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[Blightmare]

[rairii]

Passive aggression is an insufferable personality trait.

[Zaraki]

Can I get a pizza over here?

[AP_Pastor]

Not dead yet.

[Psychotic Ninja]

Just mostly dead

[Zaraki]

Oh hey Pastor.

[BTGBullseye]

I just hit 88 watts per hour!

[Psychotic Ninja]

Scuse me, pardon me, coming through, sorry about that, don't mind me

[Im_CIA]

Happy Thanks Giving everybody

[Zaraki]

Happy Thanksgiving, man!

[BTGBullseye]

Thappy Hanksgiving!

[Im_CIA]

I miss the early 2000s

[Psychotic Ninja]

Let's talk about movie critics, shall we?

 

First of all, they're not attacking you, or your opinion. They're not telling you what to like, or what to dislike. They're telling you if a movie is good or bad. They're telling you if it's well made or not. They're paid professionals. They look at movies differently than your average moviegoer. Typically, your average moviegoer is looking for two things: "Do I like this?" and "Is this entertaining?". That's it. So then, what are the things critics look for? Well, typically, there's seven major aspects they look for: Directing, Writing, Cinematography, Editing, Acting, Production Design, and Sound. Let's expand on these things, shall we?

 

Directing: You have a director, with a vision. Obviously, they can't make a movie all by themselves. So, they hire a team, one that'll help bring the director's vision to life. Let's say, they're working on a dramatic reveal. If something's not working out right, it's the director's job to figure out what's not working, and fix it. A director might have the perfect pieces to a puzzle, but it's up to them to assemble the pieces together to get the image.

 

 

Writing: Most movies fall under the Three Act Structure: Act 1 being the setup, the moments that get the meat of the plot moving. Act 2 is the meat of the plot. It usually ends with a big reveal, or the plot twist. Act 3 is the Character's resolve. It's at this point, they've grown into the character they were to become. Think in Star Wars, when Luke puts away the Targeting Computer, and uses the Force to destroy the Death Star. The whole movie was leading up to this moment. Luke letting go, and starting his path down the Jedi way. The reason why most writers use this structure, isn't because they're lazy, but simply cause it just works.

 

Cinematography: It's their job to make sure they're using the right camera angles, lenses, and lighting. If a scene's supposed to be dramatic, it should look and feel dramatic.

 

Editing: It's the editor's job to fix movie mistakes, help with pacing, fix performances, making the movie complete.

 

Acting: A great actor can take a mediocre script, and make it great. The opposite is true also, a mediocre actor and take a great script and make it horrible.  It's all in their performance. How well can they make you forget you're watching a movie, and instead, you're experiencing the movie.

 

Production Design: Does the movie take place in the 1940's? Well it's their job to make sure the set, props, and characters look the part. Take Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 for example: The movie's supposed to take place in 1998. And yet, if you look back, it looks like it takes place in modern London. This is an example of bad Production Design.

 

Sound: The way music, and sound effects are used in a movie can have a huge impact on how a scene plays out. In some cases, no sound or music can be used for greater effect.

 

 

So, when a honest critic writes a review for a movie, they're taking all of this into consideration. So, when a movie, like Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse gets a 97% on Rotten Tomatoes, with 300+ Critics giving great reviews, maybe, just maybe, it really is a great movie, and worth a watch.

 

 

That all said and done, this short little scene probably just became my favorite scene in the entire Star Wars movie, if not the entire series:

 

Edited January 18, 2019 by Psychotic Ninja (see edit history)

[rairii]

2 hours ago, Psychotic Ninja said:

Let's talk about movie critics, shall we?

 

First of all, they're not attacking you, or your opinion. They're not telling you what to like, or what to dislike. They're telling you if a movie is good or bad. They're telling you if it's well made or not. They're paid professionals. They look at movies differently than your average moviegoer. Typically, your average moviegoer is looking for two things: "Do I like this?" and "Is this entertaining?". That's it. So then, what are the things critics look for? Well, typically, there's seven major aspects they look for: Directing, Writing, Cinematography, Editing, Acting, Production Design, and Sound. Let's expand on these things, shall we?

