Overrated/Underrated Geek Media

[Paul Farquhar]

Yes, this, 100%. I don't know that I'd call it a good movie, but it is a movie where Helen Mirren fights Hussar terminators with a bull whip, and that's great fun. Also, Kiera Knightly as the Sugarplum Fairy is the wildest thing, just off the wall insane and so much fun.

And the best thing about it it's a Disney movie in which no one sings!

And Tchaikovsky wrote the music (the other one).

 

[payn]

*Jupiter Ascending. Sky roller blading. Nonsensical space politics. Eddie Redmayne whisper shouting as he devours the scenery. Extreme tonal shifts that will give you whiplash every five minutes. "Bees recognize royalty". Odd nonsequitor homages to Terry Gilliam's Brazil. What more could you want?

 

[payn]

No but so think sometimes people forget experts are human too, and I think some experts do get overly accustomed to having their words taken with more weight than other peoples

Being able to simply wipe out any experience or education and level the playing field on opinions seems awfully convenient no?

 

[Bedrockgames]

Being able to simply wipe out any experience or education and level the playing field on opinions seems awfully convenient no?

I am not saying it isn’t ever relevant. If I am reading a review it is one factor among many I consider and for one aspects of a review it will be particularly important. If some is talking about the history and significance of Hong Kong New Wave, and where a particular director fits, I am probably going to give their opinion more weight if they have been covering Asian cinema professionally for twenty years or teach film history. But 1) they can and are sometimes wrong (I’ve certainly encountered this where an expert made a clear error about something, 2) that doesn’t make their subjective opinions on the topic more relevant to me than a die hard fan of new wave). Just because a group of critics doesn’t like a given movie or style of movie, that doesn’t mean their opinions are more valid. They may have good reasons for why they feel that way, informed by their expert understanding. But this is media and art. You don’t have to be educated into an elite culture or critical language to have opinions about art. And people can know about this stuff without an education or degree. It isn’t like learning how to build a rocket ship.

 

[Deset Gled]

*Jupiter Ascending. Sky roller blading. Nonsensical space politics. Eddie Redmayne whisper shouting as he devours the scenery. Extreme tonal shifts that will give you whiplash every five minutes. "Bees recognize royalty". Odd nonsequitor homages to Terry Gilliam's Brazil. What more could you want?

Jupiter Ascending is a movie I categorize as "Beautiful Disaster". So many great visuals, along with a story and script that is so amazingly terrible, and acting and worldbuilding that is all over the place. My other go-to example of this phenomenon is Hellboy 2. I think Mad God may be an example of doing "Beautiful Disaster" on purpose.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Jupiter Ascending is a movie I categorize as "Beautiful Disaster". So many great visuals, along with a story and script that is so amazingly terrible, and acting and worldbuilding that is all over the place. My other go-to example of this phenomenon is Hellboy 2. I think Mad God may be an example of doing "Beautiful Disaster" on purpose.

How did you feel about Cloud Atlas?

 

[Clint_L]

I'm currently re-watching Goodfellas with my kid...and feeling like it might actually be kind of overrated? There are some amazing moments - obviously the long shot of entering the Copacabana - but in terms of story it's a bit of a shaggy dog. Still a great movie, but I don't think it is up there with Scorsese's very best.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I do think these platforms are getting better at weeding out these problems, but things like review bombing as a concept are also often used to discount audience opinion

Sorry, that's nonsense, complete and utter nonsense.

Review bombing is often used to discredit random polls of users on the internet which commercial websites say represent audience opinion. Which is perfectly reasonable.

That's very different from actual, real, properly-measured audience opinions!

You can't "review bomb" any actual polling of actual audiences, conducted properly! And that polling does exist - one example is CinemaScore. It's been around since 1979. It's worth noting one thing - since the 1990s, it's very rare for an audience to give a movie worse than a B, but within the B-, B, B+, A-, A, A+ grading available there's still a decent degree of nuance.

It's not flawless - they only (? or that's the main thing) use American audiences, which gives it a hilarious pro-Christian-themed-movie bias (easy to account for), and apparently Americans really dislike thoughtful or weird movies (but even then, a good thoughtful/weird movie will usually do better than a mediocre or bad one, with the odd exception). It's certainly much, much better at correlating with the actual success of movies with audiences (relative to marketing etc.) than stuff like RT's audience score.

CinemaScore - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[Bedrockgames]

Sorry, that's nonsense, complete and utter nonsense.

How do you expect people to respond when you lead with statements like this?

 

[payn]

I'm currently re-watching Goodfellas with my kid...and feeling like it might actually be kind of overrated? There are some amazing moments - obviously the long shot of entering the Copacabana - but in terms of story it's a bit of a shaggy dog. Still a great movie, but I don't think it is up there with Scorsese's very best.

Scorsese is, without a doubt, a great director, but his reputation has certainly overrated some of his films.