The Mad Cartoon Network Wiki

21-Aug-03 22:27 #1 CubeFan973 Join Date May 2002 Location USA, Earth, Solar System, Universe 2313 Posts 1,657 MAD sucks. (LONG rant ahead) MAD sucks. Having bought 3 issues hoping to laugh at some funny parodies of movies, I found myself shocked at what they had become over the years I hadn't read it.

First, the second issue I bought featured "MAD's 50 Worst Things About Movies" on the cover, with Adam Sandler being strangled with a movie clapboard also shown. Hoping for it to attack truly awful films as well as clichés used in so many films they're predictable now, I bought the magazine. However, I'll recite from memory some of the worst things they did in a while.

They didn't attack bad things so much as they did good things and bad things equally. Most are attacks on talented filmmakers such as M. Night Shyamalan, who they thought had made films with "self-indulgent cameos" and endings "that a four-year old could predict." First, on the cameos, I guess they think all directors who had cameos in their films are self-indulgent? So Alfred Hitchcock was a hack? And on the endings, I'll admit that "Signs" had no kind of twist ending whatsoever, and that "The Sixth Sense" did use a twist ending from "The Twilight Zone" (which is actually where many "original" stories have come from). But they probably hadn't seen "Unbreakable," which had an ending so cool everybody who saw it probably didn't expect it.

They also bashed on Kevin Smith, as I paraphrase: "… whose tired vanity character 'Silent Bob' dispenses words of wisdom in the last 10 minutes of the film, after Smith finally runs out of genitalia jokes and realizes he needs to tie up those loose ends." Hmm. Maybe I didn't read it carefully enough, but I didn't notice anything bashing the "American Pie" films in the article. I'm pretty sure those have genitalia jokes infinitely worse and in greater quantities than a Kevin Smith film. Also, Silent Bob doesn't say words of wisdom like they think he does (talking about the meaning of life and such and such, for quite a while). I don't know about "Dogma" or "Jay And Silent Bob Strike Back," but in "Clerks" he simply said something about women, in "Mallrats" he quoted "Star Wars," and in "Chasing Amy…" well, he did have a speech in it, but it was about love. "Dogma" is about religion, obviously, and one of his whole 2 lines in the film is "No ticket!" a reference to "Raiders Of The Lost Ark." In "J&SBSB," he becomes almost chatty, as I've heard, and all his lines can't be about the meaning of life, right? Besides, "Chasing Amy" had it about 1 hour into the film. (Not that I've seen the speech scene. I hated the film enough to stop watching before it was an hour in.)

They even go too far on Michael Moore's ramblings, which "make us almost nostalgic for the days of Joe McCartney's blacklist." This is one of the worst comments they could have made. They're probably too young to know what the blacklist actually did. It had called many screenwriters (at least) Communist spies, and those screenwriters went out of a job, often having to do anonymous jobs to make money at all. Besides, how many rambling speeches has Michael Moore made? The whole Oscar-acceptance/I-hate-you-and-what-you've-done-Bush speech is pretty much it. Sure, some of his films contained political commentary (in "Bowling For Columbine" he mentions the "President bombing another country whose name we can't pronounce," and the upcoming "Fahrenheit 9/11" is pretty much self-explanatory), but so far it hasn't been the whole thing, and even the upcoming one isn't that kind of political commentary as much as it is about true facts. After all, the guy is a documentary director.

There's more, but there's just too much I actually laughed at to think of the bad things (though I really hated what they said about musicals). I would quote the whole article, but I don't have it here. However, it's just the start. The latest one is probably just as bad-maybe worse.

I bought this one for "The FakeTrix: Retarded." However, that seems to be the only good article in the whole friggin' issue. And it was barely even funny. One panel involves the "controversial" Keanu-Moss "sex-scene." It uses computer terminology as sexual innuendo (as if there's another kind of innuendo). "Software" and "Floppy" were never meant to describe how impotent someone is in bed. "Hard drive" and "unplugged" were never meant to mean how much you've rocked that person's world.

