Yeah. I read top 10 as ‘movies selling well at the box office’ not necessarily ‘top 10 movies of all time.’ In other words, if it shows up in IMDb’s “Tops at the Box Office” list, it’s a no go.
I don’t let the opinion of the masses influence what I see. Which means I will see a movie if I think it looks interesting - if it is popular or not so popular.
Exactly what I wanted to post.
I didn’t go see the Dark Knight because of the hype; I went because it genuinely looked well made and interesting. It was.
Sometimes popular opinion is right. Star Wars was popular and is excellent, right?
We avoid this problem by trying to see films very early in their run. If you see a film you’re interested in before any box office results are in, you can see it and not worry about it being a Top 10 film. We saw “Batman The Dark Knight” at the midnight show. We were responsible for it becoming a blockbuster, true. But we went because we admired the director and the actors involved, had seen the previous one and quite liked it, etc.
Now, if you were saying “I boycott the Top 10 songs!”, I’d say “more power to you”. But that’s because the pop charts represent a completely different set of consumer choices. Most of the musical genres I like don’t stand a chance of reaching the top ten, and I don’t miss anything I’d probably enjoy. On the other hand, I’ve heard pop songs that I enjoyed that later became huge hits…and have been shocked when they did so. Then the pop music machine cranked up, played it to death and made me dread hearing the song again (Gnarls Barkley’s “Crazy” for instance).
Exactly. Don’t follow the crowd or defy the crowd because either way you’re letting the crowd make your choices. Ignore the crowd and do what you want.
I had a girlfriend who made a point to avoid popular movies. I tried to get her to see Raiders of the Lost Ark once (she hadn’t seen it!) and she refused because it was too popular. She was a bit of a snob.
I have to admit that a lot of mainstream Hollywood films are stupid, bordering on moronic, but I refuse to discount something just because it’s a commercial success. If a film comes along that sounds interesting to me, I’ll go see it, regardless of popularity. (My picks tend to be the less popular, artsy films, but not always.)
I refuse to let the behavior of other moviegoers influence my opinion of a film. If you’re avoiding a movie because it’s popular, you’re being just as much a herd animal as the person who only sees the blockbusters.
My sister and brother in law do this. I thnk it is too bad, because she misses some pretty good movies. Blockbusters aren’t always dumbed down for the masses, but I can’t deny that most of them are. I can’t think of them off the top of my head, but I know she has missed some movies she would like just based on stubborn bias.
I’m not a big indie film fan. I though Pi was cinematic masterbation. This is not to say there aren’t good indie films, but most aren’t as good as the hype.
Strangely, both of us thought that the Star Wars prequels were just great.
I definitely understand the mentality behind this. I’m a bit of a contrarian myself, though generally with regards to things within my circle of friends rather than society at large. When something that I regard as mediocre or merely okay starts being unduly lauded, I find that my opinion tends to solidify against it. This can sometimes lead me to immediately suspect that if something is too popular, it must be bad. I fully realize this is an irrational mindset.
I used to think this way. I was 100% sure that general popularity ensured worthlessness.
When Twin Peaks was on the cover of every magazine, I still refused to watch it, although David Lynch was one of my favourite directors. It was just axiomatic: If everybody liked it, it was shit.
After the series wrapped up, a friend gave me a stack of videotapes and insisted that I at least watch the pilot. Of course I devoured the entire series, and that was the end of my snobbism.
I don’t think that there was anything magic about Twin Peaks that helped to bring me to my senses, except that it came out in 1990, and that’s an attitude that doesn’t wear well past the age of twenty.
prepares for lynching
I’m going through Whedon backlash right now. He could have cast the worst, most offkey, most hated pop stars in existence for Dr. Horrible and the world would still happily wank to it because he made it. The man just seems like he can do no wrong, but I’m a bit wary of someone who has never, ever been involved with a stinker project. People treat him like the cinematic Hand of Midas.
So, uh, I’m afraid to watch any of his stuff and say I’ve done it, because then I’ll be stuck sitting there for an hour while the person I’m talking to squees over him.
