The best and worst of pop culture in 2022
The biggest winners (including Top Gun: Maverick, The Bear) and losers (think Ticketmaster and Tom Hanks) from a memorable, eventful year in entertainment
Aux Features Adil El Arbi
Andor (courtesy of Lucasfilm), Morbius (Courtesy of Sony Pictures), Top Gun: Maverick (courtesy of Paramount Pictures) Graphic: The A.V. Club
Listen, this year has been a lot. From highs like Tom Cruise’s Maverick rebirth and Beyonce’s Renaissance to lows like the Johnny Depp-Amber Heard trial and, well, Morbius, there’s been so much to process. Who knew, for instance, that we’d go from hopelessly pessimistic about the future of the DCU to kinda sorta maybe a little bit reservedly hopeful about James Gunn? And who would’ve guessed that Andor would be that good after so much Star Wars mediocrity? As we near the end of 2022, The A.V. Club is taking stock of the past year with a look back at the best and worst from films, TV, music, and pop culture in general. Here, then, is is everything we loved and everything that let us down over the past year.
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The Book of Boba Fett was so pointless that the show itself gave up and just turned into The Mandelorian halfway through.
*and no one complained when it did. That’s not… a great sign for your show.
Those were the best episodes
That’s incorrect—everyone complained about it, or at least commented about how odd it is you leave your titular character for so long. There was no shortage of negative commentary about it.
I heard this a lot. I enjoyed the Mandalorian and had no interest in Fett… but I feel like I *should* watch it because it is basically season 2.5 of Mando. When I complain about shows (particularly in the MCU) being homework, this is what I am talking about.
You literally only have to watch the last 3 episodes, which is what I did. The plot of Fett was so dull and pointless that you will immediately pick up on everything that already happened just from the “previously on.” It works perfectly well as a short arc for “The Mandalorian.”
And it doing so somewhat retroactively makes The Mandalorian worse as well.
As fantastic as Andor was, and it was, was how absolutely garbage Bobba Fett was. Tony Gilroy is brilliant, if you haven’t listened to him sit down with Maron, check out the PC. It was fantastic,Tony Gilroy is a fascinating dude, as is his family, one of Marc’s best in some time.Elvis was a terrible vapid mess, Austin Butlers hunkiness and charisma couldn’t save that fucking mess, nothing could. Also, Avatar was marginally more entertaining than the new LoTR series, about as exciting as a beige turtleneck. The Bear epi 7, Review, was one of the best episodes of television in the last 10 years. I don’t get the hate on ST’s splitting up the season into a part A and B, it was MASSIVE, check the runtime, it was essentially 2 seasons of material(Covid) dropped in the same year…..and if Kim Wexler doesn’t get her own series I’ll legit cry.
The worst thing about The Book Of Boba Fett, though, is that it simply couldn’t justify its own existence.Word. It was a show about a crime lord who never did any crimes. How many compelling dramas have been made over the years about a new crime boss taking over and battling criminal rivals, and instead we get this?At least the episode of The Mandalorian they shoved into it was interesting, and it was neat to see Ahsoka interacting with Uncanny Valley Luke, even if I think Luke should have been asking her a ton more questions like “where were you that whole time between Yavin IV and Endor?”
How about Luke’s “so I’m making a new Jedi Order but adhering strictly to the rules set up by the old, failed one causing me to lose a really promising student”
That moment was the worst thing in the entire Favreau canon and worse than the rest of the execrable “Fett” series. How do you get it that wrong??? Sigh.
Rules which pretty clearly contradict everything I ever did as a budding Jedi, too.
“budding”
Eh, if you join Luke’s Jedi school there’s a good chance he’ll read your mind and pull a lightsaber on you in your sleep. Luke Skywalker: the galaxy’s most inept school administrator.
No, we didn’t need Filoni shoehorning Ahsoka yet again into another Star Wars production.
Fett was bad, but at least it didn’t actively damage the canon. Kenobi, on the other hand, did exactly that and was awful, to boot. Making Leia and Vader main characters was ill-judged enough, and then the finale doubled down by building a climax around Luke, too. And who could forget Reva, the most spectacularly incoherent character of the year, whose hero turn was as drearily predictable as it was narratively inexplicable – but, because of racist trolls, we’re all supposed to pretend she was the series’ highlight?
Honestly, Reva’s arc is on par with Anakin’s when it comes to outright stupidity and a general lack of logic. Anakin… had some vague dreams and moodiness and it was apparently enough to side with the guy who’s plans were what put Padme in danger in the first place. I mean, Anakin had multiple chances to back out of siding with Palpatine and just kept doubling down on it even while being ordered to kill children.
