The 5 Overrated *Movie Series I Just Don’t Care About (and 3 I Will Fight You Over)

When it comes to my tastes in entertainment, I tend to appreciate what’s popular. Game of Thrones? Hell yeah. How I Met Your Mother? Yes (but I have since become disenchanted). Harry Potter? OBVIOUSLY; DO YOU THINK I’M INCAPABLE OF JOY?! But every once in a while, there’s a pop culture staple that I do not give a shit about.

1. Mission: Impossible

Here’s the thing: I don’t like Tom Cruise.

Yes, this opinion is heavily influenced by the fact that he follows a religion with a central tenet that boils down to “What do doctors even know anyway?” But he also seems like a genuine psycho. I mean, who in their right mind would do the actively life-threatening stunts he pulls in his films? No one, that’s who. So, if a = b and b = c, Tom Cruise = a crazy person.

Despite that, I’ve seen half of the Mission: Impossible movies—the first one, Ghost Protocol, and Rogue Nation—thanks to my husband’s genuine love of the series. I was mildly entertained, but that’s my baseline. Basically, the only thing I’ve gotten out of the movies is a genuine lack of belief that people STILL buy Tom Cruise as an action star when he’s clearly aging out of the role.

Here’s how much I don’t care. MI: Fallout features sexy-as-all-motherfucking-get-out Henry Cavill and grace us with this panty- and boxer-dropping image:

. . . and you’re still not gonna catch me in the theaters.

Besides, Cavill never gets naked, so, like, why bother? GIVE ME HENRY CAVILL’S NAKED BODY OR GIVE ME DEATH!

What was I talking about . . .?

Right. Tom Cruise is nonsense and Mission: Impossible is kinda dumb.

Back to the Future

Now, I do like Michael J. Fox. But here, he’s teaming up with something I struggle to enjoy: time travel. In fact, the first film dabbles with the exact type I hate, which is when the time traveler is in ever-present danger of erasing themselves because of increasingly ridiculous mishaps. I much prefer the kind where the time travel events are essential to the traveler’s life being business as usual, a la Future Harry casting the successful Patronus in Prisoner of Azkaban—and I think we can all agree that’s even pushing it a little.

So watching an entire movie about a kid frantically trying to correct the timeline so his parents actually bone down is just . . . no.

(I asked Lawrence what happens in the third one, since I know the second one a little, and he said “They go back to the Old West.” What the actual fuck?!)

Star Wars

My parents were Trekkies—a fact I wouldn’t even know until the Pine-led movie reboot—so no one introduced me to Star Wars at whatever the pivotal age is. I watched it for the first time in college, when Lawrence said I should “probably see” the trilogy. (Of note: he doesn’t even like Star Wars that much.)

They did not leave an impression.

After the fanboy backlash to both The Force Awakenes and The Last Jedi, which I enjoyed, I wondered if I was missing something. After all, I barely remembered the original trilogy beyond the paternity reveal, so maybe there really was some essential quality that the new movies lack. I resolved to rewatch Episodes 4-6 to figure it out.

Y’all. Those movies are awful. Luke is a whiny baby who gets the Special/Chosen Boy pass, it’s obvious that George Lucas hadn’t fully fleshed out the films when he started working on them, Leia is woefully underutilized, and the pacing in A New Hope alone is SO BAD. I legitimately thought the movie ended with the escape from the Death Star—how was there more after that?!

Nerds. You know you’re my people. But I really think you need to take those nostalgia-covered glasses because

The Jason Bourne movies

Do I even have to say it?

Matt Damon’s wonky head and face.

Case closed.

Mad Men

This isn’t a movie series, obviously, but I don’t discriminate!

I gave it an honest try. After letting several seasons’ worth of guilt build up, I finally succumbed and borrowed the first season’s DVDs from the library. Lawrence and I binged it, and we had the same reaction at the end: What, exactly, were we supposed to feel?

It seemed like each episode wanted us to be super contemplative and think about the weight of the themes afterward, but everything just seemed dark and dramatic without breaking any new ground about character growth (or lack thereof).

Still, we attempted to watch the second season, wondering if maybe we just hadn’t been in the right frame of mind. No. We couldn’t get beyond the first few episodes because we just . . . gave no fucks. Lacking any motivation to finish it out, we decided to just stop feeling guilty about not liking it. Sorry, but we’re really not sorry.

Series I Really Like

Now that I’ve lost all my street cred, I shall lean even further into my isolation by sharing some series that I really like that have proven to not be for everyone.

Kung Fu Panda

I think these would be more popular if it weren’t for How to Train Your Dragon, which is also great. But this Dreamworks property is my first love. It brought together two of the things I loved most at the time: panda bears and Jack Black. It was basically tailor made for me.

I know there are people who enjoy the first movie, but I don’t think anyone gives the sequels their fair shake. They’re actually very strong movies! Every single movie has heart and builds on the concept of self-acceptance, family, and destiny. Plus, friggin Gary Oldman voices the villain in the second movie. What’s wrong with you people?!

National Treasure

Say what you will about Nicholas Cage’s acting or the implausibility of the films’ conspiracy theories, but I think National Treasure is fucking fun, and I will stan for these movies for the rest of my life.

The outrageous premises and over-the-top scenarios make them awesome, and I really wish they’d made a third one so I could find out WHAT WAS ON PAGE 47!!!! (Maybe I’ll write a sequel.)

Castle

Look. I love Nathan Fillion. My dad introduced me to Firefly, and I was an instant fangirl. So, when I saw that a new crime show was airing, wherein he played a mystery writer who tailed an NYPD detective for inspiration, I. Had. To. Support. My. Guy.

But while I’d initially tuned in for the Fillion of it all, I grew to obsessively love the series. I maintain that it’s one of the best TV series for character continuity—very rarely did someone do or say something that was later retconned just to suit a new story arc (looking at most sitcoms ever, but especially at How I Met Your Mother). Things may have gotten a little wobbly toward the end after the departure of the original showrunners (who I named my dog Marlowe after), but I genuinely love this series and YOU CAN FUCKING @ ME, OK?!