YMMV / The Quiet Man

Film

• Adaptation Displacement: Few people have read the short story The Green Rushes the film is based on. The story was eventually later bundled into an anthology titled The Quiet Man and Other Stories so that people can find it.
• Aluminum Christmas Trees: There really would be no correct Irish language term for 'sleeping bag'. When Ireland was conquered by the British, the Irish language was phased out and English became the dominant language. When Ireland received its independence, there were suddenly hundreds of modern conveniences that they had no Irish words for. So they had to just make them up.
• Award Snub:
  • The part of Thornton was practically John Wayne's first role as a romantic lead, and while he's pretty much acting as JOHN WAYNE, he's surprisingly good as the romantic-at-heart Sean Thorton. That he wasn't even nominated for a Best Actor Academy Award stands as a minor injustice.
  • Maureen O'Hara - in her finest moment as Fiery Redhead was snubbed for Best Actress as well.
  • The Best Picture nomination was nice, but the film lost to The Greatest Show on Earth? Granted, they were also up against High Noon and Moulin Rouge (1952)^note Not the musical, but a José Ferrer Biopic of Toulouse-Lautrec.
• Heartwarming in Hindsight: Maureen O'Hara had the music from this film, her favorite of her own work, played while on her deathbed. George A. Romero, likewise.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: When Thorton petitions the Widow Tillane (Mildred Natwick) to buy back "White O'Morning" property, the Widow Tillane quizzes him on his motives, joking that he was going to convert the farm into "a national shrine, perhaps charge tuppence a visit for a guided tour through the little thatched cottage." In Real Life, the community where the filming took place – in County Mayo, Ireland — has kept up the film sets, including that cottage, for the waves of tourists who come to visit.
• Mexicans Love Speedy Gonzales: The film lays on the Irish stereotypes thick, but it's beloved in Ireland (it helps that the stereotypes are done lovingly, in a "wouldn't it be nice if this was how Ireland is?" way). It's viewed as a Christmas classic and is frequently played on TV.
• Special Effect Failure: It's clear that every time he gets water thrown in his face, they had John Wayne dub "Thanks" in a sarcastic tone during post-production.
• Tear Jerker: The flashback to Thorton killing his opponent in the boxing ring. The horrified look on John Wayne's face was an incredible piece of acting on his part, while the rest of the scene is filled with understated on-lookers showing no expression at all.
• Values Dissonance:
  • Jokes about drunken Irishmen and the threat of domestic violence were perfectly acceptable back then.
  • Although Sean is twice handed a stick to hit Mary with and throws it away both times, the extended scene where he drags her five miles back to town is hard to view in a romantic light now. He drags her by the wrist while she's visibly exhausted, and when she stumbles or loses her shoes, he grabs her by the collar of her jacket and drags her along the ground (which happens several times), and at the end of it flings her roughly at her brother. This humiliating treatment happens in front of the entire town, too. And the town loves it. Especially the old woman who gave John the stick in the first place. It should be noted in the interests of clarity that was precisely the kind of grand gesture that Mary had been demanding of Sean, and while she resisted being dragged around by her wrist and her collar, she was visibly pleased by it in the end.
  • Sean discovers Mary Kate in his cottage and when she tries to run out, forcibly grabs her by the wrist and gives her the Big Damn Kiss. Although she slaps him and says "who gave you leave to be kissing me?", this act of sexual assault is depicted as something that Mary Kate enjoys, and she gives him a kiss right back.

