Okay. So there’s this website I like, indieWIRE. I follow them on Facebook. I read their reviews time to time. Generally I read the site for news. I mean, how else would I know that there’s a documentary about the lost Tim Burton Superman movie coming out this summer? Or pick up some Duplass-approved filmmaking tips? Or discover how much ass Unfriended kicked at the box office? But the thing is, sometimes indieWIRE can get, uh, a little ahead of itself.
Or when they put up a blog post indiscriminately trashing fan theories, going so far as to imply that anyone who comes up with a fan theory is not a “real fan.”
Or when they trashed the shit out of Jurassic World for no ostensible reason other than that it dared to beat their favorite indies at the box office, then threw in some commments about Mad Max to half-heartedly defend blockbusters as a thing.
That last one was what really got my goat. I mean, a review is one thing. I have immense respect for film critics because I know how unbelievably hard it is to write a film review that adequately represents your love, hatred or indifference to a particular film. So I’m not going to bust anyone for writing an unfavorable review; much as I loved Jurassic World, I know it wasn’t perfect and everyone is allowed their own opinion. But when you post one article after another relentlessly degrading a film and beating the “but it’s a blockbuster!” dead horse, that’s going too far. Especially when your main complaint about the film ties back into the “blockbuster bad/indie good” dichotomy that seems to have infiltrated the minds of generation after generation of film students.
To pin a movie’s worth entirely on its financial standing is absolutely ridiculous. I mean it is truly, deeply absurd. This dynamic of popular vs. unpopular has got to stop. It’s why Tim Burton still gets his ass handed to him by critics even when he comes out with the best thing he’s made in almost a decade. It’s why guys like Ethan Hawke put on airs about their films being more “interesting” simply by virtue of their non-blockbuster status. It’s why filmmakers like William Friedkin point fingers at Marvel and other superhero franchises for “ruining” the film industry and insist their work is a hundred times better than any of that useless popular stuff.
And it’s why indieWIRE is sneering at Jurassic World simply for having the gall to gross more than Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, despite the fact that they’re two very different films aimed at very different audiences. It’s become de rigueur for critics and independent or midbudget directors to nail blockbuster films to the wall--whether they’re out of envy or simply different taste is unclear, but I have a pretty good idea. It’s the same reason I used to hate the most popular kid in my high school, simply because everyone liked his movies better than mine. If you’re seriously comparing Me and Earl and the Dying Girl to Jurassic World, well, let me ask you, what are you hoping to accomplish? It’s like comparing Beauty and the Beast to A Clockwork Orange. Both are fine pieces of cinematic artwork, but they are made for completely different audiences. Of course a movie like Jurassic World is going to gross more on its opening weekend than Me and Earl and the Dying Girl; it’s made for a wide audience, whereas Me and Earl and the Dying Girl is made for a niche audience. They are both good movies; why are we pitting them against each other?
Let me be clear: there is always room for different opinions, and there is always room for critique. I’ve got some of my own that would make Roger Ebert whack me with a punishment salmon; I hate Titanic and can’t stand Von Trier, but I love A Clockwork Orange--which scares the pee out of most people--and basically worship Gus Van Sant; I can’t stand Coppola and I think Tim Burton hung the moon. Meanwhile I also think there are some serious issues with the Academy Awards. So yes, it’s a good and wonderful thing to criticize an industry that’s as out of whack as the film industry, and it’s perfectly natural to have different opinions on what constitutes a great movie.
But here’s the thing. Aggressively mocking fan theories, calling directors “failures” for making films that aren’t to your taste, and bemoaning Jurassic World’s impressive turn at the box office doesn’t do a damn thing except make you look like that kid standing on a soapbox in the middle of the schoolyard yelling fight the power! stand up to The Man! popular is not good, go against the grain, be unique! I wouldn’t be so vehement about this, if not for the fact that those people who yell “Be unique!” frequently turn around and lecture the people who dare to have different opinions. It’s like the people who claim feminism is about women’s freedom of choice and then call every woman who chooses to have children instead of a career “unfeminist.” You can’t have it both ways. You can’t say “have your own opinion!” and then nail someone else for, y’know, having an opinion.
