Tolerating "Wrong" Opinions: Good for the Industry?

I've recently had a heated discussion with a friend of mind. This friend is rather opinionated regarding the state of Hollywood, and in particular considers "bad" movies, your Saws, your Michael Bay films, to be a corrupting influence. Anyway, he firmly believes that people who enjoy films such as these should "be corrected, by any means necessary." Yeah.

Still, it got me thinking: is it healthy for the movie industry to have so many people like these movies? Surely there are better films more deserving of the ticket numbers of, say, Transformers. Yes, I know that it's completely up to the individual to decide who they want to give their money to, and these movies wouldn 't sell well if there weren't people who didn't honestly think they were worth paying for. But I can't help but feel like this trend could prove disastrous for the movie industry as a whole.

Anyway, I digress. What are some of your opinions?

There have always been brain dead (yet fun) action movies and lowest common denominator stuff. It's nothing new.

Its a fundamentally elitist attitude, and thus abhorrent. People should watch whatever movies they damn well please.

Home of CBR Rumbles-in-Exile: rumbles.fr.yuku.com

^^^ Sounds basically like yet another avenue for elitism and/or ego stroking, with a touch of tin-pot dictator wannabee (corrected "by any means necessary"? Really, about freaking movies?!). As ^^ noted, popcorn flicks and other "non-intellectual" productions are hardly a new phenomenon. Somehow, they have yet to have "ruined" film over the decades.

All your safe space are belong to Trump

For every ten bad movies one good movie will pop up. That's how its been seen the genesis of movies and its the same with all forms of art. For every hundred Twilight or Fifty Shades of Grey we'll have one Gravity's Rainbow or Oliver Twist. Its okay to have this opinion but to come off so strongly about it is harsh. Im a Film Major and yes I've had to stifle my opinion when somebody claims that they loved Transformers 2 unironically or bad movies. Hell, I actually like watching bad movies because they're bad. Its a guilty pleasure of mine. We can't change people, and its best to keep opinion's like that to yourself, or with somebody who agrees with you.

I like Shorts. Their comfortable and easy to wear.

I think I'd better own two copies of every Saw film now.

(Spite!)

I'm élitist enough to believe that at least some movies are objectively good, and some objectively bad ... or as close to "objectively" as makes no nevermind. A person is free to disagree about certain notably great/horrible movies, but unless he's got some fascinating criteria that no one's yet considered, I'll go out on a limb and call him wrong.

However, I am not the Aesthetics Czar*

. It is not my place to "correct" the tastes of others. And anyone who imagines it his place to correct them is probably personally noxious to a degree that will guarantee his abject failure. In fact—forgive me if this is getting overly personal toward your friend—someone who thinks bad-movie fans should "be corrected, by any means necessary" arguably deserves a plague of Michael Bay films.

edited 14th Sep '12 10:24:03 AM by Jhimmibhob

"She was the kind of dame they write similes about." —Pterodactyl Jones

Oh God, not the "objectively bad" stuff again... *barf*

All your safe space are belong to Trump

"The difference between reality and fiction is that fiction has to make sense." - Tom Clancy, paraphrasing Mark Twain.

50-60 years ago people were making that complaint about Cecil B. De Mille/Wannabe epic spectacle thingies, which were seen, with some justification, as flashy and dumb and (with less justification) as poorly acted. This last was somewhat hypocritical because at the time half of Hollywood was a World of Ham and the other half was a World of Repetitive Mannerisms, and the film critics picking on Charlton Heston and costars for things everyone else was doing always smacked of Acceptable Targets to me.

Anyway, getting back to the main topic, De Mille made flashy, sloppily written movies for something like thirty years, and the industry survived that. I'm pretty sure it will survive the movies of Michael Bay (who, by the way, has been directing movies for nigh-on twenty years now).

As for "correcting" people's opinions, well, one is certainly free to argue about the aesthetic merits or moral issues with regard to any film made, with anyone who will engage with you.

"By any means necessary?" That's either an extreme piece of tongue-in-cheek exagerration on the part of the OP's friend, or an extremely naive piece of Sincerity Mode. Without high-level brainwashing you can't make people dislike things they like; heavy social pressures can only make people ashamed of what they like...or mad at the people who are trying to shame them.

edited 14th Sep '12 10:50:34 AM by odadune

The problem isn't people's opinions needing to be corrected. The problem is Hollywood being lazy.

Avengers made a crapton of money this year - more than Transformers, Battleship, 2012, or any of the crappy just-here-for-the-SFX movies. It had plenty of flashy action, plenty of good special effects, but it has had an interesting plot, dialogue that wasn't painful to listen to, and characters with some level of depth. Your typical Hollywood blockbuster doesn't bother with these things; it's fine with recycling a plot, sticking in generic characters and hackneyed dialogue, throwing in a bunch of explosions and calling it a day, even if that results in less financial success (and far more justly-deserved derision) than putting in serious work.

