Being a writer only ruins watching these 'mainstream' movies if you're looking at the movie as a scriptwriter. Granted it may be difficult not to, as our brains are now wired to think dialogue, plot, clichés, but there's so much more to movies than just the scriptwriting. Movies can do stuff that books can't and those are the elements that keep me glued to the screen. Like the other day I was watching The Sorcerers Apprentice and if you broke it down to plot and dialogue you'd be left with a template of every other fantasy movie in the last few decades. If one were to pitch this story as a query, I'm pretty sure it would be rejected by every agent out there. But despite this, I still ended up enjoying it. It's an example of how going big can turn even a mediocre plot idea into something worth watching at least once. Movies have stuff like cinematography, visual effects and scores to enhance a scene in a way that books never could. The Sorcerer's Apprentice excelled in all these aspects, and so coupled with a fast plot was actually a rather enjoyable experience. So sometimes its better to just sit back, switch your writing brain off, and let the director transport you to the depths of his imagination in its entirety. With a movie he recreates every facet of the scene and your imagination doesn't feature at all. that's why I watch movies and still enjoy them because unlike books there's more to a movie than just a good story.
I mean, I see the point of what you're saying and in a way, I think the same things. However, since I have one go at this crazy world, I'm not gonna blow a little time enjoying something for the mindlessness of it because I've acquired some aesthetic from writing that compels me to watch something critically. I'd rather suspend that and just go along for the ride. If I find something compelling, I will recall it after the fact and think about what I liked and why. During a movie....I just let it go and enjoy. It's al subjective and no one way is right if you find enjoyment in dissecting a movie. Nothing wrong with that at all. I think I let go so that I can enjoy it for what it is not for what I would want it to be. Just my thought.
I can understand Arathald's point. You are more likely to notice the flaws in a film's dialogue if you consider yourself a writer. But to go as far to say that you can't enjoy films is a bit much. I think the hallmark of good writing is for you not to notice that this is actually something someone has written. I think if the writing is good and feels natural, then obviously it should be easier to immerse yourself in the story. If you feel unable to do this, then you're approaching the film with the wrong mindset. I think by the original poster's logic it would be impossible to enjoy a book because you're always looking at the writing. Obviously this isn't the case when a book is good. It is however when a book is of a poor standard and by this analogy i can see the OP's point.
I think Hollywood has ruined movies. Too many movies now try to impress the audience with special effects so they'll overlook plot holes and inconsistancies in the script. Look at the live action Transformer movies. No one watched those because they cared about what happened to the puny human germs. A story can be bad because the author is a terrible storyteller. A movie can be bad for a whole bunch of reasons, anything from bad acting to horrid special effects.
I get why people think this way, but I've never been able to bring myself to embrace it. A book is words, a movie is images, the story is just a product of those things. For me, if a movie is really good (or a book), then it will reward close watching; the script will be rich and complex, the direction will be interesting, the cinematography will be good, etc. I don't want to immerse myself in something as trivial as a story and ignore all the genius in the craft of the movie itself. Take Inception, for example. It's a decent sorta heist movie, a pretty compelling story that you could get immersed in pretty easily. But if all you focus on is the story, then you're missing so much. I mean, besides all of the technical details, the score, the camera work, there's also this theme running through where Nolan turns the movie into a film about film, and a comment on the social role of cinema. You could immerse yourself in the movie and not notice that at all, but it's a richer film if you do. So, I approach films open to analysing the technical and artistic features, not just the story, which, like the OP, is one of the reasons that many movies are simply dissatisfying.
You just saw a badly written movie. Ever since I started reading and writing avidly, I have noticed bad writing in movies more often. I don't believe that learning the craft of writing has ruined movies for me, it has just made me aware of the badly written ones. I am also able to notice well written movies more often, and really appreciate them. If anything, I believe that becoming a writer has made films more enjoyable to watch. Even though I don't enjoy all movies, I still gain a sense of perspective as a writer, which I value. So, maybe becoming a writer has ruined certain movies for you, but who needs badly written movies anyway?
I never really meant that all movies are ruined, but this is certainly a movie I would have been able to just enjoy a couple of years ago. As far as analyzing vs just enjoying, why not do both? I still enjoy well-written movies and books. Yes, to the layperson, the writing should be transparent, but, as a writer, I've found myself, even with some of the best-written stories I've read, trying to figure out what was going through the author's head and deducing his thought process. Reading makes you a better writer in two ways: passively, by simply absorbing the material and picking up on techniques subconsciously, and actively, by actually examining the structure of someone else's stories, and determining how they put it together, and figuring out what works and what doesn't, then using that in your own writing.
I see. I do that to. I concentrate on the writer's thought process. Sometimes I am blown away by the writing in a movie, and there is nothing for me to do but sit slack jawed and try to keep up. Other times I get frustrated by the writing in a movie, and I end up making a list of critiques in my head that I want to scream at the writer. It's incurable at this point, and you're right, there's a lot to absorb from other pieces of work that can help you in your own writing. I liked the Backstreet Boys when I was a little boy. I started playing guitar at the age of seven, and I have been playing since. Though unintentional, I stopped liking them very quickly after I began to understand music. I found out how little skill it took to create the songs that the Backstreet Boys created. Sure they had "good" voices, but their song composition was embarrassing, whether they wrote it themselves or not. I understand your meaning. Once you learn something your mind changes, and you can't go back to how it was before.
