How self-aware of him.
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.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.
This is why I can’t stand the MCU. Because it’s so painfully formulaic and everyone ACTS like it’s all original material in every movie.
who?
Yeah idk either
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)
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.
Ouch! You’re more snob than I am! 🏆
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 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.
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.
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)
it’s entirely subjective after you clear some very basic benchmarks.
The same guy who likes joe rogan and jordan peterson
Comments like this contribute nothing. Sure it’s true but it has absolutely nothing to do with the conversation at hand and is unnecessary.
Instead let’s have a discussion, do you think Hollywood has had a stream of Garbage content lately?
Sure, lets hear about integrity of art from someone who associates himself with people who are epitome of dissociated academic inauthenticity.
I’m with you here. I’m beyond tired of this immediate branding of people as wholely disregardable because they have some unsavoury opinions. People can simultaneously hold good and bad opinions. You’re not a bad person for agreeing with an idea held by someone you mostly disagree with.
Tom Cruise is a culty weirdo, but he’s also a phenomenal actor, so we like his movies. In all likelihood, Hitler enjoyed sandwiches, but that doesn’t mean sandwiches are bad.
Follow ideas for their own sake. The idea that Hollywood pumps out a lot of garbage is correct and agreeable no matter who says it.
Yes, streams of piss-soaked garbage content such as Joe Rogan and Jordan Peterson. They and their fans are braindead morons that are driving the dumbing-down effect that they themselves want to complain about.
EDIT: Also given Levi’s controversial opinions, which he readily claims he has lifted directly from aforementioned podcasters, we should probably be concerned as to what he considers “garbage.”
Precisely. Giving fascists or conforming liberals a platform and authority does nothing good for cinema
Maybe we just need to let Hollywood do the AI thing for a while so people can see how creatively bankrupt the execs are.
The problem with that though, lots of studios are already creatively bankrupt and most people don’t seem to care. IMO the recent Mario movie could’ve been a hell of a lot better and instead, it’s like a really tasty candy that loses it’s flavor fast. 90% of Hollywood’s releases today fall under that same category of quality and it’s still making studio lots of money.
Obviously I fully support the writer’s strike, but I’m afraid it might just mean fuck all in the end because the population just doesn’t seem to care about good story structure and character chemistry and such. I realize Mario may just be a kids movie, but so was The Incredibles and that movie had way better story structure.
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.
