A long-ass rant about modern movie geeks, the state of genre cinema, and dumb people vs smart films
You can tell a lot about a movie if enough of the right people call it "stupid."
Take the recent sci-fi film SPLICE. There was a film that had a very silly trailer, yet the presence of Guillermo Del Toro as producer made geeks like me interested that maybe SPLICE would be worth looking into.
What really clinched that feeling was an essay from Devin at CHUD.com, "How You Can Save Good Movies This Weekend," wherein he implored all lovers of genre cinema to support SPLICE, because "even if you find that you don't like it, I guarantee you're going to at least be able to admit that it's interesting and it's unique and it's pretty incredible that a studio like Warner Bros gave it a major release."
On the very same day, I discovered that D-List celebrity Joe Rogan had tweeted the following: "SPLICE may very well be the dumbest fucking movie in the history of dumb movies. The whole theater was laughing at how stupid it was."
"Dumbest fucking movie." "Stupid."
I had flashbacks to seeing a showing of William Friedkin's BUG, a smart, daring, powerful psychological drama smugged into multiplexes under the guise that it was a creepy crawly insect-themed horror movie. The audience was pissed off throughout. Someone even yelled out, "What the fuck is this shit?!" by the end.
It did not fit their expectations, so they furiously, willfully missed the point. And as I suspected from Rogan's tweet, what happened to BUG was doomed to happen with SPLICE all over again. Now, last I checked, it holds a 75% "fresh" rating on rottentomatoes.com, so the critics appreciated the film enough.
But no one ever said that the critics speak for the mentality of your average moviegoer. At least, the moviegoers who express their opinions online at LJ, twitter, facebook, etc. Twitter and Facebook have made it easier than ever for any lazy, impulsive idiot to broadcast their ill-formed knee-jerk opinion for others to take to heart.
Here on LJ, most people were railing against SPLICE not due to seeing the film themselves, but rather due to this ranting, all-caps "review" that hated the film for the sheer fact that it included shocking, disturbing, provocative, and transgressive themes.
In response to one of the few comments that actually dares to question the "reviewer" by bringing up that the fucked-up parts served the narrative purpose, the OP responded:
"I can't deal with the fucked up parts! Those are what made this a bad movie for me."
Look, I can understand someone not wanting to see a film because certain subject matter is upsetting to them, for whatever reason. I, personally, have absolutely zero interest in ever seeing IRREVERSIBLE. But just because the film included a ridiculously-extended and graphic rape sequence, I'm guessing the filmmaker probably had a reason for including that in the film. It would be horrifying, disgusting, infuriating, yes, but that alone wouldn't make IRREVERSIBLE a bad movie.
But IRREVERSIBLE is an art film, and most mainstream audiences wouldn't go for art films any more than they'd go for your average David Cronenberg flick. In fact, watching SPLICE, I was most reminded of Cronenberg's THE BROOD. But unlike THE BROOD and IRREVERSIBLE (and like BUG), SPLICE was released to multiplexes nationwide, seen by the kinds of audiences who made hits out of the SAW series and all those watered-down PG-13 remakes of classic horror.
Usually, I'd just see this as a typical case of a film being marketed to the wrong audience, as has often happened. Twenty-five years ago, SPLICE would have gone on to gain appreciation and popularity from the movie geeks who would scour the horror and sci-fi sections of your local video store, "discovering" awesome gems, and sharing them through word of mouth.
But that was before the internet. Now, even at CHUD.com, a site for the types of geeks who should at least appreciate SPLICE, those same geeks tear it apart with little more thought than to just call it "stupid."
But one commenter, a guy named Dhelix, wrote:
I can't help but wonder if film geeks born after the mid-80s just have different tastes, or if there's just more mainstream filmgoers on sites like AICN and Chud due to all the popular novel and comic book adaptations that have been coming out since the early 00s but film geeks lately have been pissing me off. It feels like an entire generation of kids has been raised to think that films have to behave a certain way and anything that's a little campy, weird, different gets shat on and ridiculed by the types of people I would have thought would have appreciated it.
