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A clear conversation is difficult in the absence of a clear, canonical definition of "bad". It would be very easy for me to get a few friends together and make

A clear conversation is difficult in the absence of a clear, canonical definition of "bad". It would be very easy for me to get a few friends together and make a 90 minutes improvised movie filmed on my phone. That would be an absolutely terrible movie, but it wouldn't be a very satisfying answer to the question "What's the worst movie?" because it would be seen by very few people and it would be made with no ambition of quality. I could go further and make a movie that was 90 minutes of a black screen. That would be a worse movie but an even less satisfying answer. Even if you limit the field to movies that have seen a theatrical release, the same principal applies. Some movies are shockingly bad, but are made with few little effort by people who know they are making a bad movie. These seem less interesting, less sad and less funny than very bad movies made by people trying very hard and spending lots of money. Personally, when rating the badness of work, I judge it against my own assessment of the potential of the work. The potential isn't directly measurable or quantifiable, but it consists of things like the budget, the vision of the creator, the skill and effort of the artists involved in the creation, etc. etc. So, for example, I think of Star Wars: Episode 1 as being a worse film than a lot of 50s low-budget sci-fi B-movies, even though I might choose to watch it more readily. The B-movies were pumped out without much effort. They're boring and poorly made on a technical level, but they never really had a chance to be any good. Episode 1 was made on a vast budget, drew on extremely rich source material, and was the culmination of unimaginable amounts of time and effort by a large number of hard-working people. For me, that makes the failure of Episode 1 more profound and more egregious.

leephillips 12y ago
This was really insightful. It's the same in any arena: if I try to think of a "bad" novel, my mind won't even go to the acres of paperback romances or teen vampire stories: I'll think of books published in hard cover and mentioned as being in the running for the Booker prize, that happen to be trite, inept, and derivative.
- drysart 12y ago
  In order for it to be meaningful that something is "bad", it has to have had intentions of being "good". Anyone can intentionally make a bad movie that's worse than a stinker like Battlefield Earth. That's nothing worth recognizing because the difference between the actual quality and the intended quality, the ΔQ, is so tiny. "The worst movie ever" designation should go to the film that has the highest ΔQ.
  - edraferi 12y ago
    hmm this means we need a measure of intended quality. Perhaps budget would be a good place to start? More invested = higher expectations. of course this might be thrown off by high-minded indie flicks and hugely expensive summer sequels, so perhaps include a polynomial term to capture the outliers. really, profitability is the best "general goodness" measure ever created.
  - trystero 12y ago
    Exactly. And that's why none of the films made by The Asylum* are eligible to the "so bad it's good" category. They never had any ambition of being good in the first place, so why bother? * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Asylum http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Asylum
cheriot 12y ago
To that extent, a comparison of box office numbers, budget, and imdb rating would be interesting. What movies have been able to buy quality at the best price? Which ones swung hardest and missed? It would be fascinating to look for common qualities within groups.
NAFV_P 12y ago
> I could go further and make a movie that was 90 minutes of a black screen. That would be a worse movie but an even less satisfying answer. What about a blue screen? http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0106438/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0106438/
- CamperBob2 12y ago
  I like drysart's criterion above (the delta-Q factor) as a way of discriminating between lowbrow but honestly-crafted crap like the usual MST3K fodder, and expensive yet incompetent crap like SW Episode 1. But you raise an interesting point, in that there should also be a penalty for novel, provocative work that, while perhaps well-executed, rests on principles that can never be used again, so they don't advance the state of the art or otherwise leave us with any enduring influence. Works like Blue and John Cage's 4'33 would fall into that category, I think.
  - NAFV_P 12y ago
    > But you raise an interesting point, in that there should also be a penalty for novel, provocative work that, while perhaps well-executed, rests on principles that can never be used again, so they don't advance the state of the art or otherwise leave us with any enduring influence. Works like Blue and John Cage's 4'33 would fall into that category, I think. I've seen the first ten minutes of Blue, it's actually really good. After ten minutes you start seeing stuff, but you can't work out if it is your own imagination or the film itself. The concept of Blue could be advanced: I was thinking of "Gamma" - viewers are exposed to intense gamma radiation for 90 minutes.
    - shabble 12y ago
      Whilst I suspect you're taking the piss, I wonder if you could you induce https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_ray_visual_phenomena https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_ray_visual_phenomena without receiving a medically serious dose of radiation? Those buzzkills at the FDA have already banned any artistically worthwhile amount of X-rays from CRT televisions though[1] :( [1] http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CFR-2013-title21-vol8/xml/CFR-2013-title21-vol8-sec1020-10.xml http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CFR-2013-title21-vol8/xml/CFR-2...
bentcorner 12y ago
I tried watching Episode 1 last weekend, I really did. I lasted about 2 minutes into Jar Jar before turning it off.
discardorama 12y ago
For me, "badness" is the difference between what (I think) the director thought of the movie, and what I thought of it.
thwarted 12y ago
A triumph only equaled by its monumental failure.

