The popular/ist opinion is that movies are good if a lot of people like watching them and actors are good if people like them and like watching them in movies.

The popular/ist opinion is that movies are good if a lot of people like watching them and actors are good if people like them and like watching them in movies. And most people generally like predictability too, at least in some form or another. Movies and acting as high art doesn't really make an actor or movie good, by some objective standard. I really can't stand Tarantino's stilted, artificial "dialogue" (read: tiresome monologues) for example, but people love the movies and love hearing about what the french call a quarter pounder. So they're good movies and it's good dialogue, despite my curmudgeon old ass muttering about how nobody speaks like that.