when is it ok to hate a stupid movie

Started by pete, June 28, 2008, 12:09:56 AM

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pete

Glancing at a few recent topics, I've noticed a lot of back-and-forths over the slew of early summer movies that center around one side hating a movie for being so dumb and the other defending its merits as good entertainment.  If the current trend subsists, studio movies will inevitably become more cynical, self-aware, derivative, and "dumb".  Most critics have already noticed the trend and began using words like "boring" to describe the action movies they hate, because words like "stupid" have lost their bite to increasingly more savvy campaigns and conditioned demographics.  Since I see the same argument repeated over and over again from thread to thread, I think we should single this out from the discussions, or to group all the recent movies that you've considered "dumb" (in both positive and negative lights) and your thoughts on just stupidity in general or something.
I guess most of this came from seeing Wanted last night.  I haven't been keeping up with the American studio tentpole movies for quite sometime now, but have always heard people describing certain absurd scenes from various films with spite.  I always thought to myself, that sounds like a lot of fun (like the shootouts in Smoking Aces or the battles in 300), how can you hate it?  But having seen a few of those movies recently, I've realized that the stupid action scenes today are marred by slick directors too smart for their own good and impossible production values that take away the charm from sequences that sound cartoonish on paper.  For example, Die Hard 4 would've been a lot more fun if the editing and the cinematography weren't so handsomely competent.  Absurdity in movies is best served earnest, if the filmmakers believe in the scenes, and if the audience is genuinely smarter than the material.  The charm comes from people's inability to hate something that is driven by earnest, no matter how silly its content.  Perhaps, the recent tentpole movies suffer from a system that stops believing in pure entertainment, and can only imitate nostalgia.  Or perhaps filmmakers were forced to be absurd and silly when it was a lot harder to create convincing spectacles; they could only rely on wit and charm to fill in the gaps, but now, updated technology rendered certain modes of spectacle-making obsolete - just as big studio sounds have turned good bands into sellouts.
Opinions?
"Tragedy is a close-up; comedy, a long shot."
- Buster Keaton

Gold Trumpet

I think most dissapointment with summer movies has to do with people getting older. Everybody reminisciences about favorite summer movies but they always do so with films that they liked when they were young. Someone in their 20s can look back at Jurassic Park and think fond thoughts. They differentiate that movie with ones made today by saying Jurassic Park had all the right elements of good entertainment and that most summer movies today are either over blown or too stylistically charged. Now someone who is much older and saw Jurassic Park when they were an adult can have a bitter memory of the film. They may notice the CGI effects and over the top stunts and think the film lacked the good storytelling they saw in their favorite movies from when they were kids.

Now I don't get much enjoyment out of most movies that try to be entertaining today. I see movies that are too stylistic for their own good, but I also have to realize that I have different taste than the target audience of these movies. Younger kids grew up to style assaults on the brain. A lot of younger people consider Spiderman really good storytelling, but I see a general super hero story with lots of elaborate filmmaking shots. The long shots of Spiderman swooping through the air, fighting bad guys and avvoiding objects all at once is now a normal special effect. You would have never seen that 15 years ago, but it is in Spiderman. The surprising thing is that Spiderman is considered pretty relaxed and mellow to other summer action movies. It's a new level of normalcy.

I think sometimes we forget that most summer movies are aimed at young teenagers. They have effects that are suppose to be candy and while we consider it a distraction, it's the thing most young audiences want. I think they'll grow out of it and redefine their tastes, but I believe most studios know to keep movies dumb enough to mainly interest really young people. I remember when Indepedence Day came out I enjoyed it. Not a chance now. It's just how it is.

Redlum

I really think it's dangerous to cite nostalgia as the reason why today's summer blockbusters aren't meeting the grade. It says "Hey, those things you used to love really weren't that good so lower your standards".

Nostalgia is a factor but I'd say our perspective is more slanted by the way that distance and time allow only the cream to rise to the top. We're still debating the merits of Jurassic Park and Spiderman while the films that we nearly drown in every summer like the Ghost Rider's and Eragons of yestayear are completely forgetten like bad B-movies. At 6 years old the one film that initiated me into the world of movies was Back to the Future but not a hint of nostalgia comes into play when I call that a great film today.

