Movies Should, At The Least, Be Good (1 Viewer)

Anyone who visits HTF on a regular basis has seen the common thread topic about the dismay we all feel when a bad movie takes over the number one spot at the box office. The repeated observation is made how the general public has no taste etc and how terrible it is for the state of movies when a, subjectively, better one fails to cover its costs.


The amazing success of the recent Jurassic World is an interesting case study. From the reaction thread it is clear that many here enjoyed the movie quite a lot despite its obvious story telling deficiencies.


But is Jurassic World a good movie?


Devin Faraci posted this recent column which should, I hope, make for interesting conversation here - Movies Should Be Good - http://birthmoviesdeath.com/2015/06/25/movies-should-be-good

“What did you expect, it would be any good?”


Yes. Yes, I did. I think every movie should be ‘good.’ Especially really big, expensive ones that were worked on by thousands of people. And I don’t mean great, or perfect or transcendent or Oscar-worthy. When I say ‘good’ what I really mean is ‘competent.’
Yet this bar, low as it is, is seen as excessive by some. Demanding basic competence - that a movie be adequately made on a fundamental level - is a sign of elitism. This bums me out; this tyranny of low expectations is why big movies can be, and often have been, so terrible. Why get the story right when the audience simply does not give a shit about it.

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How do you define what a good movie is? Is it this?

What do I mean when I say ‘good’ or ‘competent?’ I’m talking about the basics of storytelling, more or less. For some reason this is where certain audiences draw the line - asking for good storytelling is just the sort of snobbishness that ruins their fun at the movies! They don’t draw that line at cinematography - if a film were out of focus, or if it were continuously framed in such as a way as to obscure what was happening onscreen no one would say “What did you expect,Citizen Kane?” No one would say that because we expect basic competence when it comes to cinematography or lead acting. It’s just a given - a movie where the camera isn’t focused properly is a movie that wouldn’t get released. But a movie where the plot makes no sense, where the themes are muddled and where the characters have neither arcs or motivation? That shit busts records.

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Are we really surprised when movies that do not exhibit compentency in all areas, dominate records?


I know I place a high value on, at the very least, competent writing. But many times when I look at the BO returns I feel out of step with what the average movie goer enjoys.


Doesn't the success of a Jurassic World continue to perpetuate the problem of lack of compentent story telling?


What does everyone else feel?

Hollywood believes the movie going public to be morons and the public proves them right by supporting the kind of movies described.

Hollywood will produce whatever gets people to pay for admission tickets. That's the only reason the studios and theaters are in business.


Most moviegoers are not looking for high-brow enlightenment at the multiplex, but just a couple of fun hours to escape the heat of summer or the stress of real life. Why go to watch something dull and depressing?


I know a number of people whose level of interest in a film is often directly inverse to the critics' consensus. The more a film is praised, the more likely they are to avoid it (praise = dull, pretentious, muddled, obscure), while those films that are panned roundly by critics are assumed to be "a fun movie."

There's nothing wrong with escapist fare, in fact I'm all in favor of it, but when it's literally mindless I have to pass! I can suspend my disbelief as well as anyone but there are limits to what I will swallow! When a film has most or all of the problems mentioned in the OP, it's not (IMO) worth watching.

If "story telling" is necessary to be "competent", then a lot of movies I love wouldn't fit the bill. This is what separates the "thrill ride" kind of movies from the rest. There's also the term "turning off your brain" that is used a lot, and some people seem unable to do that. I'm fine with just over looking nip-picky things for the sake of enjoying the spectacle. That's not to say I like every dumb movie that comes along, but a fun and well made "fun" flick will get my seal of approval. And Jurassic World is a perfect example of that. It's not even that I don't notice some of the "story telling deficiencies", I just laugh and enjoy.

Well, Hollywood does produce films for adults but the adults rarely go to them. So fewer of these type films are made in favor of films geared to young males. Its not all Hollywood's fault. If good films don't make mpney, they'll make bad films that will, probably directed by Michael Bay.

