Discussing Inception

After seeing Inception for the 3rd time, I've become almost as interested in the way people discuss this film as I am in the film itself.

I first became interested in the discussion around psychological puzzle or "mindfuck" movies when I wrote a chapter of my thesis on the IMDB discussion of Mulholland Drive. I found that the arguments fell into two distinct categories:

Those who thought the film's creator was trying to create a coherent fictional universe in which cause-and-effect applied vs. those who thought the movie was like an abstract painting. The first group thought that the plot was like a puzzle and that if you understood which parts were "real" for the characters and which parts were dreams, fantasies, or hallucinations, and you understood how the "real" lives of the characters influenced those dreams/fantasies, then you could "understand" the film. The second group thought either that the artist is having a laugh at the audience by making them think that the art is somehow "important" b/c its so inscrutable or that it has real beauty which cannot be analyzed the way a cause-and-effect narrative is typically analyzed.

In a way, the same thing is happening with Inception (based on my observations of a very limited sample of audience reactions: my friends and people on reddit). But I think b/c Inception has all the markings of a traditional Hollywood film as opposed to the art-house pedigree of Mulholland Drive and b/c the film's characters spend so much time explaining how everything fits together, most people debate what the final reality (for the characters) of the film was and/or whether the creator of the film was successful in his attempt to create a coherent fictional reality. Those who loved the film seem to believe that it all fits together and those who didn't like it either felt that it didn't all fit together or that its construction - its attempt to weld together an action film, a psychological puzzle, and an emotional story of loss and acceptance - is clumsy and draws attention to itself as artifice. Here's what I'm interested in: why do people fall into those groups?

Here's my pet theory. People think that some characteristic of the plot's coherence is to blame/praise for why they liked/disliked the film. They argue as if that were the case. But really, its their abilities to emotionally connect with the characters and some pre-existing disposition towards the type of movie they see Inception as (a summer blockbuster, a Christopher Nolan film, a smart film, a trying-to-be-too-clever film) that determines how hard they look for those flaws. This categorization and emotional identification with the situations and characters in the film, in some sense, precede viewers' desire or attempts to piece together what exactly happened in the fictional reality of the film, even though we're not aware that they do. With Inception as with many sci-fi and/or mindfuck movies, there certainly are inconsistencies or blind-spots to find. Those who were pre-disposed to liking the film could acknowledge these, but they would probably say that they don't matter, that its all part of the willing suspension of disbelief, that all stories must leave out some information and that the rules of the genre demand that we overlook some un-reality of the film's world. Those who were pre-disposed to disliking the film would call these "plot holes" and treat them as a kind of empirical evidence that the film is poorly constructed.

So when people have debates over whether the film made sense or what happened in the reality of the film, they're really just reflecting whether or not they identified with the film and whether they typically like the type of film that, before they entered the theater, they had categorized the film as.

I have this hunch b/c I try to imagine if these relatively minor things in the movie that people talk about were altered (the spinning top falling over/not falling over, a bit more explanation here or there, things going a bit differently with the kicks, etc.) and what the people having these arguments might think of that altered movie. I am highly skeptical that their opinions would change. They talk as if these minor changes would alter their opinions of the movie, that their arguments for why this movie was good/bad rests on these features of the film, but this seems ludicrous to me.

Perhaps its easier and safer to talk about one's like or dislike of a movie in this way. To understand how or why one categorizes a film as a certain type is a really hard thing to be aware of. Also, when you talk about what characters or situations you identify with, you can be revealing something very personal about who you are. Any statement against the film could be construed as a statement against someone who identified with the characters, situations, or sentiments in the movie, which would cause a whole lotta friction.

It should be obvious which group I fall into by now. But the more I think about the multi-layered pleasure I get out of this film, the more I think, "why can't I experience this more often with more movies, TV shows, songs, etc.?" We talk about these things as if its the artists' responsibilities to bring us a pleasurable experience, but I think we as audience members have some control over this, more than we think. If I'm arguing this for Inception, I'm arguing this for all art. What if I had gone to see Eclipse instead? My knee-jerk reaction would have been to hate it and to argue why this was a bad film. But I wouldn't have to have done that. I could've acknowledged the fact that I categorized the film as "awful teen chick romance" and understood that, on the face of it, I probably wouldn't have identified with the characters, situations, or sentiments expressed in the movie. But that doesn't mean I couldn't have found something positive in the experience and that I shouldn't have to wait for an artist to cater to my desires or find a fan to convince me of the work's merit. Everyone could love everything, and if loving something is more fun than hating something (I know that hating films, TV shows, people can feel good, but as someone who really loves Inception, I can tell you that loving feels better than hating), why shouldn't we try? I think my arguments for the greatness of some works are arguments for enjoyment in general, arguments against not enjoying yourself at a movie.