Sometimes you need to stop stepping around the issue and take a stab at some qualified quality control. Looking at the highest grossing movies of all time you can see that nothing has really changed in terms of audience popularity. The staple diet is franchises (from Star Wars '77 to Pirates 2007), family animated features (Bambi '41 to Shrek 2 '04), the occasional star driven comedy (Beverley Hills Cop '84 to Click '06) and finally the Oscar heavy weights. So if the diet has stayed the same; is it still as nutritious as it used to be?

The majority of high-grossing movies from this decade are franchises or sequels. Looking at the nineties - far more movies were one-off breakout successes. Movies that in a lot of cases were successful by their own merits and thrived off of word of mouth and/or good critical notices.

As a bit of first hand evidence, I recently went into a class of 9-10 year olds at my old primary school to talk about filmmaking. When I asked what good films they'd seen lately I was mostly hearing I am Legend and  War of the Worlds . That's pretty good going. Obviously a small example, but it does make me wonder about who is really driving the market for tent-pole bilge. I started to realise that most people I'd heard talk enthusiastically about Pirates of the Carribean were adults. I wouldn't be surprised if many of Pirate's audience were going in for nostalgic reasons; looking to rekindle the enjoyment they got from adventure movies like Indiana Jones. Then making the fatal mistake of citing misguided nostalgia when the new films don't come upto snuff (like those who try to defend the new Indiana Jones film).

I'm going to haul out Pirates of Carribean and it's despicable sequels as being exemplary of a movie it is okay to hate for being dumb. To add to the hatred - the films made over 2.5 Billion dollars at the box-office.
\"I wanted to make a film for kids, something that would present them with a kind of elementary morality. Because nowadays nobody bothers to tell those kids, \'Hey, this is right and this is wrong\'.\"
  -  George Lucas

pete

I'm not talking about old vs. new or whatever - I've just never noticed a trend of films that are so self-aware AND stupid before.  Jackie Chan and Indiana Jones and Princess Bride and a lot of the movies from the 80s were self-aware and were into making jokes at the film's own expense, but they were still witty in earnest.  there were probably some that were cynically made as well, but they don't make lasting impressions.
"Tragedy is a close-up; comedy, a long shot."
- Buster Keaton

last days of gerry the elephant

I'm slightly confused to what you're actually saying/asking...

Alexandro

About a year ago I was coediting a magazine and for some reason I can't remember now, I ended up at a mall asking random people what their favorite movie was. A lot of the answers were depressing, but I did notice that Pirates is hugely popular mostly with young adults. A lot of women. I mean many grown up women were telling me their favorite film ever was Pirates 1..."no, no wait...2...no...both"...

Actual kids would give the most random answers imaginable. From Ghost Rider to Finding Nemo to everything...

So I firmly believe the real Pirates audience are adults.

Also on that day, I noticed few old films come up in people's minds when you ask about a favorite, but Scarface did came up a lot with male teenagers.

pete

Quote from: omuy on June 28, 2008, 01:00:21 PM
I'm slightly confused to what you're actually saying/asking...

me too.  I think I actually got to talking about good movies, which was not my intention at all.
is there such thing as a manufactured stupidity in the studio movies these days?  Do the non-slick stupid movies really possess more charm than well-made, intentional ones?
"Tragedy is a close-up; comedy, a long shot."
- Buster Keaton

matt35mm

I think if you're really interested in this problem, then you'll have to hunt down some of the movies from, say, a decade or two ago that no one remembers.  As it's been pointed out several times already, the lame movies probably just don't make enough of an impression--which is something that deserves to be seriously examined by research.

You may find that it has pretty much always been this way.

As for your last question ("do the non-slick stupid movies really possess more charm than well-made, intentional ones?), you might want to rephrase that.  I don't think it's answerable as is, except to say that it depends on the movie.

But with all this said, I don't really see that big of a problem.  These movies only might piss people like us off, and they don't have to.  They don't piss me off because I just don't go see them, thereby saving me a lot of time and energy.  Most of the people who do go see them are pleased enough, and this is the role that movies play in their lives.  Movies play a different role in my life and probably yours.  I can't see very much meaning in trying to figure out any responsibility that people who make films (studios and filmmakers) should have, such that they should not be stupid.  Why shouldn't they be stupid, and why shouldn't studios manufacture stupid movies if they please the audience?

