What Makes a Movie Bad?

So I clearly do a lot of media analysis, but before I start doing in depth video essays I think it's important to share how these pieces of media are being judged. What exactly makes a movie or tv show bad? There are many objective and subjective criteria; yes you can objectively analyze art and I genuinely don’t care who says otherwise. If a movie or it's elements are racist, homophobic, sexist or otherwise bigoted it's objectively bad. Period, no discussion, that point of analysis isn’t up for debate.

Another non-debatable point is set up and execution. Now this point is entirely based on genre, genres like psychological thrillers aren’t supposed to wrap everything up. Ambiguous endings are an artistic choice but it still needs to feel intentional to the audience. A movie that did this badly was TAR, in an otherwise wonderful film there were many subtle plot and character lines that were set up with absolutely no pay off. The unfortunate part of that was some of them felt intentional (the old student committing suicide, TAR being accused of sexual misconduct. However these storylines both felt incomplete but at its core-est level both were set up and paid off.) and others did not (the voices and music she was hearing, her pursuit of the new musician) these were set up with no pay off and it very much was unintentional. In contrast a film that did this quite well was Before We Go, Chris Evans’ directorial debut paid off everything it set up and expertly used an ambiguous ending. The two main characters find each other, have a whirlwind of a night, clearly have a connection and then the leading lady goes back to her boyfriend. Yet we end with the feeling that there might be more for them in the future. It's sweet, it's peaceful and nothing brought up in the film is left uncomfortable unresolved.

Now this next point could be subjective, but it's not. The quality of dialogue is pretty straight forward so unless you’re an idiot this point is also objective. For a very clear, irrefutable example we can all agree that Riverdale has bad, laughable dialogue. Not a single person with more than one brain cell could look me in the eye with a straight face and tell me that Riverdale’s dialogue isn’t total garbage. On the flip side of that, an example of impeccable dialogue is Sherlock. The BBc mystery show is witty, funny, beyond brilliant and the dialogue always fits its characters and situations perfectly. For a more direct comparison to something like Riverdale I do think I should give a teen drama example and it's quite easy to find better ones; One Tree Hill, Gossip Girl, Dawson’s Creek. Is it realistic? Of course not but the way the actual characters speak is definitely more real to how actual human beings speak.

Now this one could theoretically be up for more interpretation but the acting could either save or kill a film all on its own. A good example of good acting enhancing (or saving) a project is The Vampire Diaries…so sorry fans but it wasn’t ever a good show. All of their decent plot points they lifted directly from Buffy The Vampire Slayer (including straight up dialogue to the point of actual plagiarism) and once they had original thoughts it was…not good. However Ian Somerholder, Paul Westley, Nina Debrov, Candice King and the rest of the cast were so phenomenal they sucked you right into the poorly constructed world of Mystic Falls. From season 1 the cast had incredible chemistry and an impeccable handle on their characters. They breathed life and personality into them that simply didn’t exist on the page. I’m aware a lot of people did, but you can’t ever truly hate Caroline’s character because Candice is just too damn charismatic, and no one who is well adjusted should ever like Damon, but Ian just makes you. An example of acting killing a project is Vampire Academy (the movie, I have yet to sit through the show), now the book is great. Not written above a 3rd grade reading level but the story itself is good, the adaptation wasn’t terrible however the acting was. Do you remember the 2010s when parody movies were a thing? Yeah the entire movie felt like that, except it wasn’t a parody and was entirely intentional. Nothing can kill a project faster.

Nothing kills audiences more than an incoherent, or incomplete story. Sometimes this occurs when a series doesn’t have an end in mind, yet gets picked up for another season. And sometimes it's a movie or franchise that didn’t actually understand the story they wanted to tell. An all time great television example of terrible endings is, of course, LOST. It actually started off very good, it was interesting and emotional. Then the last few seasons were very hard to get through. Season 5 felt like everyone in the writers room had a different idea and they decided to try them all. It was chaotic, messy and beyond incoherent. It was my favorite show up till that point and honestly it made it impossible to re-watch. An example of perfect, end goal writing from beginning to end is, The Good Place. Each season has its own, self-contained plotline that contributed to the overall theme of the show. At no point did the show turn into something different then originally intended and all the characters' storylines were true to who they were.

So this next one is something that, for the most part, doesn't actually bother me but it must be taken into account. Visual effects, now if the story is good the visuals don’t bother me no matter how bad they are. However if the movie or show is failing in other elements then the visual effects are hard to look past. The best example of a good story but questionable visual effects is Doctor Who. The longest running sci-fi show of all time has entire countries captivated by it's characters, and storylines and honestly the sometimes campy visual effects are just charming. A show I could never get into because of how bad the visual effects were was Xena: Warrior Princess (I know it's good but I just can’t). I really did try to watch the first episode but I simply couldn’t look past the comically bad visuals and fight scenes. A movie example of poor visual effects (though that was the least of this film's worries) is Black Adam. Yes the story struggled as a whole, there was no character development and the pacing was atrocious but you add in bad visual effects and this movie becomes borderline unwatchable. A film with great visual effects however is Avatar, the worst possible writing possible but an absolutely visually stunning movie.