The Pitfalls of Hypothesizing about Film Success

Say we take a film like Transformers 2. The film, like most other films, has a lot going on, in its content and the circumstances under which it was released: grand spectacle, a link to something that is established in a target audience's cultural memory, an extensive marketing campaign, the fact that its a sequel, Shia LeBeouf, its director, its screenwriter, its late-June release not opposite of other big action blockbusters, etc. Which of these elements is most responsible for the film's success? Let's throw in another element of the film: Skids and Mudflap, two robots who (quoting the NYTimes piece) "talk in jive and are portrayed as illiterate; one has a gold tooth." The depictions have been called racist by many. Are these depictions reasons why the film is more successful, or is the film successful in spite of those depictions?

The questions are essentially unanswerable, but its not because film is Art and one cannot theorize about why some people like art and others don't, or why some art is profitabe and other art is not. It is so hard to predict why films, as opposed to other art forms, are successful or not b/c there are so few comparable films made and the circumstances of release (marketing, timing) play such a significant role in their success/failure. In order to determine what aspects of a product are responsible for its success, we need to make comparisons, but there are so few comparisons to be able to make that its harder to predict what will succeed. If you wanted to find out what elements of motion picture content made a certain text successful (e.g. certain choices in pacing, plotting, certain bigoted depictions, certain actors, lighting, etc), then you would look away from film and towards online video. There are simply more comparable texts, and the circumstances under which each video is watched are so varied that the uniqueness of each viewing can be considered to be random error and cancels out. What you're left with is a more pure comparison and better insight as to how motion pictures work on audiences than one you would try to do looking at a successful box office film like Transformers 2 and making generalizations about what aspects of the film resonated with the public. And yet film and cultural theorists have been doing just this, and continue to do just this: identifying certain characteristics of a film that possesses many charateristics, noting that the film was successfull, and then making claims about a culture's preferences.

Its interesting to consider recent advances in two untraditional predictions markets, both linked to the work of Nate Silver: presidential politics and baseball. Frankly, I don't know much about Silver's prediction models, but I'd guess he just takes discrete characteristics of each event (a race for office, a baseball game), takes a data set comprised of past events, and sees which characteristics, when all other characteristics are controlled for, exert the most influence on the outcome. You take those influences, assess the observable characteristics of the upcoming game/election, and make predictions of the outcome. With presidential elections, you have very few comparable events to use, while in baseball, you have many. In the former, I would think that you would have to start incorporating patterns in opinion polls (which fluctuate systematically based on various characteristics of world events and their coverage).

The trouble with film is that there aren't the equivalent of polls. Yes, there's test screenings, but those samples are so small and they're just used for minor recuts, not learning about why certain people like certain characteristics of films under certain circumstances. There's too little comparable data to work with. Perhaps the prevalence of remakes, reboots, adaptations is an attempt by producers to use the "data" of those other properties being successful with their suite of characteristics, and making a bet based on that. Its not very systematic, but in a way, I trust it more than I trust anyone who guesses that a film resonated or failed to resonate with the public b/c it was/wasn't successful at the box office and possessed a certain characteristic. That's just guesswork on their parts.

Unoriginality at the multiplex: Franchises are the New "Genres"

Here are some broad trends. I've categorized the top 10 grossing films of several years.

1980: 6 of 10 original, 2 sequels, 2 based on books
1985: 6 original, 2 sequels, 2 based on books
1990: 7 originals, 1 sequel, 2 based on comic books
1995: 5 originals, 4 sequels, 1 based on comic book/cartoon
2000: 7 originals, 1 sequel, 2 based on comic book/cartoon

No interesting trends there. People liked to talk about how Hollywood was infected with "sequelitis," but the numbers don't indicate any significant movement in that direction during those 2 decades. Then something happens in the last decade:

2001: 3 originals, 3 sequels, 2 based on books, 2 remakes
2002: 3 originals, 5 sequels, 1 based on comic book, 1 based on popular musical
2003: 3 originals, 6 sequels, 1 remake
2004: 3 originals, 5 sequels, 2 based on books
2005: 2 originals, 2 sequels, 1 based on book, 4 remakes/reboots
2006: 3 originals, 3 sequels, 1 based on book, 3 remake/reboot
2007: 0 originals!, 6 sequels, 3 based on comic book/cartoon, 1 remake
2008: 3 original, 4 sequels, 2 based on comic book/cartoon, 1 based on book

In many cases, the sequels were sequels of movies that were based on existing properties.

Of course, this is a reflection of what people want to see and what they are presented with. Whether its one or the other is, for the point I'm making, beside the point. I'm claiming that this is not a temporary trend. This is cinema (creators and consumers) obeying a fundamental law of economy. There are other media in which producers can distribute motion pictures to consumers (namely cable TV and the internet). They can also share stories via books, as always. Now, if you were a bank and you were going to fund a major motion picture, which cost 10s of millions of create, distribute, and promote, you would want to be as sure as you could be that the movie would be a hit. An established star is one way to bolster your odds, as is a director or writer with a proven track record of hits. But what about the story or the premise. Ideally, you'd want to be able to test it out for a smaller sum of money. And that's what we're able to do now. When you make a film out of an existing property, be it a cartoon, a novel, or an older film, you attract an audience who believes the film will be similar to the existing property and you have evidence that the story or the premise will resonate w/ people.

