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There is little I find more irritating than cinephile elitism. I go to a near-Ivy League school, and I live in a dorm full of movie and television fans, and I see it all the damn time. To hear them talk, there's never been a movie that's reached half the level of Citizen Kane in terms of overall quality - and, moreover, they make a distinction between 'good' movies and movies they enjoy watching.
I'm pretty sure that if you watch a 'good' movie and you're miserable the entire time, you find it boring and/or gross (I'm looking at you, Eraserhead), and it doesn't change anything about you, it doesn't emotionally affect you, then it's doing something wrong. No matter how symbolic everything is, if it doesn't work a kind of magic on you, then holding it to some kind of objective standard and calling it good is false.
On the other hand, if there's a movie that everyone sees and everyone loves (with exceptions, of course, there are always exceptions) - like, say, The Dark Knight or Iron Man, you have no real right to call those movies 'bad' while claiming that enjoyment doesn't necessarily equal quality.
This just pisses me off unbelievably. It makes an elitist, snobbish judgment about 'most people' and their loose standards for good films, and portrays the general Hollywood-viewing public as a bunch of sheep who couldn't tell a good movie if it bit them on the ass.
Okay, so maybe this corresponds with the way artists treat any kind of art, but with movies, it annoys the crap out of me, because I love movies.
Like, let's take Quantum of Solace. The cinephiles around me hated this movie, as did most newspaper critics. They claimed that it didn't fulfill its potential, that it wasn't James Bond enough, and that the fight scenes were confusing and unfulfilling. They're actually wrong. I mean, they're right, but they're also wrong.
There were a lot of fight scenes in QoS. Possibly too many. But it's not because they were trying to sell the movie on fight scenes alone. In fact, if you're not a complete moron and you actually pay attention, it's pretty clear that the bad guy and the evil plot are not, in fact, the A plot of the movie. They're the B plot. The A plot is completely, 100% about James Bond and the fallout from his relationship with Vesper.
He's absolutely as badass as usual. He still kicks bad guy ass, still fights, still can go up against, y'know, fifty or sixty armed men and come out with a few artistic scratches and marginally fewer pieces of clothing. But there's something different about this movie in that he's doing it almost automatically. He doesn't ever smile, but he's still cocky and confident - you can read it in his actions, not his dialogue.
This is a little bit of a change from the usual James Bond in that he doesn't really snark. There's notable "You were supposed to shoot her!" - "I missed" moment, which was hilarious, but, as someone I was talking to put it, it seems more out of frustration than any sort of James Bond-ly quips.
The fight scenes, again, were many, slightly confusing, a little bit ridiculous (but it's a James Bond movie, what the hell are you expecting?), and most of them ended on somewhat of an anticlimax. This wasn't done because the filmmakers were clumsy idiots who don't know how to frame a fight scene. It was done because Bond himself was frustrated, and that was reflected in every aspect of the movie.
As for the girl, she was actually interesting, and the relationship with her may have, in fact, been as important to Bond as Vesper was, though in a different way. This movie cut straight to the quick of the character, and Daniel Craig played it vulnerable - and played it as a completely badass motherfucker.
I think the people who don't like this movie don't like it because they want it to be something its not, and they refuse to judge it for what it really is. Because they don't believe it conforms to their preconceived idea of what the cinema should be, or what the James Bond franchise should be.
For what it's worth, I'm for sure going to see this movie again, and for sure buying it when it comes out on DVD.
I'm pretty sure that if you watch a 'good' movie and you're miserable the entire time, you find it boring and/or gross (I'm looking at you, Eraserhead), and it doesn't change anything about you, it doesn't emotionally affect you, then it's doing something wrong. No matter how symbolic everything is, if it doesn't work a kind of magic on you, then holding it to some kind of objective standard and calling it good is false.
On the other hand, if there's a movie that everyone sees and everyone loves (with exceptions, of course, there are always exceptions) - like, say, The Dark Knight or Iron Man, you have no real right to call those movies 'bad' while claiming that enjoyment doesn't necessarily equal quality.
This just pisses me off unbelievably. It makes an elitist, snobbish judgment about 'most people' and their loose standards for good films, and portrays the general Hollywood-viewing public as a bunch of sheep who couldn't tell a good movie if it bit them on the ass.
Okay, so maybe this corresponds with the way artists treat any kind of art, but with movies, it annoys the crap out of me, because I love movies.
Like, let's take Quantum of Solace. The cinephiles around me hated this movie, as did most newspaper critics. They claimed that it didn't fulfill its potential, that it wasn't James Bond enough, and that the fight scenes were confusing and unfulfilling. They're actually wrong. I mean, they're right, but they're also wrong.
There were a lot of fight scenes in QoS. Possibly too many. But it's not because they were trying to sell the movie on fight scenes alone. In fact, if you're not a complete moron and you actually pay attention, it's pretty clear that the bad guy and the evil plot are not, in fact, the A plot of the movie. They're the B plot. The A plot is completely, 100% about James Bond and the fallout from his relationship with Vesper.
He's absolutely as badass as usual. He still kicks bad guy ass, still fights, still can go up against, y'know, fifty or sixty armed men and come out with a few artistic scratches and marginally fewer pieces of clothing. But there's something different about this movie in that he's doing it almost automatically. He doesn't ever smile, but he's still cocky and confident - you can read it in his actions, not his dialogue.
This is a little bit of a change from the usual James Bond in that he doesn't really snark. There's notable "You were supposed to shoot her!" - "I missed" moment, which was hilarious, but, as someone I was talking to put it, it seems more out of frustration than any sort of James Bond-ly quips.
The fight scenes, again, were many, slightly confusing, a little bit ridiculous (but it's a James Bond movie, what the hell are you expecting?), and most of them ended on somewhat of an anticlimax. This wasn't done because the filmmakers were clumsy idiots who don't know how to frame a fight scene. It was done because Bond himself was frustrated, and that was reflected in every aspect of the movie.
As for the girl, she was actually interesting, and the relationship with her may have, in fact, been as important to Bond as Vesper was, though in a different way. This movie cut straight to the quick of the character, and Daniel Craig played it vulnerable - and played it as a completely badass motherfucker.
I think the people who don't like this movie don't like it because they want it to be something its not, and they refuse to judge it for what it really is. Because they don't believe it conforms to their preconceived idea of what the cinema should be, or what the James Bond franchise should be.
For what it's worth, I'm for sure going to see this movie again, and for sure buying it when it comes out on DVD.