Why ‘Overrated’ is NOT a Garbage Word
My response to an article called ‘Why ‘Overrated’ is a Garbage Word’.
It was several years ago that I first came across an article on the web that’s called ‘Why ‘Overrated’ is a Garbage Word’. This article didn’t bug me as much when I first encountered it as it did years after, especially after I had seen several people in forums, comment sections, and mini-rants hating the word overrated. This led me to realize that several people, including the person that made that article, doesn’t seem to understand what the word ‘overrated’ means. I decided to make this article as a response article to the article ‘Why ‘Overrated’ is a garbage Word’. Response articles are made in response to either online videos or other web articles. With this article that I’m making being a response to an article that was written back in 2014, I’m surprised that nobody had made a response article to that article after all these years. I’m guessing that the article writers that had made response articles weren’t aware of that article’s existence. Whatever the case, if no one else will do it, I will. This article will probably be the longest gap between a response article and the article that it’s a response to. Now I did not start making web articles until early 2025. I had uploaded a Medium account in late 2024, but it wasn’t until March of 2025 that I started my 1st articles on Medium. I wanted to make this particular article within weeks after I had started writing, but due to me being new to this stuff at that time, I decided to make smaller articles first, then later make this article that I know is going to be a very long article. Well, here we go.
Now people with common sense would understand that being ‘overrated’ doesn’t mean that someone or something is terrible. Who thinks that Baby Geniuses (1999), Son of the Mask (2005), or The Love Guru (2008) are overrated movies? Certainly not people with good taste. Anyway, overrated means that someone or something is getting much more hype than it truly deserves to get. There are a bunch of cases, but because I don’t have 5 hours, I’m only going to mention a small number of those cases. The main movie that I’ll talk about on this article is The Dark Knight, which is stupidly overrated. Additionally, an image from that movie is on the article that’s the reason why I’m making this response article.
Now from what I had noticed online over the years, the people that praise The Dark Knight treat the movie as though it transcended movies. They treat it as though the movie changed pop culture. The only things that truly did that in the 2000s are the Covid-19 Pandemic, the terrorist attack on 9/11/2001, and social media. To believe that any movie in the 2000s had truly changed anything in pop culture would be overrating it. Many Dark Knight fans assume that because the movie is popular, that means that it changed pop culture, which is freaking stupid. Being popular and changing pop culture isn’t the same thing. Anna Nicole Smith, the Backstreet Boys, Paris Hilton, and 50 Cent had became very popular, but those things weren’t a major thing beyond the bubble of obsessed fans that blindly loved them. The same thing can be said about Batman and some other popular things. There are people that believed that this movie, along with Batman Begins (2005), made superhero movies more cynical, or that it’s what made superhero movies much more common, or that it’s what made more and more movie goers become hugely obsessed with superhero movies. None of those cases apply to Christopher Nolan’s overrated trilogy, and there are numerous things that support this.
There had been several cynical superhero movies that were made prior to Nolan’s overrated trilogy, and they were much more cynical than that trilogy. The Crow (1994) is a cynical superhero movie which hero was a clear inspiration to the image of Heath Ledger’s Joker. Darkman (1990), Blade (1998), Blade 2 (2002), Blade Trinity (2004), the Kill Bill movies, Underworld (2003), The Punisher (1989), and The Punisher (2004) were among the other cynical superhero movies that were released prior to Batman Begins (2005). Sin City (2005), the most cynical movie that I had seen that involved any superheroes, was released that same year. Nolan’s overrated trilogy is innocent when compared to those other superhero movies that I just mentioned. As with the claim that The Dark Knight made superhero movies more popular, those early X-Men movies, Spiderman movies, the Hulk movie, and the first 2 Fantastic Four movies were very big superhero movies released prior to The Dark Knight. Blade, Underworld, Sin City, and the Kill Bill movies were hits to a smaller degree, and that would of been because those latter movies didn’t have the same level of followers as Batman, Spiderman, the Fantastic Four, and the Hulk. The Mask (1994), Hercules (1997), and The Incredibles (2003) were big superhero movies, though Hercules is a Disney movie, The Incredibles is a Pixar movie (Pixar wasn’t part of Disney at that time), and The Mask hugely benefitted from the performance of Jim Carrey. Plus, due to those 3 movies not being associated with DC nor Marvel, I doubt most of the fans of either of those 2 properties are going to count them or even know about them, considering that I rarely heard of those movies get brought up by fanatics of either DC or Marvel. While the Blade movies are associated with Marvel, I think much of the popularity of those movies are largely because of Wesley Snipes playing the title character. How often was Blade ever mentioned prior to Wesley? From what I had noticed online over the years, Blade doesn’t get brought up that much by Marvel fanatics. Plus, that Blade TV series didn’t get much love. The Blade movies came off as separate entities from Marvel, despite Blade being associated with Marvel. The same could be said about The Punisher movies. By the way, the Joker wouldn’t be talked about if he had faced either of those 2. Batman has a stupid no-kill rule, but Blade and The Punisher doesn’t.
