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Defining the bad movie
Defining the bad movie
I’d like to write a bit tonight regarding a subject I’ve had a lot of back and forth on the topic of with films such as Arrested Development, Hannah Montana, Sex and the City, and Transformers. These films might seem to have little in common on the base level, but there is one characteristic they all share in common.
There’s a large group that thinks they’re amazing, and a large group that thinks they’re bottom rung.
So which group is correct when it comes to this differing of opinion? Why can one critic give Twilight a high rating, another the bottom of the barrel? With the diversity of people and audiences in the world, with sheer countless attitudes and personalities as to what makes a film good or not, is it truly possible for there to be an actual bad movie?
Cue thousands of posts of films like Batman and Robin, Disaster Movie, Ecks vs. Sever, etc. Obviously these films come up time and time again when the topic of “bad” movies is brought up. But what makes these films so definably bad?
The answer, I think, lies in the films’ intended audiences. In order to truly define a movie as bad, I think fairly speaking, one must figure out what audience the film was going for, and how successful was it for that audience.
For example, let’s take a look at two films, Godzilla, and Transformers. From a purely objective standpoint, these films are pretty much the same. They both feature big explosions, cheesy dialogue, and massive special effects budgets. Yet the spitting I’m already reading below obviously tells that Transformers is amazing whereas Godzilla is junk. Why the disparity despite being, at least on paper, the same film?
While the paper looks the same, the audiences are incredibly different.. Godzilla fans tend to view the story as, at it’s heart, desolate and a metaphor for nuclear proliferation. There are layers of context in the original material that tends to invite intellectual analysis, despite the cheesy camp factor. Transformers was about cars becoming robots and beating the snot out of each other. Yes, there are more details, but these details only exist to add more robots and more snot-beating. The result was Transformers and a mediocre director receiving massive praise, whereas Godzilla received massive scorn. Despite being the same on paper, the films tried appealed to different audiences, and while Transformers’ audience got what they were expecting to the nth degree, Godzilla’s audience was left disappointed beyond measure.
This disappointment is the only true factor I think that can be said to imply a film’s quality or not. Put simply, a bad film leaves it’s intended audience disappointed, and as a result is disliked by it’s intended audience. In practical terms, you wouldn’t expect Cyrus, who is an excellent critic, and very knowledgeable about geek culture in general, to be able to really leave satisfied from a film like High School Musical. Quite obviously, without having seen even a minute of the show in advance, it’s pretty safe to say he would already be against it.
With rare exception, a film will not appeal to more than a select audience. This is why cinemas have multiple screens, and your television has multiple channels. The idea is to draw in different audiences. While Dad’s getting ecstatic enjoyment form the Stealers game, Janie can be zoning out to MTV and Mom can be taking notes on CSPAN. All get great ratings, but obviously if you ask Janie about the game, or Dad about MTV, they’ll respond with scorn. The question must be asked, though, is either channel bad entertainment?
High School Musical 3, despite the pleas of you teenage boys out there, did not get on the Razzies list. This was because it was not a bad movie. You may not have liked it, but to put it bluntly, nobody cares about you. In the same vein, when Transformers came out, nobody gave two twists of a lamb’s tail about us Disney fans. High School Musical set out to please young girls, and it delivered exactly as it set out to. In fact, it exceeded many people’s expectations.
Really bad films can be recognized as failing to achieve this criterion. Batman and Robin was a perfect example of this. Batman and Robin was meant to appeal to comic book fans. Comic book fans despised it. The Rocky Horror Picture Show was meant to appeal to horror fans. It failed to do so.
Of course, Rocky Horror is unabashedly popular today, despite the movie being very bad. The reason was it managed to jump demographics and pull in an audience that would otherwise have not cared. Other examples of this can be seen with shows like Smallville. Smallville was initially intended for Superman fans, to be sort of a Superman: Year Once: for the screen. This audience quickly tuned out, but in their place a young audience that was more used to shows like 90210 or Melrose Place. Once the studios realized this audience switch, they went out of their way to appeal to this new audience, turning shows into great shows.
