3 hours ago, ChaosEngine said:

@RivieraKid@Gnollrunner

But that's fine. We are all entitled to our opinions. But they are not objective facts.

Hence "that's pretty much my take" ...... What does kind of annoy me however is other people assigning reasons why I may like or dislike something, such as "You just don't like women protagonists". I mean now many complain people about Wonder woman?...... In any case,  Getting back to the original post, I don't see the problem with someone vocally complaining about something they don't like. That is their right. What's the problem with it?  If the game maker wants to ignore them, they can. Nobody is saying players or fans of a game or movie have any rights to control that game or movie.  All they can do is express their opinion about it. If someone dislikes Battlefield V because it's "historically inaccurate", I see nothing wrong with that. If enough people feel the same way and  profits suffer from it, at that point the game maker can asses whether they want to change something or do something different the next time around. 

I'm really not sure what conclusion we are trying to come to here.  Can we agree that people have a right to express their opinion about games or moves? Can we also agree that they don't control those games or moves? Seems to me, if we can agree on those ideas we are done.

8 hours ago, ChaosEngine said:

No. The only limit on evolving an IP is "is it good?", and again that's a subjective assessment.  

Look at Spec Ops. It went from a boring series of so-so tactical shooters to completely subverting its own genre and history with Spec Ops: The Line.

Or Westworld: the original movie is a pretty standard "technology goes mad" story. The TV series is far more interesting.

Sure, there are cases where a game (or movie) was all the better for being completly subverted. But: in this case the original being subverted was probably bad (arguably the case with the '99 and '02 Bond movies). And the new movie probably was doing something clever and original (Arguably not the case in the new bond movies... they are played way to straight and cookie cutter to be clever and original, and they neither subvert the genre nor the Bond movies in general. Trashing on the Bond series injokes like with the stirred drink, or with Bond no longer being a fan of gadgets is not really "subverting" Bond movies... the bad guy being the good guy for once would be subverting it. The british government being the bad guy would be subverting it)

I think we can agree on this: if the result is good, only the most rabid of old fans are salty about it. Even then, they probably will watch it / play it and get over their saltiness... or at least grudginlgy agree that its a good movie / good game, if not one that should be counted amongst the classics of the series.

Problem with many of the highly divisive movies or games that tried a 180 is that they are simply not good enough to be above this kind of criticism, or not good enough so only the most rabid fans complain about it.

"Subverting" an existing IP has often become the new "let's do something original" in the age of total risk avoidance. Instead of spacing releases more out (do we need yearly releases of some IPs?), or jugling more IPs at the same time (some big publishers seem to be concentrated on half a dozen never ending series now), in many cases devs and publisher try to make one IP into whatever is the hotness at the moment. I am not sure what to think of all the FPSes out there now tacking on a Battle Royale mode.... and I knew pretty well what to think of the Zombie mode many FPSes tacked on when that was all the rage: it was BS, IMO.

So oftentimes games are not "subverted" as much as bent into shape for the newest fads in the game industry. Which sometimes means they "break" under the stress.

It's probably not that the movie or game would be BETTER in quality if it stayed more true to its roots. If a publisher releases a bad product, it would still be bad if it would at least stay true to the originals. But then it would at least serve as a throwback to old times for longtime fans, which probably would be more forgiving.

12 hours ago, ChaosEngine said:

 

So @RivieraKid didn't like the new movies and @Gnollrunner thought the prequels were good. Now, in my opinion, you're both completely wrong.

But that's fine. We are all entitled to our opinions. But they are not objective facts. I can come up with a boatload of reasons why the new movies are better than the prequels. For example, the new movies don't have Hayden Christiansen, they don't rely on shot/reverse shot conversations. Those are objectively true. But if you like Hayden Christiansen, then your subjective criteria for assessing the prequels are different to mine. Telling someone else that a piece of art is objectively better than some other piece of art is only valid if you agree on subjective criteria in the first place. 

 

In school we read shakespeare and we were taught how to objectively analyse content.

If a movie contradicts itself or is obviously lazy (with cited reasons) we can objectively say that it is bad for these reasons. 

If you are deciding that star wars is just a mindless action movie then i guess you could subjectively argue that the movies are good but most people expect star wars to be internally consistent and follow sensible character progression.

A good critic should analyse a movie objectively.

Which Taken movie is objectively better? 1 clearly, 2 & 3 are pants and if u were to argue that they were better it wouldn't be "my opinion is just as valid as yours" - you would just be a fool. 

We could argue subjectively which movie is better pulp fiction or reservoir dogs. That is a subjective debate which people confuse with the former. To lump everything in the subjective opinion category makes any debate pointless and devalues quality critical analysis.

