Originally Posted By ecdc >>Why is it so hard for some to admit that whether or not a movie is "good" is largely subjective?<< Because that old canard is usually invoked as a post-modern "I loved Jaws the Revenge better than Jaws so no one can really say what is good and what isn't," than to have a thoughtful discussion about film. Hey, I get it. Some movies divide even the most respected of critics. Some movies come out and are critical bombs, only to gain tremendous respect and appreciation over time. But by and large, the average film gains a critical consensus. Of course film is subjective, so let's not invoke the either/or fallacy to somehow argue that anyone is saying otherwise. All I've argued is that this disdain for critics as a bunch of snobby know-nothings who should be ignored is silly. I do reject the notion that if so much as one person loves a film, it invalidates all criticism and we're supposed to throw up our hands and go, "Oh well, no way to really tell if a movie is good or bad!" Film is an art form that has experts and deserves for those experts to be taken seriously. Its mass appeal and easy accessibility does not make every John Q. Filmgoer as qualified as respected critics, unspoken American rules of fairness and politeness that claim everyone's opinions is the same, aside.
Originally Posted By RoadTrip <<>>I thought it was a very enjoyable film and far prefer it to the classic "Wizard of Oz". << Dude, I ... I ... I ... you ... I ... that ... I ... I ... I ... we ... I ... ooooooooooooooooooh.>> That exchange was from the Oz attraction thread. I decided further comment on it really belonged here, not there. I'll first explain why I don't think much of the classic Oz film. Maybe it was just over-exposure. It played on my family's TV year after year FOREVER. I don't even remember what age I was when I first saw it. I just know that after repeated viewings I got really, really sick of it. Having watched it again fairly recently, I can say why I still don't like it much. I don't like Garland's acting. Loved her singing, but her acting not so much. Her wide-eyed and breathless "Oh my" approach to the role just didn't do it for me... it wasn't believable. Apparently in the book Dorothy was supposed to be about 11... Garland at 16 just wasn't able to pull that off. I found the classic film's characters of the Scarecrow and Cowardly Lion to be one dimensional and excessively cartoonish... far more so than the actual animated characters Finley and China Girl in the new film. The only of the travel companions I liked in the original were the Tin Man and Toto... Toto didn't do much but at least he was believable! I didn't like the Wizard in the classic film. Oz appeared to rule through fear, threats, intimidation and perceived power. It wasn't until the end when it was revealed that he wasn't really much of a wizard, but in truth was a very good man. I far prefer the approach of the new film where from the beginning Oz either admits (or is soon found to be) not much of a wizard, but is slowly revealed to be a pretty decent man. The only place for me where the original film was significantly better was Margaret Hamilton's masterful portrayal of the Wicked Witch of the West. She was far superior to any of the witches in "Oz the Great and Powerful." So there you have my brief comparison of the two film and why I prefer the new one... for whatever it's worth. One of the primary reasons I enjoyed "Oz the Great and Powerful" so much is the color-saturated visual feast it provides. That is important to me... and the primary reason I enjoyed "What Dreams May Come" so much, even thought it was poorly received by both critics and audiences. In a book plot and character development are obviously of primary importance. In a film, I want to SEE it on the screen. I don't "hate" the critics for disliking the new Oz, or for not thinking MU was all that good. I still think there may be a little built-in bias against Disney films. How else can you possibly explain DM2 getting generally better reviews than MU? Maybe it's just that they set a far higher bar for Pixar than they do for Illumination Entertainment. I don't know. I have certainly learned that if I think a film looks good to ME, I should see it and not worry about the reviews it gets.
