Fox and Talen (leechimera) wrote, @ 2009-06-30 00:41:00

Criticism
In a conversation with a good friend recently I mentioned two things. The first of these things evoked his surprise, the second of these things evoked his sympathy.

The second thing I said is that I often offer up my opinion feeling like it doesn't really matter to my friends around me. This is something that I realised cuts both ways. I keep from stating my opinion a lot of the time because I feel like the visceral reactions I give aren't helpful, and that more and more, people don't want to hear what I really think, so instead I peck around the edges of expression. This has led to some awfully timid writing and thought of late, where I would delete something as I started it, thinking Someone I know likes this movie. They will probably disregard my opinion because it disagrees with them. They probably will be upset at me for my opinion. More and more I find that I put a lot of effort into creating a review, then for the fear of negative reactions, or worse, no reactions, delete it.

The first thing I said is that I didn't like Wall-E. He was surprised to find this out because I recommended he and his now-girlfriend see it, because I was certain they would like it. It led to the startling revelation that just because I don't like something, doesn't mean I don't see what merits it has. The idea that I can criticize something not just based on my emotional response and make a meaningful suggestion based on what I saw. I could tell the way the themes of Wall-E would play into what he would enjoy. I could tell its sweetness and its lightness made it a good date movie for nerds, one of whom is an astrophysicist, the other of whom imports games from Japan.

I had no need to enjoy the movie myself to recognise what was good in it. I just didn't like it. Once I sat back and considered what I had done in this statement, I wound up realising that if I make someone sad because they don't like my opinion of something they liked, then they need to consider dealing with it themselves. I'm not a jerk. I just didn't like a movie. I don't make fun of movies because I want to make those who like the movies feel bad. My negative reaction to movies tend to run in three broad strokes:
• I didn't like this movie. If I don't like a movie, often there's not a lot to talk about. There are heaps of perfectly good movies that don't merit any kind of word about it. These movies won't usually rile me up, they won't usually have any real reason to be considered. They're just there. A good example of this category of movie would be 15 minutes. It wasn't a bad movie, it did some things interestingly, I just found myself not really interested in what was going on.
• This was a bad movie. Welcome to the vast majority of the actual critique I have of movies that spur me to write. Typically speaking, a movie that gets praised while having significant flaws is a movie I think of as bad movie. When you extract a movie from its hype and look at it without the weight of its marketing behind it, you'll find a lot of bad things - thin characterisation, poor storytelling, loose plot threads, misuse of themes, or badly handled subtexts. Sometimes a movie is defined by a badly done story, sometimes by badly done characters. Funnily enough, I tend to not think of special effects or set or music in the same category. Either way, I think of a movie as a bad movie if it has some big failing in its whole script. A bad actor can't make a bad movie. He can just make a movie more painful to watch.
• This movie is actively harmful. This is a very rare category to find a movie in. I haven't seen very many actively harmful movies in a while. For the most part, movies have some really negative or harmful elements - consider the sexist writing in Van Helsing. The film was overall decent enough (if I was pushed to it, I'd consider a 'bad movie', but one I enjoyed), but the way it treated women was something I genuinely think of as harmful.
So with that in mind, of the following movies, I've seen recently, which do you reckon get the title of 'I didn't like it', which do you think get 'Bad movie' and which do you think get 'Actively Harmful'?
• 12 Rounds
• Stardust
• Equilibrium
• X-Men Origins: Wolverine
The spoiler is that I don't think any of these movies were actively harmful, though I thought 12 rounds, Equilibrium, and Wolverine were all bad movies, while I thought Stardust was fucking brilliant. Why did I choose to do it that way? Ask a leading question, present a simple correspondence answer, and then break with my lead-in?

Because, fuck it, I like some movies and I don't hate everything. If I can't get discussion and interest, I might as well try surprise and indignation at inappropriate quiz protocols!

(Hopefully coming soon: Reviews of each)

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