Sure, there's probably little charm to be had in such an intentionally dim-witted, big-budgeted film, but maybe many audience members do not feel the need for this charm.  I agree with you that the "Oh, it's supposed to be stupid" comment does nothing to alter the fact that it's stupid, but there seems to be that audience who wants or is satisfied with stupid movies without charm--with or without the irony.  The bucks they dole out suggest that they're satisfied, and we know that better movies don't necessarily make more money.  So again, why should any filmmaking entity have any responsibility to do anything other than find a way to get people to dole out the bucks?

Oh and as a final note, I don't care for a lot of non-slick stupid movies and I fail to see their charm.  Humans aren't necessarily unable, as you said, of hating a movie that was made with earnest, because I could spit the face of earnestness.

SoNowThen

#8
Quote from: pete on June 28, 2008, 12:26:13 PM
I'm not talking about old vs. new or whatever - I've just never noticed a trend of films that are so self-aware AND stupid before.  Jackie Chan and Indiana Jones and Princess Bride and a lot of the movies from the 80s were self-aware and were into making jokes at the film's own expense, but they were still witty in earnest.  there were probably some that were cynically made as well, but they don't make lasting impressions.

First off, Pete, this is a really great topic for a thread, and one I'm sure a lot of us have been mulling over for a while without being able to articulate even half as much as you did with the first post. Also, GT kinda took it off tangentially, but still his and your posts manage to cover most of the area of the issue (or whatever we want to call it).

It's probably worth considering: even though there seems to be a trend towards things being more cynical/knowing and yet stupider, and there is also the thing that GT mentioned in that every half generation there becomes a new standard of "normalcy" (and anyone who can even slightly side-step that generational progression indentifies without too much trouble just how not-normal this sliding scale of normal is becoming)... but I chalk this up to one major problem of our society -- I guess I can only speak of modern Western-media influenced society in general, but it must have happened to past societies as well, I reckon. And it is a complete disengagement with any cultural past to speak of. Because anyone who reads books written pre-20th century, watches movies from the beginning of the sound age, or is interested in art or history in general (and by that I mean the past traditions thereof), can comfortably identify the same uneasy depletion of earnestness with the rise of slickness by looking beyond a generation or two of slow, steady transition. On a limited scale with measured doses a massive change can be undergone without too much notice by the participants, but when one has identified cultural signposts then one can see just how radical and even bizarre some tangential movements have become. Kids whose own world is a spoon-fed frenzy of images that must be continuously notched up with every dose to make up for the diminishing returns theory have no recourse to the idea or explanation of how they are being targeted, marketed to, and set-up for future trough feeding to the point of becoming automaton receivers (and/or cyphers).

It probably has a lot to do with the ongoing push to kill "outmoded" traditional values/mores/hierarchies ever since the hateful PC movement. The sense of entitlement that's going around is at an unprecedented degree. Couple that with the apathy/malaise/whatever you want to call it, take away books and replace them with video games, continually push people to believe there are no "right or wrong" decisions but only "different" ones, and you accelerate the sliding scale of selfishness, self-centeredness, and finally stupidity (a stew of vacuousness, uselessness, and entertainment solely as time killer -- collectively lowering the bar on anything to do talent-wise with producing any work and only centering on half-dose increases in titillation).

Those are swirling ideas, and also nothing new to doomsayers of any generation during any time on earth, but still they seem to apply here. It's just now happening to cinema for the first time, maybe.

I guess it seemed like a few stupid movies that were cool and fun to watch (and still are) were the makers knowing it was kind of trash, not so much wallowing in it as seeing what they could do with limited resources, and last but not least NOT EXPECTING to have their dicks sucked to high heaven over how fantastic they were for making it. Stupidity is never so stupid as when it is begged to be respected as some kind of iconoclastic meta-achievement (I'm thinking here of channel flipping a few weeks ago and catching Jenna Jameson on the View claiming that she was "very political" and that her zombie stripper movie was a subtle critique of her current federal government administration... but this can easily be applied to several more respected filmmakers and most gallery installation creators).