Anyway, superhero movies were gaining traction despite Nolan’s Batman, not because of him. The fans of that overrated series wanted to think of it as a beyond groundbreaking thing among superhero stories when they weren’t. Then there’s Heath Ledger’s Joker, the most overrated movie villain and story villain ever. The fact that Ledger won an Oscar from that role is beyond stupid. John Travolta, Ralph Fiennes, and Tobin Bell had all played as much better villains than the Joker, but unlike Heath, those 3 never won an Oscar from their well known villain performances. The fact Ralph Fiennes didn’t win an Oscar as Amon in Schindler’s List (1993), and that Tobin Bell never got an Oscar nomination as Jigsaw in any of the Saw movies (especially the 1st one, which had a brilliant plot twist in the end), while not 1 but 2 people won an Oscar from playing as an overrated, plot armor covered clown, made me realize that the Oscar people have too much favoritism toward that clown, just like the general fanatics of that clown. This 2006 photo at the Oscars of the 2 actors that later won from playing that clown is rather strange in hindsight.
Heath’s Joker was basically a very crummy version of the Scorpio killer from the crime drama Dirty Harry (1971). Many people that seen The Dark Knight had likely never seen Dirty Harry. The Scorpio Killer was very clever at pulling strings to get what he wanted, and he didn’t have to blow things up to do it, unlike Heath’s Joker. Fans of The Dark Knight think that the Joker was rather mysterious in ways that included his true name never being mentioned. The name of the Scorpio killer from Dirty Harry was never mentioned throughout Dirty Harry. The end credits of Dirty Harry had referred to Andrew Robinson’s character as Killer. Now the Killer and Heath’s Joker had different motives. Heath’s Joker wanted to prove that even the people with the most positive mind can become evil when the chips are down. It certainly doesn’t take him to realize that certain people became bad because of what they lost, which in many of those cases, would be money and a house. As with the Scorpio killer, his motive is the reason why many bad people became bad people: Money. Greed would be the specific motive of many bad people, and Greed isn’t just limited to money. One big reason why Dirty Harry is a much better movie is that Harry Callahan ended up becoming so sick of the killer playing with and destroying people’s lives, including by using hostages to get a bunch of money, that near the end of the movie, killer got shot by Harry when the killer used a hostage as a human shield. The killer lived after the hostage ran away, and after Harry said his popular line, the killer, who felt lucky, grabbed his dropped gun, laughed while raising it, and got blown right into the water by Harry. I know that a similar situation would of happened to Heath’s Joker at that party that him and his clownface goons had crashed if Harry had been there. Harry would of blasted some of the clown goons, and would of floored some of them with either his free fist or with part of his gun. The Joker would of used someone as a human shield. Harry would of aimed at his arm or hand, fired, and would save the person that the Joker would of used as a shield. Harry would later say his popular line to that clown. Joker would later pick up his dropped gun with his unshot hand, laugh while raising it, and then Harry would of blasted that overrated clown out the window, and off the building. Harry later gets promoted, celebrates at a party dedicated to him, and then the movie ends. That would of made a much better ending than the stupid, overrated ending in The Dark Knight.
Well, fans of The Dark Knight, as well as fans of other overrated things and people, would come up with several defenses to people that would think of anything less than excellent about what those fans loves. Some would hugely insult the person, like by cursing or making fun of their weight, clothes, face, or family members. Some would resort to making death threats, which is definitely a form of overrating something or someone. Others would try to say something along the lines of something or someone being groundbreaking or a game changer, which are other ways of overrating The Dark Knight, based on what I had mentioned earlier. There are even those that would come up with the defense that someone or something must be great if it’s successful and made money. To those ignorant people, Baby Geniuses made money. Jack and Jill (2011) made money. The Emoji Movie (2017) made money. Bernie Madoff made money. Human trafficking and other cynical forms of trafficking made money. Yeah, the whole ‘it made money’ defense is a garbage defense. There are plenty of people that doesn’t have good taste. The fact that Baby Geniuses has sequels is all the proof that you need. Considering that The Emoji Movie is successful, I’m surprised that movie didn’t get any sequels from money-hungry Hollywood. Something or someone doesn’t have to be good to become successful.
