Fanboy Wars Thread: Personal Attacks not allowed | With Digital Fur Technology

[IronJimbo]

3 minutes ago, dudalb said:

Me. Avatar, take away the visuals, is not a very good film.

but.. without the visuals it would just be audio.

 

Hey dudalb, you're yet to explain why you think Tarantino is more interesting than Jim.

[dudalb]

8 minutes ago, Barnack said:

Sound reasonable, but really unfair to take away visuals from a visual medium, would be like saying that one you take away the music of 2001 a space odyssey, Jaws or Star Wars those movie does not work nearly as much....

Those films had things to offer other then visuals, IMHO Avatar really did not.

[MrGlass2]

11 minutes ago, dudalb said:

Me. Avatar, take away the visuals, is not a very good film.

Like I said someone somewhere not liking one of his movies is a very poor way to measure "subjective success", or it makes those words completely meaningless.

 

Avatar was nominated for 9 Oscars and won 3.

[dudalb]

7 minutes ago, IronJimbo said:

but.. without the visuals it would just be audio.

 

Hey dudalb, you're yet to explain why you think Tarantino is more interesting than Jim.

Tarantino's charecters are more interesting, the dialogue in his film is ten time better, his editing  is much more original.

And this routine of calling a director by his first name like he was a buddy of your is fanboy stupidty at it's worst.

[Harpospoke]

23 hours ago, IronJimbo said:

It's weird I don't feel "roasted". I don't know about JSC but all I've said (in other threads) is that the only objective measure we have is dollars grossed (which is true), you're the one who added the artistic worth bit.

That's what I read.    Not sure what other people are reading.

 

Box office is objective measurement.    "Quality" in art is a myth and is 100% subjective.  We prove this every single time we talk about it.   Getting two people to agree on the "good" art is almost impossible.    Get 10 James Cameron fans in a room and ask them to rank Jim's movies.    You'll probably get 10 different lists.    Try the same thing with 10 Beatles fans.   Who is the better songwriter....Paul or John?   What are the 10 best Beatles songs?

18 hours ago, JamesCameronScholar said:

Of course there is, I'm glad some of you are able to articulate this fact that seems lost on so many! One can be measured and therefore discussed with some rigor, the other cannot and is practically nonsense. 

Like Barnack said, we don't have a lot of choice but to talk about the subjective.   The objective facts can be interesting, but we can cover it very quickly and there isn't much to discuss.

 

So we have to get into opinions in order to have something to talk about.   What box office run is "more impressive"?  (that's a big one here)

 

Art being subjective is really the reason it is so important to people.   It effects everyone individually and so that makes it a personal thing.    Can anyone else feel what we feel when we watch a certain movie or listen to a certain song?   We don't know...but it feels amazing so we try to see if it works that way for someone else.    We "know" we are the most important people in the world but at the same time we are pack animals who need to fit in to survive.   All that stuff swirls around in our feelings about art.

 

Just do that "rank" thing which is done here so often.   What happens in your brain when you see a list that is very different from your own?   Now how does it feel when a list is just like your own?    One prompts a negative reaction and the other prompts a positive reaction.

 

This entire thread is based on those feelings.   The poor moderators have to fight this human reaction to art on a daily basis.

16 hours ago, Barnack said:

It went with recognition with how well it is aged on a craft level, one of the most acclaimed movie of all time now:

 

http://theyshootpictures.com/gf1000_all1000films_table.php

 

#715 according to this aggregate of best movie list.

 

Cameron has 5 movies perceived by world critics in the top 1000 movie of all time:

 

Aliens 372

Terminator 455

T2 637

Titanic 715

Avatar 769

 

Also in the Afi top 10 american EPIC in their latest update:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AFI's_10_Top_10

 

1	Lawrence of Arabia	1962
2	Ben-Hur	1959
3	Schindler's List	1993
4	Gone with the Wind	1939
5	Spartacus	1960
6	Titanic	1997
7	All Quiet on the Western Front	1930
8	Saving Private Ryan	1998
9	Reds	1981
10	The Ten Commandments	1956

 

And, #83 in their top 100 american movie of all time:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AFI's_100_Years...100_Movies_(10th_Anniversary_Edition)

 

I love stuff like that.    Every "measurement" we try comes up with different results.   Even the "experts" can't agree with each other.   How good is Titanic?    We can't quite work it out, can we?

 

We are about to try the whole futile process again with the Oscars.   Surely we can figure out what the "Best Picture" is, right?

 

Nope....all the Academy members will vote for different movies and when they announce the "winner" the annual arguments will begin again.   The Academy will either be smart or stupid depending on whether or not you like the movie they settled on through popular vote.

 

But like you said....what else would we talk about if we only stayed with things that are objective fact?

