Modern audiences being too nitpicky at movies

I was watching Arrietty last night with my brother and his girlfriend and noticed that as a non-film student like my brother is I had a far more emotional and feely reaction to that movie about the Borrowers who were losing their home and since I moved house into a weird new stage in my life I could relate to the movies themes on a much more empathetic level than most would allow themselves these days, but my brother was just all:

"Eh, I had problems with this movie, it didn't really go anywhere."

Which makes me wonder what he considers "a story" or "a movie" compared to me if he seems to make criticism about what I regarded as a very real and earnest emotional film experience with heart whereas he seems to be very cut and dry with plot holes or flaws he sees in a movie because he's a film student...

Essentially I'm wondering if people who watch movies nowadays are either too nitpicky or don't have enough empathy to enjoy certain movies over others. And by empathy I mean a very vulnerable empathy one feels for characters whether one wants to admit it or not. Which a lot of people I know tend to hide inside of them in case people want to judge them or call them out for liking something unpopular.

Does this make any sense or am I just rambling illogically about an imaginary trend in sociology that might not be there at all?

It's probably less that modern audiences are nitpicky, and more that technology has suddenly given the nitpickers who've always been there a chance to broadcast their opinions.

Being uninterested in the central conflict or characters in a movie is not being "nitpicky".

I find that people tend to be nitpicky in two situations:

1) They're generally bored with the movie in the first place, so they're noticing a lot of nits. They're not always aware enough to explain the deeper reasons why they were so bored, so they focus on the things that they wound up spending a lot of time thinking about- the little problems and plotholes that are easier to isolate and name.

2) They're hardcore fans who are annoyed with writers getting lazy with a series that they really love and leaving a lot of continuity errors and inconsistencies around.

SHIELDS UP. RED ALERT.

The problem with those guys — or even students of literature — is that they compare everything to the classics.

"those guys" is too general. Not every film or literature student (I was an English Major) even likes the Classics at all. I've seen Classic movies, and read Classic novels, and I really don't see them as any better than modern works. Most of my classmates didn't seem to care any more for Classics than I do.

The real issue with film students is that they know what goes into making a movie in the first place. At least moreso than non-film students. So they know what's considered to work, and what isn't, and they've been exposed to movies with those sets of references to use.

edited 17th Dec '12 8:54:09 AM by Journeyman

I do think there is a real issue there with "nitpicky film students," largely that there is sort of an elitist attitude and if it doesn't conform to what you would have done then it was poorly made. People have such a violent reaction to hearing Michael Bay's name but I was talking with a friend of mine, who is a film student, and he very calmly and concisely explained why he had such respect for both Bay's movies and Bay as a filmmaker. I remember just thinking "Wow, someone who is able to look at a project and not think of it in terms of 'I can do better!'"

This filters into the collective online consciousness of what people think a reviewer is supposed to do, reflect their own thoughts. It is not, Roger Ebert once explained that the job of a reviewer is not just passing judgement on it with the hope people will agree with you but to gauge its qualities within the sphere of what it sets out to accomplish. Ratatouille also commented that reviewers love the position of power over others while offering nothing of themselves, thus everyone who submits their work for critique shows more bravery than any critic.

If you want some clarification, what my friend explained was that people like James Cameron and Christopher Nolan may make better movies overall but, Cameron especially, tend to just throw money at it because they can. You watch the special features and audio commentary on Bay's movies and you will learn A LOT about how to make actually MAKE a movie and do it on a budget, which is why he keeps making movies.

edited 17th Dec '12 1:29:54 PM by KJMackley

I think also I've noticed that people are expecting everything to be the Next Best Thing. Because of the Internet, it's possible to see a lot more high quality stuff than before. So I feel that everyone is thinking that every movie has to be the next Citizen Kane or something. I migt be wrong though.

I echo pretty much everything everyone else here has said, plus: It's a lot easier to pick out what you didn't like about something than it is to isolate what you did like, especially when the film/novel/whathaveyou contains plenty of examples of both. A related point is that people are frequently much more enthusiastic in discussing stuff they don't like than in discussing stuff they do like.

I generally dislike questions like "are audiences too nitpicky or un-empathetic at the movies" because it's kind of saying that people aren't free to dislike something. If a person says they didn't care for a film, they're free to dislike it whether or not they're able to eloquently articulate WHY they dislike it. An inability to provide a detailed dissertation on why you don't like something does not mean you have to like it. Whatever his reasons, Arietty clearly did not set your brother on fire.

My ex didn't cry or feel any emotion at all when she watched Toy Story 3, so I dumped her.

Most of the Film undergrads I know aren't into classics. They tend to just be people who like big flashy Hollywood stuff and thought it would be fun to watch a lot of films in college. It's probably different with grad students, but I think grad students tend to be a different kind of people in general.

Or maybe the guy just didn't like a movie. It happens.

I've taken some film classes in college. I like some classics while others bore the hell out of me. Being a film student though has nothing to do with "loving classics" as much as being aware to other elements in the film outside of the story and characters.

Maybe your bother just didn't like the movie?