It's a shame that so many fans on a site like Chud or AICN are shitting on this movie with the kinds of mainstream criticisms normally reserved for Holllywood blockbusters. There used to be a time where film geeks bought magazines, went to conventions and spoke lovingly about makeup gore, special effects, and just about any movie that pushed the boundaries of good taste. Guys like John Carpenter, David Cronenberg, Sam Raimi, etc could pack thousands into convention halls for their autographs. These guys seemed rebellious. They were making movies on their terms and putting up images of dark humor, violence, gore, sex, etc in ways the rest of us could only imagine in our dreams or nightmares.
There was this cool little underground aspect to it all and the midnight showings were the best because people didn't walk out complaining and bitching about how unrealistic things were, or acting, or whatever... The bad became good. Poorly delivered lines became classic quotes. Tree rape scenes became legendary. People were appreciative and willing to suspend disbelief because they felt privileged to be able to see the kinds of sights, sounds and ideas that the studios wouldn't dare show us because 7 out 10 average, everyday citizens wouldn't approve of those images.
"Fans" these days feel so entitled and haters look up criticisms from professional critics and feel validated to spread that hate anywhere that will let them. In the past, those voices weren't heard so fandom was more positive and appreciative.
Dhelix's comment was quoted by Devin to kick-start his essay, "The Nature of the Modern Movie Geek," in which he raised a sobering question for movie geeks like me:
I wonder what it would be like if EVIL DEAD 2 were released today. Would it get relentlessly run down on the internet for being too silly and for the performances and production value? Have we become a world of film fans who can only accept movies that look like they cost a hundred million dollars, that have no tonal variances, and that adhere to Robert McKee**-style rules of structure? I wonder how Peter Jackson and Sam Raimi would have fared if there had been an internet when they were making their first films...
... We're in a weird place where the geeks won, and maybe it wasn't as good as we hoped it would be.
What a thought. In a time where the geek genres have become mainstream, where everyone can have their own little hive communities to inform and reinforce their opinions without challenge, where do we go for the new cult culture?
I don't think anyone really considers Cronenberg's THE BROOD to be a brilliant film, but it's a seminal classic in the 80's oeuvre of a great filmmaker. It's not my favorite film of his, but it's so distinctly Cronenbergian that I totally respect it for existing. But can you imagine how it'd be received today? There would be whole communities online ranting complaints like, "EWWW, she licked it off the baby? That's so disgusting! This movie sucks!" "Deformed murderous dwarf kids? That's stupid."
That's the thing about SPLICE. It's not a perfect film. In fact, I think it's a mess, but I respect the hell of it for what it tried to say about gene splicing, parenthood, science gone mad, "man is the real monster," etc. For all its shocking, gooey elements, it hearkened back to a time before STAR WARS turned sci-fi, the genre of ideas, into the genre of spectacle.
There are many ways one can criticize SPLICE, particularly in how they failed to deliver on the themes they'd established throughout by ultimately turning it into just another monster movie. But most people--geeks or otherwise--aren't talking about that. Their short, derisive, insubstantial dismissals show no indications that they even bothered to give the film some thought, nothing beyond a visceral knee-jerk reaction. They don't think, they only feel.
If they can't actually back up why they think a film is stupid with actual criticism and thought, then chances are it's not the film itself that's stupid.
*Sometimes I feel like every third link I post is by Devin Faraci from CHUD.com. Yeah, he's often an asshat when he talks about pop culture and anything not related to movies. He's worse than Roger Ebert, who seems to keep harping on all the ways that video games are not and can never be great art. Even when Ebert makes some interesting points, all I can think of is all those snobs throughout the 20th century who said that comic books could never be art. But like Ebert, when Devin sticks to talking about movies, he's often brilliantly dead-on.
**I always wince whenever critical-types deride Robert McKee's screenwriting techniques, because I think they always assume that he just teaches cookie-cutter storytelling formula, and is thus churning out an industry of hacks. No, what he really does is teach classical story structure with the idea that one has to master the classic structure FIRST before they can deconstruct it. No one ever seems to catch that subtle distinction. I'd love to hear a dissenting opinion on McKee by someone who actually *understands* what the hell he actually teaches.
