Objectivity, Criticism, and the Internet

[Clement Rage]

Sup folks. I don't really have much of a point here, just musings. Objective criticisms came up in a recent Lucrecia thread, in which I may have been unnecessarily mean to TTM, and they're kind of trending right now in angry Wheel of Time TV reviews (Don't have Amazon Prime and have no plans to change that, it just came up because I saw some of them.)

"Objectively bad" is something of a buzzword on Youtube these days, but, as someone on an even nitpickier forum I lurk on pointed out, it's actually something of a contradiction. "Objective" means not having a value judgment, while "flawed" is inherently a value judgment.

We can't abandon standards entirely, but once you get passed the level of unintentional spelling errors, what is and is not flawed becomes highly contextual, based on the intent of the text, (and of course, the viewer's perspective of what the author intended for the text.) A large part of this is how much time the viewer is willing to invest, and whether they choose to invest that time in breaking or propping up a work.

You do need some standards. But applying them too strictly is a problem in itself, because you end up box ticking instead of examining the context.

Hollywood has a big problem with this, because a guy named Syd Field wrote a book with a rigid formula for screenwriting, which became the 'screenwriter's bible' and a big contributor to Hollywood's notorious lack of creativity. It's not (necessarily) because they're evil, it's because if you are a big studio, you get sent 25,000 scripts a year, you can only make 50, you need a quick and dirty way to cut the wheat from the chaff. So that book became 'how to get your script through the studio system' rather than 'how to make a good story'. And then people started using it as a critical tool rather than a commercial chaff cutter, which leads to execs doing stupid things like mandating two hour timelines on stories that are obviously unsuited for them, which is how you get idiocy like trying to make a two hour movie of the Dark Tower, or Peter Jackson having to fight tooth and nail to convince execs that you can't boil down LOTR to two hours and still have something coherent.

You can nail down faults sometimes, but whether they matter or not depend largely on whether the viewer cares about the specific fault. Hand me any given story, and I can probably break it if I want to. Do I want to? That is the question.

And then we have the internet culture where performative rage gets you clicks. Your opinions on a work of fiction become your brand, and deviating from it has potential financial implications. Criticisms that are funny and repeatable gain a lot of traction, regardless of whether they are true or not. Memes become very powerful, and something repeated often enough becomes true without ever being based on the text.

Writing 'rules' are talked about as truth, when they are usually contextual. Chekhov's gun is useful to keep in mind but he was writing short plays, where there is no space for detail. Adhere to it rigidly, and you can't put a red herring in a crime novel or do worldbuilding in high fantasy. It's easier as a critic to talk about how specific story doesn't follow a rule than it is to think about why that's the case, or what the rule is for in the first place.

So, where do we get our standards, when they are so easily exploited to gatekeep and destroy arbitrarily? (For the purposes of full disclosure of my competing interests, the two most accessible examples of toxic fanbases destroying good things (and causing real harm to real people as a result) that come to mind for me are the Star Wars Prequels and the DCEU). I'll try not to use too many examples from those, but it's hard to find a frame of reference that people will both catch the reference and not be sidetracked by it. My benchmark for good writing is the Legacy of Kain series, but most people don't know it well enough to for illustrative examples to work, because they require too much context.

Thank you for reading this wall of text of blindingly obvious things. I'm going to come back to this, but if anyone has any thoughts I'm interested in hearing them.

[end of part 1]

 

[Mobius Stripper]

I think a lot of criticism is based in mob mentality. It's very easy to be a critic, and people will seize the opportunity to rag on something because it makes them feel better about themselves, despite the fact that most of them are not putting anything positive into the world. It's the same reason kids bully other kids on the playground. Which isn't to say that some media isn't deserving of criticism. And that kid on the playground might actually smell bad. But that's not the real reason people are jumping on the train to make a mockery of it. Criticism is fun because you can feel like you've achieved something without actually achieving anything, all at the expense of someone else who put themselves out there. (Note: I'm specifically discussing a perceived lack of artistic merit here, not cases where the work is being criticized on ethical grounds.)