About a week after the Oscars I had dinner with a classmate who spent half the meal lamenting the fact that Boyhood didn’t win Best Picture. Now, I think we all know how I feel about Boyhood (and if you forgot, let me remind you that it is hands-down my least favorite Linklater film of all time), but having felt the pain of seeing some of my favorites lose and, in some cases, not even be nominated, I listened to his venting. He called Boyhood a groundbreaking epic, Linklater’s best film, the highlight of 2014 in movies. He said that the film resonated with him on a deeply emotional level--which, knowing what I know about this person’s history, I definitely understood. I may not have liked Boyhood, but I certainly got why he did.
At some point he asked me who I would have seen win Best Picture--a loaded question when aimed at me, considering my taste in movies and my disgust for the pretentious nature of awards shows in general, but I took a whack at it. I answered honestly that I would have loved to see Big Eyes or Guardians of the Galaxy at least make it into the running.
He looked at me like I’d just said Cap’n Crunch was the cure for cancer. He railed on about the glorification of the blockbuster and how all blockbusters were turning into Michael Bay films and, in a Friedkin-approved way, blamed Marvel and DC for the “brain candy” that he insisted had infiltrated every theater from hell to Houston. And Big Eyes, according to him, was no better. It was Tim Burton grasping at straws, trying to prove he had one more bullet in the chamber, but it “wasn’t interesting.” It was “pretty, but there was no real story and no real hero.” He conceded, however, that it was better than the “empty, feel-good fairytale” that was Guardians of the Galaxy.
When he was done venting I gently pointed out that Guardians was a big hit with kids and asked him if maybe, just maybe, Guardians of the Galaxy could have resonated emotionally with someone else the way Boyhood resonated with him. To his credit, he actually paused and considered that for a moment, before shaking his head and concluding, “No. It could have, if it hadn’t been just another franchise money-grab. Like, if they’d done it right. But they didn’t, they just made another blockbuster out of it.” I’m not exaggerating when I say that he said “blockbuster” like a curse word.
Once again, he is entitled to his opinion. If he didn’t like Guardians, that’s just fine. But his whole argument was built on the idea that because it was made by a major studio, because it was made to appeal to a wide audience, Guardians of the Galaxy was inherently “mindless entertainment.” I can’t speak for everyone who saw it, but I cried watching Guardians. There were so many little moments, character quirks that might’ve gone unnoticed, that made me look at Peter Quill and think “oh my God, that’s me.” It was funny, it kept me guessing, and it made me do something I’ve never done before: go back and see it two more times. Not even the Harry Potter films enticed me to do that. My mom, who never watches Marvel movies, watched Guardians with me and enjoyed it. So maybe it’s no Rear Window, but I will defend Guardians of the Galaxy as one of the better films in the Marvel canon.
But to my friend, there can be no gray area on this issue. He complained bitterly about Big Hero 6 taking Best Animated over The Tale of Princess Kayuga. He laughed outright when I suggested Lego Movie should have won. (“It was a shameless marketing ploy for LEGO. How could anyone take that movie seriously?”) He rolled his eyes at the idea of Sebastian Stan getting a nomination for Best Supporting Actor. (“What did he do, stand there and scowl? I could have done that.”) But he hated that Boyhood lost above all, even to Birdman, a movie that he admitted was “way, way better than if American Sniper would’ve won.” If you’re seeing a theme here, well spotted. Anything that made big money at the box office was automatically poison. And anything that originated overseas or in someone’s basement was wronged if it didn’t win.
To someone like me, who loves many different kinds of movies, the kind of dork who can happily watch Django Unchained back-to-back with Home Alone 2, this black-and-white presentation of one type of cinema being inherently better than the other is confusing and even harmful. I’ve been shamed for liking certain films and I’ve seen others get the same treatment. It’s worse when you’re in film school, but I can’t imagine it’s easy for people who are actually in the industry. It’s the dichotomy that Tim Burton explored in Big Eyes: either you can be loved by audiences and hated by critics, or loved by critics and ignored by audiences; it’s nearly impossible to be both. And I can’t understand why. Art is and always has been subjective, but why do we turn it into a battlefield when it doesn’t have to be? Or as one astute Facebook commenter said on an article about Claire’s heels and whether or not they represent sexism in Jurassic World, “Can’t we just enjoy the movie and stop bitching at each other?”
So by all means continue to critique films and the film industry--after all, discourse is one of the things that makes pop culture so dynamic--but for the love of God, I beg you, have better criticism for a movie than “it’s a blockbuster.”
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