So, if I'm understanding this correctly, your take is "We tend to be more critical of things we dislike, and more forgiving of things we do like." That's a fair and valid point. The one aspect I would disagree with you on is that no one, and I mean no one, is capable of watching something without their own bias getting in the way. We aren't emotionless robots and we can't entirely ignore our own life experience. For good or ill, those things are always going to be at play when discussing anything so you can't disregard them entirely. No one is able to be 100% objective, but there are benchmarks of what generally constitutes good fiction versus bad fiction. Literary analysis (or in this case film analysis) couldn't exist if there were no standards by which to make a judgement on these things. You literally couldn't teach someone how to write if it was all arbitrary. I mean grammar is important, no? Why wouldn't works of fiction be judged by the same criteria? By your estimation, how does an English teacher have any right to grade an essay, or short story?
The reason the discussions hone in on things that are "negative" is that those of us who are more critical are trying to understand why we dislike it. I will concede that it does get taxing at times and the cottage industry that grew up around outrage has basically failed to accomplish their goals of getting the studios to change, but I digress. If we're going to have a rational discussion about fiction though, why would we throw away the very tools that allow us to understand or appreciate it?
To be clear, I'm not suggesting that people shut down their emotions and abandon all concepts of analysis. What I'm saying is that very often people take their emotional dislike of something -- or more accurately, their general preference for "something other than this," especially with respect to products they otherwise love -- and try to dress up that dislike in language that sounds more objective and rational. Except, it isn't. It's just that they don't really like it. Now, sometimes people are just casting about for things to explain their dislike, and they land on some concept in artistic criticism that they think sorta embodies that, so they point to that concept as a way to explain their dislike. But other times, people try to use that language not merely to
explain their position, but rather to
empower it.
In other words, people use technical language that's oriented around criticism and literary/artistic analysis not simply to put words to their gut feeling, but because those words are accorded a certain degree of respect that "Eh, I just didn't like it" often is not. In that sense, the language "empowers" their position. It doesn't simply validate it like someone else saying "Yeah, I didn't like it either." It makes their position far less assailable because they're appealing to a kind of authority that the language carries.
Consider the difference between someone saying "I think it would've been cooler if [character] had done [thing] instead," vs. "It's a complete betrayal of the common characteristics that [character] embodies in their position as the [literary concept] figure; the [literary concept] figure would have done [thing]."
Like, (and I'm just making this up, since I haven't watched any of Loki Season 2), let's say Loki does a thing in an episode that gets people irritated. Someone could write "Ugh, that thing that Loki did just really annoyed me. Anyone else bothered by this?" Or they could say "Loki's behavior in Episode 7 was such an example of how the writing of this show has degraded over time. The writers have forgotten Loki's roots as a classic mythological trickster figure, and are so busy trying to rehabilitate him and make him likable that they've forgotten the role these characters play. It makes no sense that Loki, the literal God of Deceit, would [do thing] especially when you compare him to other classical mythological figures like the Kitsune, or Anansi, or..." You get the idea.
Surely there's an explanation of why one story is beloved, and another is loathed? Those things are quantifiable, based on the rules of fiction, based on life experience, based on previous works in the same franchise. I know this doesn't sit well with a lot of people, but most fiction depends on these rules in order to be comprehensible, let alone considered great. There's nothing wrong with liking any story, but the metrics that people use to discuss them are very real. I don't think it's very helpful to dismiss critical elements like plot holes, bad writing, poor characterization, or any of those things as being invalid if someone dislikes something.
Sure there are. There are absolutely reasons to dismiss someone's deployment of "plot holes" or "poor writing." First, "poor writing" is a pretty broad critique of a work. But it's still (at least as I see it usually deployed) used as a means of applying
objective criteria to what is ultimately a
subjective matter. In other instances, people just flat-out misuse the concept in their efforts to critique. Like, someone saying something is a "plot hole" when it very clearly isn't (at least, not the way they're using it). Like, if someone says it's a "plot hole" that Anakin kills the Tusken Raiders in AOTC when he does...uh....they're just...wrong. It's not really a "plot hole." It might be something that hasn't been sufficiently alluded to (i.e., his violent tendencies, his anger, etc.) but it's not a plot hole the way that concept is meant to be used.
But that's not really what I'm talking about.
Those things are quantifiable tools used to create fiction, so why must we ignore those tools when discussing the end result? We can make a judgement on the construction of a wooden bedframe based on how the carpenter used the tools. The same concept applies to a work of fiction and how well the author uses those tools to tell their story.
I'm not suggesting that we abandon tools of criticism. What I'm suggesting is that the things people tend to latch on to are actually not what their real problem is with the film. Like, I really dislike The Rise of Skywalker. And there are aspects of TFA that I don't like either. But the problems I have with it aren't things like "Why the hell does the Sith knife line up the way it does exactly? How could they have known where she'd stand to look at the wreckage of the Death Star?" And I'm also not saying things like "It's a plot hole that there even is Death Star wreckage, and that said wreckage maintains exactly the shape of the knife after multiple decades." First, it's not a plot hole, and second, the thing I'm pointing to isn't actually the thing that bothers me.
What bothers me about TROS is that the whole thing feels very slapped together at the last minute, that story beats just kind of happen without a lot of lead-in, that it relies on a lot of nostalgia and "positional" storytelling (i.e., Ben and Rey kiss because people in this position are supposed to do that sort of thing in this sort of movie), rather than actually taking the time to tell the story in a way that better lays the groundwork for these things to happen.