My point is simply this. While you may find it easy to make a claim like “The Three Stooges are moronic” or “Hannah Montana is gay”, in the end, they’re still successes. No matter how much you hate them, they achieved their goals, they snagged the audience they wanted, and the exceeded the expectations expected by that audience. Can any film that makes a profit be really considered a negative? Would you yell at a fisherman for not doing your taxes in addition to his job? If a film does the job it is meant to do, and succeeded to the audience it was trying to, it cannot really be called a bad thing.
I’d like to write a bit tonight regarding a subject I’ve had a lot of back and forth on the topic of with films such as Arrested Development, Hannah Montana, Sex and the City, and Transformers. These films might seem to have little in common on the base level, but there is one characteristic they all share in common.
There’s a large group that thinks they’re amazing, and a large group that thinks they’re bottom rung.
So which group is correct when it comes to this differing of opinion? Why can one critic give Twilight a high rating, another the bottom of the barrel? With the diversity of people and audiences in the world, with sheer countless attitudes and personalities as to what makes a film good or not, is it truly possible for there to be an actual bad movie?
Cue thousands of posts of films like Batman and Robin, Disaster Movie, Ecks vs. Sever, etc. Obviously these films come up time and time again when the topic of “bad” movies is brought up. But what makes these films so definably bad?
The answer, I think, lies in the films’ intended audiences. In order to truly define a movie as bad, I think fairly speaking, one must figure out what audience the film was going for, and how successful was it for that audience.
For example, let’s take a look at two films, Godzilla, and Transformers. From a purely objective standpoint, these films are pretty much the same. They both feature big explosions, cheesy dialogue, and massive special effects budgets. Yet the spitting I’m already reading below obviously tells that Transformers is amazing whereas Godzilla is junk. Why the disparity despite being, at least on paper, the same film?
While the paper looks the same, the audiences are incredibly different.. Godzilla fans tend to view the story as, at it’s heart, desolate and a metaphor for nuclear proliferation. There are layers of context in the original material that tends to invite intellectual analysis, despite the cheesy camp factor. Transformers was about cars becoming robots and beating the snot out of each other. Yes, there are more details, but these details only exist to add more robots and more snot-beating. The result was Transformers and a mediocre director receiving massive praise, whereas Godzilla received massive scorn. Despite being the same on paper, the films tried appealed to different audiences, and while Transformers’ audience got what they were expecting to the nth degree, Godzilla’s audience was left disappointed beyond measure.
This disappointment is the only true factor I think that can be said to imply a film’s quality or not. Put simply, a bad film leaves it’s intended audience disappointed, and as a result is disliked by it’s intended audience. In practical terms, you wouldn’t expect Cyrus, who is an excellent critic, and very knowledgeable about geek culture in general, to be able to really leave satisfied from a film like High School Musical. Quite obviously, without having seen even a minute of the show in advance, it’s pretty safe to say he would already be against it.
With rare exception, a film will not appeal to more than a select audience. This is why cinemas have multiple screens, and your television has multiple channels. The idea is to draw in different audiences. While Dad’s getting ecstatic enjoyment form the Stealers game, Janie can be zoning out to MTV and Mom can be taking notes on CSPAN. All get great ratings, but obviously if you ask Janie about the game, or Dad about MTV, they’ll respond with scorn. The question must be asked, though, is either channel bad entertainment?
High School Musical 3, despite the pleas of you teenage boys out there, did not get on the Razzies list. This was because it was not a bad movie. You may not have liked it, but to put it bluntly, nobody cares about you. In the same vein, when Transformers came out, nobody gave two twists of a lamb’s tail about us Disney fans. High School Musical set out to please young girls, and it delivered exactly as it set out to. In fact, it exceeded many people’s expectations.
Really bad films can be recognized as failing to achieve this criterion. Batman and Robin was a perfect example of this. Batman and Robin was meant to appeal to comic book fans. Comic book fans despised it. The Rocky Horror Picture Show was meant to appeal to horror fans. It failed to do so.
Of course, Rocky Horror is unabashedly popular today, despite the movie being very bad. The reason was it managed to jump demographics and pull in an audience that would otherwise have not cared. Other examples of this can be seen with shows like Smallville. Smallville was initially intended for Superman fans, to be sort of a Superman: Year Once: for the screen. This audience quickly tuned out, but in their place a young audience that was more used to shows like 90210 or Melrose Place. Once the studios realized this audience switch, they went out of their way to appeal to this new audience, turning shows into great shows.
