Objectivity, Criticism, and the Internet

KindOfBlue

Pro Adventurer
AKA
Blue
I wonder if somehow the uncanny valley plays into effect here, a lot of old-school practical effects are so obviously fake yet that somehow adds to the creepiness to me
 
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Clement Rage

Pro Adventurer
There's no fair comparison, or 'in general' there's just individual effects versus other effects, The original Thing is famous for how good it's effects were, the remake is not. It's top of the line practical v average CG. That's what always happens in these convos, the comparison is between the bestest practical effects ever made and average to bad CG, nobody ever tries to compare Falkor from the Neverending Story and Smaug.
 

Clement Rage

Pro Adventurer
New one I've seen around 'you can only write characters as smart as you or lower.' It feels like a cheap, cruel, way for a critic to take a jab at a writer's intelligence, because it's so obviously not true. I can write Lucrecia Crescent without a PHD in Biotechnology. People can write Sherlock Holmes without being themselves a great detective.

I suppose you could try to salvage that by saying you can write someone with more knowledge than you have, but not someone cleverer... but what's the meaningful distinction there? It's such a snide, cruel meme.

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Nandemoyasan

Standing guard
AKA
Johnny
New one I've seen around 'you can only write characters as smart as you or lower.' It feels like a cheap, cruel, way for a critic to take a jab at a writer's intelligence, because it's so obviously not true. I can write Lucrecia Crescent without a PHD in Biotechnology. People can write Sherlock Holmes without being themselves a great detective.

I suppose you could try to salvage that by saying you can write someone with more knowledge than you have, but not someone cleverer... but what's the meaningful distinction there? It's such a snide, cruel meme.

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it’s patently untrue simply because I have the memories of having met people smarter than I am, to draw from, in order to write

if your writing demands pedantic long winded speeches by characters who are smart to prove how smart they are, then yeah you would need to be as smart as the character you’re writing for, but if you just want to show that a character is smart, all you have to do is have them figure out the solution to a problem nobody else figured out first

It is just a way for people to be mad at writers, which is stupid when it’s usually directors or producers that are to blame for shows being stupid
 

Clement Rage

Pro Adventurer
Case Study: The Last of Us: Part II. Mechanically, the story functions. (There are things wrong with it, but they're normal video game logic things like 'where did this giant horde of enemies come from? How did Character X get to place Y through incredibly hostile territory unscathed.') Emotionally, the story requires very specific responses from its audience, and if the audience isn't there, then they don't get carried along.

Case Study 2: The Mandalorian. On a mechanical level, it is fairly poor. Character, continuity, worldbuilding are shaky, the story backflips on a dime from 'we can't hide from the bleepy tracking thing' to 'character G is missing, we have no way to find them'. The action scenes mostly involve shooting blasters at someone who cannot be injured by blasters. A character with a history of baby eating is left to be babysat by new parents and their new baby.

But it works anyway. Because it elicits the correct emotional response. Last of us Part 1 leaned into the Lone Wolf and Cub dynamic that is easy to invest in. Part 2 didn't have that dynamic, so was a harder sell to its audience.

If the audience is emotionally in the right place, they'll ignore flawed mechanics. If they are not, good mechanics don't save you.

Not exactly revolutionary, I know.
 
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Deleted member 13557

Guest
In terms of entertainment is anything objectively bad or are there only preferences and opinions?

If someone told me they think Freddy’s Dead is better than the original Nightmare on Elm Street I’d probably silently judge them but they aren’t objectively wrong. Maybe they see something in it that I don’t or maybe they get something from it that I never did.

Using Freddy’s Dead as an example as that’s the first film I saw that I really disliked.
 
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