Its a little odd that it didn't happen sooner. Why weren't all movies tried as novels first? Maybe b/c some stories would only work on the big screen as spectacle. But now, with the internet and lots more TV channels, you would have to be a bit daft to bankroll an unproven story as a film. Why not make it into a miniseries on TNT or a novel first, see how it does, and retain the motion picture rights?

I would suppose that many cinephiles lament the lack of originality in mainstream cinema (if they care anymore about anythign "mainstream" that is). But are these remakes, reboots and sequels really any less original? Do we judge originality by a title? Couldn't a non-sequel thriller be less original (that is, more similar to its predecessors) than a sequel? I think that this is possible and has been the case in some instances. Really, franchises are the new genres: boundaries within which various artists work.

What to do with CGI films? Are they a genre? There are two companies that dominate - Pixar and Dreamworks. They employ many of the same creative people, use a lot of the same dramatic tropes. More importantly, I feel like audiences treat them more like a series of films and less like a genre. In terms of number and "quality," they are more like movies in a series than films in a genre: there are few and they are of uniform quality.

This is just the top slice of cinema, too. There are plenty of "original" stories lower down the charts, though again, I would question the idea of original. There has evolved a horribly formulaic strain of indie film that, I would argue, are, as a group, no more original by any definition of that term than the bulk of franchise films.

We needn't lament the fact that more hit films aren't fantastically original, the way they were, say, the in 70's. There are still great, original stories being told using moving pictures, but they aren't being told on the big screen. This is what should happen, economically speaking. Cinema no longer holds the same place it did 30 or 40 years ago when it was, essentially, the only place to go for amazing, engaging stories. Once the internet ramps up as a distribution platform for video, cinema will be even less like the cinema of yore. Get over it.

Wordling Through Public Opinion

I've been examining audience interpretations of movies, TV shows, and web video for a few years now. Recently, a friend turned me on to this Wordle application which makes word clouds of any block of text you give it. Word clouds got a lot of press recently when CNN used it to analyze one of Obama's speeches (sadly, people didn't "get" what word clouds can tell them). Anyway, like any good data visualization tool, it allows you to see, at a glance, some of the trends in your data. There are, of course, limitations (as will become apparent in the examples i give below), but it could be an exciting new way to look at public opinion quickly. Take blog posts or comments from thousands of different people, feed it into Wordle, and you'll get a general idea of what that portion of the public is thinking about (or what they think about a certain issue).

Here are the results of my wordle of people's evaluation of several movies on IMDB. I drew the comments from the headings of the first 300 posts for each movie. Check 'em out.
Shawshank Redemption (the highest rated film on IMDB). No big surprises. People think its the best. Its interesting to note that they think its the best ever. If you look closer, you can see adjectives like "brilliant" and "moving." These may not seem surprising, but when you start comparing the different word clouds to each other, even the films that everyone loved, you start to see that fans put emphases on certain elements of certain films.
Amelie (44 on the list of top 250 IMDB). Interesting to see the word "overrated" in there. People define this movie by the fact that its French, and they find it charming.
Love Guru (I had to pick a bad one for contrast). This represents the limits of assuming that word choice (taken out of context) will tell you what people think. The word "funny" might have been part of the phrase "not funny," but Wordle can't tell you that. Its interesting to see that "bad" is used far more than "worst," and that people think of this as a Mike Myers film more than anything (again, obvious, but worth noting). Also, the word "critics" indicates that the critics lambasting of this film carried some weight with people (you don't see "critics" in many other worldes for other films).Casablanca (11 on Top 250 list). Again, "best" and "greatest" are there. "Classic" is there. It would be interesting to see at what year the word "classic" becomes commonly used by people. You would expect it to grow in highly-rated movie word clouds the older the movie is, but maybe there are certain characteristics that make people call a movie "classic" (the centrality of a romance? PG content?). In any case, its far more interesting to me to look at the ways in which hundreds or thousands of viewers use words like "classic" than the ways in which a handful of critics use them. Definately something worth exploring further.

The Politics of the Dark Knight

The Dark Knight is, in many ways, the ideal movie to blog about. Its complex, so complex that I'm sure I missed a few things. After seeing it a second time, I still wasn't sure whether The Joker, when he was informing Batman of the Harvey Dent/Rachael Dawes hostage situation, told Batman who was at which address. My friend and I had conflicting memories about this, and I heard a reporter from Slate say that Batman had intended to save Harvey when I'm 90% sure he said he was going to save Rachael (though who can tell w/ that ridiculously gruff voice!). You can pause and review a DVD, but not theater flick, so we're left with the collective memory of the blogosphere to get everything straight.

But more than facts, its the meaning of The Dark Knight that needs unpacking and debating, specifically the political meaning. I'm reminded of why outlandish fiction (particularly sci-fi and comic books movies which, in some ways, have taken over sci-fi's domain in the past 5 years) can work so much better as a way of talking through issues of the day than more literal historical fiction like that rash of Iraq war movies from the last year. Even a movie I adore, The Lives of Others, is ill-suited to really dig into the philosophical and moral issues around surveillance in an impartial way. We know who to side with - those fighting the Stasi. Similarly, we know to side against the US administration and with the hapless, brave soldiers in most movies about 'nam or Iraq.