EP3 Anakin had a terminal case of stupidity and Obi-Wan should’ve killed him. The guy had just killed an large amount of children and sided with the
architect behind all the conflicts that made up his entire life. Not killing him in the series after finding out that Anakin was Vader just makes it worse. Though honestly, the prequels in general just make all of the Jedi look stupid.
Says you. I’d love to see a series of the adventures of young Leia. That kid actor was the MVP of Kenobi.
As for Obi-Wan “could have killed or arrested” Vader, what? Arrested and brought him to the authorities, which are the Empire? Killed his ex-Padawan and brother-in-arms because he shown as being traumatised and wants to give himself more trauma?
Star Wars canon is as fine as it ever was after Kenobi.
Says you. Young Leia is in the running with Jar Jar Binks for worst Star Wars Character.
The kid actor who Leia was absolutely horrendous and, easily, the worst part of Obi-Wan… which is saying a lot.
I mean, Obi Wan tried to kill Anakin in Episode 3, kinda tried to kill him in Episode 4, and encouraged Luke to kill him in Episode 6, so his angst about killing Anakin was apparently a midlife crisis.
Or… Obi-Wan never wanted to kill Anakin, only what he’d become (Vader). Obi-Wan even let Anakin/Vader live in Episode 3, sacrificed himself rather than kill him in Episode 4, and encouraged Luke to confront Vader in Episode 6.
His angst about his role in all of this was PTSD, and fair enough.
Before Kenobi aired, I was hoping for some young Leia stuff. She’s woefully under-represented, at least in the Disney version. I’d love to see her as a highly influential diplomat, unknowingly using her latent Jedi mind powers on her rivals.I don’t want CG Fisher, and I prefer seeing things move away from the Skywalker saga, but at the same time, I’d love some Leia scenes in Andor with Mon Mothma or Luthen.
Vader could walk down Main St., kill a guy in broad daylight and not spend 5 minutes in jail!
You guys take this franchise WAAAYY to seriously.
To answer your last question: Yes. In fact, we should over compensate for it. Moses Ingram got the heaps of critical praise we usually see reserved for awards contenders. Years from now, if people look back on Obi-Wan reviews without the social context, it will appear ridiculous.
Yeah, there’s a reason that Obi-Wan is a failed burnout jedi. It’s that he failed and burned out.
re: Killing Eve “…that also somehow succumbed to the “bury your gays” trope.” Pssshawww. The show is titled Killing Eve. It was always kind of inevitable. Everything post season one was awful (for me, no shade if you loved it), but offing a psychopathic murderer is hardly burying your gays.
The show unfortunately got weaker every season, and even though Comer and Oh did their best and there was a bit of magic every now and then, it was an overall disappointment I can’t recommend to new viewers. But the finale / conclusion was so bad and so unsatisfying that even the writer who created the character unequivocally disavowed it.
Anybody who believed that Villanelle would or should have survived is just being silly. The only real question was would Eve survive? Villanelle surviving would have broken every rule of drama and basic morality. Not every gay death is “bury your gays” and quite frankly the attempt to make it so is getting beyond tiresome. Some people seem to want gayness to be automatic plot armor.
Agreed with everything you said. The finale was indeed awful, but this was not the reason why.
“Tom Cruise, still boyish at 60″
“gave Cruise a viable love interest in Jennifer Connelly”
alright, how much did Cruise pay you to write this?
jennifer connelly is 52
about the same amount as Rian Johnson, James Cameron, Amber Ruffin, etc.Still not enough to save the website
The answer to saving the website:More slideshows.Specifically, slideshows about Yellowstone.
Tom Cruise is really one of the professional and unique actors.
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I dunno but Wexler not getting an award seems fitting…
Lghtyear’s problem was two fold .
It needed Tim Allen for the voice acting ,and it became about the virtue singling “Hey look we stuck in gay people for 30 seconds .”
Both misteps and Totally unnecessary actions which didn’t add to the story at all.
congratulations on cowering so much from the horde of misogynist Johnny Depp fans that you said absolutely nothing meaningful in your “summary” of that trial.
Jurassic World: Dominion was so forgettable that I had…forgotten…it was from this year. I think people were a little rough on Morbius; it wasn’t great by any stretch, but at least it was dumb fun. Crimes of the Future, Uncharted, and Ambulance were far more egregious viewing experiences.
I made it about 2 minutes into del Toro’s Pinocchio. When Geppetto started singing I was out.