Originally Posted By JeffG I actually agree with that point of view at least to a degree, but I think it goes both ways. I never would say that someone shouldn't feel free to dislike a film just because I thought it was good, but I think it is every bit as wrong to demand that a film's admirers accept it as a "guilty pleasure". I also tend to think that pointing to critical consensus is a pretty good example of the classic appeal to authority fallacy. I actually very much admire film criticism and do read reviews regularly. A well-written review by someone with a good understanding of film can be immensely useful. In many cases, I find reviews can be immensely helpful in making a decision whether or not to see a film that I'm on the fence on, regardless of the reviewer's ultimate point of view. If the reviewer well articulates the strengths and weaknesses of the film and his/her reasons for why aspects of the film did or didn't work, I can glean a lot of information that will give me a reasonable idea of whether or not I'm apt to like it. Relatively few reviews are strictly positive or strictly negative. It is completely possible that an overall negative review might convince me that various strengths that the reviewer cited are ones that I'm likely to appreciate while the weaknesses that doomed the film for the writer might be ones that I expect I can easily overlook. The exact opposite can also be true. An overall positive review might cite a few negatives that I know would be a bigger issue for me or praise components to which I would expect to react differently. What I do consider important, though, is to actually read the entire review. I generally dislike star ratings or aggregation sites like Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic as they attempt to take something complex and full of nuance and simplify it down to black and white. Bringing it back to the original topic of this thread, I think "Oz The Great and Powerful" is a particularly prime example. While the overall "consensus" cited by the aggregation sites did trend negative, nearly every review praised aspects of the film, particularly its visuals. There was also a lot of disagreement among critics about certain aspects of the film, particularly James Franco's performance. I guess I would best summarize my view as being that there really isn't as strong a critical consensus on a film as some are suggesting. Sure, there are extremes like "Citizen Kane", on one end, or pretty much every Rob Schneider movie on the other end, but the critical viewpoint on the majority of films is much more complex, just like the individuals that write the reviews. -Jeff
Originally Posted By TheRedhead "Maybe it's just that they set a far higher bar for Pixar than they do for Illumination Entertainment." The critics didn't set the bar. Pixar did. And if Pixar doesn't want us to expect greatness from them, then they shouldn't have made Toy Story 2 , The Incredibles, and Wall-E.
Originally Posted By Witches of Morva ORWEN: All I know is that I can hardly wait for the sequel to Oz the Great & Powerful--along with an Oz attraction at Disneyland!!!
Originally Posted By mawnck >>I'll first explain why I don't think much of the classic Oz film.<< Much respect for this post, strenuously disagree with it though I do. The original was very much a product of its time, and the overacting that you don't care for (which I think is just as much a part of the Tin Man's performance) was standard issue movie musical stuff, which personally, I love. Most people don't realize that Bert Lahr's lion was really just a standard issue Bert Lahr performance. If you see him in any of his other movies, he's the same character, sans lion costume, and it's what audiences expected of him. He's taken somewhat out of context nowadays. One of your comments caught my eye ... >>the color-saturated visual feast it provides<< and it causes me to wonder what your source was for your recent viewing. Oz was an early Technicolor movie. It had color saturation out the wazoo, and the most recent restoration does a decent job of reproducing it. The "color-saturated visual feast" of the new version was a not terribly successful attempt to digitally replicate the glorious color in the original. If you didn't get that from your viewing, then you might want to see if you can borrow someone's Blu Ray to see what Oz is supposed to look like. By the way ... >>How else can you possibly explain DM2 getting generally better reviews than MU?<< It didn't. On both metacritic and rottentomatoes, MU is ahead of DM2 by 3 points. Personally, I'd put it further ahead than that, but I seem to have an inexplicable immunity to minion humor. Moving along ... >>I think it is every bit as wrong to demand that a film's admirers accept it as a "guilty pleasure".<< Depends on the film, says me. If you admire "Paul Blart Mall Cop", then yes, I do insist you accept it as a guilty pleasure, or I'm never taking you seriously again when it comes to movies. Authority is not necessarily a fallacy. Some movies are, objectively, crap. And most others (objectively) have plot holes, lousy acting, poorly written scripts, and any other number of flaws that add up to "movie that doesn't quite work". I don't recall which critic it was - probably Ebert or Maltin - who described his process as first reacting to the movie, and then writing the review to try and explain the reaction he had to someone who hasn't seen it. RT's post above is a solid example of that. (I hope my posts slamming "Up" when it came out were too.) There's always going to be outliers - different people react differently to different things ("Up") - but the fact that there *is* usually a critical consensus about major movie releases, whether their stated reasons match up or not, should indicate that there's more to this than a bunch of authoritarian guys throwing opinions around. I think the aggregation sites (metacritic more so than rottentomatoes because of the binary thing) are a useful barometer of critical opinion. <a target="blank" rel="nofollow" href="http://www.metacritic.com/movie/oz-the-great-and-powerful">http://www.metacritic.com/movi...powerful</a> Oops ... how did that get here? But yeah, you're doing yourself a disservice if you go by the numbers without reading some of the reviews behind them. And +1 for 305. "Pixar disappoints Mawnck with their admittedly very good movie 'Monsters University' - Film at 11."