[dudalb]

4 minutes ago, MrGlass2 said:

Like I said someone somewhere not liking one of his movies is a very poor way to measure "subjective success", or it makes those words completely meaningless.

 

Avatar was nominated for 9 Oscars and won 3.

And all 3 wins were for visuals..which it deserfed.

 

I think the problem is I am old fashioned..a good story and compelling charecters all the foundations of a good film. Take away those and you do not have a good film, no matter how great the visuals are. Visuals around cannot make a good film.

 

But I see what is going on here: it's a logical fallacy called "Poisoning The Well" where you deny the validity of any line of argument except those that support your argument.

 

In the  case of the Camreon fanboys, they are trying to say that the only way to judge the total worth of a film is box office. I find that ridiculous for no other reason then that, by any  logic means if a film does not make money it is a bad film. I reject that completely.

 

But I do give the Cameron fanboys credit. They have sucesffuly hijacked this thread.

[dudalb]

17 hours ago, Elessar said:

Like Star Wars has been a beacon of originality... And the latest entries are the worst offenders. Taking tropes from elsewhere and putting your spin on it is one thing but regurgitating oneself... nah... that's just lazy. The stories have been nothing special from the start but TLJ just felt trite. That doesn't take away from the fact that the OT still is really enjoyable to watch. Some of the casting was a stroke of genius, for sure.

 

If you argue Avatar was a tech demo i will argue the same for Star Wars. Or do you really think the wow factor didn't play a part in the success of the OT?

Oh, I agree the SW films plots were far from original. But they had compelling charecters, which people remember...something which Avatar  lacks. They were also much better written. Everyone can name charecters from Star Wars, a lot fewer can name charecters from Avatar. Only Stephan Lang's commander was memorable, and that probably less from the writing and more from Lang's compelling performance.

[MrGlass2]

4 minutes ago, dudalb said:

 

But I see what is going on here: it's a logical fallacy called "Poisoning The Well" where you deny the validity of any line of argument except those that support your argument.

 

Avatar was also nominated for Best Picture, and Cameron for best director.

[Barnack]

13 minutes ago, Harpospoke said:

Box office is objective measurement.

And like you said even with it you go rapidly in subjective once the numbers is said, talking about box office as if it was anything is already subjective.

 

But rapidly it will dissolve in subjective talk for example:

 

17	La La Land	LG/S	$446.1	$151.1	33.9%	$295.0	66.1%
18	Warcraft	Uni.	$433.7	$47.4	10.9%	$386.3	89.1%

 

 

This for an example, the only objective box office measurement is that La la land barely made more than Warcraft, do we keep it there ? What else objective is there to say, dbo/intl split number ? (Already subjective to care about those)

 

Subjective stuff, like a non IP small Liongates titles doing over 400m is much more impressive than for the giant Universal franchise movie, etc... will immediately follow and for good reasons.

[Barnack]

23 minutes ago, dudalb said:

Those films had things to offer other then visuals, IMHO Avatar really did not.

I would agree with you there, but what matter is the total experience of a movie, from start to the memory kept a month/year after, not sure that the it was only a good experience because of X should matter, could be a good tie breaker but not much more than that.

[IronJimbo]

9 minutes ago, dudalb said:

In the  case of the Camreon fanboys, they are trying to say that the only way to judge the total worth of a film is box office. I find that ridiculous for no other reason then that, by any  logic means if a film does not make money it is a bad film. I reject that completely.

Literally never said any of this, I said the only objective measure in filmmaking is box office gross. Do you not understand the difference between this and what you just wrote?

 

Also you switched from Jim is less interesting than Tarantino to Jim's films are less interesting, is this what you meant from the start?

[Rebeccas]

2 minutes ago, Barnack said:

And like you said even with it you go rapidly in subjective once the numbers is said, talking about box office as if it was anything is already subjective.

 

But rapidly it will dissolve in subjective talk for example:

 

17	La La Land	LG/S	$446.1	$151.1	33.9%	$295.0	66.1%
18	Warcraft	Uni.	$433.7	$47.4	10.9%	$386.3	89.1%

 

 

This for an example, the only objective box office measurement is that La la land barely made more than Warcraft, do we keep it there ? What else objective is there to say, dbo/intl split number ? (Already subjective to care about those)

 

Subjective stuff, like a non IP small Liongates titles doing over 400m is much more impressive than for the giant Universal franchise movie, etc... will immediately follow and for good reasons.

Well budgets are still a mostly objective comparison to gauge how successful a box office run is.

[dudalb]

5 minutes ago, MrGlass2 said:

 

Avatar was also nominated for Best Picture, and Cameron for best director.

And I might argue that Oscars are of questionable worth as a sign of artistic merit, given how much studio and Hollywood politics are involved, and the many questionable wins we have seen in Oscar History.

