It's a law. That means it's even more true that gravity, which is a theory.
Has Stergeon's Law gone under any scientific scrutiny? If not, then it's not the kind of law that you're thinking about. Anyone can say that something is a law, but it takes something special for it to be a scientific law.
Just don't be a dick about the things you don't like.
For people rejoining us since last time:
Churba: "It's okay that Rym doesn't like things, but Scott calling people subhuman for not liking things probably isn't." Everyone Else: "Pretty much. Some of the things Rym likes suck." Rym: "I am surprised you otherwise smart people like things I don't." Apreche: "I don't understand science, but I'm going to pretend I do to make a point."
Pick ten completely random movies from IMDB and watch them in their entirety. I'll bet money that nine of them are garbage. ;^)
I agree, but 99% might be pushing it.
There's also the important fact that in the real world the process of selecting movies is far from random.
99% is not pushing it. The thing is, you are probably not noticing just how much is out there. Twenty Four Hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every second. There is no way that more than an extremely small fraction of that is worth watching.
In terms of what Superheroes could be replaceable, Hawkeye, Black Widow and Hulk (Ruffalo was basically playing a new version of Banner) were given most of their personal history and personality within the film and they all had superpowers that can be found in other characters. But I enjoyed how they were written and what arcs they had, so I didn't find them extraneous
There is nothing wrong with the premise of Avatar. I mean, hell it's been done before multiple times. It's competently made and has pretty good cinematography, fantastic visuals, and par acting. If you guys are so hell bent on hating Rym for being a contrarian, it's pretty pot meet kettle if you guys are hating on Avatar.
There is nothing wrong with the premise of it, it just didn't need to be almost 3 hours long to tell that particular story. It's a well made movie, it is just too long and the characters are completely stock.
So by your own admission, Avatar is not the worst movie you have ever seen. It's one of the worst stories you've ever sat through. Slight difference there.
I would argue that if the aim of a movie is immersion in a visual landscape or world, that is a valid goal in filmmaking. So long as there's still meaning in the piece, whether obvious or not, it is a valid form of visual art. The main message in Avatar — that the environment is beautiful and must be protected from destruction — may be obvious, even thuddingly so, but at least it's more substance than one gets in other, more hollow pieces of visual spectacle (*cough*Transformers*cough*).
Heck, I would even call Avatar's approach (gasp) an original way to get that meaning across to an audience. Other movies that have had similar messages in the past tended to stand more equally on narrative and setting, to varying degrees of success (with, say, Dances With Wolves being the top and FernGully being bottom). Here, setting is the key priority, and that's the big difference. The goal of Avatar is to have the audience fall in love with the world and environment of the film, even more so than the individual characters in that world. When the audience feels a connection to the world of the film, it makes them care about whether or not that world is destroyed, not just about whether certain characters or groups in that world are suffering. That is really a unique angle to approach that well-worn message from, I think.
I also think that that's why the film was so popular with audiences. Character arcs are a dime a dozen at the movies, good ones and bad. It's a lot more rare, I think, for mainstream audiences to latch onto a visual world that is so rich that they want to keep going back to it and sharing it with their friends and family. That's more common in nerd circles, where long-form worldbuilding is king. This may be one of the rare examples of that happening in the mainstream, even if it's just on the level of "That 3D Avatar shit is dope, yo!"
That said, if you go to see Avatar and what you value most in a movie is individual character arcs and narrative, then yes, it's a disappointing experience. It's also why the movie, while still popular, is less talked-about on home video. The strength of Avatar is really in the theatre; a lot of its grandeur is lost on the small screen, where the visuals are reduced and the thin story stands closer to the forefront. That is a legitimate flaw in the movie, and it's why it ultimately does not stand with the true classics of cinema.
Anyway, TL;DR: weak story =/= weak movie. Not necessarily, anyway.
Pick ten completely random movies from IMDB and watch them in their entirety. I'll bet money that nine of them are garbage. ;^)
I agree, but 99% might be pushing it.
There's also the important fact that in the real world the process of selecting movies is far from random.