 

Directing: You have a director, with a vision. Obviously, they can't make a movie all by themselves. So, they hire a team, one that'll help bring the director's vision to life. Let's say, they're working on a dramatic reveal. If something's not working out right, it's the director's job to figure out what's not working, and fix it. A director might have the perfect pieces to a puzzle, but it's up to them to assemble the pieces together to get the image.

 

 

Writing: Most movies fall under the Three Act Structure: Act 1 being the setup, the moments that get the meat of the plot moving. Act 2 is the meat of the plot. It usually ends with a big reveal, or the plot twist. Act 3 is the Character's resolve. It's at this point, they've grown into the character they were to become. Think in Star Wars, when Luke puts away the Targeting Computer, and uses the Force to destroy the Death Star. The whole movie was leading up to this moment. Luke letting go, and starting his path down the Jedi way. The reason why most writers use this structure, isn't because they're lazy, but simply cause it just works.

 

Cinematography: It's their job to make sure they're using the right camera angles, lenses, and lighting. If a scene's supposed to be dramatic, it should look and feel dramatic.

 

Editing: It's the editor's job to fix movie mistakes, help with pacing, fix performances, making the movie complete.

 

Acting: A great actor can take a mediocre script, and make it great. The opposite is true also, a mediocre actor and take a great script and make it horrible.  It's all in their performance. How well can they make you forget you're watching a movie, and instead, you're experiencing the movie.

 

Production Design: Does the movie take place in the 1940's? Well it's their job to make sure the set, props, and characters look the part. Take Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 for example: The movie's supposed to take place in 1998. And yet, if you look back, it looks like it takes place in modern London. This is an example of bad Production Design.

 

Sound: The way music, and sound effects are used in a movie can have a huge impact on how a scene plays out. In some cases, no sound or music can be used for greater effect.

 

 

So, when a honest critic writes a review for a movie, they're taking all of this into consideration. So, when a movie, like Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse gets a 97% on Rotten Tomatoes, with 300+ Critics giving great reviews, maybe, just maybe, it really is a great movie, and worth a watch.

Well to toss my unwarranted opinion in to the ring, there's a very valid reason why film critics are widely disliked by people who enjoy movies: art is subjective.

 

The attitude that you can objectively measure certain aspects of what make a film good is extremely elitist and dismissive, as any single piece of art can mean something completely different to any two people. Not to mention narrow minded, as art is meant to be viewed from different perspectives, not just one single corporate perspective. When you boil down good film to a handful of boxes to tick, or sliding scales, you create an environment in which artists rarely innovate in order to score high on conventional measures of success. 

 

Just because several critics claim a movie to be good or bad doesn't actually make that movie good or bad. By the same measures critics treat as objective, Star Wars 7 and 8 are very successful are widely considered to be great movies, even though in actuality they are quite unpopular with casual filmgoers and longtime fans alike.

 

This doesn't mean film criticism itself is worthless, but film criticism as an industry is shallow and lacking in perspective, and we shouldn't be putting the opinions of film critics on a pedestal.

[rairii]

Addendum: I'm also not saying there's rarely or never any innovation in the film industry, but it's not more common than repetition and unoriginal content. Marvel is making a killing off of extremely repetitive superhero films and Disney is releasing a boatload of live-action remakes. Not to say these aren't well made movies, but they certainly aren't "good" movies at least by my standards. Foreign art is often much better than U.S. industry art as it very often fills more niches than industry. It's why anime has exploded in popularity.

[Im_CIA]

Yes, fight fight fight fight. 

 

This pleases Kane

[Psychotic Ninja]

[Im_CIA]

Art is subjective in that it's free of any hard axiomes, but you can still approach it critically. Broadly speaking, the rules are:

 

1. Have evidence that backs your your poing

2. Don't have anything contradicting your point. 

 

Beyond that, not even the artist can say whether your interpertation is wrong or right 

[Psychotic Ninja]

[BTGBullseye]

If only things were as clear cut and dried as my tea leaves...