My point is simply this. While you may find it easy to make a claim like “The Three Stooges are moronic” or “Hannah Montana is gay”, in the end, they’re still successes. No matter how much you hate them, they achieved their goals, they snagged the audience they wanted, and the exceeded the expectations expected by that audience. Can any film that makes a profit be really considered a negative? Would you yell at a fisherman for not doing your taxes in addition to his job? If a film does the job it is meant to do, and succeeded to the audience it was trying to, it cannot really be called a bad thing.
Comment
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Comment by Miley Zor-El on February 2, 2009 at 2:30am -
What I'm saying is noone is qualified to tell someone else that they're wrong for calling a movie good or bad. If it's a good movie for you, forget what everyone else says.
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Comment by Jessica on February 2, 2009 at 1:49am -
I don't quite understand the analogy, MileyZorEl...:(
I do think any good movie would have something that is appealing to viewers who aren't necessarily targeted. I'm not saying that they would rabidly love it like those who are already fans of similar entertainment, but they would be able to find some basic element of it appealing. There are many movies that are considered classics that I didn't enjoy but I can see WHY they are classics and loved by many. I can also understand why some people don't like the cheesier films that I like very much because they are much more difficult to defend.
A lot of kids' movies are enjoyable to adults but adults wouldn't necessarily go out and view the movie on their own if they didn't have kids, even after seeing it. A kids' movie that could keep the both the parent and the child entertained could at least be called a good movie, or would at least be on it's way to being called that. However, kids are known to love some objectively godawful entertainment. Would a Teletubbies movie be qualified good because babies enjoy it? There's really nothing there except people in big colorful suits making noises and saying random words. Would putting that on film necessarily make it good because it is enjoyed? Also, what do you make of the recent rage of "horror" films/remakes full of clichés, bad dialogue, lame jump scares, mediocre acting, etc? Are they intended for horror fans (who hate them) or for young teenagers (who seem to enjoy them)? And which of these two groups is the best judge of these types of movies?
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Comment by Miley Zor-El on February 1, 2009 at 11:36pm
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@Jessica
The ability to transcend the intended audience is the mark of a great film, but failing to do so wouldn't really make a film bad per se. Yes, you're right one person is enough to say a movie is good or bad. I stand by that. Look at it like this, If you had the ability to date a Brad Pitt or a Megan Fox, would you turn that down if everyone else said they were horrifyingly ugly?
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Comment by Jessica on February 1, 2009 at 11:30pm
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Sorry MileyZorEl, I'm with Mike and Shinigami64 on this one. You began to lose me at "For example, let’s take a look at two films, Godzilla, and Transformers. From a purely objective standpoint, these films are pretty much the same". They have in common the same things they do with every summer blockbuster that came out in the last 15 years so how are they THE SAME?
Your position barely has anything to do with the movies themselves. Opinions about films change all the time, and that includes the ones coming from the so-called intended audience. I think a truly good movie would be able to transcend the constraint of "target audiences" and offer something in some way to most people who watch it, even those expecting to hate it. You can look at basic things like the narrative, the acting, the dialogue and determine from that if the end product successfully does what film is intended to do: tell a compelling story. You can also place them in a social context and judge their impact on it and the medium to distinguish the bad from the good movies, and the good from the great ones. Sure, it's subjective but those are things you can actually argue and defend. By your logic, all a person needs to say to argue that a movie is good or bad is "I'm the intended audience and I liked/disliked it so shut the hell up." Doesn't that invalidate movie criticism as a whole? How could any reviewer give their opinion on a wide range of movies if they would only be the intended audience for a small fraction of them? Why would anyone need to study film? Does all this apply to books as well?
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Comment by Hgreen on February 1, 2009 at 9:42pm -
I agree with what you're saying but it can still be called bad from an objective standpoint, or it can be called bad at something, i.e. "star wars; clone wars has awful dialogue." Still, it is an interesting point.