Originally Posted By mawnck >>And most others (objectively) have plot holes<< Eh, remove the word "most". It was for an earlier version of this sentence. I need an editor.
Originally Posted By kennect Maybe i'm wrong if so please correct me. I have always read that the original Wizard of Oz was not a hit initially. That it took time to become the classic it is.
Originally Posted By Dabob2 I believe it was a modest hit, but not a runaway in its initial run. It became the classic it is at least partly through repetition on television; when there were only 3 networks, it got annual airplay, and it was almost an event to baby boomers, who would watch religiously every year. For probably millions of Americans of a certain age, it is THE movie they have seen the most times. I remember davewasbaloo and at least one other British-based LP'er saying that Robin Hood is one of the most highly regarded Disney animated films in Britain. To most Americans, it's just not one of the better ones, but in Britain apparently they've played it on TV every year around Christmas, and a couple of generations now have grown up with it and attach fond memories to it as a result. The movie "A Christmas Story" has had a similar thing happen to it. Not a big hit at the time of release, I'd call it a good but not great flick... but every year now TBS (I think) plays a marathon of it - 24 hours straight of A Christmas Story, and it's become something of a ritual for millions of people, thus enhancing its reputation.
Originally Posted By RoadTrip <<Maybe i'm wrong if so please correct me. I have always read that the original Wizard of Oz was not a hit initially. That it took time to become the classic it is.>> Yes, it was not very popular until it's re-release.
Originally Posted By kennect well I simply checked Wikipedia. interesting info about cost versus it's initial return. it was a loser for that time. though films at that time seemed dirt cheap!
Originally Posted By mawnck >>Business for The Wizard of Oz was superlative from the onset and, by the end of 1939, it ranked as one of the top money-making motion pictures of the year. In its first release, the film returned $3,017,000 to MGM, and the figure would have been higher but for an odd combination of uncontrollable factors. As noted earlier, the film broke attendance records in many areas, but the accompanying box-office figures--while excellent--were not of the same record-breaking caliber. At least one-third of the Oz audience was comprised of children, who paid less in admission prices than adult patrons. And, while business was always strong enough to warrant extended engagements for the film, the picture was not "held over" in some cases because, as Variety put it, there was "too much biz backed up." Nineteen thirty-nine was a bumper year for motion pictures, and the glut of incoming films required exhibition space. Finally, much of the potential foreign market for the film was cut off by the beginning of World War II in September 1939. ... the box office receipts of $3,017,000 were not enough to put the picture in the black. The Wizard of Oz probably lost around seven hundred fifty thousand dollars on its initial release. ... [but] if the film remained "good" for the ten years of subsequent use the studio expected to get out of it, there would be more money to be made in the future--virtually all of it clear profit.<< Fricke, Scarfone & Stillman, "The Wizard of Oz: The Official 50th Anniversary Pictorial History"
Originally Posted By ecdc >>It became the classic it is at least partly through repetition on television<< It's next-to-impossible for people today to appreciate what it was like to see a movie in the 1930s or '40s and have no expectation of ever seeing it again. Then, with the advent of television, you at least had the movie of the week. But yearly replays were rare, reserved for the Wizard of Oz, The Ten Commandments, and Its a Wonderful Life, among others. A friend of mine pointed out how exciting it was in the 1960s when a friend of his got a color TV. Practically the whole neighborhood gathered around and, for the first time, saw the Wizard of Oz in color.