Another major killer of movies is a lack of structure. The primest example of this is gonna get me hate messages but I don't care; The Snydercut. There was no semblance of structure in this movie at all. Structure exists for a reason, some writers use a 3 act structure some use a 5 act structure, but no matter what there are distinct ways that writers plan out their story beats so that it makes sense to the audience. In his 3 hour film, Snyder’s act 1 ended around the 2 hour mark…that's blatantly incorrect no matter who you ask. For this reason (and many others) The film was utter garbage. The Eternals is another prime example, they had no idea how they wanted to tell that story and it showed. You could have entirely fixed nearly every problem with that film by simply showing all the flashback scenes up top and then continuing with the story (you also could have fixed it by making it a mini series but whatever). Like with any artform once you understand the rules you can break them, the problem was that neither of these writers understood the rules. When a film lacks structure, it's still an idea, it's an overly produced rough draft, it also tends to lead to longer runtimes. Generally speaking if a film (that isn’t an adaptation i.e. Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter) is over 2 hours then you have a lack of structure. There is no film (that didn’t have a 10 year build) of original thoughts that is still good after the 2 hour mark. All you’ve proven as a writer is that you are incapable of telling your story. There are very very rare exceptions to this rule and an example of truly incredible structure is one of them; Wakanda Forever, it was a bit on the long side but I didn’t realize that until the movie ended and I left the theater. The pacing was so incredible and one act fed into the next so well that the audience always knew where we were in the story.. There was never a lull or pause long enough to ask myself what act we were on or if the movie was almost over. I was so engulfed in the beauty that was this movie that my analytical brain completely shut off. Another wonderfully structured superhero film is the first Wonder Woman film. Diana’s story was so true to the original source material that the writers knew exactly what story they wanted to tell and they told it just over 2 hours, again a little long (and there were things that could have been cut from that movie) but overall it moved at a nice clip and it didn’t belabor any points it didn’t need to. A non superhero example of poor structure is The Triangle of Sadness, this is definitely one that the filmmakers had no idea what story they wanted to tell. The acts bled together, and not in a fluid, I want my audience to feel completely sucked in, but more of a I don’t even know what an act structure is, kind of way. It also felt like each act was trying to be a different genre and it did none of them well. Overall I don’t think lack of structure was it's biggest problem but it most certainly would have fixed a lot if it was good. The best example of truly perfect structure is the greatest movie of all time (not up for debate) The Princess Bride. Not only is this story told in a tight hour and a half but it's structured and paced so well that it really feels almost too short. The set up is nice and quick, you immediately care about the characters and understand what everyone's roles are. Act 2 is very clear, everyone has their own objective and the relationships are formed and the characters very clearly develop. Act 3 is beautiful and gives everyone proper resolution. Entirely irrelevant to this particular section but it's also one of the only movies in existence that uses a narrator properly.

There are, using these criteria, universally bad movies. Sure people like them, I like some of them but that doesn’t change the fact that they are bad. SuckerPunch, it's a bad movie based on my thesis paragraph alone, considering no film elements. It's a sexist, misogynistic piece of trash that also happens to have no structure, bad visual effects and upsettingly bad acting. Dark Phoenix, the only superhero movie I almost walked out of, lets ignore the fact that the writers clearly didn’t understand the Phoenix entities or that this was part of a franchise that should have some level of continuity, the writing was so bad the incredible skills of the cast could not make it watchable. Grease 2, quite possibly the worst movie musical ever and yet I can’t stop watching it. It's terrible I know but in a fun way, it turns my brain off, kind of way. As for TV shows we’ve got bad ones like Gossip Girl and Grey’s Anatomy (sorry but neither show is good, you just like drama). On the flip side we have near perfect or perfect projects by all accounts. The Princess Bride, Goonies and The Breakfast Club. All critically recommended as well as audience approved. For TV shows there's Buffy the Vampire Slayer and regardless of its creator being a pile of trash was a phenomenal show, and one that spawned an incredible amount of pop culture references. We would not have most of the strong female characters we have on TV today without Buffy. And of course, one of the greatest TV shows of all time, Avatar the Last Airbender. ATLA set the bar for family shows that has yet to be matched, the story, pacing, voice acting, humor, dialogue is all so impeccable that it is untouchable.

When absorbing media this is what goes through my head, this is how I analyze every project I choose to talk about. If a film or show can shut off this part of my brain then we consider that a win because it takes a lot to get me to stop analyzing. So when you are on YouTube or my website, or questioning one of my reviews, just know it was well thought out and unless you can defend your opposing opinion using these objective points then I don’t care.