To boil the topic of the last dozen or so posts down: Not everyone likes every story. This in itself does not make one good or another bad. I also learned early on that just because something might be a "great" movie, doesn't necessarily mean it's a
good one. There are a lot of movies I've watched where I can point out all the ways in which they're important ot the evolution of the medium, of our ability ot tell and take in stories, etc. But for most of them, they're not my go-to when I'm wanting to actually be entertained. Similarly, "simple" or "complex" do not, by themselves, indicate whether something will be good or not.
So yes there's a lot of subjectivity in the arena.
But one thing I
also learned from my study of film -- both official and amateur over a lifetime -- is that the
best movies are complex without being impenetrable, engaging without being frivolous, exciting without being nonstop action and explosions... They make you care about the characters and what happens to them (in this one context, I
do like Bayformers for giving the military unit personality and -- shockingly -- having them survive not just one but multiple films)... And, I feel, there should be a good and memorable and well-applied score -- I strongly respond to a good interplay of music and visuals.
I'd have to think for a while, over all the movies I've seen, which few I feel are perfect or close to it. And why. But one I know is near the top is The Princess Bride. Characters, dialogue, acting, wardrobe, timing, story, music... The few things that ding it from being truly perfect for me (not quite long enough, obvious actors in rubber suits as the ROUSes, occasional difficulty understanding Andre through his accent) I can easily forgive because of all the rest that makes it so wonderful.
I
can, if I felt like taking the time and making the effort, sit down and express over pages of symbolic logic how and why it is objectively a very good film (even if some people don't like it -- and I'd consider that more a psychological reflection of something amiss with them than I would a valid counterargument to my thesis)... But I won't. It's enough for me to know
inductively that it's a good film and to know that, if challenged, I could elucidate as to why, without needing to lay it all out
deductively to "show my work". It's enough to know there
are sufficient metrics to be able to come up with at least pseudo-objective standards for what makes a
good movie (absent experimental
greatness), and that it can be refined further to establish what makes a good film in this or that fictional setting (I, personally, feel like I have a very high Star Wars, Star Trek, and Transformers IQ, in this sense
). I think where The Wook and I are in agreement on this is that we haven't sat down to enumerate all the line-items of what does or does not make a decent-to-good Star Wars film, but we have enough of a gestalt sense of it that we feel able to assert that such a standard baseline can be established.
He and I do differ in our conclusions, however. I can appreciate the Prequels and TFA and R1 for what they were trying to do, even as I can rattle off all my structural and stylistic complaints and things I'd recommend as changes for the better. But I can still compartmentalize both of those and have re-watched both newer films several times since acquiring them on home-video. Whereas his enjoyment suffers from his appraisal of what's missing. That, then, enters the realm of subjectivity. I don't feel I'm a fool for enjoying them despite their faults, and I don't feel he's a fool for not enjoying them for the same reason. I'll leave it to a higher power to determine which of us is suffering more...
..But where I see him coming from (and correct me if I'm wrong) is that -- leaving out whether one enjoys the newer films or not -- they could have been done better, and I agree. And I'm pretty sure he and I would likely agree on the broad strokes of what that would look like, and there the balls got dropped. I can appreciate him not giving the makers a pass, and wanting to somehow force them to rise to the quality of the universe they're fortunate to be playing in. And, like me, he hates being dismissed as a crank and gets more strident when treated thus. I, also, would like a better term than "SWIQ", but I also can't think of a better and equally succinct one. *sigh*
--Jonah