Take the recent sci-fi film SPLICE. There was a film that had a very silly trailer, yet the presence of Guillermo Del Toro as producer made geeks like me interested that maybe SPLICE would be worth looking into.
What really clinched that feeling was an essay from Devin at CHUD.com, "How You Can Save Good Movies This Weekend," wherein he implored all lovers of genre cinema to support SPLICE, because "even if you find that you don't like it, I guarantee you're going to at least be able to admit that it's interesting and it's unique and it's pretty incredible that a studio like Warner Bros gave it a major release."
On the very same day, I discovered that D-List celebrity Joe Rogan had tweeted the following: "SPLICE may very well be the dumbest fucking movie in the history of dumb movies. The whole theater was laughing at how stupid it was."
"Dumbest fucking movie." "Stupid."
I had flashbacks to seeing a showing of William Friedkin's BUG, a smart, daring, powerful psychological drama smugged into multiplexes under the guise that it was a creepy crawly insect-themed horror movie. The audience was pissed off throughout. Someone even yelled out, "What the fuck is this shit?!" by the end.
It did not fit their expectations, so they furiously, willfully missed the point. And as I suspected from Rogan's tweet, what happened to BUG was doomed to happen with SPLICE all over again. Now, last I checked, it holds a 75% "fresh" rating on rottentomatoes.com, so the critics appreciated the film enough.
But no one ever said that the critics speak for the mentality of your average moviegoer. At least, the moviegoers who express their opinions online at LJ, twitter, facebook, etc. Twitter and Facebook have made it easier than ever for any lazy, impulsive idiot to broadcast their ill-formed knee-jerk opinion for others to take to heart.
Here on LJ, most people were railing against SPLICE not due to seeing the film themselves, but rather due to this ranting, all-caps "review" that hated the film for the sheer fact that it included shocking, disturbing, provocative, and transgressive themes.
In response to one of the few comments that actually dares to question the "reviewer" by bringing up that the fucked-up parts served the narrative purpose, the OP responded:
"I can't deal with the fucked up parts! Those are what made this a bad movie for me."
Look, I can understand someone not wanting to see a film because certain subject matter is upsetting to them, for whatever reason. I, personally, have absolutely zero interest in ever seeing IRREVERSIBLE. But just because the film included a ridiculously-extended and graphic rape sequence, I'm guessing the filmmaker probably had a reason for including that in the film. It would be horrifying, disgusting, infuriating, yes, but that alone wouldn't make IRREVERSIBLE a bad movie.
But IRREVERSIBLE is an art film, and most mainstream audiences wouldn't go for art films any more than they'd go for your average David Cronenberg flick. In fact, watching SPLICE, I was most reminded of Cronenberg's THE BROOD. But unlike THE BROOD and IRREVERSIBLE (and like BUG), SPLICE was released to multiplexes nationwide, seen by the kinds of audiences who made hits out of the SAW series and all those watered-down PG-13 remakes of classic horror.
Usually, I'd just see this as a typical case of a film being marketed to the wrong audience, as has often happened. Twenty-five years ago, SPLICE would have gone on to gain appreciation and popularity from the movie geeks who would scour the horror and sci-fi sections of your local video store, "discovering" awesome gems, and sharing them through word of mouth.
But that was before the internet. Now, even at CHUD.com, a site for the types of geeks who should at least appreciate SPLICE, those same geeks tear it apart with little more thought than to just call it "stupid."
But one commenter, a guy named Dhelix, wrote:
I can't help but wonder if film geeks born after the mid-80s just have different tastes, or if there's just more mainstream filmgoers on sites like AICN and Chud due to all the popular novel and comic book adaptations that have been coming out since the early 00s but film geeks lately have been pissing me off. It feels like an entire generation of kids has been raised to think that films have to behave a certain way and anything that's a little campy, weird, different gets shat on and ridiculed by the types of people I would have thought would have appreciated it.
