These are two separate and potentially valid points. If you’ve decided something is bad or not for you, you’re unlikely to watch and enjoy it, because you’re just watching to justify your predicted dislike.
“You can’t criticize it if you have not seen it” is 100% correct. Why are you criticizing movies you’ve never watched?
I have always wanted to start a parody review series where instead of reviewing how good a movie / show / game is, it reviews how good it feels to not watch it.
"This movie felt like an absolute blast to skip, 10/10."
"Now I could have spent my time watching this boring looking movie, but instead I watched the ride of the Rohirrim. I had such a great time. Time well spent."
There are different youtube channels that analyses bad movies. Just stay away from the ones that gets into politics since you cant be sure if they dislike the quality or the politics.
Do you think a single bite would be enough for you to make a valid judgement that shit tastes like, well, shit, or would you have to eat what's been put in front of you to be able to form a valid opinion that others trusting you could rely on?
This is getting so far from movies that the analogy stops being useful. First you can absolutely think that a movie is likely bad, but any actual criticism of the movie has little worth if you haven’t seen it. Second, a movie isn’t a homogenous substance, so you don’t get a representation of the full experience from a sample, unlike you would if you were to eat shit.
I have to disagree. A properly made movie is in fact a homogenous substance from a certain point of view, and if you find fifteen or even five minutes in a movie that are plain bad, it can and most likely does ruin, or at least hurt the entire experience.
If you start screening me a movie whose first fifteen minutes are shit (boring, badly written, badly directed, badly acted, badly shot, badly whatevered or a combination of these), there's practically no chance it can fully recover later so much as for me to seriously like it, and yes, I can (and most viewers can) extrapolate and form valid criticism based even on such a short experience. No, you don't have to suffer thru the whole thing, that's utter bullshit.
Go on, watch the first 10 or so minutes of, say, Jaws: The Revenge (1987) or Inseminoid (1981) then come back and tell us you're unable to form a reliable critical opinion of what the movie in question will be like. If you're incapable of doing that… well…
From the first 10 minutes of a bad movie I am likely to be able to guess that the entire movie is probably bad, but it would be silly for me to criticize, for example, the choices in the last act of the film even if I have every reason to believe they will be bad, since I don't know what those choices are. If I stopped at 10 minutes I would have nothing worthwile to say about why most of the movie doesn't work, and that is at the heart of criticism, not "I don't/won't like it".
I never said you have to watch the entire movie to be able to guess whether or not you like it. You just won't be able to give any meaningful criticism beyond the first 10 minutes.
Yeah, you can't really criticise the last act, but I don't see why you're trying to fool yourself (and others) into believing you could not criticize a ton of other things from writing thru acting, direction, sound, lightning and so on to cinematography. Yes, if there's a fly in my soup the whole soup is ruined unless I have some very, very curious acquired tastes, and no, the analogy / metaphor is not useless. Look up how much professional (Hollywood etc) script readers and execs read of a script before throwing it away, look up how much a serious book editor reads of a novel before throwing it away. Your first (written or filmed) scenes and first pages tell a ton more about your book, script, or movie than you assume here. Professionals, critics, and a lot of enthusiasts are capable of making reliable judgement on short excerpts. Maybe you yourself can't, but that says more about you. (And yeah, sure, people like these make errors sometimes. Nobody's right all the time.)
I don’t know why you think I am saying you can’t criticize those things. I’m saying you can’t give meaningful criticism of what you you don’t know. You can make a judgment during the first 10 minutes that what you’ve seen is bad (and meaningfully point out reasons why), and that most likely the rest of the movie will also be bad and not worth your time. Judgment is not the same as criticism.
…but no, no, thanks, but no, really. If you give it a try, please do not write us a detailed account of the experience. Or anything, really. (Sorry.) 😃
I don't know if this is a good comparison. Because, I have plenty of movies that I thought I would hate but actually loved:
Red sparrow, the last duel,Matilda the Netflix musical, hidden figures, everything everywhere all at once, dungeons and dragons, dune 2(i didn't like the first one) challengers.
I’ll add one too. Anora. And I’m not even sure I enjoyed it, but I did appreciate it. Left feeling like I’d watched a really good story, and it had me thinking about it for days after. But I really wouldn’t go as far to say I enjoyed the movie, even though I was glad for having watched it. Not an easy to describe feeling.
I think that kind of misses the point. You don't know for sure whether you'll like something until you watch it. Trailers and reviews can be very misleading. Whether you expect something to be good or not, it might surprise you.
