Roy Tang

Apparently I’m not done looking back at the 2010s yet. I had some “top tens of 2010s” discussions with some friends recently, here are my personal lists, each in no particular order:

My Top Ten Movies of the 2010s

• Avengers Endgame (2019).. I’m keeping only one slot per franchise, so I had to choose an MCU movies for this. Runner-ups for this slot were Guardians of the Galaxy and Captain America Winter Soldier, and individually either one of those movies might be around the same or better than Endgame, but Endgame is the culmination of a decade’s worth of movies and gave me the most enjoyment as a comic book fan.
• Rogue One (2016). I really liked The Force Awakens too, but Rogue One is easily the best of the Disney Star Wars era.
• Interstellar (2014). The top ten discussions led to an extended debate about some of the science in this movie, all in good fun. It requires some suspension of disbelief is needed, but it’s still a pretty good sci-fi movie.
• The Martian (2015). This one was my favorite sci-fi movie of the decade though, I’ll read the book someday.
• Inception (2010). The fact that this movie spawned so many memes and so many debates and discussions was an indication of how good it was.
• Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse (2018). The MCU was a series of great movies based on comic books, but Spider-Verse was the best movie that really feels like a comic book. (I suppose the comparison is slightly unfair since Spider-Verse has the advantage of being animated!)
• One Cut of the Dead (2017). This is a Japanese film I saw at Eiga-sai. If you can overcome the one-inch barrier of subtitles it’s easily one of the funniest movies I’ve seen in the past decade.
• Logan (2017). Easily the best of Fox’s X-Men films, and among the top echelon of comic book films overall.
• Mad Max Fury Road (2015). This was my first Mad Max film, I really enjoyed the performances and the stunts and the ridiculous vehicle scenes.
• Baby Driver (2017). Makes me want to imagine what Edgar Wright’s Ant-Man would have been like.

My Top Ten TV Shows of the 2010s

• Parks and Recreation (2009-2015). I know it started before the 2010s, but this might be appropriate anyway since the show didn’t really pick up until the third season. There’s a lot of other notable comedies of its class that I really enjoyed during the last decade, such as 30 Rock and Community, but I tip the hat to PnR because I really like the characters of Ben Wyatt and Ron Swanson and Andy Dwyer. (Apparently I really like all the male main characters except for Tom lol)
• Brooklyn Nine Nine (2013-). B99 is just my kind of ridiculous, similar to PnR, super quotable, and so on.
• Young Justice (2010-). Young Justice is the true successor to the excellent JL/JLU of the 00s, with a deep plot full of conspiracy and betrayal, a large cast of characters
• Daredevil (2015-2018). The Netflix shows had great promise, and Daredevil seasons 1 and 3 were among the best of them. It’s too bad that they fell to the IP disputes of their time, but who knows maybe we get to revisit them again some time in the future.
• Doctor Who (2005-). The DW revival started in the 00s, but I only started watching it in 2012, when Matt Smith was already the Eleventh. There have been some weaker seasons and episodes, but overall I enjoyed the general campiness and sci-ifi silliness of the series.
• Black Mirror (2011-). I’m actually still not caught up with the latest season, but I have greatly enjoyed the near-future what-ifs posed by this popular show. (It’s too bad we are unlikely to heed its warnings!)
• Breaking Bad (2008-2013). I mean, it’s generally regarded as one of the best series of all time right? I haven’t even bothered watching El Camino because for me the ending of BB was already prefect.
• The Orville (2017-). 2017 was a great year for Star Trek (-like) content, with the more serious Star Trek Discovery and more lighthearted The Orville both debuting. I enjoyed both shows, but the Orville’s sci-fi sitcom brought us something a lot more unique.
• Game of Thrones (2011-2019). Say what you will about the quality of writing (or lack thereof) for the last couple of seasons, but this was a TV series that got people obsessed and following every episode and arguing about spoilers and forming fan theories, book readers or otherwise. It pretty much defined the decade of TV.

My Top Ten Games of the 2010s

• Starcraft 2 (2010-2015)(PC). Got all 3 parts on release, and still playing it to this day (mostly coop missions - I don’t really have the heart for the stress of ladder matches anymore!)
• The Last of Us (2013)(PS3). There are games where you’re saddened that you can’t play them again for the first time, and the Last of Us was one of the best of those.
• The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (2017)(WiiU). The defining Zelda of modern times. I loved the exploratory nature similar to the original NES LoZ and the cel-shaded graphics were fantastic. The sequel may yet convince me to get a Switch!
• Persona 5 (2017)(PS4). Easily the best JRPG of its era (sorry, Final Fantasy XV!).
• Fallout: New Vegas (2010)(PC). Obsidian’s part of the Fallout franchise had much improved writing and questlines over it’s predecessor Fallout 3, good enough for multiple run throughs, and I even managed to finish all the DLCs as well!
• The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim (2011)(PC). I came late to this series with Oblivion in 2008, but it’s one of the few RPGs in this decade that I’ve replayed and finished multiple times.
• The Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt (2015)(PS4). Easily the best PC RPG of the past decade, and I haven’t even played the expansions yet! Runner-up: Divinity Original Sin.
• Ultra Street Fighter IV (2014)(PS3). Technically, the base game came out in the 00s, but all the later revisions came out in the 2010s. This game started a fighting game resurgence that’s going on to this today. I was never super good at it, but I sure played a lot of hours and bought multiple copies of each version that came out even. The next version, SFV, hasn’t been as well received, but the franchise and the fighting game resurgence is still going strong up to now.
• Eternal Card Game (2016)(Multiplat). This one is actually my most played Steam game of all time.
• Sid Meier’s Civilization V (2010). Been playing this series since the olden days! Civ5 brought a pretty big change to the series with one unit per tile, and at 395 hours it’s still currently among my most played games on Steam. (Civ6 is about a hundred hours behind)