That said, there is plenty of media that I do think is objectively terrible and love to rag on. I'm always hesitant to use the word "objective," but movies like Troll 2 and Mac and Me are as close to objectively bad as anything can get. At the very least, they run counter to some kind of near-universal human sensibility regarding quality. But there's a difference between so-bad-it's-good and just bad. There are rules, and they are not rigid, but they have been developed over many centuries of writers and artists observing human behavior and finding what garners certain responses in audiences. I think it takes some understanding of audience psychology to make something good. Which doesn't mean following the rules. But it does mean understanding the factors that inspired the rules to a degree where one can navigate them. So-bad-it's-good movies attain that status by being so glaringly ignorant of the rules that it's entertaining. Normal bad movies just miss the mark. Meanwhile, avant-garde art can hit the mark by breaking the rules in an informed and deliberate manner. Following the rules to a T can actually harm a work, which is why "formulaic" and "derivative" are such common and devastating criticisms. Making good art is all about achieving an organic and expert manipulation of the rules.

A lot of amateur visual artists get mocked online and in art communities for claiming, "It's my style!" when some aspect of their art gets criticized. The idea is that, while it is acceptable to break rules in the name of style, the artist SHOULD also be able to create within the rules. If they cannot, it bespeaks a lack of skill and a lack of devotion. The artist's style should not be built around gaps in technical skill. Rather, any deviation from technical skill should be a deliberate choice. There is a difference between "breaking the rules because the rules do not apply here, and I know they don't because I know the rules" vs. "breaking the rules because I don't know what the rules are or how to follow them."

 

[Makoeyes987]

The term "objectively bad" is a stupid carry over from the early 2000s when critic culture/discourse started really taking off on the internet. And it's only gained currency with the complete obliteration of the ad revenue system thanks to Google and Facebook, with sites now relying on outrage clicks to get attention.

It's a term I am very hesitant to use because it's contradictory. Subjective opinion and valuation is just that. Subjective. A work can carry objective flaws, errors, and mistakes in production but so many things get lumped up or called "objectively bad" and it just sounds so stupid and like an angry nerd just ranting into the wind.

Critics called Ed Wood's movies dogshit and him the worst director to ever defame the craft of cinema. And posthumously, people ended up unironically enjoying his films. Technical errors, poor special effects and cheap stock footage and all.

Taste or the lack thereof is subjective. And it just sounds so silly to argue it as an objective metric. It's not. Traditional models or archetypes in writing aren't an objective standard either. Those systems exist to be subverted, reexamined, experimented with, and more. Art has no form and exists solely as an expression of people and their creativity. And even if it fails, it still could one day gain value. Or not. But that doesn't make the criticism "objective."

And a criticism not being "objective" doesn't automatically discount said criticism either. Yes, some subjective interpretations do hold weight. If you want to criticize something, just own up to where it comes from and make sense. It's not an objective measurement and it's certainly not quantifiable.

 

[Clement Rage]

'Learn the rules before you break them' as we were all taught has value, but I don't entirely subscribe to it. If something good is created, does it matter if someone hasn't learned a list? The creators of genres don't know the rules of their genres, which usually means they have to write them better, because they can't rely on genre conventions to prop them up.

It does help sort the wheat from the chaff, but you lose some wheat as well.

Of course, the subjective criticisms tend to have the problem of being about the thing the reader particularly cares about. I have a hangup about evil henchpeople that few other people care about, that I think is important.

'should be' 'supposed to be' (according to me)

'we don't care/why should we care about' (I don't care, and if you do you're wrong)

'relatable' is a weird one, because of course different people relate to different things.

One of the weird memes I see a lot is 'too much CGI'. It doesn't make sense, it's like saying 'this story has too many props in it'

The big thing I draw the line at is malice, where you actively try to fuck over someone else's work and/or person. I've cooled on parody a lot over the last while, it's relatively easy to break apart someone else's work and jeer at it, it's a lot harder to create something of your own.

 

[Mobius Stripper]

Obviously there are exceptions to everything. There's no dogma about what makes things good and bad. There are just trends. Some people have top notch natural intuitions and don't need to learn the rules to make something amazing. That's fine, but it's also rare, and a lot more creators think they fall into that category than actually do.

If the creator is failing to make people care about something, the proof is in the pudding. People won't care. If people care, then they care. If people are asking why they should care, the work failed for them because if it succeeded, they wouldn't be asking in the first place. It's not about right or wrong.

Too much CGI usually has to do with things not looking as good as they should (people wouldn't notice the CGI if it was done well) and when there is a perceived effort to show off the effects at the expense of the narrative. It's the equivalent of an author using purple prose. There is also the meta context in which CGI has overtaken practical effects because it is cheaper for studios and doesn't use union labor, so a lot of people have a pre-existing axe to grind with excessive CGI and view it as a symbol of artistry taking a back seat to corporate greed.