Everything I've written is my own
subjective opinion. I'm not trying to appeal to authority or use the authoritative language of criticism (e.g., "This is an example of [thing you give a name to in criticism as a type of failure]." I've seen plenty of videos, however, that focus on that kind of thing.
More to the point, though, there are
plenty of other films I enjoy that have similar problems, so why are they problems in one film, but not in another? And if we're all focused on what great big problems they are...why do we ignore them in the films we like? If these are objective criteria, why is one movie good but the other one bad when both have the same failing? And if they both have the same failing, but one is good and the other is bad, why are we busy trying to point to this failing as if it actually matters? Clearly, it
doesn't matter, or at least it doesn't matter nearly as much. So there must be something else going on, and if we're going to try to describe our problems with a story, maybe we should try to get to the bottom of
that.
The Sith knife example that I mention is almost a perfect parallel to the doubloon in The Goonies. It functions exactly the same way, and raises exactly the same questions. How the hell did the pirates know where folks would stand? How did they know the rocks wouldn't just erode or whatever? How did the
kids know where to stand to line things up? Meh, who cares? It's a fun movie! We like The Goonies! We're not really wondering how the hell One Eyed Willie (*snicker*) built an organ with no discernible source of air to power the organ, which causes flooring to fall away if you play the wrong notes, but somehow said flooring remains perfectly secure as long as you play the correct ones. We're too busy having fun to focus on that "plot hole" (or whatever). So, why do we excuse it there, but not in TROS? Why do we latch on to this "failure" in TROS, when we just kinda shrug and go with it in The Goonies? I'd argue it's because there's something else going on, and that people fail to recognize that because they're too busy pointing out these more minute issues which they simultaneously don't care about in other films. It's missing the forest for the trees.
Ultimately if a character is written to be unlikeable- that's fine- but how well they're received by the audience is going to depend on what purpose they serve to the overall plot. If that plot is uninteresting or unintelligable- it doesn't matter how good or bad the character is written. Even the most despicable characters have the ability to generate the audience's ire to the point where they "love to hate them."
Right, but even then, it's not "bad writing" that audiences don't like a character or even don't like a story. Or rather, it's not
necessarily "bad writing." There may be bad writing in some other respect, or it may have nothing to do with the writing of the film at all. It may be a fundamental mismatch of the audience's expectations and what the film was doing. And maybe that's the fault of the filmmaker for failing to understand the assignment, or maybe it's the fault of the audience for getting too wrapped up in their own "head canon" or other expectations. Or...maybe there's nothing "wrong" with the film at all. Maybe it's a good film
for what it's trying to do, and the audience is too preoccupied with its own dislike of the experience that it can't see that.
Back to my PT example. I had my own idea for what the PT was probably going to be. I thought its focus would be broader, with more time looking at the political machinations that bring down a democracy and turn it into an autocracy. I thought there'd be more focus on the "wars" part of the Clone Wars. I thought there'd be more examination of how/why Anakin turns to evil. What I got instead was a trilogy that, taken as a whole, is more about Anakin's own emotional development, and which ends the way it does because of that development. I didn't like it. I still don't. I didn't like the reason why Anakin falls in ROTS. I thought it wasn't sufficiently "hero to villain" for my tastes. And it's not. It's not interested in telling
that story. Anakin isn't ever really portrayed as much of a hero. His heroism is alluded to, but we don't see that much of it. The film spends way more time on his attachment stuff, and actually bothers to develop that (although not as much as I think it could've used).
I still think a "better" (i.e., my preferred) version of the PT would've started with something kind of like AOTC, without paying any attention to Anakin's life as a little kid. I think it could've introduced him as someone who doesn't understand and doesn't care for the difficulties of democratic politics. I think it could've had a middle film where he's fully engrossed in the war, and has grown fond of his "disposable" soldiers and the sacrifices the otherwise unemotional Jedi are willing to make (note: this wouldn't jive with much of what we see in The Clone Wars cartoon). This would've fueled him to believe that the way forward would be to unify the galaxy under one centralized authority (e.g., the Empire), and when the Jedi opposed them, he'd have fought them fist, tooth, and nail. And I wouldn't have had him kill kids.
But that's not the trilogy we got. What we got is...you know...fine. I get what Lucas is trying to do, I think. I think he does a decent job at doing it, showing Anakin's progression from innocence to corruption. I think he needed more time to tell his story, or better/tighter editing to get it done more effectively, but I think he did it ok. It's not a total failure, certainly. It's just...not at all what I wanted to see and not something that really interests me as it was told. And yeah, the PT has plenty of other smaller flaws, but for me at least, the big thing that makes it a failure is that I just don't
like the story Lucas was trying to tell. It's not about any objective failure on his part. It just doesn't resonate with me. No biggie. I enjoy The Clone Wars cartoon, and that gives me much more of the stuff I was looking for, while also (I think) effectively threading the needle on the issue of Anakin's attachment problems. Less so with Padme, and more in his relationship with Ahsoka.
My issue with a lot of the fandom is that they spend an enormous amount of time focusing on these smaller issues with the films -- which also exist in the films they say they love, and which they ignore in those films -- and end up missing what's
really bothering them about the movies. By all means, they should try to effectively express what they dislike. But I tend to think that what they dislike is less that "Rey is a Mary Sue" or "TLJ ignored the setup from JJ" and more is about "This didn't go the way I wanted it to," and "JJ's style is, it turns out, actually a
bad match for Star Wars films."
