Current Events > Was The Phantom Menace the most hyped piece of media ever?

(+) Yeah! (+)

I wasn't alive to see it, but that's the impression I've gotten.

[LFAQs-redacted-quote]


Not even close to what it meant that a new star wars was coming out.

Yes

No

[LFAQs-redacted-quote]


lol i don't give a shit about either franchise. Probably endgame was a better movie as Phantom Menace sucked. Never watched any avengers though and never will. But the leadup to it coming out was a really huge cultural deal and that was without any new movies leading up to it since 16 years ago. And that was before modern internet etc.

I never really understood why star wars was as huge of a thing as it was as a kid but like 95% of people who were into any nerdy stuff at all revered it.

MASH's final episode. The US population in 1983 was 234 million and the episode had a viewer count of 106 million, meaning that almost half of the US tuned in to watch that particular episode. It is still the most watched TV series finale, usually beating every other extremely hyped TV series by 2-3x, and acts as a sort of extreme outlier when compared to basically anything media-wise.

Beyond that probably the stage play for The Lion King. It has less of a "cultural bomb" like MASH or Endgame but it will continue to generate hype long after the others have gone away, the length of its reign being sort of crazy compared to all other long term media outside of The Simpsons.

[LFAQs-redacted-quote]

Absolutely shit taste. The worst orginal Star Wars movie (RoTJ) is probably better than the best MCU. No MCU movie even comes within a league of Empire.

Maybe the Sopranos finale. I know everyone was talking about that the next day

[LFAQs-redacted-quote]

Cope

Duke Nukem Forever

MCU and Star Wars can both be shitty, its not a competition

Who shot J.R.?

[LFAQs-redacted-quote]

https://youtu.be/u0CLdVlJ4eA

sutree posted...

Absolutely shit taste. The worst orginal Star Wars movie (RoTJ) is probably better than the best MCU. No MCU movie even comes within a league of Empire.

Glad someone said it.

Fuck no

Lmfao. X-Men, for example, and even AotC, were more popular with that demographic. I'd argue wat you're looking for is The Dark Knight. Greatest movie ever made. You'll remember the script. Are the kids buying the toys? Who gives a shit. It's Batman, for fuckin out loud

The moon landing

An estimated 650 million people watched it live in 1969, when the world population was 3.6 billion.

As far as movies go, people said Deathly Hallows was the biggest thing due to books and amount of movies leading up. Marvel is the same way. Just current hype trend backed by large corporation, advertising, and focus groups.

Star Wars started from the bottom and achieved massive hype pre modern internet. Even back when star wars had peak nerd stigma.

MCU is the pop music of films these days. Not necessarily bad, but by the numbers for sure.

comedy option:

South Park: Who's cartman's dad?

I remember this being a big deal in middle school. Then they aired a terrance and phillip special instead since it was april fool's day and some people were big mad about it. Stopped being a fan of south park at all as the show went on, but still think this was a pretty funny gag.

SiO4 posted...

Who shot J.R.?

This was a big one, although I barely remember it.

As far as movies go, it was definitely Phantom Menace (which is part of the reason the backlash was so strong too). Nothing modern comes close-- people went to movies just to see the trailer for it back when the internet was still slow as hell and youtube didn't exist.

Hard to say. Honestly, I was 10 when The Phantom Menace came out, so no one around me was part of the "Star Wars is back" hype.

If any movie did have more hype though, it would have been endgame. Endgame had huge amounts of hype, it was crazy.

garan posted...

This was a big one, although I barely remember it.

As far as movies go, it was definitely Phantom Menace (which is part of the reason the backlash was so strong too). Nothing modern comes close-- people went to movies just to see the trailer for it back when the internet was still slow as hell and youtube didn't exist.

Ya, I never watched Dalles at all.

But ya, having a generation waiting on a movie is a big deal..even if it is a tiny generation.

I definitely remember it being absurd. I was in middle school at the time and I remember Star Wars being on literally everything for a year before and like two years after it came out (and that was in spite of it sucking). Anyone else get one of these?

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/7/3/9/AASfTXAACuQL.jpg

Jar Jar Lollipop. Never forget.

Came in to talk about how people were losing their minds collecting soda containers.

Yes. I watched the Duel of the Fates video so many times leading up to it. It was even in MTVs TRL which was really popular at the time.

The Popo posted...

The moon landing

An estimated 650 million people watched it live in 1969, when the world population was 3.6 billion.

In 1978 2 billion people watched Muhammad Ali versus Leon Spinks. With a world population of 4.3 billion people on the planet it was the highest % of the world population to ever watch a singular event.

The difference between it and something like MASH, however, was that it was popular around the world and thus it caused high overall viewership numbers but low individual-country impact while the sheer obscene nature of the MASH's hype caused it to be closer to something like a natural disaster. Famously so many people flushed in New York following the ending of the episode that the entire city had sewage flooding. Raw numbers are nice but do not necessarily say all there is to do with hype. MASH is a bit unique in that way in that it is the only instance of more than 100% of households with TV's watched the finale.

I don't remember hearing many people discussing it before release, but the internet was very different in 1999. No youtube for one thing. I think many people were excited though. Everyone expected more like the original trilogy. I want to say I remember people after the movie walking out dumbfounded but I can't remember for sure.

It's not even the most hyped Star Wars movie, The Force Awakens was bigger