, it's relatively easy to break apart someone else's work and jeer at it, it's a lot harder to create something of your own.

Very true. It's fine to give honest, good faith critiques of things, but when people make hating on something a hobby (especially when it's something other people enjoy), it's time to reassess. Don't yuck my yum and all that.

 

[MelodicEnigma]

Yeah it's fun, isn't it? lol I could describe this phenomenon as a mismanagement of information and logic, I suppose. Facts in and of themselves can be subject to change, but what we also tend to forget is that a lot of the objective sector of factual information and reasoning is attached to specific things. One line of reasoning or information, as objective as it is, may not be universal and apply to every context. I like the mention of the 'should be' 'supposed to be' (according to me) because I sometimes wish people would ask themselves if what they're claiming and how they're doing so (which may not be correct anyway) is applicable or not—or if their reason for using a specific line of reasoning and information was prompted subjectively, ironically enough.

It's fun.

 

[KindOfBlue]

but when people make hating on something a hobby (especially when it's something other people enjoy)

I swear like a third of YouTube content would be gone if less people did this

 

[Clement Rage]

Are CG artists particularly non unionised? Practical effects have a lot of uses, but they have limitations too, and it's difficult to come up with a true example of cg being used where practical effects would definitively be better. Good (combat) practical effects need a Keanu Reeves, Tom Cruise or Jackie Chan, someone willing to risk grievous injury to entertain strangers. They're hard.

When there's a bad practical effect, people criticise the effect, but when there's a bad cg effect, they criticise cg as a whole instead.

The only other time this happened that comes to mind was with shakycam, but overuse of shakycam has an obvious downside, it can make it difficult to understand what is going on.

'Necessary' is another criticism I'm not fond of, because lots of awesome things are unnecessary.

So, all this said, what would be an example of good criticism, then?

 

[Mobius Stripper]

Are CG artists particularly non unionised?

Yes.

Practical effects have a lot of uses, but they have limitations too, and it's difficult to come up with a true example of cg being used where practical effects would definitively be better. Good (combat) practical effects need a Keanu Reeves, Tom Cruise or Jackie Chan, someone willing to risk grievous injury to entertain strangers. They're hard.

Except we aren't just talking about stunts in the CGI conversation. Practical effects can be used in tons of contexts. Have you seen The Fountain? That film was done entirely with practical effects and produced some of the most incredible visuals I've seen in a film. Same goes for 2001: A Space Odyssey . The point isn't that CGI is inherently bad; it's that it's a hammer, and not everything in film is a nail. Most "too much CGI" criticism I see lately seems to be targeted at the MCU, and I can't speak to that personally, since I haven't seen a MCU movie since 2015. But I also see this criticism pop up for things that end up in the uncanny valley, like Cats. Which isn't to say practical effects can't land you in the uncanny valley (some animatronics are really unintentionally freaky), but it seems to be a pitfall for CGI in particular because it can get so close to realism without making it all the way there. If it's good, people won't notice it. So if people are complaining about it, it's probably because something about it was off-kilter enough to pull them out of the movie. The problem isn't the CGI per se, but the fact that the CGI is obnoxious, distracting, and/or looks like shit.

Again, this isn't an anti-CGI screed, and I'm not anti-CGI on principle, but there are some very valid criticisms of CGI. Everything comes down to a matter of taste at the end of the day, and it's fine to disagree about aesthetic preferences.

 

[MelodicEnigma]

'Necessary' is another criticism I'm not fond of, because lots of awesome things are unnecessary.

So, all this said, what would be an example of good criticism, then?

Oh god yes. I actively try my best to stay away from the word "necessary/not necessary" unless it's necessary to bring it up. *badum-tsh* But it really is ironic. It's a term that hinges on something needing to be met, and what exactly that something is may very well not be applicable for a work or its creators, and purely by that of someone else's standards. It's really hard to judge. Not to mention that, what can be identified as necessary can also be considered a "bare minimum", which absolutely doesn't always quantify as being the "best". But, it can find it's place, it's just a really hard place to find and that's what makes writing "good" criticism so difficult when trying to be as straight n' narrow as possible.

