He’s not wrong, but there a couple of problems:
A) Your average movie goer isn’t capable of telling from a trailer if a movie is going to be garbage or not. Heck, your average movie goer can’t tell from watching THE MOVIE if it’s garbage or not.
B) Levi’s last flick, while not exactly a hot mess, wasn’t exactly great either. The Skittles product placement was 110% un-necessary and backpedaling to go “no, no, it’s a family movie, see?” lowers the bar for family movies.
Just looking at this year, Cocaine Bear and The Machine probably didn’t need to happen.
I actually enjoyed cocaine bear. That one felt like a breath of fresh air to the usual garbo. Was genuinely a fun film to watch where it felt like you were also watching people have fun making it.
A)
Ouch! You’re more snob than I am! 🏆
You getting snobby about Cocaine Bear?
Some movies are good because they are completely aware of how ridiculous they are.
Self awareness can be fun, that doesn’t make it a good movie.
I laughed so hard at Betty White, swearing like a sailor, feeding people to a giant New England crocodile in Lake Placid, but I’d never dream of calling it a good movie.
Wanted has Morgan Freeman delivering the classic line “Will somebody, please, shoot this motherfucker?” Again, does not make it a good movie.
Good thing I did not say that being self aware automatically made a movie good.
Lake Placid is an excellent horror comedy beyond Betty’s character. You just have bad taste and try to pass it off as objective criticism.
Because the premise of the movie didn’t give that away from day one!?
I feel like you can’t really watch trailers anymore nowadays, they tend to give away a lot of the story already. For example, I watched the trailer for the Meg 2 and it already gave away most of the twists and who would die. I know that they have to try and hype you up but it sucks when they basically spoil the movie.
Your opinion on trailers is nothing new and you’re not wrong. But then you went and chose MEG 2 as your example??? 🤔 Like that movie was an Agatha Christie mystery or something?! 🤣
It was just an example, I could’ve used most other modern movies as an example as well. It’s just the most recent movie I saw and it happens to be a guilty pleasure of my GF to watch shark movies (besides sharknado, that’s just way too bad), before that I saw Oppenheimer and MI 7 so I’d like to think that my taste in movies is pretty varied.
No, no, my apologies! I didn’t intend to imply anything. I just found the example you chose amusing!
This comment reminds me of right as I was about to watch The Meg, someone told me they were blown away by the twist. “Bro, wait for it, holy shit” and “the twist” was the most predictable thing that could have happened. The fucking shark died with most of the movie left to go, how is ANOTHER SHARK a fucking crazy twist??
Just to note, this is so not new that the original trailers for the original release of Planet of the Apes spoiled the ending way back in 1968. And here we are today…
I think it’s more an American thing.
Look at the Arrietty Trailer:
UK version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQXi1bKfiTM
US version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VlMe7PavaRQ
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/watch?v=sQXi1bKfiTM
https://piped.video/watch?v=sQXi1bKfiTM
https://piped.video/watch?v=VlMe7PavaRQ
https://piped.video/watch?v=VlMe7PavaRQ
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source, check me out at GitHub.
On the opposite end, from watching the trailer I could not understand how Barbie was going to be as good as people said, it seemed so one note! I’m so glad it wasn’t all shown to me ahead of time
I haven’t seen the Barbie movie but I’ve heard more people say that the trailer is nothing like the movie. Interesting, maybe this will make film companies reconsider their trailer strategies.
Your average movie goer isn’t capable of telling from a trailer if a movie is going to be garbage or not.
Of course not. A trailer is just an ad. That’s like expecting to be able to tell if a smartwatch is good after watching an ad.
So a possible solution could be professional/expert reviews. We need to be able to trust them though (no bought reviews etc.) and they shouldn’t be snobbish against pure entertainment movies. Unfortunately this will only work if people actively seek out those reviews (at least I can’t think of a way to actively push the reviews to the consumers), which does not work as long as movies are consumed in order to not think. Which they will be as long as they are as shitty and brainless as many are right now.
We used to have that back in the day with Siskel and Ebert. Two, classically trained film reviewers, who had a show that aired the week before the films they were reviewing were due to come out.
Of the two, Ebert would go easier on pure entertainment movies than Siskel would. They didn’t always agree, but when they did, you could be assured it was either really good or really bad.
We don’t really have an equivalent in this day and age with review embargoes and such.
Classically trained film reviewers?
Not sure that’s even a thing. Sure, they were educated and well informed, still…
If you are after a popular film critic that really engages with the material, we have Mark Kermode in the UK. I might not agree with everything he thinks, but he’s consistent enough that you can use his opinion as a yardstick. I strongly recommend you check him out.
Film criticism and journalism are both college level courses.
I took classes in literary ctiticism, but that wasn’t my major.
Ah, yeah, ‘classically trained’ means something very different here. My bad.
While S & E were great for explaining why they liked or did not like movies, their opinions were still opinions and at best they gave middling reviews to the types of movies they did not like even when those movies were the best of their type.
Plus Ebert gave Anaconda a high rating and praise. Fucking Anaconda.
He liked Spawn as well which I still have not entirely forgiven him for! But like I say, of the two, he was the one who went easier on populist media than Siskel did. That’s probably why putting the two of them together worked better than anyone else who inherited the shows they left as they bounced around from one to the next to the next.
Who else had their platform before Siskel died? Rex Reed + somebody else was one, and I think there was one more pair as well.
Rex Reed sticks out because he turned into a giant bitchy queen when he really hated a movie and it was hilarious.
I didn’t always agree with Gene & Roger, but I did watch them every Saturday. What made it a little weird for me was watching Roger’s magnum opus Beyond the Valley of the Dolls as a young adult, and trying - never succeeding - to reconcile that movie with this man I grew up listening to.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/TPflEZG4US8
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source, check me out at GitHub.