Movies today regularly elevate the implausible over the plausible and audiences don't seem to mind. They expect action heroes to do things that violate the laws of physics. Those of us who are bothered by such things are in the minority. I remember a time when action films weren't stupid, when action heroes behaved in a plausible manner. Outside of swashbuckling heroes like Douglas Fairbanks, they didn't do outlandish stunts or take extraordinary punishment and then keep fighting. Yes, there were little things like the hero getting shot and saying, "It's only a flesh wound," and continuing to fight, or shooting his gun long after the bullets would have run out. But that's quite different from the punishment action heroes take today. In JOHN WICK, Keanu Reeves' character would have been killed ten times over by the punishment he takes. And how many times have we seen heroes get blown into the air by an explosion and land with a thud and get up and keep fighting? In the 3rd Bourne film, Bourne (Matt Damon) is inside a car that flies out of a parking garage and crashes on the street ten stories below, a complete wreck, and he climbs out as if nothing happened. This was particularly egregious to me because the first two Bourne films took pains to avoid that kind of foolishness.

I liked Jurassic World for what it was. As low brow fare I will take something this competently done over the brash transformer junk any day.

Sam Posten said:

I liked Jurassic World for what it was. As low brow fare I will take something this competently done over the brash transformer junk any day.

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The difference is that lowbrow fare used to be made for pennies and would fill up neighborhood double bills that cost a quarter or less to see. B-westerns, Abbott & Costello, 1950s horror and sci-fi, Roger Corman movies, etc. The movies that cost the most were prestigious historical dramas made with literate scripts by directors at the top of their craft. And they played the "roadshow" circuit with reserved seating and high-priced tickets ($2.50!!!).


Today, "lowbrow fare" like JURASSIC WORLD costs hundreds of millions to make and market--per film!--and the theaters charge high prices for admission. And they're made, in many cases, by novice directors. Meanwhile, prestigious projects by master directors have to struggle to find funding. FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD (1967) was an MGM historical epic of its time, given the full roadshow treatment. The 2015 remake is consigned to the arthouse circuit and is being shown in only a handful of theaters. There's an article in the recent Cineaste about Francis Ford Coppola, once the king of Hollywood, and his straight-to-video personal films of the 21st century.

Hollywood always gives itself some very good advice but very seldom follows it.

I often wondered why, with all the crew involved in making a picture all the way down to the gaffer and "best boy" and "script girl" (I'm being deliberately archaic here), do they not hire a fricken movie critic or at least a creative writing professor to take a crack at fixing the story/screenplay before throwing $300 million at it in production costs?


And I don't mean they should have a guy second-guessing the creating staff and offering inspired ideas such as, "I think we should add a giant spider here" (they have studio management for that function). I mean a guy who looks at the whole damned thing and goes, "You know, I can spot about 5 major writing mistakes in this script, starting with the artificial excitement laced rat-in-a-puzzle-box story structure that is masquerading as drama. Plus, see here. You killed one of the main characters at the end, then double-talked him back to life before the credits started rolling. Where I come from—that being second-year college—that's a story cheat known as deus ex machina. The Greeks used to do that all the time, and now look at them."

Who's to say what a good movi3 is?
Seems to Me the people that go and pay are the ones who say what is good, good to them. Otherwise they would t go.

JW was good movie as far as my opinion goes.
I paid to see it, to be entertained, to enjoy my 2 hours. It did that for me. Good.

Good is a subjective term when it comes to movies. What you think is good isn't necessarily what I would think is good and vice versa. For example, most people think Pixar's CARS film is a bad film relative to their other output and I think it is an underrated classic. It is third only to "The Incredibles" and "Ratatouille" in my book.