99% is not pushing it. The thing is, you are probably not noticing just how much is out there. Twenty Four Hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every second. There is no way that more than an extremely small fraction of that is worth watching.
I posit that you don't realize how much is out there. Sturgeon's Law is too cynical and therefore largely bullshit. "99% of everything is crud?" Shenanigans. Every living cell on planet earth is a small factory capable of sustaining life and interacting with a complex system in a package mere micrometers apart. We build amazing fucking machines that play with electrons on a quantum level just to play those shitty YouTube videos Scott mentioned. There are so many fucking stars in the universe that looking in the right place lets us see back in time, because they're so far away.
The shit isn't the point, it's the fact that we have the means to create it.
So no thanks, Sturgeon. You can have your law; I'll just pick media to consume based on what I enjoy. With regards to the rest of the universe, I far prefer CK's Axiom:
Heck, I like bad movies more than I like most good movies. Like, I get far more engaged by the average Nick Cage film than by most masterpieces. I understand why good things are good, but I also personally enjoy cheesy bullshit more for some reason.
The movie already had deeply compelling personal arcs with both internal and external conflict, not the least of which being:
1. Cap's idealism versus Iron Man's cynical realism. 2. Banner's internal struggle versus Fury's external struggle. 3. Thor versus Loki on all levels. 4. The non-superhero agents struggling to stand their ground and be heros.
Adding Black Widow's silly past, her relationship with Hawkeye, and his whole arc, just crowded out much more compelling narrative points to no real end. I literally didn't empathize with or care about Hawkeye at any point in the entire movie, and Black Widow was entirely one-dimensional. Remove them, cut the last fight in half, and explore the four points above more deeply, and you go from an average summer movie into a good summer movie.
I liked the movie, probably a little better than Rym did, but I agree with many of his assertions. The last fight felt SUPER LONG, but then again I really had to pee for most of it, so my judgement of time might have been skewed. I liked a lot of the Black Widow's scenes, such as the beginning interrogation scene, and the part where Loki is awful to her, but she tricks him. However, her relationship with Hawkeye, while it might have made an interesting story, kind of distracted from some of the other stuff going on. (I'd like to see the back story of when they were enemies that are trying to kill each other in a separate thing.) Superhero teams, if they are too big and too varied in power levels, always seem to lack focus. I say that 5 is my maximum as far as a team that has enough inter-party conflict to be interesting, and beyond that it's really hard to give the character relationships/conflicts room to be fully explored. Rym's above list really articulates conflicts I was interested in. I love when two heroes who have vastly different views on life are forced to work together. Iron Man and Captain America are so different (Steve seems so sincere and idealistic, Tony is quite jaded and hedonistic) that I think they make good foils for each other. The Thor vs. brother thing was interesting (I didn't see the movie, do I get to see more of that in "Thor" maybe?) as was Bruce Banner's struggle with his inner green demon. All the acting was pretty decent and there were some really funny bits of Whedon dialog. It just was a little too full of other stuff to really be fully satisfying.
I should clarify that I really liked Black Widow's scenes as they were presented. I just didn't enjoy how they integrated with the rest of the movie. As Emily pointed out, we could probably have kept her, dropped Hawkeye, and with a big cut to the action scene at the end had a decent movie.
Am I the only person who just wants a movie of Hulk running around beating the every living crap out of every Super hero/villain out there while talking in third person. Would Rym say that Action scene went too long? Does that make me a bad person?
Emily, I seldom will have to use the bathroom during a movie I paid to see, but I had to go so I picked the scene where Hawkeye and Black Widow were talking about stuff that didn't matter. I think What Rym misses is they put that plot in there that doesn't matter so I could release my bladder after drinking a large diet soda so I wouldn't have to get up during the action scene :-p
Am I the only person who just wants a movie of Hulk running around beating the every living crap out of every Super hero/villain out there while talking in third person. Would Rym say that Action scene went too long? Does that make me a bad person?
That's pretty much the plot of World War Hulk. Tony Stark even builds a giant Iron Man suit that can't fly or shoot stuff but matches Hulk in mechanical strength so you get to see Iron Man and Hulk pummel the shit out of each other.