"Good criticism" should be something that would make someone else reevaluate, grow, and learn, and a question for the person giving said criticism—is what I'm saying actually for that purpose? But alas, some people have different agendas, or simply what one thinks is "good" for someone may not in fact be so. I think what we'd want to look closer for is "True criticism"? Kind of sounds silly, but I'd say it's something that is dependent on the objective and facts corresponding to the context of the material, or logically attached thereof, but that still requires for it to be applicable to have such a standing in the first place as a boiled fact or logical thought process to follow. That can be hard for creative works, maybe easier for products more in that nature in and of itself, like research papers. I honestly just think that we should be continually aware of the state of being of what our thoughts are and their nature, knowing that how we feel about a product, even if logical by some standard, isn't in dire need of being absolute. Sometimes criticism should be there to be expressed, not religiously followed.

 

[Clement Rage]

The eternal problem, finding the balance between 'every problem looking like a nail' and 'nails exist, a hammer is a viable tool.'

Interesting re unions, I didn't know that. Filmmaking being notoriously cut-throat, it's not a surprise.

Re the MCU, the criticism doesn't tend to have anything to do with the effects, it's very rare I see anyone talk about the effects being bad or unconvincing. The criticism veers towards 'boring samey CGI climax' which actually seems to be more of a writing issue, because the movies are all written the same way, rather than a problem with CG. Dr. Strange has a giant CG climax that is written differently than usual, that didn't get the same criticisms.

The Hobbit trilogy caught flack for it's overelaborate CG action, but I think that was mostly a writing criticism as well, because the action scenes were long and fastmoving (and here is an interesting conundrum, because my brain is saying 'longer than needed', which is 'necessary', the criticism I just called out). Part of it seems to be that some of the long action scenes were not in the book, so the audiences had something to compare it to. I think maybe having CG Sonic in games also was a factor in the backlash, the audience already knew what they wanted him to look like.

The big thing practical effects are not great at is monsters. Puppets and animatronics tend to look like puppets and animatronics, especially when they have to move quickly and change positions.

So practically, you're stuck with humans in makeup like Star Trek or Buffy, or monsters that are fixed in one place or built into a wall.

The reason this bothers me is that I think it ends up hurting creativity. When stories start marketing themselves with 'practical effects' as a benefit in itself, leaving aside that it is usually a lie, they stick with things that can plausibly be done practically, so fantastic things lose out.

It's not like practical effects are bad, John Wick makes very good use of stunts (and the aforementioned Keanu being willing to do a lot). I'm not sure that a lot of producers are thinking 'what's the best for this effect' rather than 'audiences think they don't like CG, so let's pretend to avoid it for marketing'

So, re criticism, when we're talking about not following rules, ideally it should be followed by how and why this instance is bad, rather than just 'doesn't follow rule=bad'. Of course, reviewers and critics tend to have limited space to express their views, so...

I had more relevant things to say, but I got too long as it is. Bye for now.

 

[Mobius Stripper]

Personally, my biggest issue with CGI is the labor one, and I think if CG artists were unionized, we would see more filmmakers deciding whether to use CGI vs. practical effects based on what they actually feel is the best artistic tool instead of what is best for their budget and "fuck it, we'll fix it in post."

So, re criticism, when we're talking about not following rules, ideally it should be followed by how and why this instance is bad, rather than just 'doesn't follow rule=bad'.

Yes, I think that's always a good rule of thumb. It can be very easy to hate on something because it's popular to hate one it without actually having a personal reason for it. It's easy to say "everyone knows X is bad, and this has X, so this is bad." For me, many of my preferences come down to artistic snobbishness, and I've had to learn to examine my opinions about media a lot to ask myself: do I have an actual argument for why something is bad, is it just a matter of personal aesthetics and my not being a member of the target audience, OR is it that it's something I've come to knee-jerk associate with tackiness or kitschiness and I'm actually just being a snob for the sake of being a snob?

 

[Clement Rage]

So how do we change the culture on CG without punishing the CG artists who are the victims of it?

 

[Mobius Stripper]

I imagine it would take them going on strike or something similar. It would have to start from within the industry, not from the outside.

 

[Mobius Stripper]

There is a big post about practical effects and CGI going around on Tumblr if anyone is interested.

https://veerletakino.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F672689209042141184

 

[Keveh Kins]

Maaaaan I love the Derelict spaceship and giant corpse from Alien. What a movie

 

[Clement Rage]

"Here is a still image or short gif that looks good, carefully cherrypicked from among the greatest effects ever made. Therefore practical effects are better."

Plus the usual stupidity about the Star Wars special editions being polluted by CG.

It wouldn't exactly be difficult to put together the exact same thing showing crap practical effects and good CGI if they wanted.

