I used to work in a video store a few years ago, and I also studied film and scriptwriting while at university and college. Needless to say, the extent of my post-secondary life has revolved heavily around movies. I love movies. I love their power to transport an audience to new worlds and new circumstances, to engage our mental processes in ways other mediums aren't able, and sometimes I just like watching giant robots beat the shit out of each other.
I have a problem though. It's not with movies, it's with audiences - particularly with modern audiences. I'm not sure if it's a result of my generation's affiliation with Internet culture and the funny things that does to our psychology, or maybe it's just the way peoples' minds work. My problem is when people confuse their subjective opinion with things that cannot be appreciated/categorized/defined by a single perspective.
This is getting a little abstract, so let me clear things up right now: I hate it when people claim a film is "terrible" or "bad" simply because they didn't like it.
I first began meditating on this issue after watching the film Atonement (2007), in which Keira Knightley, James McAvoy, and a young Saoirse Ronan run around being depressed and sad because of a lie Ronan's character tells. I admit the film is wonderfully shot and nicely acted, but personally, it didn't do it for me. It was just too damn depressing, and the ending didn't quite sit well with me. I was working at the aforementioned video store when the movie was released, so when people asked me whether it was good or not, I would tell them exactly how I felt: too depressing, gut-punch of an ending, all-in-all not the best thing to rent on a Saturday night.
I thought it was a bad film, plain and simple.
And then something happened that forever changed the way I perceive movies. My mom watched it, and she loved it. She connected with all the different elements that I didn't. And so I was left to ponder, "if someone likes a movie that I don't, is it still bad?"
Thus ignited within my brain was the simple idea that I always end up arguing online: just because you don't like something doesn't mean it's terrible. Probably the biggest example of this was the film Prometheus (2012), Ridley Scott's sorta-prequel to Alien (1979). A lot of people hated that movie, but me?
I loved it. Boy, how I loved it.
Scott had gone on record ahead of time saying that he wasn't making a direct prequel to the Alien Saga. Although the film would exist in the same universe, the tone, atmosphere, and general themes would be different. Yes, there would be similar elements, but otherwise he wanted it to be seen as a separate franchise.
And holy shit, did it end up pissing a lot of people off.
Hitler was received more favorably than this film. People all over the Internet were throwing feces at it like it was responsible for killing their childhood dog. Ridley Scott and screenwriter Damon Lindelof took a lot of heat for it. I've never in my life seen a film inspire so much rage.
And yet I loved it. I loved the visuals, the themes, and the tiny connections to the original franchise. Scott is a big fan of working religion into his films, and I was totally into that. He dared to ask a lot of existential questions regarding humanity and the nature of life, and even better, he didn't try to answer them outright. Multiple viewings only increase my appreciation. I truly sympathize with the characters, especially Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace) who spends the film questioning her faith amidst the clusterfuck around her.
Not that there weren't a few issues. A few of the secondary characters were underdeveloped, and people were screaming bloody murder about supposed plot holes (which you can totally find explanations for online, FYI) but there was nothing that would make me think less of the film. I loved it, plain and simple.
And I got into a lot of fights about it.
My issue wasn't that people didn't like the film. That's totally fine. My issue was with people declaring the film was terrible because they didn't like it, as if their subjective opinion was a declaration of fact. I got into arguments where I was called a total moron for liking the film. I had arguments over Facebook where friends berated me endlessly, trying to convince me that I had somehow misinterpreted my own opinion. One friend spent a lengthy amount of time saying the character of Shaw was "totally unsympathetic" and yet when I told him that I sympathized with her, he still contested that I was wrong. Apparently I wasn't watching it right.
The point I kept endlessly trying (and still continue to try) to make is that just because something doesn't appeal to someone does not mean the thing in question is by its very nature a bad thing. It just means the person in question didn't like it. It would be one thing if everyone, everywhere, ever hated it, but that wasn't the case with Prometheus. There were critics who praised it (including Roger Ebert) and there were plenty of people who simply enjoyed it (or at least aspects of it) and there were people like me who truly loved it.
Movies these days seem to exist in a binary vacuum. Either they are good or they are bad - there is no middle ground. Either a film is universally loved, or total fucking garbage. The spectrum seems to be getting wider and wider, and I'm not sure why. Perhaps it's the sense of entitlement that walks hand-in-hand with Internet culture. I don't think you'd ever get into that kind of an argument in real life, because it's a lot more nerve-racking to call someone a total twat for liking a film when they're within slapping distance.
What do I hope to achieve with this? I don't know. I guess I'd like to call for a little bit more self-awareness on the part of us, the audience. Escape your own head space and try to stop seeing works of art (not just films) as black-and-white, awesome-or-terrible things that can only be defined by a single word. And please, for the love of Christ, stop acting like you are the supreme and total authority on everything. It's totally fine if you don't like something, but when you start to insult other people because YOU HAVE TO BE RIGHT ALL THE TIME then it might be high-time you take a break from the Internet.
And you can totally feel free to disagree with me . . . but there's a reason I don't have a comments section on this blog yet.
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