From My POV, Some Bad Movies are Better than You Think

I'm looking at you and your opinions of "Quantumania" and "Shazam 2"

Lately, I feel like there has been a lot of unfair bashing of movies. When Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania came out earlier this year I remember enjoying the heck out of it. Apparently I was among the minority. People mocked the VFX mostly but also the story and (if I recall correctly) some of the silliness (specifically MODOK). A month later Shazam! Fury of the Gods got a similar reception. That was another film that I enjoyed the heck out of.

I could ask the folks who hated on these films what they expected from them as neither film was a sequel to a film that knocked anything out of the park, cinematically or in any other way.

The thing is…

Ant-Man, as a sub-franchise, exists in a light, frothy, fun, sometimes downright silly corner of the MCU. Likewise, Shazam was positioned by the previous regime at Warner Brothers as a kid-friendly sub-franchise and that first film did not attempt to do much more than meet that expectation. It was darker than I expected but it was nothing I would expect parents to shield their 10-and-older kids from. Shazam 2 held that same family-friendly line and still managed to be pretty entertaining, I thought.

While it was definitely not a perfect film, Quantumania was a blast, in my mind. It took us to another realm of existence that was very unlike anything we’ve seen in the MCU so far. It showed us some truly crazy imagery, with one scene featuring thousands of Ant-Men piled on top of each other to help just one of them get someplace high up and keep the plot going. MODOK, while silly, was fun and pretty reasonably explained within the story. I would have had the VFX for him worked on for a bit longer, but this is the Quantum Realm—you should be able to get away with anything down there.

What do people think the Quantum Realm looks like? It can look like what ever the filmmakers want it to look like. Just because you don’t like it, doesn’t mean it’s bad.

Could either of these movies have been better?

Yes. Much better.

Just because they weren’t does not mean they were garbage. When I see Rotten Tomato scores as low as the scores these two films have, I know that people are just focusing on the negative. I feel like, when this happens, it’s because folks look at movies (and probably other media, too) in a very different way from myself.

In fact, the way I look at movies (and other media) just might help you enjoy movies more.

Here it is: Script Dr. Pete’s Movie Watching Method

When I watch a movie I consider the question “what are the filmmakers trying to do?”

In the case of these two films, they weren’t trying to do a lot, but the question then becomes, “Did they do it well?”

There’s a great line from the classic Tony Scott (RIP) film True Romance spoken by a movie director played by Saul Rubinek: “I'm on this world to make good movies. Nothing more and nothing, well maybe less.”

I use that last part as a baseline, asking the question “Did they do less?”

Looking at movies in this way helps the viewer accept movies for what they are and not what you’d like them to be.

I am still critical of these films because it’s important to recognize failings as much as it is to recognize successes. This is why I structure most of my reviews in terms of what I think works in the film and what I think doesn’t. That said, I don’t focus solely on what didn’t work and ignore what did, which seems to be what a lot of folks have done with these two films.

I think it’s a shame that these two films tanked, box-office-wise, not because they were Babylon or Blonde bad*,* but because the films didn’t meet viewer expectations.

It’s also ok to say “I just didn’t like it.” instead of saying a movie is bad.

I’m of the opinion that objectively critiquing art is a challenging thing to do but I think it’s still worth doing. “Objectively” means not being critical of a thing because you don’t like it. Criticize it because it has technical flaws that you can point to. Also, don’t ignore the positive just because the negative makes you angry or frustrated.

For instance:

You’re watching Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania and you start to say “The VFX suck” but you stop yourself and instead say “the Quantum Realm just looks like a CGI wonderland and not a real place. It’s knocking me out of the movie.”

OK, that is a fair opinion. Of course, then I’d have to ask “What does the Quantum Realm look like, though? Why can’t it look like that? Doesn’t the very nature of what it is in the confines of the story universe allow for it to look like something unreal?”

The point is:

I just want us to have a better discussion about movies, and storytelling, in general.

Is it easier to just declare that a movie is shit? Sure. But if you actually dig in and talk about why you think it’s shit it’ll be more interesting, fun, and might even help you discover that the movie is better than you thought.