Is there such a thing as a bad movie, game, book, etc?

What have you been watching?

Is there such a thing as a bad movie, game, book, etc?

Postby DanteHoratio » Sat May 13, 2017 12:37 pm

No, there is not. It's all opinion based. I rather liked Star Wars episode 1 though 3. That does not make my taste batter or worst then anybody who disliked Star Wars episode 1 though 3. Just different.

I disliked Avater(You know, with the blue alien people), despite the fact that alot of people liked it. That does not make my taste better or worst, just different.

What do you think?
  • 2

"Suppose you were an idiot, and suppose you were a member of Congress; but I repeat myself." -Mark Twain

"I couldn't live a week without a private library - indeed, I'd part with all my furniture and squat and sleep on the floor before I'd let go of the 1500 or so books I possess." -HP Lovecraft
User avatar
DanteHoratio
TCS Sithlord
TCS Sithlord
 
Posts: 547
Joined: Thu May 28, 2015 9:17 pm
Location: Somewhere over the rainbow
Show rep
Title: Let's get dangerous

Re: Is there such a thing as a bad movie, game, book, etc?

Postby Piter Lauchy » Sat May 13, 2017 12:53 pm

DanteHoratio wrote:That does not make my taste batter

That does make it dough, however.

(Bad) joking aside, I agree. It's only possible to objectively judge how good an artist is at their craft, but that's just framework. Rough diamonds or shiny turds aren't unheard of.
  • 8

The Oatmeal wrote:Live life passionately and love everyone like they are family, because Jesus is always with you. Jesus loves you seriously bigtime. He'd hug you until your eyeballs exploded out of your skull if he ever met you. He'd windsurf across oceans of dead Nazis which he personally slaughtered just to tell you that your new haircut is the bee's knees. [...]
Praise Jesus, especially when it's sunny outside because Jesus would totally be cool with you praising while you get a nice tan.
User avatar
Piter Lauchy
Time Waster
Time Waster
 
Posts: 1090
Joined: Thu Jan 07, 2016 1:33 am
Location: Bier und Wurst
Show rep
Title: Idk, someone give me one

Re: Is there such a thing as a bad movie, game, book, etc?

Postby iMURDAu » Sat May 13, 2017 1:58 pm

There are definitely bad games. That's due to programming problems causing issues ranging from collision detection to framerate to who knows what. So if you can't play it the way that it was designed it will be a bad experience no matter what.

Example A - Ninjabread Man for the Wii. A great concept. Terrible execution. I've played this game and it is barely playable. A bad game.

A book can be poorly written and a movie can be poorly written, edited, acted, etc. but they're still able to be experienced without any obstacles. Books don't have lag. Can you imagine? Your eyes are moving but you have to wait for the text to load.
  • 5

“This is going to become a bad meme,” Todd observed.
User avatar
iMURDAu
TCS Chomper
TCS Chomper
 
Posts: 6752
Joined: Fri Apr 19, 2013 10:08 am
Location: twitch.tv/beakstore
Show rep
Title: King of Fuh

Re: Is there such a thing as a bad movie, game, book, etc?

Postby 52xMax » Sat May 13, 2017 2:05 pm

I disagree.

Image

Also, my opinions are always objective and everyone else should be judged by how much they deviate from them.




Seriously though, there's no accounting for taste, and everyone has their own preferences which should remain diverse because that's what allows for creativity. But while there's usually not a consensus on what's the best or the worst, there's plenty of stuff out there that's almost universally panned/acclaimed, so that's something worth pondering. I'm also a firm believer in Sturgeon's law (which says 90% of everything is shit, though suspect the number's probably closer to 95%), but I also think it's much more productive to focus on the positive and use constructive criticism whenever possible, unlike most critics out there who only try to tear down things, probably because it's easier than engaging on a creative enterprise of their own.

Image
Yes, we know everything stinks, but what are you going to do about it?
  • 6

"When in doubt... well, don't ask me!"
User avatar
52xMax
Knight Writer
Knight Writer
 
Posts: 3058
Joined: Mon Apr 29, 2013 6:38 pm
Location: In all the wrong places.
Show rep
Title: Salmon the Wise

Re: Is there such a thing as a bad movie, game, book, etc?

Postby Tesseracts » Sat May 13, 2017 4:09 pm

  • 4

User avatar
Tesseracts
Big Brother
Big Brother
 
Posts: 9653
Joined: Sat Apr 13, 2013 5:31 am
Show rep
Title: Social Media Expert

Re: Is there such a thing as a bad movie, game, book, etc?