Not everything that became successful got successful through the same reasons. That’s true within the realm of movies alone. I know that the reasons why the DC or Marvel movies became successful weren’t because of the same main audience of the Twilight movies, the Alvin and the Chipmunks movies, the Smurfs movies, the Fifty Shades movies, the Barbie movie, the Ice Age movies, or many other very big movies from the last 25 years. From what I had noticed online over the years, fans of DC and/or Marvel rarely ever brought up those other big movie projects that I just mentioned. This made me think that the fanbases of DC and Marvel are largely separate from those other franchises. I guess that’s not too surprising. The Smurfs doesn’t have an all-menacing villain, with him getting stopped by a taser in a comical way in that first movie. He later flew out of prison in a comical way with the help of a bunch of flies. It’s still much better than how Heath’s Joker escaped custody. The main villain of those Chipmunk movies didn’t want to take over the world, a major land, nor anything else. He just wanted to make a bunch of money from Chipmunks that could sing. He tried that with the Chipmunks in the 1st movie, and later the Chipettes in the 2nd movie. In the 3rd movie, he got demoted to being in a bird costume on a cruise ship, and the main villain is some woman that had spent years stuck on an island because she was trying to find some treasure. The Ice Age movies are cartoon movies, which tend to do well in theaters because kids love cartoons. The Madagascar movies, the Paw Patrol movies, and The Emoji Movie had all done very well in theaters. The Twilight movies had been called the Marvel movies to females. The Barbie movie can fall under that same category. The Fifty Shades movies are just movies that appeal to twisted perverts. From what I had noticed on IMDb (Internet Movie Database), many of the movies that are associated with DC and Marvel didn’t even do twice as well in theaters as the Chipmunks movies, the Smurfs movies, the Twilight movies, the Fifty Shades movies, and the Ice Age movies. Heck, many of the DC and Marvel movies had not even done as well as the biggest movies of those other franchises that I had just mentioned. This shows how much fans of Marvel and/or DC overrate the love and importance of the movies they love. The only comic book movie that had done around twice as well as the Barbie movie is that overrated Endgame movie, and it took a bunch of overrated characters, especially an overrated villain, to put that much attention to that movie. Barbie only needed 2 characters: Barbie and Ken. The movie had several versions of both, but to Barbie fans, it only would of needed 2. Benefitting from nostalgia is not a high standard. That live action Yogi Bear movie became one of the biggest movies from 2010, and that was not a good movie by any means. That proves how overrated nostalgia is to many people of older generations.
At least Twilight, Ice Age, and Fifty Shades didn’t benefit from nostalgia, due to their stories not existing until the 2000s. Those stories wouldn’t of had decades worth of fans behind them.
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According to the min. read of this article’s draft, I had already gone longer than all but one article that I had previously made. So I’ll mention just one more reason why ‘overrated’ is not a garbage word. Denialism, which I’m sure most over-obsessed fans had never heard of, is when someone doesn’t want to admit to being wrong, regardless of the evidence that proves it. The over-obsessed fans are big examples. Other examples would include people that still believe that the Earth is flat, people that claim to be rich when they aren’t (this didn’t start with fake influencers), people that claim to of hooked up with people that they never hooked up with, and prisoners that claim to be innocent. Now there are people that got sent to prison that were truly innocent. In many of those cases, it took DNA evidence to overturn their convictions. Truly innocent prisoners wouldn’t of been denialists when they were constantly saying that they are innocent. Now when it comes down to denialists that are associated with shows and movies, Batman fanatics would be the worst that I can think of. His obsessed fans want to think that Batman is the greatest superhero ever. That’s clear denialism. While I know that The Matrix (1999) is overrated, I’m going to bring up a pill scenario similar to that movie to make a point.
In that situation, say if the red pill can make you like Superman, and the blue pill can make you like Batman. What would be the point of choosing the blue pill? One can turn you into someone that is truly extraordinary on so many levels, and the other would turn you into Batman. I guarantee you that in that situation, NOBODY would choose the blue pill over the red pill. Heck, if the red pill can make you like Green Lantern, Wonder Woman, the Flash, or Aquaman, NOBODY would choose the blue pill over the red pill. Batman fanatics that would state that they would take the blue pill over the red pill would be denialists that keep overrating a guy who’s only true benefit is plot armor. Mr. Magoo with plot armor can beat any adversary that Batman had faced. Mr. Magoo is blind, has no superpowers, has no great skills, and doesn’t have superb intelligence. The only major benefit that Mr.Magoo has is plot armor, and that’s all he would need to survive any situation that Batman had survived that he shouldn’t of.
In conclusion, ‘overrated’ is not a garbage word. Only denialists, including the writer that made that article that this article is a response toward, would hate that word. They hate the idea of being wrong, even when they are. Tyrant leaders think that way too. This article could get a bunch of hate comments from denialists, but considering that I’m not a well known writer, I doubt that’s going to happen. Well, according to the min. read on this draft, this would be the 2nd longest article that I wrote up to this point. If you want to read my longest article, it’s called ‘7 major problems that I had noticed about ‘Most Beautiful Women’ lists’. To the random visitors that read my articles, enjoy the rest of the year. The End.