It would be very easy to read The Dark Knight as an allegory for post 9/11 America, though we don't have to read it that way. In fact, I think its a great way to think about a hypothetical world with hypothetical heroes and villains that our world might come to resemble in the future, in which case we should think about how we would act in those situations.

Being a Role Model: Batman wanted to be a symbol of good actions, so that if he died, there would be others who would take his place to step up and do the right thing. Trouble is a lot of those people bastardize that good symbol and put their own spin on it. To them, its OK for Batman to carry a gun, and b/c they're not mega-millionaires with military R&D people working for them, they don't have much choice but to carry guns and wear hockey pads. Then there's the matter of inspiring madmen like the Joker/terrorists, but its tough to say that Batman's hubris and his clones created The Joker, just as it would be tough to say that any given culture or Cowboy president created terrorists, though its to their advantage to make you think that.

Surveillance: In real world "prisoner's dilemma" situations, the best course of action is to try as hard as you can to find a third option. Its Batman's use of illicit surveillance that resolves the prisoner's dilemma on the two ferries. Thanks to the cell phones as cameras, he's able to track down the Joker before he throws the switch and kills the people on the two ferries who, in a strictly Utilitarian sense, made the wrong decision not to kill each other. There are two significant things about that cell-phone scene in the Bat lab: Lucius Fox objects to the surveillance on moral grounds, and even though he capitulates, the fact that he objected makes it more thought provoking than if the scene were just passed off as cool gadgetry (Bond, anyone?). And before we jump to making the obligatory Orwellian metaphor, its worth noting that the civilians do not know they're being spied upon. When people know they're being spied on by their leaders, it can have a chilling effect on their behavior. But if they don't know, well then, is there any harm? This leads us to the next moral dilemma.

Lying to the Public: Bruce has trouble with this one at first, wanting to come out and tell the world he's been living a lie, coming clean and telling them that he's Batman. He wants crime to be fought by a public figure - Harvey Dent (Obama to Bruce's Bush? Just a thought). Alfred insists that there needs to be someone who does the dirty work, who makes decisions that he knows are unpopular and probably illegal. The solution? Do those deeds but invent a persona that is distanced from you that can take the public's disapproval. At first, its just Bruce's reputation that needs to be kept clean. In the end, of course, its Harvey's. But all of this assumes that the public simply can't handle the fact that a good person - Harvey Dent - did some really bad things. Knowing this would make them lose all faith in themselves. Is this true? What if we found evidence that MLK shot a bunch of people in an insane revenge seeking fit? Interesting question, but I really find it shocking that any movie would say that the answer is that the public can't handle the truth. What are we, children?

Killing people: I would argue that b/c Batman cannot kill anyone, even his arch nemesis, he has to commit other sins against the freedom of the people he protects. Sometimes, martyrs for non-violence don't get assassinated. Sometimes they live long enough to have to make some unpopular decisions, to see themselves become villains.

So what does the movie really say about any of these? I think it leaves a lot of questions open to debate. If the movie has a moral voice, it is not that of Bruce Wayne but that of Alfred. Bruce eventually comes around to Alfred's "things have to get worse before they get better" philosophy, which is oddly similar to Ra's Al Ghul's, the villain from Batman Begins. Something about the way in which Alfred and his message is presented makes it seem authoritative in a way that Bruce isn't. Bruce, like the audience, is trying to work through difficult real-world moral dilemmas, whereas Alfred seems to have it all figured out from his years of experience.

Still, I'm not convinced that if we are to call Alfred's version of reality a bit...right wing that we must dislike or dismiss the movie if we do not share those values. It reminds me of one of the most praised films of all time - The Searchers. From what I understand, critics love that movie b/c the morality it apparently presents in the end (lunatic racist hyper-macho psychopath hero decides to reform for no reason at the last minute) shows how ridiculous traditional Hollywood Western morality (and, by association, the morality of 1950's America) really is. You could read the end of The Dark Knight the same way. Its holding up a mirror to our political culture. We're scared of people we think just want to watch the world burn (maybe you think its terrorists, maybe you think its Cheney/Bush/corporations). We want a knight in shining armor, but sooner or later, that knight has to do some things that aren't going to look so good to others. In order to maintain power in this democratic culture that values popularity above all else, the knight has to hide his or her dirty work and maintain a nice face for children and the ignorant masses. At least that's my reading. What's yours?

Superhero Movies - More Diverse Than You Think

At the risk of using a classic snowclone, Superhero (or comic book) movies are the new Westerns. What I mean is that the genre is both popular and diverse enough to be regarded as a venue for working through our collective philosophical and psychological issues.

Other genres (horror, melodrama, comedy) also hold up a mirror to our collective psyches, but not in the way that the Big movies do. The lesser genres show us what we want - morally, aesthetically, emotionally - but only part of what some of us want. The dominant genre of the time, be it Westerns, gangster movies, or superhero flicks, reflects most of what most of us want. I would consider comparing gangster movies and TV shows to Westerns, if you were to say that Westerns were more of a way of defining masculinity. But I think Westerns, in their time, were bigger than gangster films/shows like The Sopranos, Godfather, Goodfellas, and Scarface are today.

