Let's say you've decided to go to restaurant which has a semi-famous gourmet chef working there. And let's say that this gourmet chef does the specials of the day. Let's also say that you yourself are rather fond of cooking. You've got several cook books, you learn some stuff on the Internet. So let's say that you order the daily special at this restaurant. You quickly find out that you dislike this dish. So you proceed to ask to the chef. And you begin telling how he could have cooked this said dish better. And criticizing his work. But then someone at another table asks you, 'excuse me sir', he says. 'But have you actually gone to school for several years just to learn how to cook? Have you spent several years of your life just trying to reach the position that this man is?' Well naturally the answer is no. How can you objectively and accurately critique? You haven't had any schooling in this subject.
Great analogy, I myself use cooking as the analogy quite often as well, except your logical conclusion is flawed.
First, you can finish courses and schools and have qualifications and say “f it, I’ll make something new up, break the rules and come up with something really original”. It’s damn hard to do that. Picasso apparently said something along the lines that “you need to master the rules in order to know how to break them”. He could draw super-realistic but he is famous for his surreal, cubist, stylized work. Very very few people can pull it off and do something great. Creating a cheesecake with marmite, strawberry jam and smoked salmon is bold, subverts expectations but doubt it’ll go down as a triumph.
Second, everybody makes mistakes. EVERYBODY. John Carpenter is one of my favourite directors, he wrote, directed and scored fantastic movies with highly original content and fantastic filmmaking quality. Ghosts of Mars was something out of Syfy channel’s worst or something made by Uwe Boll. Just because he has great talent, eye and track record does not mean he cannot make duds.
Third, Tommy Wiseau, Uwe Boll, Neil Breen have all more experience in making a movie than I do. Am I barred then from calling their work what it is? Sub-par and low quality? I can’t make a car, I don’t have a factory, assembly line, engineering degree. Does that mean that every car maker makes impeccable cars because they have the staff, personnel and resources? There are objective markers as to the quality of a car within its class, and you can absolutely quantify it. Same goes for movies. Are there cars that have practically zero boot space, terrible mpg, needs constant working, prone to rusting and there’s a chance you need to rebuild the engine before it hots 100k miles but I still would buy it because it gives me that buzz? Of course. I actually own one like that.
Setting aside Star Wars, I think it’s important to understand how movies work if you’re into them. I just used to go and say “didn’t like it” or “it was crap” solely based on my feelings and initial reactions. Once I started viewing them from technical aspects as well it was like a revelation.
I think you should try and drop the holy cows mentality. Nothing and nobody is infallible. You don’t need to be a DP to have the confidence to say “I actually know how a scene like that could have been shot better”. I wholeheartedly recommend Half in the Bag as a series (you can skip their Star Wars stuff, just focus on other movies), their discussion about movies is great, informative and relaxed, it’s technical without being surgical and boring. I honestly learned a lot from those guys.