Jonathan Perregaux said:

I often wondered why, with all the crew involved in making a picture all the way down to the gaffer and "best boy" and "script girl" (I'm being deliberately archaic here), do they not hire a fricken movie critic or at least a creative writing professor to take a crack at fixing the story/screenplay before throwing $300 million at it in production costs?


And I don't mean they should have a guy second-guessing the creating staff and offering inspired ideas such as, "I think we should add a giant spider here" (they have studio management for that function). I mean a guy who looks at the whole damned thing and goes, "You know, I can spot about 5 major writing mistakes in this script, starting with the artificial excitement laced rat-in-a-puzzle-box story structure that is masquerading as drama. Plus, see here. You killed one of the main characters at the end, then double-talked him back to life before the credits started rolling. Where I come from—that being second-year college—that's a story cheat known as deus ex machina. The Greeks used to do that all the time, and now look at them."

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Hollywood has plenty of highly-paid "script doctors," some of them very well-known writers and some of them former English professors or former critics, who hone and polish scripts for big-budget movies all the time. Sometimes their rewrites are used, sometimes not. My guess is that the type of films you describe would be much worse without the script doctors. Granted, that's small consolation...

Who doctors the doctors, I wonder? There have been some gigantic, bank-breaking dropped balls this past decade or so.

Part of the problem is the studios frequently green-light films before a script is even written. The first thing usually established when producing a movie is the date of release. Then everything is built around that, usually to the detriment of quality. They have to rush to write the script, then rush the film into production so there's enough time for post-production FX in order to be in theaters by the release date they've selected.

That's exactly what happened to Star Trek—The Motion Picture. They had a "drop dead" release date of December 7, 1979. They made it, but only just and the damned thing wasn't even finished. Almost 40 years later and this absurd practice continues? It boggles the mind.

Jonathan Perregaux said:

I often wondered why, with all the crew involved in making a picture all the way down to the gaffer and "best boy" and "script girl" (I'm being deliberately archaic here), do they not hire a fricken movie critic or at least a creative writing professor to take a crack at fixing the story/screenplay before throwing $300 million at it in production costs?


And I don't mean they should have a guy second-guessing the creating staff and offering inspired ideas such as, "I think we should add a giant spider here" (they have studio management for that function). I mean a guy who looks at the whole damned thing and goes, "You know, I can spot about 5 major writing mistakes in this script, starting with the artificial excitement laced rat-in-a-puzzle-box story structure that is masquerading as drama. Plus, see here. You killed one of the main characters at the end, then double-talked him back to life before the credits started rolling. Where I come from—that being second-year college—that's a story cheat known as deus ex machina. The Greeks used to do that all the time, and now look at them."

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You are assuming that these sorts of problems originate in the script. Many times stuff gets added or changed during production, *after* all the script revising/ doctoring has been done.


I remember asking one of the writers of the 3:10 to Yuma remake about the ending, which made no sense to me (the rest of the movie was great). He told me that the filmed ending was the director's idea. The original scripted ending that he described to me sounded far superior, but oh well.

Edwin-S said:

Good is a subjective term when it comes to movies. What you think is good isn't necessarily what I would think is good and vice versa. For example, most people think Pixar's CARS film is a bad film relative to their other output and I think it is an underrated classic. It is third only to "The Incredibles" and "Ratatouille" in my book.

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I agree that Cars is an underrated classic, but I have issues with Ratatouille. In many ways, it's great, but I just can't get past the stupid hair-pulling.


Which just reinforces your point!

Jonathan Perregaux said:

I often wondered why, with all the crew involved in making a picture all the way down to the gaffer and "best boy" and "script girl" (I'm being deliberately archaic here), do they not hire a fricken movie critic or at least a creative writing professor to take a crack at fixing the story/screenplay before throwing $300 million at it in production costs?

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Because hiring movie critics worked SO well for Myra Breckinridge and Beyond the Valley of the Dolls.


And then there was Pauline Kael's short-lived hiatus from film criticism circa 1979.