Can a Prequel EVER be a Good Film?

That's fine, potentially, but I'd be a little surprised if skizzer's comment was about subjectivism rather than the much simpler and more common notion that opinions about art are subjective. At minimum, probably worth clarifying.

I really, really don't like to watch series, I just like movies most of the time, but I thought The Dark Crystal: AoR was outsanding and I'm with you, it was a really disappointing cancellation. Like, you finally made something worth watching for more than three hours and you're killing it. Great.

Anyways...yes Prequels can be good and you have plenty of good ones.


Kong Skull island for example is my favorite of the Monsterverse films.


The Godfather Part II, The Good The Bad and the Ugly, and Temple of Doom are all-time classics.


Anabelle and Ouja are both terrible movies with excellent sequels that are prequels.


Planet of the Apes is basically all prequels and many of them are excellent not just the recent ones but also the eartlier sequels.

I do know what both are, but I'm seriously dubious about the ability of humans to rise to that self-aggrandizing goal of "objectivity". Everybody, me included, brings their own axe to grind, their own perceptions and their own attitudes to the argument. Humans pretend to use objectivity so they can "win" arguments, but they really can't practice it. At least subjectivity is a bit more honest. Justification and evidence both help, but again, everybody comes to the discussion with a pre-formed opinion, otherwise they would not have gathered all of that evidence and rationalization.

I pick the facts that justify my opinion.

Yep, this cancellation made me hesitant to commit to series any more. I really only take chances with sure things like miniseries, anthology series, long-running series or ones that are already over.

I guess Netflix cancelled it because stop-motion animating all those puppets was so expensive, which is understandable, and because of the A-list voice talent. I hope the latter is not what tipped the scale because as much as I liked the work of Simon Pegg, Awkwafina, etc., it's not like the original movie needed recogizable names to be great.

People also use subjectivity to invalidate other people's opinions about what's good and bad in cinema. If some people using it for illegitimate reasons is an argument against it, then subjectivity is in the same boat as objectivity.


When a person is being subjective, they are calling a movie "good" merely because they like it, and bad because they dislike it, not because they've made any attempt to objectively analyze it's qualities, such as the acting, directing, cinematography, writing, etc... When a person is being objective, they are able to recognize that a movie can be good, with excellent acting, cinematography, directing, and writing, even if the movie doesn't appeal to their personal taste and they didn't like it. For example, I found Last Year at Marienbad quite boring, but I still recognize that it's a great film.


Being objective is not binary, it is a spectrum. Just because a person isn't 100% objective, doesn't mean they aren't objective at all. Being objective is recognizing that we are all living a shared experience in reality. We're not in parallel universes where the same movie's acting is worse for whoever dislikes it and the acting metaphysically improves for whoever likes it. If quality were subjective, wouldn't that mean your opinion would change the actual acting performance itself? Subjective means based on opinion, but the movie came before our opinion, so how could it's quality be based on our opinions? It's the other way around, our opinions are based on its quality, and our opinions are right or wrong to the degree at which they accurately describe reality.


I can't even wrap my head around how quality could be subjective. It's by definition objective, or else it isn't quality. You don't have the grounds to say a movie is great just because it appeal to your personal taste. If quality is subjective, then no one can legitimately say any movie is either good or bad, since it's not a matter of fact, it's just a matter of opinion. If it isn't measurable it isn't quality. If you say one movie is better or worse than another movie, you better have some reasons beyond how you personally feel about it, considering your feelings will change over time. Or haven't you experienced thinking a movie has good acting, and rewatching years later only to realize the acting was way worse than you remembered?


I think a person is being subjective whenever they let their feelings about a movie cloud their judgement, and a person is being objective whenever they ignore their personal feelings in their assessment. But I also notice that the more objective I am when I describe a movie, the less qualitative statements I make. For example, instead of saying the movie has great cinematography, I'll say something like, the composition was tight. But if quality was subjective, wouldn't that mean if you wanted to you could say a cinematographer with no experience, who hasn't practiced, and doesn't know what he's doing, produces just as good or possibly even better cinematography than a professional expert? Doesn't the fact that you can't honestly say your stick figure drawing is better than DaVinchi prove that quality is objective?