Then they go on to attack "The Hulk." I don't want to hear comments about how much of a hulking (pun intended) pile of shit it was, or if it was a good film. THE HULK ISN'T UNLEASHED TO HAVE SEX! THE HULK'S PENIS IS NOT SOMETHING TO BE MOCKED! BRUCE DOESN'T TURN INTO THE HULK JUST BECAUSE OF "AMERICAN IDOL!" If I seem like I'm yelling, the reason is because "The Hulk" just wasn't made to get a mocking in MAD Magazine.

At the end of the issue, they mocked the MTV Music Awards, or whatever they're called. While I didn't have problems with most of the jokes ("Queens Of The Stone Age should win some awards tonight!" "Why? Haven't Elton John & David Bowie won enough awards in their life already?"), one in particular angered me. Which was it? An insult towards Avril Lavigne. They mention how "musicians claim she stole their songs," and someone can't believe it because "others want credit for writing nonsense like 'Sk8er Boi.'" Hmm… maybe they weren't listening to the song. It was about love, not about misspelling. Before you bash on something, do your f***ing research and figure out what you're bashing.

Worst of all was "The Gamer's Guide To Functioning In The Real World." They seem to be assaulting video games (mainly "Grand Theft Auto: Vice City") for society's problems. For example, in the article they bash on how you can kill someone in "The Sims" by removing the ladder from their swimming pool, how you regain health in "GTA: VC" by going to a red cross and touching it, how you can open sealed boxes in "Half-Life" and "Deus Ex" with your 'bare hands' (I'll approach that in a while), how you roll up into a ball in "Metroid Prime" to run away, and how in adventure/role-playing games you can just take anything you want.

First, the swimming pool thing: That's not the only way to kill someone in "The Sims." There's plenty of ways to do that. And even so, after all the time someone's spent playing "The Sims," they're still going to remember how to swim in a kiddie pool (which was pictured). It's not that hard, especially if you're grown up, which the people at MAD seem to know nothing about.

Second, they think "GTA: VC" caused Columbine and such and such? Nuh-uh. It's a harmless way to relieve stress. So what if it's a little unbelievable? If you want a totally believable game, play "The Getaway." That'll teach them to bash on things they know nothing about.

Third, I pointed out the "destroy-crates-with-your-bare-hands" comment earlier. Not true at all, even in video games. In both "Deus Ex" and "Half-Life" (the latter of which they seem to have Photoshopped the picture in), you break the crates with crowbars. Those look considerably different from your hands. And even if it's unrealistic to do that, so what? You can still use a crowbar to open the box, even if you just open one side.

Fourth, I said their theory on rolling up into a ball in "Metroid Prime" was stupid, and I'm likely right on it. You see, the character you play is something of a super-soldier of the future. If you can't suspend your disbelief that this could happen in the future for the duration of gameplay, maybe you should stick to playing "Super Mario Bros" or "Doom."

Finally, the pick-up-anything idea of "role-playing adventure games" isn't true. In many adventure games, you can't pick up a bookcase. You can't pick up beds. Sometimes you can't even take certain items from a bookcase or a phone. And in "Resident Evil Zero" (which appears to be what they stole the screenshot from), that's not a feature; there's a limit, just like in many other games. Heck, even the rather simple "NetHack" (an Internet project that started IN THE 80'S! Unbelievable) has a limit to what you can carry. "Your movements are slowed slightly because of your load…" "You rebalance. Movement is difficult." "You can barely move a hand span with this load!"

What's really sad is that Electronic Gaming Monthly, which is a video game magazine with a sarcastic sense of humor, is funnier in their often-3-page-long Letters articles than MAD has been in two whole issues. Worse, the first MAD issue I bought, which was really "MAD XL," was kind of funny… then you realize most of it isn't new. Heck, the feature I bought it for, "The FakeTrix," was from 1999, I'm sure. And somewhere in that whole issue of "what's really sad" is that they've started to have ads, something I remember being unspoken of years ago. When you think about it, it opens two possibilities: One, MAD will never be able to parody "Grind," a stupid skateboarding movie they've advertised; and two, the readers who bought MAD must have started to avoid it in droves.

In summary: Boycott MAD. It's not funny anymore; it's simply stupid.