Originally Posted By skinnerbox <<A friend of mine pointed out how exciting it was in the 1960s when a friend of his got a color TV. Practically the whole neighborhood gathered around and, for the first time, saw the Wizard of Oz in color.>> Count me amongst that group. One of my school mates' parents got a color TV -- huge console set in a wooden cabinet that weighed a ton -- just a few weeks before the annual airing of Oz. They held a party for their friends and their daughter's friends and we all watched the film together in their somewhat cramped apartment's living room. This was around 1966. It was the first time I had ever seen Oz in color. And it was a big deal.
Originally Posted By RoadTrip <<A friend of mine pointed out how exciting it was in the 1960s when a friend of his got a color TV. Practically the whole neighborhood gathered around and, for the first time, saw the Wizard of Oz in color.>> Yes, my parents got our first color TV (a 19"er from "Monkey Wards" somewhere between 62 and 65. I would have been 10-13 years old. I remember being absolutely captivated by the Tonight Show, one of the first TV shows to be routinely broadcast in color. I thought it was absolutely gorgeous. Probably part of the reason why to this day imaginative use of intense color impresses me so much. It carries over to the artists I tend to favor... Matisse, van Gogh, Gauguin and Mondrian. Mondrian's use of color was not as varied as the others, but I like the clean black lines and white spaces punctuated by bright primary colors. I guess I'm just a color junkie.
Originally Posted By RoadTrip Currently, the worldwide-gross for "Oz, the Great and Powerful" is just short of $500 Million... I don't know how that can be seen as a total failure. It is #7 on the world-wide gross list for movies released in 2013, just behind MU at #6. I don't know that Disney is making poor movies... they just PAY to damn much for the movies they make. I know Disney fans tend to hate accountants with sharp pencils, but I think they could maybe use a few more!
Originally Posted By ecdc >>I actually agree with that point of view at least to a degree, but I think it goes both ways.<< I think we're pretty much in agreement, and your post was great. I really don't mean to come across as holding up all critics as if they are the end-all, be-all of film judgment. There a movies that I know will appeal to me that don't get great reviews that I see anyway (Hitchcock from last year comes to mind). I might quibble and say that I do think there's more consensus than you might. I think middle scores on Rotten Tomatoes or Metacritic, for example, are usually more an indication of "meh" by critics than they are a division. At first glance, it might seem like one critic liked a movie and another didn't, but as one reads the review, they are more in agreement than one might initially think.
Originally Posted By skinnerbox <<Currently, the worldwide-gross for "Oz, the Great and Powerful" is just short of $500 Million... I don't know how that can be seen as a total failure.>> Simple. Disney will not break even on the cost for producing, distributing, and marketing the film. There will be no profit realized from the film. How could that be anything but failure? Disney spent between $325 mil and $400 mil to put this film in theaters and advertise it to the public. And they only get to keep about 50% of the box office receipts. Therefore, they need to earn at least $650 mil at the box before realizing any profit. Disney fell over $150 mil short of that target. This is the very definition of failure for a film studio. And Disney keeps doing this over and over and over again. More of their films now lose money at the box instead of earn money because Iger has allowed production costs to spiral out of control. Oz cost over $200 million to make. That's ridiculous! In this day and age of digital effects, that number should be far, far lower. Why the Board isn't ticked off with Iger for allowing this to continue is beyond me.