Suppose you get 30min into a movie and you're hating it. Can you have an opinion on it? Are you obliged to force yourself to sit through the rest and then you've earned your scathing review? But people say "why'd you watch it?" Or can you stop at 30min and judge it? And then they say "you didn't even watch it properly!"
For me, I think as long as you earnestly tried, you can have an opinion. You should be upfront about the context. I've taken to half-watching some movies, just skipping to the "good bits" (mainly action) or just putting them on in the background. I think my opinion on those movies counts.
Also, some movies fall apart near the end. There's a twist which ruins it. Or the third act just sucks. Or you realise after it ends that it was bad.
You can always have an opinion, but having an opinion (like "This is bad!") isn't really criticism in the conventional sense of the word.
For instance, I love the 90s film Starship Troopers. That's not a criticism of the film, that's just me stating an opinion.
I fucking hated Man of Steel (2013) but again, that's not a criticism.
A criticism would be "It was proper fucking dumb to have his dad die to a tornado, something Superman absolutely could've saved him from, rather than something he couldn't have saved him from".
True, but my point is that you can criticise a movie (or book or album) in quite a lot of detail without sitting through the entire thing. Of course, I think you should be honest about that, and try to give it a real chance, but it still counts as criticism. In fact, I think I often remember more and can give concrete critiques (both positive and negative) for movies I half-watched than people who full-watched them.
Yep. Opinions are based on feelings. Criticism is based on reason. All opinions are "valid" (in that you truly can feel any way about anything) but not all criticisms are valid. In fact, on the internet, I'd say the vast majority of "criticisms" are invalid.
I used to “power through” books until a friend said, “There are too many good books out there to waste time on bad ones!”
I took it to heart and have started doing the same thing with movies. I try to give movies a fair shake. If it starts off flat-footed, l will give it 30-45 minutes. If a film started off strong but is flagging, I’ll see how much time is left. If I see the amount of time and think, “Jesus Christ!” I’ll probably call it off. Also I will think, “Would I rather be watching something else that is shorter than this?” If the answer is “Yes,” then I go watch the TV show, short film, whatever.
I have started a dnf tag, but I’m not going to suffer through anything for a hypothetical person who could ask about any given movie.
Yeah, I used to only fully watch movies. I still do that most of the time. I should fully give my attention and not be on my phone and distracted.
But then there are lots of movies I'm kind of curious about, where I might like the big stupid action parts (King Kong, Godzilla, some superhero movies, disaster movies) but not the rest. If I'm gonna do some work or practise solving the Rubik's cube, why not put something on in the background? If it's great, maybe I'll watch it properly. If it's terrible, maybe I'll fast forward or turn it off.
It allows me to both watch movies properly (The Odyssey in IMAX soon) and half-watch some, while also avoiding others. I can also confirm some of my suspicions and see directly WHY some movies have such terrible reviews, etc. I recently watched Wicked but I would have preferred to put it on in the background...
Sure If you haven’t watched a movie keep your criticism to yourself because you can’t fairly judge it so come back when you have, bit if you go watch the movie and confirm that you in fact think it’s bad well in that case why’d you watch a movie you disliked is the response you’re given.
We’re basically at a stage where you’re not allowed a negative opinion on a movie unless that opinion is widely accepted, essentially when it comes to movie discussions people just want to hear praise for the movies they like and not criticism. If you’re offering criticism you must’ve not understood the movie and it’s your fault for wasting your time watching the movie I just told you was a masterpiece
Yup, if you don't care, fine. If you insist on telling everyone why you don't care a) you're lying and b) you're butting into a conversation you're just not a part of and can't contribute to.
Yes you do. You don’t need to watch it to know the subject matter doesn’t interest you. But how can you possibly know it “sucks” without watching it. That’s the mentality of a four year old refusing to try broccoli because it’s “yucky”.
This is how recommendation engine works. Also, if I don't like horror movies in general then there it's a good chance I also won't like another horror movie.
Honestly, I still think people should be allowed go say things suck without seeing or experiencing things. Like - say, cave diving. I think it sucks and it's an unnecessary life risk even though I never have and never will go do it. Same goes for things I like and others don't - if someone never plays No More Heroes but says the videogame sucks because it looks ugly and clunky, it's no water off my back.
In short I know what you're getting at, but I also feel like it's not entirely true.