The singing is what made me tune out too many forgettable songs. But the ending got to me. Also like that Geppeto was annoyed with him at first and was freaked out about him being alive which makes sense.
Lol, there’s singing in many Pinocchio adaptations, tho. But fwiw, in this movie it gets worse. The praise del Toro’s Pinocchio is getting really feels like director bias to me. The songs are not good, it completely omits Pleasure Island and the donkey transformations (I’d argue the whole point of the moral lessons), and somehow commits the exact same sin as the Disney remake (**mild spoilers** Pinocchio uses his lies to grow his nose and get out of a jam), yet is not at all raked over the coals for this.
Showrunner Steven Moffat’s adaptation didn’t seem to get that Audrey Niffenegger’s novel isn’t about time travel at all. It’s about what it’s like to love someone with a chronic disability that makes it impossible to live a normal life, and the complications that creates for both partners over time. But that’s not even the worst of this show’s litany of sins against quality television. We also got the creepy optics an a man paying regular visits to a young girl until she’s old enough to date him, A chronic disability that, besides giving a couple a way to make a lot of money, involves a man paying regular visits to a young girl until she’s old enough to date him? That’s the story. (God, I hated that book.)
So, what’s the issue?-Woody Allen
Best of the year is Avatar 2 and it is way better than any of that mindless star wars and marvel crap. Hopefully this will end lazy bullshit like marvel and star wars and Hollywood can start making real movies again.
Jebus. It is soon to be 2023, so can the AVClub stop shilling for Avatar then? Or do the checks run into next year too?#zerocredibility #avatarshill #review4sale
The best measure of Morbius’ failure is that the female lead is Adria Arjona, who everybody fell in love with within 10 seconds in Andor as Bix, and nobody remembers she was in Morbius.
Similarly, I’m really glad Matt Smith got a showy, immediately-beloved role in “House of the Dragon” before the stink-by-association of “Morbius” settled on him.
One of the many reasons I dislike Dragons is because the first time I saw Matt Smith act was Morbius. Not even a fake blond wig can make me forget.
Haven’t seen Andor, but I just watched Morbius, and I liked her in it. In fact, I don’t think Morbius is nearly as awful as everyone said. Venom and its sequel frustrated me way more. Morbius is just what I’d call dumb ‘goth schlock’, no more offensive than something like Underworld was 20 years ago.
Lightyear wasn’t the worst. My kids liked it and it didn’t make me want to curl up and die watching it with them. I think we sometimes forget who the primary audience is supposed to be for these things.
Agreed. It’s not a bad movie. In fact it’s a good movie that just doesn’t live up to it’s predecessors. When you think about truly bad Pixar movies (The Good Dinosaur, Cars 2), Lightyear is much better in comparison.But it would have done better as a story with being based on a Toy Story character. The confusing aspect of it didn’t do Disney any favors.
It felt to me like one of those situations where two scripts are floating around behind the scenes and the execs decide they’re similar enough to smash them together–like they were thinking about exploring Buzz Lightyear’s canon, and also someone had a fun little sci-fi romp, and why not combine them! But the two ideas end up stepping on each others’ feet a little.
I didn’t dislike The Good Dinosaur, it’s very middling by Pixar standards but it wasn’t unpleasant to watch.I’d honestly put it on par with Luca, which also has a very basic story and message for its intended audience. Both perfectly watchable but not particularly memorable films by a studio with much stronger films in its portfolio.
Also Sox is a cute cat something you rarely see in 3D animation.
Worth it for Sox alone! I am right now cuddling my talking Sox plush, which my daughter bought for me and lives on my work desk. (She is 20, I am 55, so both grown-ass adults.)
Yes, but we’re supposed to remember that a great deal of rapidly-ageing Millennials haven’t psychologically grown-up. They’re now the parents of the kids going to see films like this and we have to remember to be “inclusive” of everyone in our audience.It’s a great kids film. It’s dangerous to the point of being silly, it has a nonsensical plot, bright colours, a fun animal sidekick and no fucking songs about why no one talks about the pervert uncle living in the walls who talks to fucking rats.We need to stop making animated films for the idiot parents and focus more on the kids. There’s more to life than what some neckbeard with wank fantasies over their Buzz/Woody fanfic has to say.
Exactly, I get the impression a lot of the critics who hated it grew up with the original Toy Story films and I get a “not my Buzz” energy from the critique. It’s my seven year olds favorite movie and the majority of his Christmas wants were related to it. Judging by the fact that toys from the movie were sold out and not filling clearance bins like I had hoped, I suspect my son is not the only kid who fell in love with it
Same here, my 7 year old was Buzz Lightyear for Halloween but NOT Toy Story Buzz. He was very clear. I don’t agree with half of the stick this movie gets.