Postby RaceProUK » Sat May 13, 2017 4:18 pm

  • 3

User avatar
RaceProUK
Frequent Poster
Frequent Poster
 
Posts: 156
Joined: Wed Mar 15, 2017 7:26 pm
Show rep

Re: Is there such a thing as a bad movie, game, book, etc?

Postby cmsellers » Sat May 13, 2017 5:18 pm

DanteHoratio wrote:No, there is not. It's all opinion based. I rather liked Star Wars episode 1 though 3. That does not make my taste batter or worst then anybody who disliked Star Wars episode 1 though 3. Just different.

I disliked Avater(You know, with the blue alien people), despite the fact that alot of people liked it. That does not make my taste better or worst, just different.

What do you think?

I think this sounds like exactly the sort of thread someone with terrible taste would start.

But to be serious, I have to echo Max. There are some cases where opinion is sharply divided and you get basically a bimodal distribution. The most famous example is Napoleon Dynamite, which gave its name to the Napoleon Dynamite effect: there's a few movies which people either love or hate, with very little middle ground. But most things follow a normal distribution. If you're on one end of the curve of the other, you might argue that something is overrated or underrated, given the tastes of the time.

And popularity does not equal goodness. People often have unsophisticated tastes, and consume media uncritically. A lot of people like potato chips (I like potato chips), but if you suggest that they're the height of culinary achievement I'm going to call BS. On the flip side, critics and be pretentious and overrate some things I think are pretentious garbage, but I don't think I've ever seen anything universally critically panned which I thought was objectively good.

I've found that the Rotten Tomatoes audience score is a good marker of whether I will enjoy a movie, but the critical score is a good marker as to whether I'll think it's a good movie. And I can recognize that something is good even if I dislike it, and bad even with I like it. I can enjoy something for one reason and know it's bad in other ways. Avatar is a good example. The visuals were amazing, and I enjoyed seeing it in 3D. The plot was shit, the characterization was shit, and overall I'd say it's a bad movie I enjoyed. Not "so bad it's good," just that it had some good parts that made it worthwhile. I'd happily see it again in 3D.

Now most things, tend to fall in terms of consensus towards the middle of the spectrum, and there's room for legitimate argument. But if you tell me Shakespeare was a hack, or Santa Claus Conquers the Martians is the pinnacle of cinematic excellence, I'm going to call bullshit. Shakespeare wrote some bad plays, and I enjoyed Santa Claus Conquers the Martians, but the brilliance of the latter is entirely accidental, and I challenge you to find a major flaw in Othello.

52xMax wrote:I'm also a firm believer in Sturgeon's law (which says 90% of everything is shit, though suspect the number's probably closer to 95%)

The amusing thing is that Sturgeon was one of my favorite SF writers and I own most of his work in collected form. Upon which I realized: the brilliant Sturgeon stories I knew and loved made up only a small part of his oeuvre. With Sturgeon himself I'd say he writes about 20% great stories, 80% forgettable dross.
  • 6

User avatar
cmsellers
Back-End Admin
Back-End Admin
 
Posts: 9316
Joined: Sun Apr 14, 2013 7:20 pm
Location: Not *that* Bay Area
Show rep
Title: Broken Record Player

Re: Is there such a thing as a bad movie, game, book, etc?

Postby gisambards » Sat May 13, 2017 5:46 pm

I think it's a combination of the two. While there is obviously a huge amount of subjectivity, I think there are elements of the relative quality of pieces of media which are actually objective. However, I think people can like things that aren't as high quality, and not in the sense of so-bad-it's-good.

Although I think this boils down to another subjective concept: is it possible to like something and yet still think it's not that good? I think it is. As examples, I personally think the book World War Z actually has more flaws than positives, but I still really like it. I think the original Mass Effect is probably more flawed than a lot of games I liked less. And as a particularly embarrassing example, I still really like the original live-action Scooby-Doo film, but at the same time would never argue it was a particularly good movie.
  • 8

User avatar
gisambards
TCS Junkie
TCS Junkie
 
Posts: 2088
Joined: Sat Feb 21, 2015 11:45 pm
Show rep

Re: Is there such a thing as a bad movie, game, book, etc?

Postby NathanLoiselle » Sat May 13, 2017 6:15 pm

Yes.
  • 2

User avatar
NathanLoiselle
TCS Junkie
TCS Junkie
 
Posts: 4484
Joined: Wed Jul 09, 2014 3:49 am
Location: You'll Never Know!
Show rep

Re: Is there such a thing as a bad movie, game, book, etc?