That's pretty much exactly what I texted to a friend after he sent me a link to the first Teaser Trailer for Avatar. 20 seconds of glimpses were enough to make this apparent. I think it's inevitable to become more jaded towards entertainment with age, as you know all the stories that new ones are derived from, but at the same time, knowing more about storytelling (and life in general) also allows you to pick up on little things that go over the head of a younger or less experienced crowd. When I see films I used to love 10 years ago, some of them utterly fail now, where as other ones are even greater, because I notice references I didn't know about before. Win some, lose some.
I recently got to see Citizen Kane, often cited as the best movie ever. Very near the beginning is a long movie newsreel about Kane's life, which the studio exec complains is too long and boring. The rest of the film is an attempt to get something more interesting to replace it with. So the supposed "best film ever" starts with an infodump that even the film itself (rightly) admits is too long and boring? I'm not convinced that films were better "back then".
Is it just me who's started liking everything a lot more than average? I spend a lot of time appreciating what people are *trying* to do, rather than what they actually did. Take that awful new Red Riding Hood movie that came out lately. I went to see it with a bunch of friends for a laugh and we didn't take it very seriously, but actually despite all the huge flaws and lack of compelling anything, I found it really interesting. Granted, I probably wasn't thinking many of the things the film makers wanted me to think, but I think I took a lot away from it despite finding the plot/acting/whatever laughable in places. It was a big visual mess, and nothing in it was presented well, but I could see what they wanted it to be and how they'd attempted to get there, and all these things they'd done that would have made it a brilliant film if absolutely everything else was different... Maybe if I wasn't looking critically at films, I would have just seen the surface blech to the film, and felt like a couple of hours wasted, but really, I felt the experience was worth it to see some of the little things. *shrugs* I end up secretly liking a lot of things that everyone else hates. Like Avatar - most people I know are more critical of it than not, but ignoring the plot, which was just an excuse to CG up the things they did, it was a great experience. However terrible it was on reflection, while watching it I felt they did a great job... Maybe just a temporary high which faded really quickly, but in watching it I was totally caught up. Mind you, I've grown up reading and critiquing bad fiction on the internet... It has as much, if not more, to teach than a good novel. I'm used to mining my way through crap to figure out what would be good if it wasn't bad.
The only difference for me is for low budget movies. When I see a poor movie: "Publishers get up to 5000 submissions a month and this story found its way into a movie?" I understand low budget, but a poor story? even popular movies can have a poorly written story. the positive: I do look at the characters closer though.
I felt the same way about E.T. The movie came out when I was kid. I sat through it once and that was once too many. All I saw was a butt ugly alien that drank too much Coca Cola in a boring movie. I never did understand why everyone else was fawning over it. I still don't. I can't tell you how sick I was of hearing, "E.T. phone home." BTW, did I mention E.T. is butt ugly?
As the old saying goes, what's good isn't necessarily popular and what's popular isn't necessarily good. A year and a half ago, I cancelled all the premium movie channels on my cable service because there were so few premium movies. For me, the only two movie channels I watch at all are Turner Classic (and lots of dogs there, too - they seem to think that anything made before 1960 was a "classic") and IFC. Does being a writer make me more critical of films than I was before? Probably not. I hated "Lawrence of Arabia" when I saw it as a child and I still hate it.
I think it's more that they think that anything made before 1960 is cheap to buy the broadcasting rights to.
Really? That doesn't happen to me very often, but I could blame that entirely on the nostalgia high I get every time I watch a Disney movie. Sure, I notice that a few things seem dumber to me now than back then, but I never really thought they failed. I could recognise the entertainment value and still get back into it. But, again, it's probably just the nostalgia. What movies are you referring to anyway, out of curiosity? I will admit that my wording was bad. I meant to say that most mainstream movies that are made now don't really focus on story as much as they used to. Many movies aren't really original anymore and I suppose that everything has been done, but it's disappointing to see when Hollywood doesn't even try to make a twist; they stay on a safe and generic path and don't try to deviate from every single other movie I had to see. Even then, some of their adaptations are simply atrocious (The Last Airbender, The Legend of Chun-Li, Dragonball Evolution, the Akira remake). Citizen Kane probably has a reason for being a classic other than displaying the crafty art of infodump and being tedious. I've never seen the film, so I wouldn't know, but things are usually made classics because it tried something new. I remember reading Jane Eyre and watching one of the movies and wondering how it came to be a classic, only latering appreciating it because, back then, it brought in a new concept during the Victorian Era. I never saw the movie, but I do remember the hype. E.T. scared me a little when I was a kid. His ugliness was out of this world [/bad joke].
Films have a unique combination of art. Writing is one, but I also find myself examining the cinematography, set design, lighting, acting, etc. This can be good and bad. I'm able to find several aspects of a film that I like, even if the writing is poor. But I also see a lot of things that are bad when a studio decides to just through something together. @Arathald I know what you mean. It's hard to ignore a bad script. It has been helpful to me to pay attention to the projects of a particular studio, director, or actor (well known or relatively unknown). Sure, its a general rule, but some choose better projects than others. There will always be some bullsh%t in a portfolio of work but there are some that refuse to associate themselves with crap on a regular basis. Of course, this is subjective. Everyone will like something different. A few quick director examples for me would be Joel and Ethan Coen, Wes Anderson, P.T. Anderson, Darren Aronosfsky, or Christopher Nolan. Generally, I can expect to get what I want from their films (good writing, good visuals, good acting). Divisions of the larger studios like Paramount Vantage or Fox Searchlight and independent studios like Magnolia also tend to produce films I'm likely to find entertaining. It is getting harder to find quality movies these days but it's nice when they do come along.
