me_irl

Sounds like someone who never watched House of the Dead in theatres.

Sometimes, it's more important that you enjoy the thing than the thing being objectively good. There is merit to objectively analyzing things, and there can be enjoyment found in doing so. There is also merit to just enjoying the thing you like. Both are valid.

i can enjoy a movie i think is objectively bad and vice versa.

Enjoying a movie, having fun watching it, is not an indication of its quality. It is acceptable to enjoy bad movies, nothing wrong with that, I've watched plenty of movies I consider as bad but still had fun and a nice time watching them.

Defining the quality of a movie by the enjoyment you had is like defining the quality of a painting by how realistic it is. A painting might be good even if it is surreal, unrealistic or abstract, and a realistic painting might be crap, so the quality of the painting is not tied to simply how realistic it is. The same way there are movies that are fun and enjoyable but not "good", and there are movies that bore most people and are a master piece.

While with a painting defining the quality is simpler (simpler yes, but not simple) as it is the creation of one person normally, for movies it gets incredibly complex as there's so much to measure and its the work of so many people; the script, the acting, the photography, the score, the directing, the stunts, makeup and dressing, FX, ... There's a lot that can be good and a lot that can be bad in the same movie.

At least that has always been my perspective, I have no issues admitting to not liking something despite how good it was, and loving something that I knew was not good. Some examples that come to mind: I love the matrix movies, love watching them, yes, in plural, that doesn't mean the second and third are good. It feels like there were too many issues in them to make them good, but I still had a good time watching them. On the other hand, I feel like a movie like 2001 is of unquestionable quality, yet I always feel somewhat bored watching it and would rather do something else.

Don't have fun = bad movie.

So we're going to ignore the assholes that talk in the theater too huh?

Yes. This is why I hate movie critics. Your PhD in post romantic Spanish literature does not qualify you to make a determination if the power rangers movie was good or not.

The Room is considered a movie so bad it's good, but if it turned out that Tommy knew what he was doing the whole time, would that make it just a good movie?

That's why I watch video essays that are longer than the actual movie and explain why it's bad instead of watching the movie

I had this exact train of thought when I was eighteen and ended up building a career and a half on top of that particular crisis.

I was going to say no regrets, but... you know, some regrets?

I can tell when a movie is good now, though.

Weirdly, that somehow became a huge political problem on the Internet and ended up killing democracy. I guess that's one of the regrets.