Then there is the flip side of things, with the common prole response to anything but a cookie-cutter movie being "stupid", meaning in this case the plot, if discernable at all, was either hard to follow or did not end up pointing to the same cliched meaning/solution as the last 6000 stories that had a similar plot. So not only do we have critics not being able to apply "stupid" to truly stupid movies anymore (whether, as you say, good or bad), but we have a complete devalutation (or subjectification) of the word "stupid", meaning "did not please me". This is not the correct definition of stupid, in fact. However, with the sliding scale, in a few years "stupid" will come to mean "did not please me" by the generation of kids who only ever heard their parents/peers use it in this context.

Although, by then urban slang will have rendered the "..pid" an archaic part of the word, and someone will just write off a potentially challenging movie by saying "that was so fuckin' stu".

Finally, as to liking something when we were kids, but seeing it now for what it is, ie. don't rag on current kids' fun -- fair enough, GT. But, again, slipping outside the PCism that has so horribly poisoned our vocabularies, just because kids like shit because they don't know anything better yet doesn't mean we can't make that fact perfectly clear. 'No, it is not good art; it appeals to the lowest common denominator which, unfortunately, little man, you are at this moment'. We don't have to call the kid stupid, but we certainly should be able to call the movie stupid. Or whatever equivalent term of derision that still carries bite.
Those who say that the totalitarian state of the Soviet Union was not "real" Marxism also cannot admit that one simple feature of Marxism makes totalitarianism necessary:  the rejection of civil society. Since civil society is the sphere of private activity, its abolition and replacement by political society means that nothing private remains. That is already the essence of totalitarianism; and the moralistic practice of the trendy Left, which regards everything as political and sometimes reveals its hostility to free speech, does nothing to contradict this implication.

When those who hated capital and consumption (and Jews) in the 20th century murdered some hundred million people, and the poster children for the struggle against international capitalism and America are now fanatical Islamic terrorists, this puts recent enthusiasts in an awkward position. Most of them are too dense and shameless to appreciate it, and far too many are taken in by the moralistic and paternalistic rhetoric of the Left.

SoNowThen

Quote from: matt35mm on June 28, 2008, 03:02:47 PMI could spit in the face of earnestness.

After-thought -- this is also very true. Touche.
Those who say that the totalitarian state of the Soviet Union was not "real" Marxism also cannot admit that one simple feature of Marxism makes totalitarianism necessary:  the rejection of civil society. Since civil society is the sphere of private activity, its abolition and replacement by political society means that nothing private remains. That is already the essence of totalitarianism; and the moralistic practice of the trendy Left, which regards everything as political and sometimes reveals its hostility to free speech, does nothing to contradict this implication.

When those who hated capital and consumption (and Jews) in the 20th century murdered some hundred million people, and the poster children for the struggle against international capitalism and America are now fanatical Islamic terrorists, this puts recent enthusiasts in an awkward position. Most of them are too dense and shameless to appreciate it, and far too many are taken in by the moralistic and paternalistic rhetoric of the Left.

Pas

Quote from: SoNowThen on June 30, 2008, 04:04:47 AM
It probably has a lot to do with the ongoing push to kill "outmoded" traditional values/mores/hierarchies ever since the hateful PC movement. The sense of entitlement that's going around is at an unprecedented degree. Couple that with the apathy/malaise/whatever you want to call it, take away books and replace them with video games, continually push people to believe there are no "right or wrong" decisions but only "different" ones, and you accelerate the sliding scale of selfishness, self-centeredness, and finally stupidity (a stew of vacuousness, uselessness, and entertainment solely as time killer -- collectively lowering the bar on anything to do talent-wise with producing any work and only centering on half-dose increases in titillation).


Very true and intelligently said.

Ravi

Sometimes movies or TV shows will have a deus ex machina and the characters will call attention to it, as if they're aware of how convenient it is.  That's funny once or twice, but more often than out its a cop-out. Why not write a better ending instead of writing a shitty one and then calling attention to it, thereby shielding yourself from criticism?  "But look, we know how stupid this is!  Therefore, its okay!"