No one would doubt that superhero tales are quite popular, more popular in the last 5 years than ever before and more popular than any other type of film with the possible exception of talking-animal-CGI films. If you were keen on making an older comparison, you could liken them to myths or fairy tails, other dominant genres of their times. But what about my claim that the genre is diverse?

Enter The Dark Knight, in some sense a synthesis of the superhero movie and the gangster flick. And yes, I know Batman isn't technically a superhero because he doesn't have superpowers. But genres and classification aren't defined that way. They're defined by the language we use to refer to the texts, by marketers, vendors, critics, and fans. And I'm willing to assume that most of them would classify this as a superhero blockbuster film. While watching it, I couldn't help but compare it to another superhero blockbuster - Iron Man. These films came out in the same year, they're of the same genre, I'm willing to wager they make roughly the same money (they're as popular as one another), and, significantly, they have almost the same amount of critical acclaim (79 for Iron Man on metacritic, to Dark Knight's 82).

If we were going to plop down $15 to see the Dark Knight on the Imax, maybe we'd like to have a good idea of what we're in for. Ads are of no service here, as they remain startlingly homogeneous. They have to. Ads have to appeal to the largest group possible, even if they have to misrepresent their product, which they frequently do. Ads for Iron Man, Hancock, and Dark Knight look pretty similar to one another - lots of action, some ironic wit, good-looking wounded-yet-rough men, sexy women. To take Dark Knight as an example, its interesting to note that almost all of the clips in the many previews come from the first 2/3 of the movie (which, in my opinion, are the least interesting part of the movie, certainly not as morally complex as the last third). So ads are not a good indicator of content.

What about critics? Shouldn't critics be the corrective to misleading advertising? Well, it depends on how much you bother to read. If you're just looking for general thumbs-up-thumbs-down assessment, as most people are, then the critics are of no use. Yes, all of the critics like both movies, but I have a tough time believing that the public will like both movies equally. One is pretty frothy and fun, the other is pitch black and quite complex. If you dig a little deeper and read the reviews, you can see that most critics recognize these differences. Its important to say that I do not think critics should've praised Iron Man, damned Dark Knight, or vice-versa. But to fail to acknowledge the stark differences between these movies, as thumbs-up-thumbs-down reviewing does, seems to indicate that there's something wrong with that kind of popular film criticism.

Let's go over some of the differences:

Humor: the humor in Iron Man relies primarily on understatement - the hero reacts to a huge explosion with raised eyebrows. There are plenty of catchphrases and instances of Tony Stark reacting in more laid-back fashion than the situation dictates. In the Dark Knight, the humor is more dry and British, quicker and, depending on your taste for these things, either clever or too clever. There's more gallows humor as one would expect with the Joker (here's hoping that Heath Ledger's death doesn't totally overwhelm critical appraisal of this film).

Romance subplot: While both protagonists are playboys, Tony Stark gets the girl in the end while Bruce Wayne is left to brood over a dead lover. Not exactly a minor difference in terms of tone.

Morality: Iron Man dabbles with moral complexity, casting a reformed arms dealer as hero (who ultimately ends up using weapons he designed to kill bad guys, much like the military does). The Dark Knight, on the other hand, had scene after scene in which characters were made to ask themselves (and the audience) tough moral questions: is it ever moral to kill large numbers of people? Is it okay to lie to the public in order to maintain order? Is it okay to survey the public without their knowing? Does using force against the enemy breed more insidious, amoral enemies? Can we delegate the killing that our situation demands to superheroes (read: soldiers) because we can't do what needs to be done? The film was practically an ethics class.

There's one scene that really brings home the dissimilarity. At the end of Iron Man, Tony Stark holds a press conference and announces that he is Iron Man. The scene is subversive, in that it goes against what we know about superheroes: they like to keep their true identity a secret. In The Dark Knight, Harvey Dent calls a press conference and announces that he is Batman (when we know that he's not). Iron Man is content with a few double crosses here and there but doesn't want to confuse the audience with too many. The Dark Knight assumes the audience can maintain an understanding of character motivation even when there are many, many more double crosses.

If there's anything to learn from this, it is that looking at who wrote and directed the movie might be a better indicator than any as to what the film will be like, lending credence to the beleaguered auteur theory. I think that auteur theory is imperfect in that it fails to recognize the fact that creators could create something especially similar to other creators' works and dissimilar to their own previous work. This happens plenty, and the good critic can recognize it.

So, what are the recurring authorial themes? Right away, there's identity. In the first two scenes, the Nolans play with our expectations of who's who, just as they did with the twins in The Prestige, the hero/villain of Memento, and superhero-as-symbol-transcending -individual concept in Batman Begins. They take the idea of superhero's symbolic power being more important than their individual identity to a new level by making a mockery of the personal-history-as-destiny concept. The Joker tells a couple of different versions of how he got to be as fucked up as he is, and none of them is the truth. Each version suits his situation. This film deals far more with moral, political, social, and philosophical issues than psychological or personal ones. Another point of difference from some comic book heroes (Hulk) but not terribly different than others (Spiderman).