[IronJimbo]

1 minute ago, dudalb said:

And I might argue that Oscars are of questionable worth as a sign of artistic merit, given how much studio and Hollywood politics are involved, and the many questionable wins we have seen in Oscar History.

Like Hurt Locker over Avatar

[MCKillswitch123]

1 minute ago, IronJimbo said:

Like Hurt Locker over Inglourious Basterds

Fixed that for ya.

[IronJimbo]

Just now, MCKillswitch123 said:

Fixed that for ya.

[MrGlass2]

15 minutes ago, dudalb said:

And I might argue that Oscars are of questionable worth as a sign of artistic merit, given how much studio and Hollywood politics are involved, and the many questionable wins we have seen in Oscar History.

I guess Cameron is just a failure then.

[Harpospoke]

 

28 minutes ago, dudalb said:

And I might argue that Oscars are of questionable worth as a sign of artistic merit, given how much studio and Hollywood politics are involved, and the many questionable wins we have seen in Oscar History.

Of course they are of questionable worth.   As in....they are worth nothing.

 

It's just something Hollywood invented to have an excuse to get together, throw a party, get drunk, and pat each other on the back with fake "awards".

 

There is no way to determine that one movie is better than another.   The Oscars are just one example of how that fails.    Use any other measure and the same thing happens.

 

List movies in order of their RT score or Metacritic score and you won't agree that they fall in order of quality.

 

List movie in order of their IMBD scores...same thing.

 

List movies in order of the box office....same thing.

 

There is no method anyone ever uses that proves anything about art.   Art is only good if you think it is good.   That's pretty much the end of it.   You can be the only person on the planet to like a piece of art and it will be just as good.   Popular vote means nothing.   "Expert opinion" means nothing because they don't agree with each other either.  (they can't even make up their minds about which movie is "greatest of all time")

[Barnack]

1 hour ago, Rebeccas said:

Well budgets are still a mostly objective comparison to gauge how successful a box office run is.

They start with objective number (or mostly we rarely know production budget), but the value giving to that metric will be a very subjective one.

 

- Below the line vs above the line,

- cost push forward via participation deal vs buying profit in advance, 

- marketing budget vs production budget is one less impressive box office run is for the movie ? why talk about one more than the other,

- is that a movie build to play under/on par/over average on Home Entertainment,

- the year of release also need to be taken account, big success stories of the 2002 to 2010 era like Batman Begin, Captain America First Avenger, X-men First class, would be under performing disappointment today.

 

Just trying to look at a box office / production budget, is still quite either a very fast conversation everyone can make himself alone without help and look at them, even if it is build with objective number it is a subjective equation to give credit to and one that the subjective talk around will still be most of the talk.

 

In the leaked Sony accounting there was for 28.081 billion spent on movies, only 33% (9.256b) of those were on production budget, 39% of those expense were on theatrical release cost, a bigger amount. Making the very fact at looking at Box office/production budget as a metric of success instead of Box office/ release cost a very subjective choice.

 

How well a movie did will be very subjective and that why there is a conversation message board about it, otherwise an shared excel table would do the trick.

Edited February 13, 2018 by Barnack

[Barnack]

5 hours ago, JamesCameronScholar said:

What my original point was meant to really convey however, is that there is a lot of objective things to be discussed. Let's take demographic of viewers as one stat, why and how does one encourage one gender or another to watch your movie? What about the time period in which a movie is released, not merely in terms of an annual process, but lets think economically. It's no secret that Avatar was released after one of the great economic depressions of our time, there is a wealth of discussion there to be had on the socio-political and economic conditions which surround the release of a single movie! Imagine the kinds of discussion that could be had based on objective metrics for a whole host of other movies! 

Yes I am encouraged or your not troll intention thanks, you will understand that saying stuff like that:

If people want to discuss weak directors who can't make serious bank like Tarantino, they should be looking to other forums, no? 

 

Sound really trollish (like I said a simple game of naming 10 directors with a better non IP box office track record since the 90s is not easy to do.

 

If you want to start those conversation I strongly encourage you to do so, this message board is an excellent platform.

 

You can do it in the speakeasy section:

 

For example I did that one, talking of trying to be objective as one can about numbers:

 

 

If you want to make a study and start a subject about historical general mood and the type of movie that work at the box office / box office in general you can, there is some theory outthere that when life is rough cinema become more fun in response and vice versa, it is cheap also so link with economics could be seen I imagine, post 2000-2001 economic crisis to 2012 was maybe the most profitable time for Hollywood ever.

 

Same for demographic evolution (that a subject that come from time to time) with the older demographic and the disappearance of the domestic teen audience.

 

But you will see that it will be hard to sustain conversation about those, news and fanboyisme tend to be necessary to have people going, those things are more blog entry.