The Film Talk » Are Bad Films of Any Value?

Are Bad Films of Any Value?

June 3rd, 2009by Jett Loe · Comments

‘Terminator Salvation’: an unrecognised masterpiece full of signs/symbols that points towards a new way for cinema?

No, I don’t think so. ‘Salvation’ is a film we both roundly denounced on the podcast, (Gareth arguably less so), but the vehemence with which ‘kbm’ puts forwards his comments in this post:

Three Questions about ‘Terminator Salvation’

at first gave me pause.

Was I missing something? Did we, as kbm put it “have no idea what this film is and what it is referencing.”? Should we “stop underestimating McG and go in again with a clean slate and really look at it. this is a bleak, very developed idea that has copious, instructive signals, codes and shot relations that Cameron never imagined.”

I admire kbm’s online work and so felt the need to think again about this McG pic. And…well…this leads to my question. What value bad films? Because I saw ‘Terminator Salvation’ again and it is awful. Half-baked, nonsensical – the kind of film in which good actors, in fact every actor in the film, comes across as bad. Hackneyed dialogue that was stale decades ago, “it’s too quiet in here – could be a trap”, astonishes.

But. There are things there.

Who knows how many people worked on the script. As Higgins points out in the podcast there were more producers on that show then there were Apostles. So there’s stuff there. What creature do they test the ‘death/rebirth’ signal on? A robotic snake – so symbols/signs – archetypes are there. Sort of. None of it comes together. It’s not cohesive and remains, without a doubt, a dull film.

So. Is it of value? Can a film that fails on every level in terms of conventional film-making craft, (fails at what it tries to do – the action is devoid of excitement and suspense, the characterisations laughable etc. etc. etc.), still be worth viewing?

Thoughts?

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Tags: Action · Blockbusters · Jett Loe · Science Fiction · Thoughts on Criticism · Who Knows?

Chris_rp

Well, if you watch good to great films all the time, how can you say they're really well made and cohesive when you don't watch and ponder the the movies that are not so great? how can you tell it's good pizza when you haven't eaten a really bad one?

Tom

Are bad films of any value? Well, they often seem to generate more discussion than average ones!

kbm

Sorry to reply so late to this I hadn't seen this until now.

If I could summarize briefly why TS is so unusual, it would have to be that the film is falsely heroic on a level that is weirdly satiric. He didn't go as far as Strangelove (is that level achievable any longer?) but the safe bet is: the machines are essentially running a 'game' on humans, the entire film is machine-plotted. Rebels are safely contained in their underground bunker, surrounded by a machine filled moat, they are lured easily to learning about a new Terminator, they are handed a code they think is the end of the war when it is actually their destruction, all dialogue, even John Connor's, is false, the only one with an individual brain, ie thinking for himself, is Marcus. The only one who recognizes it is the Pilot. Now I'm not sure I believe in this auteur idea completely, but what I do know is masterpieces hide their real plots and real connections under a simplified surface to better deliver ah-ha moments, whether in the last moments of the film or hours, days, months later, and for me these moments followed me out the doors. With a series that began with time-bending (time travel game theory developed by machines) in the past and now ends with physical game-playing in our future with paradoxes as to who john conner really 'is' makes for unusual human cosmology.

This is our brief
http://www.mstrmnd.com/log/1046

Jett Loe

re: Terminator Salvation does intention matter?

peter

While we're on the subject, if you still haven't seen this transforminators trailer, it's pretty hilarious: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hcaNZ4iHSMw

Jett Loe

Transforminators was pretty good - i'll raise ya with Transmorphers: http://www.slashfilm.com/2009/06/05/lol-the-asy...

K-Ann

My husband said when he saw it that it was good that the movie was an action film - you know there would be an explosion soon that would stop the dialogue

Tom

Generally I agree with Jett and Gareth's reviews but... I really enjoyed Terminator 4.

Sure, I agree with some of the criticism; too much growly voiced grandstanding by Mr Bale (why do the Batman voice again?) and the human friendly Skynet control centre made no sense. However I thought the tone was in keeping with the previous films and the action sequences were very well put together, not unfinished at all - it was refreshing to see set pieces that were not edited so rapidly that you couldn't tell what was going on (something even Star Trek was guilty of in places).

Of course it's not high art, but a great example of a good summer blockbuster.

Oh, and to hark back to Gareth's dislike of conflict being solved with violence, surely a war against machines would be the only time that blowing your enemy up would be acceptable? I don't think Skynet was up for treaty signing.

Jett Loe

terminator salvation

Eric

Exactly. I'm totally okay with a mindless, action-packed movie that's made just to entertain. But there was a problem... this movie wasn't entertaining. When I've railed against this film in conversation, people have said, "Relax, it's just a fun, summer action flick." Well, that might be a good argument IF it were a fun movie. Instead, I rolled my eyes and sighed more watching this movie than I did in "Fast & Furious." At least that movie knows it's not a good movie. But with "Terminator Salvation" it's quite apparent that the filmmakers actually think they're making a good movie...which is troubling to say the least.

Phil

I saw it, and here's what I came away with.

Not a great movie, but one I could enjoy watching - it was an "homage' pic to me...like "Rocky Balboa" was - some mindless fun for me but not worth much praise otherwise.

Do bad pics hold any value? Some do. My favorite 'bad pic', as I've mentioned several times on this blog, is "Smokey and the Bandit". So bad it's good? If it can entertain, I think it holds value.

peter

I think that would depend on what you define as value. Certainly, entertainment value can be derived from even the worst movies, as the MST3K people would often do.

In this case though, not so much, and I think kbm's comments were pretty insane to be honest. Symbolism and Messages? In a blank slate of a corporate product? Comeone.
And that's what the movie is and feels like through and through, product (badly made product too). The script is at best a first draft and it shows, with ludicrous plot holes, no story arc or character development of any kind, action for the sake of action.
Worst of all, it completley disregards most of the mythology from the earlier movies (which at least the 1'st two I would argue were creative ventures, not studio-packaged product).
Think about it, this particular story is COMPLETELY superflous, no reason for it at all.
John Conner gets his scar, that's it, that's the contribution to the terminator mythology made by this movie. It's a complete failure on any level, and frankly I'm sorry that you saw the movie again just because of some irrational comment one reader made. I respect people who enjoyed this particular flick, I can see how someone could have some mindless fun with it, but to give it pretentions to high art is ludicrous.

Jett Loe

Seeing Terminator again!

Eric

When you say that Terminator Salvation lacks a cohesive vision I think you're hitting on a much larger issue that this film represents. The auteur (with a few exceptions) has all but given way to an army of mercenary filmmakers. Studios are so paranoid about a film's mass appeal and marketability that it's become a rarity to see a film with just one writer, thus making a complete, unique, idiosyncratic vision nearly impossible. As soon as compromise enters the picture, quality inevitably suffers. With Terminator Salvation we are witnessing the flagship film of a new era of Hollywood. You've got the Silent Era, the Golden Age, New Hollywood, and now.... the Mercenary Age. It will be studied for years as a dark time in which literal armies of filmmakers with no emotional or intellectual investment in a project are hired to violently beat original, challenging, and provocative ideas into submission...suitable for mass consumption.