Can anyone give an example of a subjective quality? What is a subjective quality? There is no such thing to my knowledge. To make art you have to use skill. Painting is not just one skill, but there are many skills involved. By studying and practicing you gradually get better over time. Anyone who makes art can see there is an improvement within themselves over time, and someone else's opinion about your art doesn't affect or change your art. That improvement within yourself is observable.


I often see subjectivity used by less informed people who don't understand art as well to justify their opinions as being just as valid as people who have taken more time to study and understand art. Subjectivity is often used by people when they don't want to adopt the correct opinion, but want to validate an incorrect opinion.


A person's objectivity is relative to their current understanding. Just because there's a spectrum of degrees of more or less objective does not mean it's subjective. Over time I become more objective as I learn how to be, and my understanding of art grows.


To me, subjectivity is a rejection of standards and principles, and an abandoning of understanding of technical mastery, in favor of an elevation of personal preference.


It seems to me that the most important thing to a subjectivist is content, and to an objectivist content is the least important thing.

Wow. Among the last things I can imagine being a topic for presumed "objectivity" is a movie. It's right up there with music and art. It's yours and my right to like it or not based on completely personal preferences or even something like whether I have a headache tonight. There's no international consortium that has established benchmarks, a rating scale or even open-ended guidelines. Without all of those, the idea that any rating is objective is absurd.

The weight of a potato is objective, or at least it is if we can agree on a uniform standard for weight. The US disagrees with most of the world on that in that endless metric vs english catfight. We can't even get started on movies, art or music....no metrics there either, fortunately. Once we go down the road to "objective" evaluations of art, we've gone about 2/3 of the way to despotism. All that's left is for the goons to knock down your door for not liking Casablanca.

So, are you suggesting that unless something is 100% objective, like the weight on a scale, then it isn't objective at all? There are many schools and institutions of art that rate and grade art. Just because they don't agree completely on everything doesn't mean you can dismiss their correlations altogether. From your subjective standpoint, how can you account for correlation?


Can we not agree that an artist improves their skill over time and that although it's not perfectly measurable, it's still measurable to at least some degree by observing it through experience?


If an artist has improved in any way, is it not fair to say the art they've made after improving is better than the art they made before? Is that a matter of opinion, or can it not be considered factual?

I don't dismiss subjective ratings at all, but I do cast doubt on the validity of supposed objectivity for anything that's not a measurement based on a benchmarked scale. Schools are a prime example. I've done a lot of that and have seen a lot of personal preference masquerading as objectivity.

2 + 2 = 4 is objective.....Whether Gone With the Wind is a good movie, depends.

In my life, I've seen it travel from great, historical epic to post-bellum, racist and cringeworthy. Take your pick. Which it is depends on whether you personally identify with Rhett Butler or Mammy.

Quality is not necessarily measured on a benchmark scale. How do you measure how ripe a tomatoe is? Because it's not exact doesn't mean someone's opinion that a green tomato is riper than a red one is valid. Differences of opinion don't mean there isn't an actual correct answer when two tomatoes are so close to the same ripeness that the human eye can't detect which is slightly riper. It's the same principle if you're trying to assess whether one movie is better than another. If someone is being subjective they'll say the movie they like more is better, but if someone is being objective they'll say the movie with better acting, directing, writing, and cinematography is better.


Quality in art is measured by comparison. That is how you are graded in an art school, by how your art compares to the rest of the class on a given assignment. There are standards of excellence that can be objectively observed, though not necessarily with exactness. There have also been many studies done to measure creativity in art.


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Can't you imagine any movie necessarily being better than any other movie? Any movie at all have anything better about it than any other movie? Are you saying there is no such thing as a good movie, if anyone thinks anything is "good" it's nothing other than their opinion?

"It's all subjective" is an objectively bad argument to make.


That's probably why it's almost always used by people who never have any other argument.

I've said some version of this like a dozen times, but resorting to "art is subjective" is one of those things that's both functionally true but also generally a bad response.

The problem, I think, is with the unstated implication, which creates a sort of motte-and-bailey. The motte is the literal idea: objectivity isn't really possible even if we presume it exists. The bailey is the implication of using it as a response: so therefore we don't need to discuss this (or in some cases: therefore I don't need to defend what I just said). All discussions about subjectivity would benefit from the unstated implication being actually stated (or denied).