I think maybe there is a point to the first part- I've found despite the majority of critics and the internet finding Meet The Robinsons to be dreck-to-mediocre, people who are adopted (like me) or those who have experience with those who are (there are communities for that sort of thing), tend to absolutely love it. Others, like John K, appear to have simply not seen the thing. (Seriously, the man put a picture of the family as an example of 'bland designs'. The art design of that movie was many things, but bland was nowhere on the list.)

edited 18th Dec '12 7:07:19 PM by Ronnie

I'm not entirely sure about that. I am adopted myself, and while I love the heart of the movie, the rest of it is pretty much just "okay" to me. Again, though, I do love the heart of it. That kind of stuff makes me tear up.

There are communities for adopted people? (Well, okay, I should've figured there are, but are there any specifically you know of?)

edited 18th Dec '12 9:52:23 PM by 0dd1

Sensing that this is going to soon turn into a discussion on whether the quality of a film is subjective or objective and the impact one's personal opinion (which can be influenced by a multitude of unrelated factors) may or may not have on said quality, this troper exits, stage right.

As a Gun Nut, I think that weapon-related tropes are something people are getting really nit-picky about. I mean, I confess to being the sort of person who cringes when I see Steven Segal shoot down what is supposed to be a Hind with a 9mm pistol, but the fact that we have gotten to the point where the audience is so unwilling to have their disbelief suspended that Shoot the Fuel Tank requires a scene showing the shooter specifically loading their magazine with tracer rounds is a bit ridiculous. I tend to see it as less "that really bugged me" to more of a "I know lots about guns and I want to shout it on the highest mountain top for all to see so women will hopefully sleep with me".

I suppose that is just a complaint because I tend to view movies more on their technical basis than on a plot basis, something I think a lot of those "film student" types need to learn more about. I get the general consensus that these days, more people want to be screenwriters and directors than stuntmen and prop designers.

I really don't see how that's ridiculous, just that the movie-makers want to be realistic. Although I would think the better option would be to just write the story so that Shoot the Fuel Tank isn't necessary in the first place, but whatever.

Are you talking about that time I bitched about the Uranium rounds on the Skyfall headscratchers page? Because I only did that once.

They aren't nit-picky enough.

If the majority of modern movie audiences had the expectation for quality, craft and intelligence that the much smaller but more articulate nit-picking segment has then there wouldn't be so many terrible movies and just generally terrible things in life.

Terrible movies that make lots of dumb money catering to and justifying stupidity.

And each one that becomes succesful begets 10 more terrible re-imaginings/rippoffs even worse then the first one.

Hollywood wouldn't get away with being so corrupt and creatively lazy, and the remake/re-imagining/reboot/homage/tongue-in-cheek/sequel/prequal scurge would have been kept to a minimum and not become a modern standard.

Pointing out and recognizing a flaw is the first step towards correcting it.

Ignoring laziness and stupidity rewards it and encourages it.

Not just for movies, but everywhere in life.

edited 13th Apr '13 7:18:13 PM by thunderlippps

I have to say, I find your total contempt for everything kind of refreshing. Particularly when this board is the only place I've seen anybody, say, praise LXG(not a dig, just an observation).

"dumb money"...heh, heh, heh...

While true in the broad sense, I would point out you'd still have people making the exact same complaints even if Hollywood *didn't* use lazy storytelling, because a lot of the complaints aren't about the quality, they are about the genre. For some people, the problem with a bad action movie isn't that its bad, but that its an action movie *ergo* it is bad axiomatically.

Craft in movie making can be applied in numerous fields. Its no crime to have the characters be 2D archetypes if the point of the movie is lovingly crafted set piece action scenes. The problem with the Transformers movies, which aspire to this kind of thing, isn't that the characterization is flat, but that its poorly executed such that the flatness gets in the way.

That's the difference between good and bad criticism. A good critic will know that dramas, comedies, and action movies generally aren't all judged on the same level or criteria. What gets really weird is when movies actually cross genres, like Inception and The Matrix (first movie only) which are lauded as pure awesome by those who see them as action movies but are called "pretentious" for being shallow by those who see them as philosophical/psychological thrillers, or like The Dark Knight Trilogy who had enough of a comic superhero legacy to be passed over for any Oscar nominations and yet is also considered to be "too realistic" to be considered a true superhero movie.

Most reviewers do know that; the Rotten Tomatoes ratings and consensus reviews tend to reflect how good a movie is at doing what it sets out to do (action, comedy, drama, etc.) and how original or creative it is. It's just the Academy and a few stuffy people who equate quality with "drama, preferably historical, with obvious Aesop".

I do think people can get overly nit-picky these days, though, when it comes to details of film accuracy, like the gun stuff mentioned earlier. The difference between what's a glaring error and what's a minor detail probably differs between people based on what their areas of expertise are, but in a lot of the film and TV show pages on TV Tropes you've got people filing incredibly minor stuff under Did Not Do The Research and Artistic License. If you've got years of expertise in a subject then no, the filmmakers probably won't know as much about it as you do. That doesn't mean that they didn't do a reasonable amount of research or that they didn't care about accuracy.

edited 15th Apr '13 4:28:12 PM by WarriorEowyn

Well, some people just have pet hobbies, like gun owners. If you're well-versed on a subject, it bugs you that overpaid filmmakers can't invest the same kind of time to do research.

edited 15th Apr '13 5:39:59 PM by johnnyfog