I think it had more to do with the concept itself being so clunky.
It’s also kinda wild in a countdown for TYOOL 2022 that a complaint for anything ever at all would be “This needs Tim Allen.”
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Oh my.“It was a media circus from the beginning, turning two people’s personal traumas into a public debate.”Which your ilk over on the Jezebel blog were more than happy to exploit. Remind us: how many articles, listicle, “opinion pieces” and general shit did your fellow blogistas create? Hmm? And now, on the other side of it, there’s still nothing much to be learned here—except that, as always, we can still sink lower.Yes. Which your site actively encouraged. Word of advice? In the future? Try harder. Do better. Hire a better writer than that trashy queen you have writing your hit pieces (we all know what happened to that Henry Cavill attempt) and cover all aspects of the trial. You can still be on one party’s side and take their side whilst demonstrating non-bias in your reporting. Heaven knows professional journalists can do it. Why can’t you lot? Oh, that’s right, you still haven’t learned your lessons from the Hogan fiasco.
Was the ‘Ellie Kemper is racist’ debacle from this year too?
That was summer 2021.
I’ll never forget the summer that I turned 16 and learned that Ellie Kemper was a raging racist.
Truly a wet hot American summer, if ever there was one.
I wouldn’t have been aware of the trial but for AV Club.
Don’t worry, darling!
Zendaya’s just the ugliest kid I’ve ever seen.
Ticketmaster hasn’t been exactly beloved—memes about their exorbitant service and processing fees go back at least to the Obama administrationI guess I shouldn’t even be surprised at this point that the children running this site either don’t care or have forgotten about Pearl Jam taking on Ticketmaster way back in ye olden days of 1994. There may not have been any of your precious fucking memes, but back then, we used words to communicate with one another.How adorable is it that a $1.80 service charge on an $18 ticket was considered a high crime?https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/pearl-jam-war-with-ticketmaster/
Top Gun was just okay.
Top Gun Maverick has to be the most overrated movie of the year, maybe the past several years. It ain’t completely awful, but it’s ultimately just “Merika good” slop.
How about not spoiling Del Toro’s Pinocchio? AV Club is the worst of 2022.
I miss The Year in Swag.
Yeah, and the Best/Overrated/Underrated/Outlier annual movie recaps. And so many other things.
I found that most of what was on tv or streaming was rather mediocre, some worse than others, I think the break out hit was squid games, it was at least entertaining and if a show can keep you interested enough to see what is going to happen next than they have succeeded.Jack Ryan was far better viewing than the CBS FBI SHOWS as far as those kind of things go.Star Trek Strange new world was far better than Picard, especially that remake of the balance of terror, at least those Romulans actually reminded me of how sinister Romulans where as the Romulans in Picard looked like Vulcans and acted like Humans, and now the Queen of the Borg is a female human who wants to hug and love everyone, why is it in Star Trek they always introduce a fresh new Ultimate threat race and then turn it into campy boring pacified crapola.Lord of the Rings was eye candy and not much else, everything about it was mediocre, House of Dragon was better but still not up to the level that was Game of Thrones at least not yet.Two shows that were worth watching but axed are:Raised by Wolves and Mindhunter.
Shows split up series because of the lightning in a bottle success when Breaking Bad did it, which turned the final episodes into a ratings smash based on super word of mouth. They hope by breaking them up tons of people will talk about your show and therefore get an even bigger audience. However, despite about a 100 shows doing this since BB, it has not worked as they do not recognize that some things are one in a million.
For Best, I’d add The Batman, Severance, and a pretty good year for the Playstation 5.
For Worst, I’d insist on Netflix’s Resident Evil, the collapse of G4, and Thor Love and Thunder, a movie I’d say surpasses The Dark World as the weakest MCU film.
I hate to say Bobba Fett & Obi Wan almost killed Star Wars for me after 45 years of fandom. I could not finish Obi Wan it was so bad. Given all the great content we can now choose it felt like LucasFilms was just milking my loyalty. And then came Andor. Some of the greatest acting, scripts, action and production that showed what science fiction could be. Much, much, much more please.
Coming in just under the wire as the worst pop culture moment of 2022, HBO Max removing half of the classic Looney Toons library on January 31st!
“box office success can be debated”Avatar 2 becomes the biggest hit released in 2022 today or tomorrow.