There is, of course, also an unstated implication to posting one's opinion in the first place: that it's worth disseminating and discussing. So the act of posting the opinion is nearly (if not totally) at odds with the idea that it cannot be critiqued. Unless people are using public forums the way they would use a private film watching diary or something, where the point is just to log your thoughts somewhere. That, too, would be good to say upfront.

In short, if someone thinks there is value to posting their mere opinion, they're strongly suggesting there's value to people talking about that opinion, so it would be dissonant to post opinions but then also deflect responses based on the fact that they're subjective. If someone really believes that through and through, then why post the opinion in the first place?

Wouldn't you agree that the more a person separates their personal preferences from the technical aspects of a film they are being more objective? I'd argue that objectivity is possible to the degree of which a person separates their personal feelings from their assessment of a movie's quality. A person can be objective without necessarily being correct about their opinion or assessment.


Subjective means based on our opinions and feelings, and objective means based on measurable criteria. If someone says a movie is good based on their personal feelings towards the movie, they're being subjective. But if they say they think it's a good movie based on the movie's physical properties, it's acting, directing, writing, and cinematography, are they not being objective even if they aren't entirely correct? Like say for example if they don't actually understand very much about acting, but they still try to fairly assess it at their current level of understanding.

Zotis can I ask you a personal question? Some people are OK with many loose ends in their life, other's want everything put in order. Would you describe yourself as someone who has a strong need for order and consistency in life?

I'm not quite sure if I'm someone who has a strong need for order and consistency in life, but I do think order and consistency are important and necessary, although personally I'm not very orderly or consistent, I strive to improve in that area.

Yes, but it's asymptotic. It can be more or less objective while never achieving real objectivity.

The fact that people can do things to reduce the influence of subjectivity is the basis for the other half of my responses, the parts that talk about how it's a cop-out.

I think this is sort of true, but that terminology is confusing things. Earlier you used the word "objective" in a strict philosophical sense, using it to describe things like underlying universal truths. What you're describing here is "objective" in a more colloquial sense, one that puts aside the strict philosophical question and judges from a normal human baseline. Unbiased more than objective, in other words.

True, but all this does is bump the question up one more layer. We can be objective, for example, about certain highly specific things in film if we first agree on a standard. But the choice of that standard cannot, itself, be objective, which is kind of what people mean when they say it's all subjective. Objectivity in the way you're describing only exists if we first admit that our standards are necessarily axiomatic (not objectively justified), and simply decide to accept them, at which point we can be potentially objective about them.

By analogy: we may decide to determine who the world's greatest athlete is. We may, to that end, have people swim laps and run as fast as they can. We can then objectively measure their performance on those tests...but that is not actually measuring their total athleticism. Our choice of tests, of criteria, can never itself be objective.

Honestly? Not really. Because their reaction to those physical properties is not going to be free of emotional influence, either. It's the kind of thing we do to orient ourselves around more productive ways of discussing things, but it's not really clear how much rationality drives opinions, as opposed to retroactively justifying gut feeling. It's pretty clear that to some degree we all reason backwards from desired conclusions, it's just not usually clear how much.

Thanks Zotis, that's sound like me too.

That reminds me of some of the movie reviews I've read here at MoFo. People will slam a movie they hated by criticizing some form of the direction or acting and yet they will praise that same quality in another film if they enjoyed the movie. I know that's true because I realize I've done that myself...and it's an honest expression of my feelings at the time. It's like we can flip a switch and hate what we said we loved if it occurs in something we strongly dislike.

Yeah. Sometimes it's just total dissonance. Being more charitable, sometimes there's a distinction, but one they can't (or just didn't) articulate.

It's a little scary to try to consider the degree to which our beliefs and choices are arbitrary and then retroactively justified by our intellect. It's obvious this happens to some degree, and I believe/fear that it happens more than any of us would like to admit, but we can't really know.

But, to Zotis' point, that's just all the more reason to try to think about and establish consistent principles and orient ourselves around those when possible. It doesn't make us objective, but it's the best we can do, and the alternative is just sort of flailing at things as they strike us in the moment, living the unexamined life.

I agree with that. For me I find arbitrary reflex belief to be comforting. My personality & personal belief is for life/art/etc that everything is in flux so I'm good with how the spur of the moment can shape one's ideas and interruptions of all things including art. But that's just me I don't state that as a global truth, just my truth.