Postby Kivutar » Sat May 13, 2017 6:17 pm

What about books and movies that promote terrible ideas, like The Turner Diaries?
  • 4

Then the LORD said to me, "Go again, love a woman who is loved by her husband, yet an adulteress, even as the LORD loves the sons of Israel, though they turn to other gods and love raisin cakes."

Hosea 3:1
User avatar
Kivutar
Champion
Champion
 
Posts: 1425
Joined: Wed Apr 01, 2015 3:52 am
Location: Right behind you
Show rep
Title: Great Librarian

Re: Is there such a thing as a bad movie, game, book, etc?

Postby Marcuse » Sat May 13, 2017 6:32 pm

I think the problem we're having here is that we're not defining the term "bad" sufficiently clearly enough to know what we're talking about. If we're talking about a certain genre, style or artistic choice being bad, then probably not. There's going to be a following for even stuff that's objectively offensive to the senses (looking at you brutal/guttural slam death metal).

On the other hand, there's objective things one can measure that define whether or not the artist has achieved their intention in creating media. For example, if one intends to create a horror film, but that film makes people giggle a bit too much and scream far too little, then it might be said to be a "bad" movie, because it's not achieved the thing the artist/author/filmmaker intended to make. The Prequels are one of the classic things people call bad because they were billed by George Lucas as "for kids" but they include child murder, amputations, graphic-ish depiction of Vader burning, and tons of politics that kids won't get for a second. The thrust of the story is Vader's fall to the Dark Side, but it never once manages to convince us of that either, due to poor writing and wooden acting (though not entirely the fault of the actors; working in essentially a green room with nothing in it with poor direction isn't going to get a great performance). So we call them bad movies because they don't convey what the author intended them to convey, as we discern it.
  • 16

User avatar
Marcuse
TCS Sithlord
TCS Sithlord
 
Posts: 6592
Joined: Tue Apr 16, 2013 8:00 pm
Show rep

Re: Is there such a thing as a bad movie, game, book, etc?

Postby ghijkmnop » Sat May 13, 2017 6:35 pm

Redacted
  • 4

Last edited by ghijkmnop on Fri Mar 15, 2019 2:30 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Delete my account
ghijkmnop
Time Waster
Time Waster
 
Posts: 1962
Joined: Thu May 28, 2015 8:22 am
Show rep
Title: Prisoner of TCS

Re: Is there such a thing as a bad movie, game, book, etc?

Postby iMURDAu » Sat May 13, 2017 7:54 pm

Kivutar wrote:What about books and movies that promote terrible ideas, like The Turner Diaries?


They at least let us know that there are people who have viewpoints we don't agree with. Those people probably enjoyed the book. But even a book that promotes terrible ideas allows you to read it to get a sense of what the hell the author is thinking. It is useful for the intended purpose of reading despite how anyone feels about the subject matter.

Again, its all about how you define bad. Imo "bad" in this case is totally objective. It's more analog when I'm judging these things. Good isn't good like bad isn't evil. Good is something that can be taken at face value and experienced as intended. That's why I can't say anything but some games are bad.
  • 7

“This is going to become a bad meme,” Todd observed.
User avatar
iMURDAu
TCS Chomper
TCS Chomper
 
Posts: 6752
Joined: Fri Apr 19, 2013 10:08 am
Location: twitch.tv/beakstore
Show rep
Title: King of Fuh

Re: Is there such a thing as a bad movie, game, book, etc?

Postby IamNotCreepy » Sun May 14, 2017 3:22 am

I think a book/movie/game/etc. can objectively be judged by how well it accomplishes what it intends. Does it try to be scary and fails? That's objectively bad. Is it unreadable/unwatchable/unplayable?
  • 3

User avatar
IamNotCreepy
TCS Admin
TCS Admin
 
Posts: 1521
Joined: Fri Dec 18, 2015 5:00 am
Location: Inside the "Cone of Uncertainty"
Show rep
Title: Chasing after the Wind

Re: Is there such a thing as a bad movie, game, book, etc?

Postby 52xMax » Sun May 14, 2017 4:33 am

Kivutar wrote:What about books and movies that promote terrible ideas, like The Turner Diaries?


Admittedly I'm not CNN's biggest fan, but Ted Turner isn't so bad. He turned the Atlanta Braves into a decent team, and he also created Captain Planet.



Unless that book you're talking is not about Ted... but I still think that the story of Ike and Tina should be told, at least as a cautionary tale.

Image
  • 3

"When in doubt... well, don't ask me!"
User avatar
52xMax
Knight Writer
Knight Writer
 
Posts: 3058
Joined: Mon Apr 29, 2013 6:38 pm
Location: In all the wrong places.
Show rep
Title: Salmon the Wise

Next

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 8 guests