It's a shame that so many fans on a site like Chud or AICN are shitting on this movie with the kinds of mainstream criticisms normally reserved for Holllywood blockbusters. There used to be a time where film geeks bought magazines, went to conventions and spoke lovingly about makeup gore, special effects, and just about any movie that pushed the boundaries of good taste. Guys like John Carpenter, David Cronenberg, Sam Raimi, etc could pack thousands into convention halls for their autographs. These guys seemed rebellious. They were making movies on their terms and putting up images of dark humor, violence, gore, sex, etc in ways the rest of us could only imagine in our dreams or nightmares.
There was this cool little underground aspect to it all and the midnight showings were the best because people didn't walk out complaining and bitching about how unrealistic things were, or acting, or whatever... The bad became good. Poorly delivered lines became classic quotes. Tree rape scenes became legendary. People were appreciative and willing to suspend disbelief because they felt privileged to be able to see the kinds of sights, sounds and ideas that the studios wouldn't dare show us because 7 out 10 average, everyday citizens wouldn't approve of those images.
"Fans" these days feel so entitled and haters look up criticisms from professional critics and feel validated to spread that hate anywhere that will let them. In the past, those voices weren't heard so fandom was more positive and appreciative.
Dhelix's comment was quoted by Devin to kick-start his essay, "The Nature of the Modern Movie Geek," in which he raised a sobering question for movie geeks like me:
I wonder what it would be like if EVIL DEAD 2 were released today. Would it get relentlessly run down on the internet for being too silly and for the performances and production value? Have we become a world of film fans who can only accept movies that look like they cost a hundred million dollars, that have no tonal variances, and that adhere to Robert McKee**-style rules of structure? I wonder how Peter Jackson and Sam Raimi would have fared if there had been an internet when they were making their first films...
... We're in a weird place where the geeks won, and maybe it wasn't as good as we hoped it would be.
What a thought. In a time where the geek genres have become mainstream, where everyone can have their own little hive communities to inform and reinforce their opinions without challenge, where do we go for the new cult culture?
I don't think anyone really considers Cronenberg's THE BROOD to be a brilliant film, but it's a seminal classic in the 80's oeuvre of a great filmmaker. It's not my favorite film of his, but it's so distinctly Cronenbergian that I totally respect it for existing. But can you imagine how it'd be received today? There would be whole communities online ranting complaints like, "EWWW, she licked it off the baby? That's so disgusting! This movie sucks!" "Deformed murderous dwarf kids? That's stupid."
That's the thing about SPLICE. It's not a perfect film. In fact, I think it's a mess, but I respect the hell of it for what it tried to say about gene splicing, parenthood, science gone mad, "man is the real monster," etc. For all its shocking, gooey elements, it hearkened back to a time before STAR WARS turned sci-fi, the genre of ideas, into the genre of spectacle.
There are many ways one can criticize SPLICE, particularly in how they failed to deliver on the themes they'd established throughout by ultimately turning it into just another monster movie. But most people--geeks or otherwise--aren't talking about that. Their short, derisive, insubstantial dismissals show no indications that they even bothered to give the film some thought, nothing beyond a visceral knee-jerk reaction. They don't think, they only feel.
If they can't actually back up why they think a film is stupid with actual criticism and thought, then chances are it's not the film itself that's stupid.
*Sometimes I feel like every third link I post is by Devin Faraci from CHUD.com. Yeah, he's often an asshat when he talks about pop culture and anything not related to movies. He's worse than Roger Ebert, who seems to keep harping on all the ways that video games are not and can never be great art. Even when Ebert makes some interesting points, all I can think of is all those snobs throughout the 20th century who said that comic books could never be art. But like Ebert, when Devin sticks to talking about movies, he's often brilliantly dead-on.
**I always wince whenever critical-types deride Robert McKee's screenwriting techniques, because I think they always assume that he just teaches cookie-cutter storytelling formula, and is thus churning out an industry of hacks. No, what he really does is teach classical story structure with the idea that one has to master the classic structure FIRST before they can deconstruct it. No one ever seems to catch that subtle distinction. I'd love to hear a dissenting opinion on McKee by someone who actually *understands* what the hell he actually teaches.