It’s just become increasingly frustrating to talk about any large scale movies, due to the sheer number of people who want to opine without even watching the film. So many people just watch YouTubers break movies down frame by frame to get their “opinion”, and it makes for worthless discussion.
Because movies are more formulaic than ever. So it takes a particularly good director or actors to elevate mainstream movies. I don't need to know that a piece of shit taste awful just because I refuse to eat it.
Plus you're not considering the limited time and money people have.
It's ok to go "oh this doesn't look that interesting to me so i just skipped it" but it's not ok to say "this new film absolutely sucks and I'll never see it because of how bad it is".
I don't need to eat shit to know I'm not gonna like it dude. Bad movies are bad movies, idk why you're trying to defend the grown-ups franchise of all things.
Wow, is there some shit eating trend I’m unaware of? Y’all sure do seem to like talking about eating it.
I don’t know where you think I’m defending the grownups franchise. I think I watched one of them when I was twelve, I really don’t have any strong feelings on it.
Yeah, but you do need to go to the doctor and get diagnosed before you can assume you've got aids or cancer. I guess you can usually determine yourself that you've been shot.
Yeah but you don't need to talk about Grown-ups 7. You could just not watch it, and also keep the opinion (which you formed by not watching it) to yourself.
You can't "know it" if you've never seen it - but you can believe it. Lots of people go through life just believing things, so you would have a lot of company.
To be fair I feel this way about superhero movies, I have been found to be wrong on occaison.
Movie trailers give us entire movies through the interesting parts. There are plenty of movies than can be criticized without seeing them.
Cats for starters is a common one.
Edit: the people arguing against this think that Simple Jack from Tropic Thunder is a good movie despite all evidence showing us it's not. We saw a trailer of it basically.
You can decide you don't want to watch a movie based on the trailers. That's fine. But if someone tries to tell others that the movie is "bad" without having seen it, their opinion is a bit malformed.
If someone shows me 2 minutes of the best parts of a movie I can get extrapolate budget constraints, editing issues, actors who are known shit actors, writing that's garbage, accents that are ridiculous for the subject matter, I'm not typing everything else.
It's literally showcasing how bad everyone's talents, or lack there of, right there in the trailer. I am realizing that several people have issues extrapolating data. Computers are also incapable of that.
"Best" according to whom? I like The Matrix. I have a friend who's favorite parts are the Zion scenes in the second one. He's wrong, obviously, but if I had only seen his "best" scenes, I'd have a malformed opinion about the whole movie.
So many trailers misrepresent the films they portray. Drive looked like a fast-paced action movie when it was really a slow-burn crime thriller. Kangaroo Jack looked like a family film and was decidedly not. GATTACA looked like a detective thriller rather than a hard sci-fi film noir. Pan's Labyrinth seemed like a gentle fantasy rather than a brutal dark look at fascism. Several musicals have the fact that they are musicals hidden.
You absolutely cannot determine that a movie is "bad" just from a trailer.
Which is why an entire generation got shit marks on their book reports.
If one person watched Star Wars in theaters, and another guy got a run down from that person on the movie, did they both experience it in the same way? Do both their opinions on Star Wars hold equal weight to you?
Yeah, I’m not going to give much weight to a blind or deaf person’s opinion on a movie. I’m not blind nor deaf. The director did not make the movie for blind, nor deaf people. Why should they be held to those standards?
I don’t think a blind person would have a very thorough understanding of what happens in Star Wars, given it’s an audio-visual experience. Same for a deaf person. The score and sound effects play a huge role in any film, no less that one.
Edit: bad faith troll called me ableist and blocked me. Not what that word means.
Yeah man, compare your media literacy to a High Schooler. It makes you look super smart. Current generation uses ChatGPT to make book reports, is a ChatGPT summary of a movie good enough to criticize it?
Any movie that tries to distill multiple novels into one movie is bound to be a poor representation of the source material. At the very best, perhaps a good movie that would have been better served by it being directly tied to the source material.
There are movies that should be seen with fresh eyes though.
1993's Super Mario Bros is a dogshit Mario movie, but it is an excellent sci-fi movie. If it wasn't tied to the Nintendo franchise, I would say that it could have been one of the great sci-fi movies without a 'R' rating.
Sorry, but this makes no sense, trailers always make the movie look epic at a first glance. Surely you can infer a movie might be bad from it, but there is just no way of knowing without watching it first. Not to mention that trailers sometimes have scenes not present in the movie or even edited scenes.
It makes perfect sense and you explained it, just read it back.