Video Game

• Alternative Character Interpretation: Given that Dane seems to hear and vocally converse with others as long as it's just him and one other person, he might actually have an audio processing disorder that turns multiple overlapping sounds into "noise soup".
• Audience-Alienating Premise: It is a melee-combat focused game whose premise is that the protagonist's deafness is represented by having gameplay and most of the cutscenes be completely silent aside from subtle droning noises and muffled punching and kicking sounds (and the cutscenes aren't subtitled, which doesn't even have Gameplay and Story Integration as justification because the main character does understand what's being said while players are left to piece together the story themselves). Even if the game had been more competently-made in other respects, several reviews and social reactions started with openly wondering why anyone thought this was a good hook.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: The 11th-Hour Superpower comes across this way, given the lack of anything supernatural beforehand or afterward, with the live action scene immediately picking up from the gameplay not acknowledging it at all.
• Camera Screw: A big problem with the combat, where the camera is prone to things like clipping into terrain after successful dodges or snap wildly out of place as you dash-attack random enemies.
• Esoteric Happy Ending: The New Game Plus ends with Dane being released from prison some time after the events of the game, where he meets Robert and the two decide to have another go at salvaging their relationship. This is framed as a hopeful, happy ending, except Robert has received absolutely zero apparent comeuppance for or development from his abusive and manipulative actions towards Dane, making such a resolution feel completely unearned. The game also fails to mention how Taye is dead as a direct result of said schemes, and even Lala's eventual fate is completely unmentioned.
• Good Bad Bugs: The final fight against Taye can be completely broken by grabbing him by the neck then simply wailing on his gut like there's no tomorrow, something he has no means of escaping until all his health is gone. Not only does it look hilarious, but the fight doesn't properly conclude until his health his gone and he hits the ground, so you can continuously punch him in the chest over and over again until you get bored and decide to let it end,which you can see here.
• Love to Hate: It's for the precisely wrong reasons, but Isaac is seen as one of the funnier moments of the game even despite his rather difficult fight. He's absolutely obscenely cartoonish and Laughably Evil both in flashbacks and the main game, coming off as a Large Ham Jerkass that, even by the standards of the rest of the game, is impossible to take seriously. He was intended to be hated, but instead comes off as almost likeable in his idiotically exaggerated evil. He also is the presenter of one of the stupidest glitches of the entire game, where his Turns Red limping animation plays in very fast motion if he's far away. He even delivers one of the corniest lines in the whole game:
  "You're blinded by grief! Me...by ambition!"
• Narm: Once the sound is unlocked, one will find a lot of the dialogue comes off as cheesy and overly theatrical.
• Platonic Writing, Romantic Reading: Due to the relatively youthful appearances of Dane and Lala, as well as a lack of dialogue or definite framing helping confirm matters until a second playthrough, it's very unclear as to whether or not Lala is supposed to be Dane's mother that frequently appears in flashbacks, giving their relationship (as well as much of the overall emotional conflict in the game) very awkward incestuous subtext as a result.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • The lack of any sound or consistent subtitles has been heavily panned, since it makes the game nigh incomprehensible for players until they achieve a New Game Plus, and it doesn't even reflect the deaf protagonist's experience, since he clearly does understand what's going on (as he's reading lips and sign language is being used).
  • The game attempts a semi-Diegetic Interface where the focus meter for combat is represented as a lens flare effect in the top-right. An interesting idea, but it's ruined by the fact the game never explicitly points it out, and combined with the action and other camera effects you're likely to focus on more, it's also very easy to lose track of.
• So Bad, It's Good: While the actual game as a whole has not been looked kindly at all — appearing on many, many "Worst Games of 2018" lists (and even topping some of them) the general consensus is that The Quiet Man is straight-up bad— the story has this reputation for being hilariously difficult to understand due to aspects of the story that work against the narrative, and the Answered patch only made the game's attempts to be serious even funnier. This came to a point that one of the post-game trailers was done "accolades" style, but the first half being done with reviews that hated the game.
• Special Effect Failure:
  • The full motion video part of The Quiet Man starkly contrasts with the beat 'em up segments which were generally compared to effortless video games on Google Play Store gameplay-wise, and to an early PS3 game graphics-wise.