I give props to Ebert for putting his money where his mouth is and actually writing a movie. While not a great movie, he was still willing to go through the process of writing a screenplay and getting the movie made.
I would argue your second statement in A) assumes that a movie can objectively be rated good or bad. Plus it also seems to claim to know exactly what people want to see from a movie. Never s fan when someone seems to say, “I know better than you do what you like.”
I’ll agree a trailer doesn’t always do a good job. But to claim a person can’t tell if what they watched is good is hardly a statement a same person would make. Possibly a narcissist would say it. Or someone else full of themselves.
There is obviously technique that can be graded, but that doesn’t make a movie.
I agree, movies are art and art is (mostly) subjective. Not everyone likes going to the Fast and Furious movies for example but the audience that’s there for it tends to love it. Same with things like Star Wars or Top Gun. All you can objectively say is whether the movie was technically shot well and for that you need knowledge of making movies.
Movies are made for different reasons. Some are made for the ‘art’, but some are made simply for entertainment. Shitty B-movies are a whole genere about being so ‘bad’ they’re fun, and that’s they’re purpose. Fast and Furious movies aren’t being made for the art.
Movies can absolutely be objectively rated good or bad, all the component pieces can be good or bad, writing, acting, directing, pacing, hell, even lighting, editing and special effects.
The problem is your average movie goer can’t tell the difference. Sure, if something is ESPECIALLY bad like the visual effects in the Flash, they’ll pick up on that.
Quite more often something can be entirely awful and the reaction is “Well, I had fun…” That doesn’t make it “good”.
You can have a good movie with poor elements and a poor movie with great elements. I’d even argue you can have a good movie with bad acting. Plus, it’s all about the intent of the movie, as with any piece of art. Cocaine Bear had an intent. It fulfilled that intent. Claiming that art can objectively be rated is naive.
Plan 9 From Outer Space is a terrible movie.
Ed Wood is amazing.
I’m sure you can tell the difference.
I don’t know what you expect to accomplish with this. If you want to make an argument by example, be prepared to make it exhaustive, otherwise it’s simply anecdotal. Anecdotes does not an argument make.
My point is that this is a very subjective realm. You can know all you want about technique and still make a bad movie. And someone who knows nothing can still make a good movie. The odds don’t work in their favor, sure, but it’s possible. Technique just helps, but it’s neither a requirement nor a guarantee. And part of determining whether a film is done well is knowing the film’s purpose and theme. Cult classics exist for a reason. They aren’t “bad.” They’re just not popular with folks who didn’t get it. You will always be colored by your biases. You can not like a film but that doesn’t mean it was unnecessary. You aren’t an authority as much as you want to pretend to the throne.
It’s not at all subjective and, again, if you doubt that, sit down and watch Plan 9 and Ed Wood back to back.
One is generally accepted to be the worst film ever made, the other won two Academy Awards.
If you legit can’t tell why which film falls into which category, you’re precisely the problem I outlined in A)
I feel like you just like hearing yourself talk because you clearly ignored almost everything I said. If you’re going to act like a brick wall, there’s no point in discussion until you even come close to remotely acknowledging any of my points let alone refuting them. I get you took a film class. It doesn’t make you an auteur.
it’s entirely subjective after you clear some very basic benchmarks.
Um… You shut your mouth. Cocaine Bear was fantastic.
How self-aware of him.
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I’m bone-tired of movies that
foliofollow the Save the Cat! formula beat-for-beat. There have been some great ones: The Matrix, Big, and The Mighty Ducks are three of many, many examples. But, Good God, it gets boring.I hadn’t heard of the “Save the cat” method before. Hello rabbit-hole.
Same. After a bit of reading, I’m now certain I will see this structure in everything.
Just spent two hours researching it. Shit, now I’m gonna notice it EVERYWHERE …
One of my biggest regrets in life is studying storytelling and scriptwriting because it made me aware of the freaking save the cat thing and ruined movies (and a lot of modern storytelling) forever for me. Well, “biggest regret” may be a bit of hyperbole, but you get it.
I can’t watch a movie that is following the model non-cynically, and since most movies do follow it, well…
It’s also made me dislike when an industry tries to push that there’s an objectively correct way of doing something in an artform, but that’s another story entirely.
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see the thing is, you see it like that, but the industry sees it like this
My biggest regret is that I have boneitis
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I made the mistake of pointing out the Blue and Orange marketing trick to my wife, and goddamn it once you see it, it’s EVERYWHERE.
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OrangeBlueContrast
Next up, tell her about color theory in general and how valid color combinations for characters are more limited than you thought. Show her how green goblin, piccolo and the joker share color identity due to this. That’s why Spider-Man and Superman go to the same tailor! Etc etc
That stems more from the limitations of the four-color process than anything else. That’s why Superman and Spider-Man share the exact same red and blue (cyan). I wouldn’t really use comic books as a yardstick for valid color combinations nor graphic design in general, of course with (few) exceptions.
Hhhmm I was taught to never go out of one of the colour harmony rules but that may very well have been a “learn how to walk before you can fly” thing, so you may be right.
Save the Cat! formula
Huh. I’ve never heard of this before. I played through The Matrix in my head while reading a Save The Cat guide and it’s strikingly accurate.
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Maybe we just need to let Hollywood do the AI thing for a while so people can see how creatively bankrupt the execs are.
I don’t think this will end like you think it will. Last time we had a writer’s strike, we got
reality“reality” TV, a cursed genre that continues to grow more popular and more vapid than ever.
Agreed, Shazam 2 was garbo.
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who?
Yeah idk either
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Well the TV show from the 70’s wasn’t known for its strong dialogue, interesting story line or complex characters either.
A man and his dog. Shazam!