 

[Mobius Stripper]

I didn't see the point as "Practical effects are better." I just saw it as a refutation of the argument that cool stuff requires CGI and pointing out the potential shortcomings of CGI to people who think CGI is the one and only. The argument has never been "practical effects good, CGI bad." The argument is that CGI supremacy is bullshit.

 

[Clement Rage]

The tweet they're replying isn't doesn't really say that, though. The point is 'stop bitching about CG as though it's inherently bad, practical effects have limitations' which is true. Then the replies go on scathing tangents saying things like 'cg ages really poorly', which is a stupid blanket statement (some does, some doesn't. Some practical effects age poorly too, others stand up.) It depends on the effect. Don't see much stop motion these days.

They're replying to 'CG is not inherently bad' with a bunch of rude scathing replies, including namecalling 'heathens', assuming ignorance and bad faith 'you're fucking welcome for assuming', talking about how the tweeter is undervaluing the time of the model people when they never said anything of the kind. CG has made effects possible that filmmakers couldn't do before. That doesn't mean everything before it was shit.

This is the problem with this culture, it's an ideological position, not based on what actually looks good. Plenty of practical effects look great, others look shit. Plenty of CG looks good, sometimes it looks shit. But it's made into this stupid game of 'practical v cg' as though you have to pick a side. Which is what the tumblr conversation seems to be going for.

There are some things that practical effects can't accomplish. You can do other planets that look like Tattooine practically. You can't practically do other planets that look like Mustafar. 2001 had some of the best available effects of the time, it also went massively over budget and only made its money back on rereleases.

Then there are the casual swipes at the special editions. It's very arguable whether they are improvements or not, it's basically a question of taste. A certain kind of spacebattle can be done best practically, but it has to be on a small scale. You can do Mandalorian's space battles practically, but you can't do the opening of Revenge of the Sith practically.

Edit: There may be some context I'm missing depending on what the initial tweet was replying to. If the tweet is replying to a specific conversation, there may be more to it, but if it's just lamenting the endless complaining about CG being automatically bad, (which happens a hell of a lot) then that thread looks a lot like just screengrabbing a tweet so they can bitch about it to their echo chamber without engaging in good faith.

 

[Mobius Stripper]

Having just finished Joel Coen's The Tragedy of Macbeth, I am a bit over the moon for it right now, and I felt the need to bring it up here because I think it is an example of a film with well-done CGI. Despite the theatrical atmosphere of the film, almost all of the effects were done in post, and it works, in large part (I would argue) because the uncanny, surreal aesthetic that I pointed to previously as a common pitfall of CGI happens to be precisely what the doctor ordered here. Just thought I should share my impression because I did not provide any earlier examples of when CGI does work despite claiming not to be anti-CGI.

 

[Clement Rage]

The important thing is whether you're asking the question 'is this practical or cg' and the answer being your metric for good or bad. More than once I've encountered the criticism of 'bad cg' only for it to turn out the effect in question was practical.

The important question is 'is this the right effect for the scene', and whether the effect is practical or CG doesn't determine that.

Back on track, a few more criticisms that don't work -you can't character assassinate someone who isn't real, and you can't betray the fanbase by writing something they don't like.

You can betray creators, by intentionally screwing over them financially or maliciously retconning stuff into their universe, but the creator gets to determine that, not the fans.

And finally, someone making or being part of a bad piece of media, no matter how good or bad it is, does not make it okay to throw personal abuse at them. Ever.

 

[Clement Rage]

I was intending to move on to positive things by now, but one more thing.

Sometimes you hear people say 'they should have done effect X practically'(the principle also applies with the reverse, but you don't often hear 'they should have done CGI.' On the whole, that doesn't make sense. Because what's happening there is someone comparing what exists to an effect that is in their own head, and the effects in your own head that never have to be made are always perfect. You don't ever have to actually see what the same effect practically would look like, so of course it looks bad next to the image in your brain.

More tangibly, I played Bloodborne over Christmas, and mostly found it boring. The immortality of the lead makes everything pretty stakesless, because you can in -universe try as often as you like, and you can also level grind to blast through the bossfights. The only stakes are meta, for the player.

Interestingly, one of my favourite games is Soul Reaver 1, which runs on a similar mechanic. The lead is immortal, and in -universe can only be returned to the hub, never destroyed. Mechanically, it's obviously mostly inferior to a ps3 game, but it is more engaging for me.