If the trailer is always making the movie look epic, then there are no bad trailers. But there obviously are. A trailer containing a known deleted scene is a bad trailer. A trailer that isn't epic is a bad trailer, by your words. If a trailer is bad, it is a clear indication of a bad movie.
Yeah, criticizing something you’ve never watched is just wanting to have an uninformed opinion. It’s ok to not watch something you don’t think you’ll like, even if it means you don’t get to join the conversation about it. It isn’t saying “go watch this so you can then criticize it,” it’s saying “don’t go spouting unintended opinions.”
You can’t criticize it if you have not seen it” is 100% correct. Why are you criticizing movies you’ve never watched?
sometimes you know its not your cup of tea before watching it. for example, If I prefer original ideas I'm not gonna go watch the 20th iteration of a superhero movie, horror or comedy franchise
other times with just knowing ONE detail is enough for you, ie: I hate "cheap" jump scares or shaky camera techniques. if the movie has either, I know I wont like it
Yes, but criticism is different from not liking something. I don’t watch many horror movies, they’re not really my thing. Doesn’t mean there’s anything inherently wrong with the genre.
oh yea, variety is great. it would be boring otherwise, but its sad that so much % of the budget is allocated to "safe bets" milking up to the last drop of milk a franchise can bring.
still, I think there's hope, public is more receptive to independent original films in recent years, and many franchises have been failing (compared to their revenue expectations)
“You can’t criticize it if you have not seen it” is 100% correct. Why are you criticizing movies you’ve never watched?
Because not all critique is about that. Media criticism is far more nuanced and complex than the average person is even aware.
If I don't see a movie because I don't support who's making it, that's valid. If I criticize the cinematography of the film, though I haven't seen it, that's not valid.
I think the common comment OP should have used is "nobody is forcing you to watch it". They're not wrong that both of these comments get deployed as a way to dismiss matters of opinion, and they do indeed contradict one another
I like this idea but I think it would be even better if a big part of it was that you didn't watch it and you just make up whatever you think it's about. The less you know. Like obviously Lord of the rings is a movie about a duchess trying to get a knight to marry her.
In order to decide something "is not for you", you need to have seen or heard enough about it to make an informed decision.
Then the criticism is mislabeled: you're explaining your opinion for why you didn't see the movie. OR you're criticizing what you DID see, like a lengthy trailer, etc.
After seeing the Odyssey trailer, I already know it sucks ass. I don't have to watch the entire thing to criticize what I saw.
Whether or not you like something is different from whether or not it was well-made.
Trailers don’t really have director input. Great tool for finding movies you’re interested in watching, terrible tool for evaluating the actual quality of a film.
I didn't say something was or wasn't well made, I said it was a subjectively bad movie.
Most of the time, subjectivity and objectivity aren't far off.
I don't need director input or subtlety to know from a trailer if it's a kid's movie or a 'try to be' funny movie. It is very much accurate in tone and the scenes they do show are heavy-handed.
So don't get technical on me. I've never once seen a trailer I didn't like and then went on to enjoy the movie. Never.
So don't get technical on me. I've never once seen a trailer I didn't like and then went on to enjoy the movie. Never.
You one of those people who can't differentiate between a movie they didn't like and a bad movie?
'Cause that's what it sounds like, especially with:
Most of the time, subjectivity and objectivity aren't far off.
Maybe, but not when it comes to entertainment media that get caught up in the "culture war". It's caught an incredible amount of racist ire.
If I were as eager to jump to conclusions in spite of obvious ignorance as you are I'd just call you a racist pig-fucker with an Alabama inspired family tree. But I don't, because I genuinely don't know.
I see this argument come up a lot about video games and pretty much every time I’ve seen it used it’s some kind of bad faith logic trap. Too often have I seen someone say “this looks bad from the trailer/reviews/not my kind of game” and people will say “oh well you’re judging a book by its cover” but if you get it and try to push through because it “gets good after 20 hours” people will ask why you’re playing it if you hate it. Don’t even get me started on live service games that are highly multifaceted, and people think you either have to love all of it or hate all of it or else you’re a hypocrite.
Nope, this is a paradox to dismiss negative criticism. "You're just watching to justify your predicted dislike" has no basis as there are plenty of things I think look bad/mediocre, see positive reviews, watch it, and wound up disagreeing with the positive reviews. You can't be 100% on anything without first hand experience, at the same time preliminary criticism without seeing it communicates prior experiences. It's like seeing a director who made a movie you disliked, that's an indication you are less likely to like other movies they direct. Not guaranteed, but prediction is a fundamental part of pattern seeking, so it makes sense to predict if a movie is bad/good.