And for those of you who think web criticism doesn't matter, check out this article from Slate. Be advised that the article never claims that critics cause a movie to be popular. Only that they are able to anticipate the popularity of a movie better than non-experts and better than chance. Surely, some critics exert some effect on the popularity of a movie (probably the ones who have been especially good at predicting how much the public will like it). Anyway, if critics learn to write from the point of view of the experienced expert and not from the point of view of the cultural elitist, then they will be valued widely. As long as they assume that their job is to say what is good and what is bad, what is art and what is trash, instead of being able to distill the differences of films and be able to present those differences in a way that consumers can make decisions based on them, they'll be writing for just another niche.

Movies and Data Visualization

Check out this amazing chart (or is it a graph? Maybe I'll just call it an interactive graphic) @ the New York Times. Box office earnings of every movie since 1986 represented graphically. At first glance, it just shows what one would suspect: summers and holidays are when the hit movies come out. But if you look closer, you can follow the paths of each film as its earnings rise and drop. You can quickly see which movies had "long tails." Its interesting to think about what those movies might have in common with one another.

Just looking at this, I start to see the flawed, delayed feedback system that movie creation and distribution is based on, all due to something that is becoming increasingly irrelevant: "shelf space" (or in this case, theater space). Studios release big movies at certain times b/c more people go to the movies then (summer/holidays), but people have started going to movies more at those times b/c that's when the big movies are out, not necessarily b/c that's the only time they want to go see movies. But b/c they're making huge, bloated-budget movies that have to compete with one another, studios have to make us starve for any half-way decent movies during the off-months (this April is pretty bad), not b/c its what we actually want, but b/c of finite shelf-space and bloated budgets, both of which could be (and perhaps are being) eliminated. Here's hoping everyone stays home this summer and watches hulu and YouTube.

Promotional space is still finite, though, so its still the movies with the biggest promo budgets that have the big numbers (they tend to peak faster and drop off faster than indy word-of-mouth hits). I really want to see how well films could do on their own merit. It would be easy enough to make a graph that corrected for promotional budgets, if only you could that information, if only studios weren't so protective of that data. I'm starting some work with a professor here at Michigan on the amount of information that flows into our households each day. Perhaps it would be easier to just track the amount of ads one can see instead of trying to get those stats from the people who put them out there. Advertising and promotion, by definition, is visible. Its trying to be seen, has nowhere to hide. You could just do a web-search for a movie, see how many hits you got, code explicit promos separately from mentions on blogs, etc. If one movie is more visible in its explicit and unofficial promotion than another movie that makes the same amount of money over the course of a similar time period, then you might conclude that the first movie actually succeeded based on its own merits and not on extensive promotion.

Long-term sales of DVDs might also get around the promotion issue, getting us closer to what people actually like.

Specific stats (things like "smallest drop from 5th to 6th week") are available in numerical form on sites like Box Office Mojo. In some cases, you're looking at the graphic representation to find specific things, in which case you'd be better off with a list of numbers. But still, images give you a bunch of patterns to notice that you can't notice right away by looking at numbers.

3 Ways to Define Good Cinema: Box Office, AFI, and IMDB

As the subjective coronation that is the Academy Award for Best Picture approaches, its interesting to compare a few gauges of public and critical enjoyment: AFI's top 100 (critics), Box Office revenue adjusted for inflation (public), and IMDB's top 250 (a certain segment of the public). If nothing else, a comparison might give us some clue as to what kind of sample of the public IMDB users are. Also, it might give us some indication of differences between public and critical perception of films.

What the lists have in common
Amazingly, Star Wars is on all three lists (#2 B.O., 15 AFI, and 11 IMDB). My personal opinion on this film is that the acting and dialog are awful and the special effects haven't aged well. Still, the themes resonate across time and cultures, the story is well constructed, and its a good mix of humor, romance, action, and philosophy. The Godfather just misses being in the top 20 on all lists (21 B.O., 2 AFI, 1 IMDB). Just as I'm surprised that so many critics like Star Wars, I'm shocked that The Godfather, with its European art cinema tendencies, is as popular as it is. I wonder if this film is a lot more popular with men than with women. Might that also be true of Star Wars? If that's so, then the male bias in movies isn't just coming from the critics or IMDB users. Its coming from paying customers. And yet, there are plenty of women who consume media. Historically, were they (and are they still) not making the decision as to what films to go see? Might this change in the future? Are TV and books more women's media than film and video games?

What they don't have in common
Gone with the Wind is #1 in Box Office, #6 with the critics, but its nowhere to be found on the IMDB site. IMDB definately has a bias towards newer films while AFI skews much older. The average age of a film in the IMDB top 20 is 30 years, while the average age of AFI's top 20 is 50(!). The average age of the top 20 box office hits is 38.

Casablanca is 3 on the AFI, 9 on IMDB, and nowhere to be seen on box office. Could it be that the general public didn't or wouldn't really like this movie as much as the critics or the semi-elite users of IMDB? Possibly, or maybe Casablanca was never promoted properly in the theater or re-released widely. Perhaps its stature grew over time. Perhaps all of these things account for the discrepancy.