leephillips 12y ago

This was really insightful. It's the same in any arena: if I try to think of a "bad" novel, my mind won't even go to the acres of paperback romances or teen vampire stories: I'll think of books published in hard cover and mentioned as being in the running for the Booker prize, that happen to be trite, inept, and derivative.

drysart 12y ago
In order for it to be meaningful that something is "bad", it has to have had intentions of being "good". Anyone can intentionally make a bad movie that's worse than a stinker like Battlefield Earth. That's nothing worth recognizing because the difference between the actual quality and the intended quality, the ΔQ, is so tiny. "The worst movie ever" designation should go to the film that has the highest ΔQ.
- edraferi 12y ago
  hmm this means we need a measure of intended quality. Perhaps budget would be a good place to start? More invested = higher expectations. of course this might be thrown off by high-minded indie flicks and hugely expensive summer sequels, so perhaps include a polynomial term to capture the outliers. really, profitability is the best "general goodness" measure ever created.
- trystero 12y ago
  Exactly. And that's why none of the films made by The Asylum* are eligible to the "so bad it's good" category. They never had any ambition of being good in the first place, so why bother? * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Asylum http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Asylum

cheriot 12y ago

To that extent, a comparison of box office numbers, budget, and imdb rating would be interesting. What movies have been able to buy quality at the best price? Which ones swung hardest and missed? It would be fascinating to look for common qualities within groups.

NAFV_P 12y ago

> I could go further and make a movie that was 90 minutes of a black screen. That would be a worse movie but an even less satisfying answer. What about a blue screen? http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0106438/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0106438/

CamperBob2 12y ago
I like drysart's criterion above (the delta-Q factor) as a way of discriminating between lowbrow but honestly-crafted crap like the usual MST3K fodder, and expensive yet incompetent crap like SW Episode 1. But you raise an interesting point, in that there should also be a penalty for novel, provocative work that, while perhaps well-executed, rests on principles that can never be used again, so they don't advance the state of the art or otherwise leave us with any enduring influence. Works like Blue and John Cage's 4'33 would fall into that category, I think.
- NAFV_P 12y ago
  > But you raise an interesting point, in that there should also be a penalty for novel, provocative work that, while perhaps well-executed, rests on principles that can never be used again, so they don't advance the state of the art or otherwise leave us with any enduring influence. Works like Blue and John Cage's 4'33 would fall into that category, I think. I've seen the first ten minutes of Blue, it's actually really good. After ten minutes you start seeing stuff, but you can't work out if it is your own imagination or the film itself. The concept of Blue could be advanced: I was thinking of "Gamma" - viewers are exposed to intense gamma radiation for 90 minutes.
  - shabble 12y ago
    Whilst I suspect you're taking the piss, I wonder if you could you induce https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_ray_visual_phenomena https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_ray_visual_phenomena without receiving a medically serious dose of radiation? Those buzzkills at the FDA have already banned any artistically worthwhile amount of X-rays from CRT televisions though[1] :( [1] http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CFR-2013-title21-vol8/xml/CFR-2013-title21-vol8-sec1020-10.xml http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CFR-2013-title21-vol8/xml/CFR-2...

bentcorner 12y ago

I tried watching Episode 1 last weekend, I really did. I lasted about 2 minutes into Jar Jar before turning it off.

discardorama 12y ago

For me, "badness" is the difference between what (I think) the director thought of the movie, and what I thought of it.

thwarted 12y ago

A triumph only equaled by its monumental failure.