Quote from: SoNowThen on June 30, 2008, 04:04:47 AM
I guess it seemed like a few stupid movies that were cool and fun to watch (and still are) were the makers knowing it was kind of trash, not so much wallowing in it as seeing what they could do with limited resources, and last but not least NOT EXPECTING to have their dicks sucked to high heaven over how fantastic they were for making it. Stupidity is never so stupid as when it is begged to be respected as some kind of iconoclastic meta-achievement (I'm thinking here of channel flipping a few weeks ago and catching Jenna Jameson on the View claiming that she was "very political" and that her zombie stripper movie was a subtle critique of her current federal government administration... but this can easily be applied to several more respected filmmakers and most gallery installation creators).

There's a fine balance between a film taking itself too seriously and being overly self-aware.  Sometimes the makers of the old shitty films that we enjoy because they're shitty knew they were making shit and sometimes they thought they were making (or aspired to making) quality films.  In the former case they trusted that people would pick up on the inherent ridiculousness of the films without constantly nudging us in the ribs.

Horror film trends vaguely correspond to social issues.  The 80s slasher films where people who had sex died more or less corresponds to the furor around AIDS.  Today's "torture porn" corresponds to the larger debate about torture.  That subtext is there, but the filmmakers use the issue at hand to tap into common fears at the time, albeit, without actually tackling the issue itself.  The vast majority of people watching these films don't care about or pick up on the shallow social commentary.

pete

I think, just as meth addicts will buy anything that labels itself meth, people will spend big money on things that label themselves as entertainment, especially if those movies are the only ones available to them on friday night.  that doesn't prove that people like them, or that they're entertained.  I have no nostalgia for bad movies simply because they were bad, though one or two might get a pass because of other redeemable qualities.  those stupid movies were hated as stupid movies, but in cases like commando or love story, there were hopes that people wouldn't think these movies were stupid and would be moved/ excited by them.  that is when earnestness comes into play - it gives the people who are willing to go along a chance to enjoy.  thousands of kungfu movies go so over the top with the evil deeds because they hoped to sucker someone into buying the whole revenge plot.  so, of course you can spit on earnestness, which is a whole lot better than hiding behind self-awareness.
I blame Scream.
but matt, being interested in this problem is not exactly the same as being interested in discussing it.  and while you're cool finding better things to do, I'm just sick of taking my students or my nieces or going with my friends to the movies and seeing them all lukewarm or disappointed. 

Quote from: matt35mm on June 28, 2008, 03:02:47 PM
I think if you're really interested in this problem, then you'll have to hunt down some of the movies from, say, a decade or two ago that no one remembers.  As it's been pointed out several times already, the lame movies probably just don't make enough of an impression--which is something that deserves to be seriously examined by research.

You may find that it has pretty much always been this way.

As for your last question ("do the non-slick stupid movies really possess more charm than well-made, intentional ones?), you might want to rephrase that.  I don't think it's answerable as is, except to say that it depends on the movie.

But with all this said, I don't really see that big of a problem.  These movies only might piss people like us off, and they don't have to.  They don't piss me off because I just don't go see them, thereby saving me a lot of time and energy.  Most of the people who do go see them are pleased enough, and this is the role that movies play in their lives.  Movies play a different role in my life and probably yours.  I can't see very much meaning in trying to figure out any responsibility that people who make films (studios and filmmakers) should have, such that they should not be stupid.  Why shouldn't they be stupid, and why shouldn't studios manufacture stupid movies if they please the audience?

Sure, there's probably little charm to be had in such an intentionally dim-witted, big-budgeted film, but maybe many audience members do not feel the need for this charm.  I agree with you that the "Oh, it's supposed to be stupid" comment does nothing to alter the fact that it's stupid, but there seems to be that audience who wants or is satisfied with stupid movies without charm--with or without the irony.  The bucks they dole out suggest that they're satisfied, and we know that better movies don't necessarily make more money.  So again, why should any filmmaking entity have any responsibility to do anything other than find a way to get people to dole out the bucks?

Oh and as a final note, I don't care for a lot of non-slick stupid movies and I fail to see their charm.  Humans aren't necessarily unable, as you said, of hating a movie that was made with earnest, because I could spit the face of earnestness.
"Tragedy is a close-up; comedy, a long shot."
- Buster Keaton