  • Related to the graphics is Square Enix/Human Head Studios' claim that game will come with "flawless transitions between the 3D scenes and FMV" - only two scenes throughout the entirety of The Quiet Man hold up to that claim, while the rest goes between inconsistently-shaded cuts and obvious fades between the shots.
  • Moreso, despite having FMV cutscenes, most of the game is rendered in real time with... not the most organic recreations of the characters' respective actors — particularly Taye. That, and Dane's 3D model emotes very little, if at all. Combined with the inconsistently-shaded environments, the "seamless" transitions are instead extremely conspicuous.
  • During the subway level, a Mook's entrance animation is horribly misaligned: Instead of vaulting over a turnstile, he vaults over the empty air behind it and clips through said turnstile when he lands.
  • All the menus are stylized after neon signs, in the vein of Club Moonrise... unless you own the PC version of the game which has an extra menu, made only with stock Unreal assets.
  • During cutscenes in cars, the rear-projected background sometimes moves in the wrong direction.
  • Dane's shadow-y form in the climax has very rough particle effect interactions, most conspicuously with how his Glowing Eyes of Doom leave behind light trails that dart all over the place at random with virtually every animation.
• Spiritual Successor: The game is similar to Ukrainian movie The Tribe, though the latter is thought to do a better and more respectful job at making a subtitle-less, silent narrative out of deaf character(s)..
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: A game with a deaf main character has lots of potential to be interesting, but sadly, it's rarely taken anywhere beyond just hitting "mute" on the cutscenes. For added salt in the wound, most of the cutscenes require sound for context, and in some cases, Dane replies to people he shouldn't have been able to understand.
• Took the Bad Film Seriously:
  • Many viewers are of the agreement that Taye's actor, John Anthony Wylliams, gives the best attempt in performing the game's near-incomprehensible plot, making the most effort at physical acting rather than constantly monologuing like most (including several moments of ASL). Even in the Narm-tacular Answered patch, his audible performance is relatively well-received in spite of the nonsensical script.
  • In general, the behind-the-scenes short and several interviews seem to indicate that pretty much everyone developing the game was fully aware of how ambitious and potentially disastrous their concept of a soundless game was, and were at least attempting to make it into a challengingly unique, but still entertaining experience. It's almost tragic that it ended up turning out as what casual players and critics alike consider a disaster.
• Unintentionally Sympathetic: Taye is a very confused sort. While his poor treatment of Lala is crucial to the plot, it's the only unprovoked villainy we actually see on screen. The first half of the game treats him as a shady, yet supportive friend and ally of Dane, but he slowly becomes an antagonistic force you have to fight. However, much of this antagonism is driven by him feeling pretty justifiably betrayed by Dane going behind his back in his convoluted plot of rescuing Lala (and Dane never tries to clear up his accidental rampage), and Taye even offers a chance to end things peacefully that Dane has no choice but to reject. Even when Taye finally resolves to kill Dane, his distraught performance makes it clear that he's sincerely sorry to Dane for having to do so.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic:
  • Similarly, while the game very often frames Robert as being an antagonistic force, being the mastermind who set the plot in motion, the True Final Boss, as well as just being a generally abusive father who purposefully invoked his son's trauma to goad him into his convoluted plot to end the gang war, the game also ends with him coming out relatively unscathed, even framed in a sympathetic light for him attempting to reconcile with Dane by the climax despite lacking any Character Development motivating him to do so, with Dane going along with just as much explanation.
  • The Reveal that the entire gang war was one big False Flag Operation that Taye got unwillingly dragged into pretty much kills any sympathy for Lala and Dane as well. We're apparently supposed to feel more sorry for Dane having to backstab his friend as opposed to the guy who was actually backstabbed.
• The Woobie: Dane. Already born deaf, which his father hated him for, he watched his mother get shot and killed in front of him as a child. Afterward his father began to ramp up the abuse and blamed him for all of it when he already felt guilt enough. As an adult, he appears to at least have a modicum of control and seems to be getting by working for his friend. Over the course of the game, however, everything starts to break down around him. He's essentially forced to relive the loss of his mother and he's tricked into turning his only friends against him. At the end, it's revealed that he pretty much had no agency in any of this as it was carefully manipulated by outside forces, including the very father that already destroyed his childhood. When he breaks down crying before the final boss fight, it's hard to not wish the guy could have been spared the whole plot.

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