[edit]

some examples to drive home the distinction

"this movie sucks because it doesnt have any hot women in it" - subjective

"this movie sucks because the acting is wooden, the bad guy has no motive and the protagonist has no progression/depth. The story also makes no sense. [Cited reasons for all bad points]" - mostly objective - you can argue against them with sound reasoning but you cant just say "well I disagree ?, the explosions and women were great, cant wait for part2"

5 hours ago, RivieraKid said:

f a movie contradicts itself or is obviously lazy (with cited reasons) we can objectively say that it is bad for these reasons. 

If you are deciding that star wars is just a mindless action movie then i guess you could subjectively argue that the movies are good but most people expect star wars to be internally consistent and follow sensible character progression.

A good critic should analyse a movie objectively.

Which Taken movie is objectively better? 1 clearly, 2 & 3 are pants and if u were to argue that they were better it wouldn't be "my opinion is just as valid as yours" - you would just be a fool. 

No, we cannot say that it is "objectively bad," because "good" and "bad" as applied to art (and other things, but that's another story) are human-invented points of view and are therefore not "objective." Interpretation of art is always predicated on what the person subject to the work values and the relative priority of those values; interpretation requires an interpreter. We are not identical CPUs bound to interpret the same input the same way as everyone else. Movies can mean different things to different people.

Now, I doubt you'd find anyone whose values would be opposed to internal consistency, of course - but it seems obvious that some people value other traits of a film more. The only reason any trait seems "objectively good" is because enough of us agree that the trait is a valuable one. Even then, the absence of a "good" trait may be ignored when other traits are present. If we disagree on what traits of a film are important, then chances are good we will come to different judgments of its value.

For example, Someone who values subtlety, originality, deep characterization, and realism is obviously not going to judge Star Wars: A New Hope  "good" given that criteria. The fantastical elements obviously fail the "realism" metric, the presentation is bombastic and epic (fails the "subtle" metric), the characters are thin archetypes (fails "deep characterization"), and the plot borrows most elements from other films (fails originality) - in fact, huge portions of the film are shot-for-shot pastiches of other films! Yet I suspect SW:Ep IV is probably one of those movies I would assume you think is "objectively good."

16 hours ago, Oberon_Command said:

No, we cannot say that it is "objectively bad," because "good" and "bad" as applied to art (and other things, but that's another story) are human-invented points of view and are therefore not "objective." Interpretation of art is always predicated on what the person subject to the work values and the relative priority of those values; interpretation requires an interpreter. We are not identical CPUs bound to interpret the same input the same way as everyone else. Movies can mean different things to different people.

Now, I doubt you'd find anyone whose values would be opposed to internal consistency, of course - but it seems obvious that some people value other traits of a film more. The only reason any trait seems "objectively good" is because enough of us agree that the trait is a valuable one. Even then, the absence of a "good" trait may be ignored when other traits are present. If we disagree on what traits of a film are important, then chances are good we will come to different judgments of its value.

For example, Someone who values subtlety, originality, deep characterization, and realism is obviously not going to judge Star Wars: A New Hope  "good" given that criteria. The fantastical elements obviously fail the "realism" metric, the presentation is bombastic and epic (fails the "subtle" metric), the characters are thin archetypes (fails "deep characterization"), and the plot borrows most elements from other films (fails originality) - in fact, huge portions of the film are shot-for-shot pastiches of other films! Yet I suspect SW:Ep IV is probably one of those movies I would assume you think is "objectively good."

when discussing the quality of a film within a particular genre it is assumed that everyone in the discussion is aware of what the movie sets out to achieve (to an extent). If you enjoy 80's action shooters over sharespeare you would not argue there are no good action elements to shakespeare and therefore it is bad in your opinion, it would just be that you don't enjoy it. If you cant differentiate between your own personal bias for different values that makes you a lousy critic. Being able to judge the important values for a given genre makes  good objective criticism.

You picked unimportant elements from SW EP IV to judge to make a point. It has the elements that a hero action adventure story should have. The focus on different characters is balanced. If the movie over analysed a single character that would have made other characters look obviously flat. It suspended disbelief. Now some people may disagree but they would have to give valid counter arguments before I would give a shit. Since the majority of the target audience enjoyed it for the stated reasons we can say the movie achieved what it tried. It didn't try to have deep characters so we can ignore that value regardless of any individuals preference.

My wife says "terminator is a shit movie because its just about this dumb machine that tries to kill everyone". Its a crap argument because it doesn't consider the genre and aims of the movie. 

Just because I do not enjoy a movie does not mean I automatically label it as low quality. In fact, even when I do enjoy something, if I respect another persons critical film knowledge I would defer to them to tell me if that was a quality movie. There is a level of ability present when criticising art. It is not just 1 opinion vs the next.

Going back to the Taken example - the pacing and choreography in 2 & 3 is significantly worse than in 1. This is a key element to this type of movie. We obviously would not judge these movies on storyline. We would not just the The Raid on character development or story either.