The percentage of shitty movies that aren’t Hollywood blockbusters is probably even higher than those that are. And this is especially true about art house fare, which has tended to settle into as much if not more of a formulatic style as big studio films, to a point that I can often classify such films and deduce the plot revelations from the trailer. Personally, I don’t care about the popularity of a film (though I do generally avoid opening weekends for big pictures, both because I don’t like crowds and because I don’t like to feed the fallacy of “opening weekend proceeds” as a measure of anything but the effectiveness of the pre-releasing marketing campaign).
Saying that you don’t want to watch popular movies is like saying, “I don’t watch Bond movies because they’re all mindless sequences of improbable violence and big-titted women.” Well, certainly some–perhaps even many–are, but then you’d miss classics like From Russia With Love, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, and the recent (and blockbusting) Casino Royale, just because you don’t want to be associated with dreck like Diamonds Are Forever, The Man With The Golden Gun, and Die Another Day. (And besides, Goldfinger, while falling in the latter camp, is still a good time, even though or indeed perhaps because the plot makes no sense and Bond comes off as an incompetent booby throughout the entire film.)
The o.p.'s rational is just as shallow, if not moreso, than the people who rush out to see whatever Lethal Weapon or Star Wars sequel is being squeezed out now. Ditto for “In my defense I am a big reader and I loathe fantasy and science fiction,”; while 90% of fantasy and science fiction is crap, 90% of anything is crap. There are some great novels and novelists–including George Orwell, Kurt Vonnegut, Thomas Pynchon, José Saramago, Philip K. Dick, Stanislaw Lem, Jorge Luis Borges, to name a few–who have worked in the genre of “science fiction” and have used the freedom therein to explore great ideas and expand the horizons of literature. It’s not all Martian princesses and elves with swords, just as all spy fiction is thankfully not Robert Ludlum and Clive Cussler.
Stranger
One of the interesting things about the blockbusters you listed is that most of them are pictures with huge, huge budgets and special effects to match. Those kinds of movies NEED to have big box office numbers, or they aren’t going to be worth making. If you don’t give a rip about that aspect of movie making, then there isn’t much point to seeing those movies…most of them aren’t known for their brilliant dialogue or plots.
But man, those dinosaurs were scary! And that ship sinking… :eek: I won’t say you’ve missed out (I don’t go to the movie theater at all, so I’ve only seen these on the small screen myself), but I wouldn’t say there’s nothing about them that’s worthwhile.
I mentioned recently in a different thread that I tend to put off seeing/reading/visiting things that are really popular. I never know if it’s good, or just a craze. After the dust has settled and a consensus can emerge on the actual quality, well, at that point I can catch up with the rest of society then if I want to.
(The comment was due to the fact that it took me 50 years to read On the Beach.)
Whedon did the screenplay for Alien Resurrection.
Just because a movie is popular doesn’t mean it’s not a good movie.
I tend to avoid very popular movies because of the crowds, I’d rather see a blockbuster 5 or 6 weeks into it’s run, that way I can sit in a theatre with 20 people instead of 300.
I don’t get to go to the movies very often. I usually reserve those few times for blockbuster movies. The ones that rely on special effects. They lose a lot of their impact on a smaller scene.
And a large portion of unpopular movies are just complete crap.
I cringe in embarassment on your behalf. Teenage iconoclasm is all well and good when you are an actual teenager.
I’m kind of wierd in that I go to movies that I think I would enjoy regardless of what the public thinks.
Actually it’s pretty ridiculous then too, but understandable. Into the twenties and beyond, if left untreated, it metastasizes into hipsterism. And that’s bad for us all.
To me, the author of the original post comes across as a really childish snob (which I probably shouldn’t have said because I know insults aren’t allowed). But really.
As others have pointed out some popular movies are good. and why let the masses determine what you see one way or the other?
I’m pretty put off by things that are over-hyped and over praised (if I’d known “Dark Knight” was gonna be called a masterpiece and such, I probably would have waited for the DVD) - but in the end I alone choose what I want to see. and I make up my own mind about what I think of it, though I enjoy discussing with others.
All in all, while I may have empathized with Calm Kiwi many years ago, right now it just seems sad.