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Comment by Miley Zor-El on January 31, 2009 at 6:19pm
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No, the play is not the movie. The movie suffered from a terrible translation, and the production, if you've ever watched any documentaries on the subject you would now this, was a train wreck. Released into theaters, it was almost universally reviled by the market it was trying to appeal to. The movie's initial audience was not the same as the play's. The studio messed that up. Much like Sweeney Todd, they created a marketing campaign to appeal to an audience by hiding aspects of the actual film. It's a terrible parody, and it always was on film. The slyness and the tongue-in-cheek aspect was largely lost when it made the jump to film. In fact there's a lot of people that are shocked when they go to the play expecting the movie, because there, at least until more modern productions, was a marked difference.
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Comment by Miley Zor-El on January 31, 2009 at 2:18pm
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@ Dustin. I was speaking only of the Rocky Horror movie. The play and such is entirely different. Have you ever been to see it with other fans. The reason most of us ended up liking it was because it was such a bad movie. The jokes it wants you to laugh at really aren't that funny. What you end up doing is laughing at it's attempts to be clever. Believe me, I am a huge Rocky Horror fan, and the soundtrack is in most of my play lists. You're mistaken in part about it's audience I think. The reason it ended up becoming so long running was because a bunch fo night owls that, especially for the time, got nothing but dirty stares for making fun of a movie any other time, not only got to heckle, but to choreograph their heckling with the entire audience. Rocky Horror's modern audience is theaters full of wanna be MST3Kers.
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Comment by Shinigami64 on January 31, 2009 at 12:35pm -
Your logic is faulty, Miley. In fact, it sounds like your whole argument boils down to the same ol' bullshit position of "it's popular so it's good" which is easily disproved and takes nothing concerning genuine quality into account. There is one fact that cannot go ignored when it comes to film, and it's that this is still a story-telling medium. So if one is to attempt to define the "bad movie" then how do you go about it without taking this into account? Personally, I could give two shits of a movie appeals to its target audience if the story it presents is a bad one or simply badly presented. There are plenty of people that enjoyed Death Race, but does that make it a good movie? Fuck no. The narrative hinges on the idea that veteran racers on a set track need navigators who're mostly female prisoners there to appeal to the audiences watching at home who don't actually see them because they're inside heavily armored cars. Oh, and Tyrese is apparently gay. There are lots of Transformers fans that liked Michael Bay's movie, but is it really good? Seriously? If you took out the giant robots you'd have every other trite alien invasion ever made with plot-holes big enough to fit a 747 through unhindered. Optimus requests that the Macguffin spark be shoved into his chest which implies that doing so will give him a power increase. But when Shia (I refuse to call him by any character name until he does some fucking acting) rams it into Megatron, it kills him. Are we then to assume that this would've killed Optimus as well? Then that would mean that Optimus Prime is such a fucktard that he was planning on killing himself and leaving humanity at the mercy of Megatron and the surviving Decepticons. Not that his presence made much difference as he was a secondary character at best in this movie titled "Transformers", and was far too busy getting beat the fuck up to ever save the day...I could use Twilight as another example of a popular property that really just sucks elephant spunk, but I think I've made my point.
Target audiences do not and never will denote quality. They can be just as stupid as the uninformed, and sometimes are the uninformed. There's a target audience for The Love Guru, and somewhere out there is someone that thinks that movie is legitimately funny (and I pity the bastard). If you want to truly define what a bad movie is then look at what the movie presents to you. You'll find your answer there...
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Comment by Miley Zor-El on January 30, 2009 at 2:20pm
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@drum. If you had read, you would realize that I said Disaster Movie did not deserve credit as a good movie. This was because, it did not get the majority of the audience it tended to appeal to. Immature comedies usually appeal to a large number of teenagers, but very few teenagers actually liked it. The reason they're successful is because the marketing keeps these youths from realizing what they're given until they've paid for it. Disaster Movie and it's ilk are not made to be good movies, they're made to make money, in the same vein as Uwe Boll's films. The only reason they'res an actual film in there is so parents can't sue them for scamming them.
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Comment by drum_drunk on January 30, 2009 at 9:35am -
So... Disaster Movie deserves credit? There are BAD films because there sure as hell are a lot of STUPID people. Whether movies like HSM, Transformers, or Hannah Montana were successful is a different point altogether. You can't mash box office gross with artistic value. Compare: sure. Base a film's merit on it: fuck no.
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