E.T. is the 4th highest grossing film of all time, and rates a reasonable 24 on the AFI list, but is nowhere to be found on IMDB's 250. The critic/public hybrid represented by IMDB seems to be more testosterone heavy than either the general public or the critics. IMDB's top 20 is packed with men and violence. E.T. is a bit schmaltzy and certainly isn't very high in testosterone. This male (presumably young male) skew is a big reason why IMDB should not be confused with public or critical praise, but more likely represents, on average, the desires of young male Americans.

The Empire Strikes Back is 12 on all-time BO, 8 on IMDB, and its left off of the AFI list. I've always felt that Empire is vastly superior to Star Wars in every way: acting, cinematography, character development, pacing. The Joseph Campbell mythic themes that made the first one great are still there, too. The only reason I can think that AFI found Star Wars so superior to Empire is the former's cultural and economic significance, which is weird b/c they have no problem putting films that didn't exactly change cinema or the public consciousness (The Searchers, for example).

Critical godhead Citizen Kane (the Stairway to Heaven of movies, as it were) sits atop the AFI list. Only 3 films stayed in the same spot from the 1998 top 100 AFI list to the 2007 list, and this was one of them. IMDB rates it a respectable 24, and of course, its not on the box office list. I wonder if this were re-released and promoted heavily, would the public show up? Would they like it? Would they get what the big deal was about this movie? I kinda doubt it. Again, maybe critics are rating this movie highly for being innovative, in terms of style (depth of field), story, and themes. Sure, its still a good story, and the look of the film, the acting, and the dialog still hold up reasonably well, but I think the critics are mostly rating it so highly for its influence on subsequent movies (and the IMDB folks are probably acting like critics on this one). Ditto to Wizard of Oz (10 on AFI, 110 on IMDB, nothing on BO).

The Searchers, considered by many to be the apotheosis of a critics movie, is number 12 on the AFI list, 241 on IMDB, and nowhere on box office. What's most interesting is that on the 1998 edition of AFI's top 100 list, this film was 96(!!!). What the hell happened in those 10 years? Other big jumpers include Vertigo (52 spots) and City Lights (65 spots to 11).

Many films (Psycho, Schindler's List, Vertigo, Dr. Strangelove, Lawrence of Arabia to name a few) are higher on AFI's list than IMDB by 20-50 spots, but that's not really that much of a discrepancy. They both think the film is great. But none of these films grosses all that much $. Unsurprisingly, epics do better on the box office list, probably b/c they play well on big screens and are heavily promoted to recoup high costs of production (both of which critics and IMDB users don't seem to care about). Sequels and films based on existing properties do better on the box office list, too, for obvious reasons.

So, what lesson can we draw from this brief comparison? I think we should pay more attention to IMDB and AFI for a few reasons: big screens won't really account for that much huge revenue in the future. Only 3 out of the top 20 films of all time were released during the home video (VHS/DVD) era. Back when theatrical release was the only revenue stream for film, they made them so that they would play well on the big screen. AFI and IMDB lists are made by people watching films that were made during that era and the era of home video, so I don't think they'd have this big screen historical bias that the box office list has. Presumably, home video, with its smaller screens, isn't going away. It would help to have a list of top 100 grossing films in all formats (theatrical, VHS, DVD, online, TV, etc). The same is true for repeated viewings: critics and IMDB users have time to pour over films again and again, so that might be a better indication of what people would really like, instead of what they've been told to like by marketers.

On a similar note, I think that in the future, promotion won't influence film revenue the way it has in the past. The long tail economy of the internet will allow good films to rise to the top over time. For these reasons, the top box office list might look more and more antiquated as the years go by. I think that the critics list are just as prone to cultural elitism bias as ever, but there also needs to be a way to track audience desire that can factor out the effects of marketing. Maybe that's what truly "good" criticism can do.

Box Office adjusted for inflation:

1	Gone with the Wind
2	Star Wars
3	The Sound of Music
4	E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial
5	The Ten Commandments
6	Titanic
7	Jaws
8	Doctor Zhivago
9	The Exorcist
10	Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
11	101 Dalmatians
12	The Empire Strikes Back
13	Ben-Hur
14	Return of the Jedi
15	The Sting
16	Raiders of the Lost Ark
17	Jurassic Park
18	The Graduate
19	Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace
20	Fantasia

AFI:

1	Citizen Kane	1941
2	Casablanca	1942
3	The Godfather	1972
4	Gone with the Wind	1939
5	Lawrence of Arabia	1962
6	The Wizard of Oz	1939
7	The Graduate	1967
8	On the Waterfront	1954
9	Schindler's List	1993
10	Singin' in the Rain	1952
11	It's a Wonderful Life	1946
12	Sunset Boulevard	1950
13	The Bridge on the River Kwai	1957
14	Some Like It Hot	1959
15	Star Wars	1977
16	All About Eve	1950
17	The African Queen	1951
18	Psycho	1960
19	Chinatown	1974
20	One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest	1975