Comments
Has Stergeon's Law gone under any scientific scrutiny? If not, then it's not the kind of law that you're thinking about. Anyone can say that something is a law, but it takes something special for it to be a scientific law.
Now let's compare it to what Scott said. So there is 9% of non-crap that you just think is crap?
For people rejoining us since last time:
Churba: "It's okay that Rym doesn't like things, but Scott calling people subhuman for not liking things probably isn't."
Everyone Else: "Pretty much. Some of the things Rym likes suck."
Rym: "I am surprised you otherwise smart people like things I don't."
Apreche: "I don't understand science, but I'm going to pretend I do to make a point."
Thanks for watching folks.
I think I can safely put this discussion to bed by saying that everyone should be unreasonably excited for Prometheus.
There's also the important fact that in the real world the process of selecting movies is far from random.
In terms of what Superheroes could be replaceable, Hawkeye, Black Widow and Hulk (Ruffalo was basically playing a new version of Banner) were given most of their personal history and personality within the film and they all had superpowers that can be found in other characters. But I enjoyed how they were written and what arcs they had, so I didn't find them extraneous
I would argue that if the aim of a movie is immersion in a visual landscape or world, that is a valid goal in filmmaking. So long as there's still meaning in the piece, whether obvious or not, it is a valid form of visual art. The main message in Avatar — that the environment is beautiful and must be protected from destruction — may be obvious, even thuddingly so, but at least it's more substance than one gets in other, more hollow pieces of visual spectacle (*cough*Transformers*cough*).
Heck, I would even call Avatar's approach (gasp) an original way to get that meaning across to an audience. Other movies that have had similar messages in the past tended to stand more equally on narrative and setting, to varying degrees of success (with, say, Dances With Wolves being the top and FernGully being bottom). Here, setting is the key priority, and that's the big difference. The goal of Avatar is to have the audience fall in love with the world and environment of the film, even more so than the individual characters in that world. When the audience feels a connection to the world of the film, it makes them care about whether or not that world is destroyed, not just about whether certain characters or groups in that world are suffering. That is really a unique angle to approach that well-worn message from, I think.
I also think that that's why the film was so popular with audiences. Character arcs are a dime a dozen at the movies, good ones and bad. It's a lot more rare, I think, for mainstream audiences to latch onto a visual world that is so rich that they want to keep going back to it and sharing it with their friends and family. That's more common in nerd circles, where long-form worldbuilding is king. This may be one of the rare examples of that happening in the mainstream, even if it's just on the level of "That 3D Avatar shit is dope, yo!"
That said, if you go to see Avatar and what you value most in a movie is individual character arcs and narrative, then yes, it's a disappointing experience. It's also why the movie, while still popular, is less talked-about on home video. The strength of Avatar is really in the theatre; a lot of its grandeur is lost on the small screen, where the visuals are reduced and the thin story stands closer to the forefront. That is a legitimate flaw in the movie, and it's why it ultimately does not stand with the true classics of cinema.
Anyway, TL;DR: weak story =/= weak movie. Not necessarily, anyway.
The shit isn't the point, it's the fact that we have the means to create it.
So no thanks, Sturgeon. You can have your law; I'll just pick media to consume based on what I enjoy. With regards to the rest of the universe, I far prefer CK's Axiom:
"Everything is amazing, and nobody is happy."
But, I am also openly aware of its deep flaws. I will never pretend it's a great show.
Rym's above list really articulates conflicts I was interested in. I love when two heroes who have vastly different views on life are forced to work together. Iron Man and Captain America are so different (Steve seems so sincere and idealistic, Tony is quite jaded and hedonistic) that I think they make good foils for each other. The Thor vs. brother thing was interesting (I didn't see the movie, do I get to see more of that in "Thor" maybe?) as was Bruce Banner's struggle with his inner green demon. All the acting was pretty decent and there were some really funny bits of Whedon dialog. It just was a little too full of other stuff to really be fully satisfying.