If Hollywood would make good blockbusters/popcorn flicks rather than crappy ones, more people would go see the good ones, and the crappy ones would be outcompeted. My answer to the problem is "stop giving money to hack directors, and give it to good ones".

edited 14th Sep '12 2:48:32 PM by WarriorEowyn

Wasn't there a thread almost exactly like this one about 2 or 3 months ago?

^ Probably.

Movie snobbery. Movie snobbery never changes.

edited 14th Sep '12 4:08:18 PM by Nohbody

All your safe space are belong to Trump

It's not snobbery to wish directors would put a little bit of effort into making something that's not dreck and that has some degree of creativity.

Not every director wants to (or should be expected) to reinvent the wheel. Maybe a dude just wants to make some dumb action movie.

^^ No, but it is snobbery to insist that anyone who likes popcorn flicks is a horrible person that needs to be corrected "by any means necessary".

You (generic "you") like a certain genre or trend and don't like others? Fine. Speaking out in regards to your preferences? Peachy.

Insisting that I be sent to a re-education camp like this were Stalin's USSR, Mao's China, or Pol Pot's Cambodia (the ultimate end-game of "by any means necessary", if you take it to its logical conclusion) because I don't like what you like? Fuck you and the horse you rode in on.

All your safe space are belong to Trump

Elements of a movie can be objectively good or bad — lighting, camera work, maybe even acting — but on the whole, the most important part of a movie is whether it's enjoyable.

Yeah, I'm part of the reason Avengers made so much money, and it wasn't that good. With the exception of Hulk, every movie that lead into Avengers was a better film than it was.

The difference was the Iroman films were the only ones I went paid full price for, the others I just rented to catch up for the Avengers... so I can't really complain about the movie making money, just that people think it was more than just tolerable.

You can dislike Transformers all you want. All three were more enjoyable than the Avengers movie was but if I said they're weren't flaws in the films I'd be lying. Contrary to popular belief they're not all the fault of the director but even if they were all Bay's fault there would still be worse things people could like than his films.

Maybe if the films had a racist message or something(they don't), maybe if watching them was dangerous to the psyche(for people who don't have preexisting conditions they aren't), maybe if he broke some law to get them made(as far as I know that didn't happen) there would be legitimate reason to be outraged at people liking his stuff but until any of that becomes apparent the best you can do is explain what flaws you can't look past and why you think that makes the movie bad. Even if those you argue with don't really have any sensible reason to like it doesn't mean they've been corrupted unless there is something corrupt about a the movie. As far as I can see they're isn't.

Modified Ura-nage, Torture Rack

Neither Hollywood, nor anyone else, has any responsibility to make any kind of movie at all. If a movie is made, its entirely up to the people who make it, and those who are paying them to make it, what kind of film it will be. And it's up to the audience to decide to spend money on that film, or not. As to whether the proliferation of brain-dead money makers "hurts" the industry, allow me to point out that movies aren't alcohol, and movie-goers aren't alcoholics; in the absence of beer, they're not going to switch to wine just to get their fix. Deprived of movies they like, most movie-goers aren't going to switch to movies they don't like, or even movies they might like if they gave them a chance. Most would just find something else to do.

What's more, so what if it "hurts" the movie industry. Either the movie industry will be hurt, figure out what its doing "wrong", and recover, or it will die from its injuries, thus opening the way for some other media to come in and take up market share.

I suspect that this is not at all what the referenced person/mindset is worried about. What they really fear is that Hollywood will *continue to succeed* in a way they don't like. Its precisely the fact that they are *not* being hurt by the movies they make that is the "problem."

Home of CBR Rumbles-in-Exile: rumbles.fr.yuku.com

NUL - And maybe an office worker wants to spend three quarters of his day dicking around on Facebook. That doesn't mean he should be rewarded for doing so.

"Directors should actually put effort into their work" isn't unfair.

Bah! I'd rather watch Michael Bay films and the Star Wars prequels a dozen times than 90% of what Hollywood considers worthy of nominating for their top-level Oscars every year.

I'm not a fan of most of the Oscar Bait films either. I just wish that filmmakers would bother to make good action movies, romcoms, etc. rather than ones with bad characterization and dialogue and unoriginal plots.

They don't have to make arthouse movies, just put more effort into what they're doing, and give more money to the occasional original idea like Inception.

That pretty much summarizes my opinion. I think Inception was a good start. It was a big budget Hollywood film, it had an original idea that required some thought but you didn't have to have a Ph.D. in film studies to understand it.

Eh, nevermind.

edited 15th Sep '12 1:45:54 PM by NULLcHiLD27