigned the sequence number 2185. But that was just to prevent the trouble a not numbered comic was having on the xkcd site. It was designed to disappear completely and leave no trace in xkcd's history or archives when the Monday comic, 2185: Cumulonimbus, was released. The original comic does also no longer appear in explain xkcd's comic navigation either, and is hence linked here: Disappearing Sunday Update.

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Discussion

Hi. Unpopular Opinions (talk) 20:23 6 February 2020 (UTC)

You have been kicked in the face by a ball in accordance with the community standards for... no real reason. Feel free to revert this odd edit.