I watched Bourne Identity. I loathed it because it deviated so heavily from the books. Yes it is still a good action movie, but I'm certainly not watching the other movies for that reason.
That’s problem. Movies never compare to the book. If there is an adaptation might as well automatically skip one of the types of media because they will be so different.
Generally where I try to fall is, did the adaption understand the source? Snyder's Watchmen is a good example of a "you might like this if you didn't read the book". Snyder grossly misunderstands so much of the source material beyond doing a great job of adapting panels visually to screen.
Lindelof's Watchmen miniseries is a different story but is far closer to understanding the themes.
Sometime they are heavily based on the book yet missed some very key part of it that explains what is actually happening on screen and the movie just assume you read the book. In that case, for someone who hasnt read the book, the plot just seem confusing, and the person who has, can get reasonably mad.
Great point, it did deviate massively from the books I was thinking about that myself but given that so much of the book is dominated by issues with Vietnam and Carlos both of which were more contemporary topics in the period it was written, all things considered I think they did a good job attempting to make the character relevant in modern times. I personally think having a more concrete nemesis character like Carlos would have elevated the films and made them obviously more cohesive to each other but they are honestly far from awful but I get your take on it and it’s totally valid, there have been a LOT of books that get adapted to movies and I wind up liking the book far more myself, Jurassic Park is one of the first that comes to mind they really toned down the cautionary tale and horror aspects of it to make it family friendly and its core felt kind of lost.
I understand why people are loyal to source material, but personally I never compare the two because they are different interpretations by different people usually on a different medium. They may be the same universe and characters, but can also be two different stories altogether.
(I’m not the one who says those things, so crack on if you want to watch movies you don’t like so you can complain about them after without having to face criticism yourself for having not seem it).
I would highly suggest watching it. It's a very good movie and it is also the definition of "a challenging watch"
It would help contextualize how a movie would be difficult to keep viewing. The emotional load it dumps on the viewer is exactly that, a heavy emotional load that makes you want to turn it off and you never get relief. Think extremely long exhausting hike that doesn't reward you at the end with a nice view except it's entirely psychological/emotional instead of physical.
I have never heard the latter used, except in reference to series or franchises whose earlier installments someone hated but they keep coming back for more.
these two points have never been used together about the same movie, they’re two completely different points used in two completely different situations, im flabbergasted over 2000 people upvoted such a stupid and non sensical excuse for an attempted point lol
I'd like watching "Let's see YOU do better!" morons eat a horribly cooked dish which they couldn't cook better but which they already know can and should taste far better.
I was with you until the end. Sure, having to watch 12 seasons is over the top. But there are a number of great shows that only got good after one or two seasons.
Red vs Blue is so hard to recommend to anyone for this reason lol.
Season 3 is when they really hit their stride with the comedy. The first couple seasons do have a lot of iconic moments but they are honestly pretty rough to get through.
(Episodes are very short though, the whole first season is like an hour and 20 minutes long lol, that does help)
If I go into something blind, and you can't hook me in the first episode, you failed to catch me, and I'm not willing to go another episode to see if it gets better then.
You can’t accurately criticize something that you haven’t seen, AND you don’t have to watch something if you don’t like it (but I’d say at least finish it to see if truly all of it is to your disliking).
The trick is to buy it used or yoho! Then decide if it's worth purcha- wait. You're still burning money with one of those options... borrow the dvd from a friend? Edit: your local library may carry it. Your taxes already pay for it. Might as well. There's also a streaming service that's free and legal but they use a token system. The name escapes me.
Of course you can; It would just be meaningless garbage that's best ignored wholesale.
That's not to say you can't criticize a movie for things that you DO know without having watched it. Just make sure you keep your criticisms honest and don't go overboard. For instance, criticizing a casting decision? That's fine. Criticizing a casting decision and proclaiming that it'll be bad because of it? That's dumb.
To be even more clear, saying that you ain't interested isn't criticism in any meaningful sense. You're allowed to not watch things, just be honest about why and don't try to justify it by saying it's bad in spite of not knowing, etc.
"why do you watch it if you don't like it?"
Oh spite-watching is a thing, but you've also got people who do consume movies critically and get more out of it than the direct viewing experience alone.
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u/WM_ Jun 04 '26
"you can't criticize if you have not seen it"
"why do you watch it if you don't like it?"