Some of it is nostalgia, some of the rest is because it's more narrative driven. The Bloodborne lead is faceless, voiceless, interchangeable. You're supposed to fill in the blanks yourself, but I don't. It would take a highly motivated individual to go through what Bloodborne protagonist does, but we don't know anything about them, so instead of a mystery it comes off as more of a hole. To me, at least.

Narratively, in SR1, we know exactly why the lead is doing what they're doing, and the main antagonist is aware of the lead's immortality and factors it into his plans, having and endgame that isn't dependent on futilely trying to kill something that can't be killed.

So, valid criticism or not?

 

[Clement Rage]

One more thing about CG. How audiences have been taught to react to it (bad CG pilloried, good CG not noticed) may well actually be a contributory factor to the abuses of the animators in the industry. If fandoms exerted more effort in distinguishing good CG artists and studios and non abusive practices, maybe we could help them get some clout in the industry and push for change.

Instead, what we have now is audience primed to complain about CG at every turn, with the result that productions market their 'practical effects' as though that's somehow revolutionary, and downplay their CG. They don't stop using CG, but they're incentivised to not draw attention to it, with knock on effects on storytelling and in the industry itself, a la Force Awakens or that first Rings of Power trailer.

 

[Nandemoyasan]

If someone’s writing is so weak that they need to use buzzwords like “objectively” in order to make their point, then they are a talentless hack in the first place.

I’ll demonstrate by tearing to pieces a well-trodden dead mule around here; Final Fantasy 2. Like Westley from The Princess Bride, I’ll use small words, so that you’ll be sure to understand. No offense. : )

Final Fantasy 2 is, for starters, too similar to the first game. Similar battle interface, similar spritework, and similar gameplay. It doesn’t really do much to innovate over Final Fantasy 1 other than slap on an excuse plot about Imperial Conquest vs. Plucky Resistance, that ultimately falls flat for lack of scale.

This brings me to my next point. Even Final Fantasy 4-6 would later have trouble pulling off the scale and scope necessary to illustrate open warfare in any way that really had any impact. The ransacking of Damcyan, the Battles of the Dwarf Tanks and Golbez’ Red Wings, The Battle on the Big Bridge (awesome song, lame scene), the Battle of Surgate Fleet, the Battle of Narshe, and the Ancient Castle flashback all come to mind. Final Fantasy 7 tellingly restrains itself from ever showing any kind of open warfare scenes; in fact the battles of Dollet Dukedom and of Galbadia and Balamb Gardens in Final Fantasy 8 are striking in that they’re the first times the series ever managed to pull off scenes of open infantry warfare with any degree of realism.

This is all a really fancy way of saying that Final Fantasy 2 starts by biting off waaaaay more than it could ever have chewed. Believable open infantry warfare is extremely difficult to pull off in any medium; the NES was the wrong choice for almost anything but maybe the Fire Emblem series.

Next up is its straight up clunky leveling system that everyone hates, and for good reason. It’s just plain ridiculous. Making your characters powerful takes way too long; in the time it takes to get past let’s say the Dreadnought, The Descendant of Erdrick could have shoulder checked a dragon, rescued a Princess, combined sun and rain into Bifrosty goodness, and wailed on some Dragonlord ass, perhaps twice over. RPGs are good because they last, but don’t bore; cheap lastability like FF2’s feels tiresome and, well, boring.

Its dungeons are the worst kind of cut-and-paste nonsense, its music is frankly kind of a low point for the series, its puzzles are kind of bland, its monster art is close to laughable, and the stakes for the protagonists are slim-to-nil to the point where I forget what their personalities are supposed to be like half the time I even think about them.

It isn’t such a bad thing that Final Fantasy 2 didn’t come out in America; I don’t think it was going to give the Legend of Zelda any sleepless nights.

Now that I’ve finished, read what I’ve said and tell me if it would have been helpful to say anything so idiotic as “objectively bad” in the cause of getting my points across. I don’t think so. They’re just fluffy words that sound stinging when really, they’re just filling space. That’s bad writing kids.

 

[Mobius Stripper]

I don't want to write out an entire essay here, but I will just say that watching The Thing (1982) and then watching The Thing (2011) immediately afterward (or before, since it's a prequel) is a great way to experience old school practical effects and CGI effects side-by-side within the same context for comparison purposes. I think the practical effects in the 1982 film are more viscerally disgusting, while the realism of the effects in the 2011 film makes it disturbing in a different way (sometimes - some of the CGI effects are bad and don't look real, but it was 2011). I feel that, in general, CGI fails to replicate the visceral nature of some practical effects, particularly in horror.