The 2000s in Popular Entertainment

We are quickly coming to the end of this abhorrent little decade known occasionally as “the two-thousands” or “the naughties.” As such, I thought I would throw together a series of articles discussing the best and worst of 2000-2009. This week, I bring you the decade in Popular Entertainment, excluding games, which I will cover in their own article. Please note: I have said Popular Entertainment, which means that I realize Harry Potter is not the actual best book of the decade.

Best Movie of the Decade: The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring

In a decade wrought with unnecessary remakes, sequels to perfectly good trilogies, and movies based on toy brands, the LotR trilogy stood as a beacon of hope for fans of fantasy, epic blockbusters, and literature.

I’ve chosen to honour The Fellowship of the Ring specifically because it can stand for the other two as well, and I consider it the best of the trilogy anyway. Fellowship blew the nerd hive mind in 2001 when we were introduced to this picture perfect representation of J. R. R. Tolkien’s seminal work.

Worst Movie of the Decade: Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

There were so many awful movies this decade, including two Cheaper by the Dozens, two Twilights, and two Transformers. Ultimately, I’ve chosen RotF not just because it is itself bad (which it is, thoroughly one of the most cringe-worthy films I’ve ever encountered), but because it also represents so much of what was wrong with this decade, both in film and as a whole.

The film is utterly unoriginal: a sequel to a film based on a line of toys. The story isn’t so much told as vomited clumsily onto the screen as a series of absurdities meant to entertain people with a phobia for thinking. The movie offers up explosions, talking robots, humping dogs, racism, awkward drug humour, American flag waving, and Republican talking points in a clusterfuck of stupidity so choked with lazy filmmaking that its success proclaims for the world the brain-death of the film-going audience. Looking back at that list though, I can’t help but feel those things kind of represent the 2000s themselves. That’s why Revenge of the Fallen is the worst film of the decade: it is the decade in all its lowest-common-denominator loving shame.

Best Book of the Decade: Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

The Harry Potter phenomenon may have begun with a novel published in 1997, but it climaxed in the 00s. Supporting the delirium was a sturdy frame of quality novels featuring well developed characters of both sexes, penned by an author with integrity.

Goblet of Fire was the first Harry Potter book of the decade, and perhaps the most important in the series. Starting with Goblet, Harry Potter books became monstrous tomes. Each massive volume was released to delirious fans who would take them home, devour them within a couple days, and then turn to the internet where they would puke them back out as increasingly erotic fan fiction and art. The whole thing was a genuinely fun time.

Worst Book of the Decade: Twilight

The 2000s featured a strange pairing of massive young adult book series: one which provided readers with respectable heroes called Harry Potter, and one which provided embarrassing, sexist, and archaic role models called Twilight.

Twilight‘s power in our culture is its worst aspect, young women read this shit and love it for some reason, seemingly unaware of the harmful gender expectations which they are absorbing. The novel features a weak female lead, Bella, submitting to her mysterious jerk-off boyfriend, Edward, at every opportunity.

Best Website of the Decade: Shufflingdead.com

Officially born June 17, 2001, Shufflingdead.com has become the go-to website for news, reviews, and humour relating to everything from Technology to Politics. With every careful keystroke, Shufflingdead Editor in Chief Newbs creates not just words, but revelations. When Shufflingdead speaks, the world listens and respectfully bows its head to the awesome power of this electric website.

In the 2000s, Shufflingdead has gone from humble Angelfire shithole to the most powerful media conglomerate in the universe: producing everything from webcomics to videos, all of which ooze undeniable gravitas and provide splendid amusement. Shufflingdead is all things to all people, and it is relentless in its violent conquering of human consciousness.

Worst Website of the Decade: MySpace.com

This was a difficult category. There are millions of terrible websites in the world, but few which anyone has really heard of. Of those which are broadly known, most possess vast amounts of shit produced by huge communities of users.

I’ve selected MySpace because it is a site which everyone has heard of and many have used, its reach is massive, it is supported by one of the giant media conglomerates (News Corp.) and yet it does not function in the least. MySpace is guilty of success despite total failure in its design. A typical MySpace profile contains broken code, obnoxious auto-playing music, animated gifs, and basically everything that was once associated with 90s Geocities sites. In 2009.

Best TV series of the Decade: Battlestar Galactica

Television changed in the 2000s, led by HBO shows like The Sopranos, the good stuff became great by adopting ongoing plotlines and harder-edged drama. The height of this trend came with the 2003-2009 sci-fi drama Battlestar Galactica. We were shown interesting characters who were actually affected by the events with which they were involved, and who acted like human beings instead of unflinching robots. Instead of being fed the same formulaic plotline each week, the audience was given a story which progressed, and sometimes a story which took unexpected, dark directions.

Worst TV series of the Decade: American Idol

With the 2000s, television split, the good half became things like Battlestar Galactica, the bad half became the awful half, became the unbearable half. As the decade dawned, a new television program named Survivor began, and with it came the birth of reality TV. Survivor itself was not such a bad show; it was original when it started, it was engaging, and the people on it seemed real enough. As networks began to push more and more reality programming, the quality became lower and lower, once again, the race to the bottom was also the race to the greatest success. Fun shows like The Osbournes led to blatantly scripted un-reality shows like Gene Simmons Family Jewels.

The worst of this cancerous growth on television was, and continues to be, American Idol, because Idol is the powerhouse of reality TV that keeps the whole thing going. The show features lazy character arcs for its annual rotating cast, while its mainstays spout predictable catchphrases. The show is like the Home Improvement of reality television, with the characters behaving in the same manner each episode: Cowell is mean/Tim screws up, Tim talks to Wilson/Jackson says “dawg,” Jill accepts Tim’s apology/Paula is crazy.

Stay tuned for decade-end reviews of the best and worst in Games and Politics!