IMDB

1.	9.1	The Godfather (1972)	263,716
2.	9.1	The Shawshank Redemption (1994)	311,972
3.	9.0	The Godfather: Part II (1974)	151,051
4.	8.9	Buono, il brutto, il cattivo, Il (1966)	85,867
5.	8.8	Pulp Fiction (1994)	267,773
6.	8.8	Schindler's List (1993)	179,754
7.	8.8	One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975)	134,305
8.	8.8	Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back (1980)	189,692
9.	8.8	Casablanca (1942)	117,857
10.	8.8	Shichinin no samurai (1954)	65,877
11.	8.8	Star Wars (1977)	229,423
12.	8.8	The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003)	239,837
13.	8.7	12 Angry Men (1957)	63,122
14.	8.7	Rear Window (1954)	77,927
15.	8.7	Goodfellas (1990)	145,925
16.	8.7	Cidade de Deus (2002)	90,867
17.	8.7	Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)	162,612
18.	8.7	The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)	273,337
19.	8.7	C'era una volta il West (1968)	43,490
20.	8.7	The Usual Suspects (1995)	184,812

Are 'No Country for Old Men' and 'There Will Be Blood' good movies?

Right after seeing No Country for Old Men and There Will be Blood (both of which I liked, kind of), I got the feeling that critics would love them and the public would wonder what the critics were smoking. The lackadaisical pacing, the meandering plots, the lack of distinct musical cues, emotionally remote protagonists, and the oddball endings all seemed like something that people wouldn't like nearly as much as critics. I was right about the critics, but I'm not so sure about the second part.

One hint that this is the case can be found on metacritic which aggregates critical reception of a film and compares it to the opinions of users. The 18 point difference between critical praise and user praise of Blood and 17 points for No Country are larger than those of any other film out now, maybe bigger than any film on the site ever (need to do more research there). Granted, the sample of users is so small (329 & 401) and is interested enough in critical reaction to come to a site dedicated to aggregating it, and therefore it probably isn't very representative of general public opinion. IMDB users (larger samples at 30,000 and 60,000) rated both films very highly, so highly that they're both in the top 40 films of all time according to users.



For a moment, let's assume that the public didn't (or wouldn't) like either of these films as much as the critics. As I've always been interested in the relationship between critical praise and popular success, having rejected the reductionist platitude that critics like one type of film and the public another, I thought I'd take another look at why the discrepancy might exist.

One explanation would have it that there are certain static characteristics, both thematic and stylistic, that critics are drawn to more than the general public. Grandiose themes like the criticism of American capitalist arrogance, might be a thematic thread that is common to so many critically acclaimed films, while long-duration shots and any of the attributes listed above seem to fare better with critics than audiences.

In some cases, I think critical praise, of a film or the themes and stylistic traits of a film, precede the popular embrace of those things. Does the praise cause the public to like those things; that is, does the public or has the public ever looked to critics to tell them what's good and what isn't? Are the critics merely good at predicting what the public will eventually like? Are they just as likely to guess which movies will be popular if they were to pull a film's name out of a hat (the times they anticipate popularity are roughly equal to the odds that they would do so by chance)?

It would be fascinating to do an analysis of films that were loved by critics and hated by the public. Within that category there would be to sub-categories: the films (or attributes of films) that the public came to love (or at least accept) and films/attributes that the public still dislikes. The former would show us instances critical anticipating of popularity (critics doing their job well) while the other would show us what the critics like that the public will never like (critics acting like cultural elites, trying in vain to force the public to like what they like).

Limited access might skew there numbers. Even if all critically praised films become available to everyone via online or in-person rental, some will be better promoted than others, and so their popularity would reflect their promotion budget more than any intrinsic characteristic of the film. But still, the internet allows people to see some prima facie indication of what films critics liked that the public wouldn't like if they were made to watch the film instead of selecting it b/c they sought it out or b/c it was heavily marketed. Critics are made to watch every film, so for it to be a sensible comparison, the public would have to be made to watch every film too.

Re-editing Foreign CG Animated Films for the Worse

I just casually stumbled upon a weird phenomenon I hadn't been aware of: CG animated films made overseas that get re-edited for American family audiences (either for comprehensibility or adult themes, such as the vaguest hint of sex). Both Doogal and Arthur & The Invisibles tanked in the US, but did OK overseas (something like 70/30 or 80/20 splits) and both were released by the Weinsteins. So, did they tank b/c they were badly re-edited and badly marketed, or b/c they just weren't American enough?

What's odd is that I hadn't known that these were European products. I guess I had assumed that CG animation was strictly the domain of Pixar, Dreamworks, and a few shitty knock-off production houses. Perhaps many who who went (or didn't go) to see these films in the States assumed that they were from one of these budget mini-studios. Perhaps, since these films appeal primarily to kids, who care more about being able to talk about movies w/ their peers than older folks (playground fodder as opposed to water-cooler talk), once these films were seen as "uncool," it was over for them.

If they present an alternative to the suffocating same-ness of American CG animated fare, I'm all for them. Even if they suck.