But, you’ll admit that some films are simply poorly made and poorly written, right? There may not be some inherent metric for judging a film’s quality, but the fact that we keep trying to create metrics to assess films (Rotten Tomatoes, Metacritic, IMDB, etc.) shows that we are aware of inherent quality differences between the movies we watch.
Film’s qualities are subjective. We can personally think “some films are simply poorly made and poorly written”, and nothing is wrong with that, but that will only be a subjective opinion. What Rotten Tomatoes, Metacritic, IMDB, etc. are creating is simply a generalisation of multiple opinions, which ends up as a sort of a popularity score.
It’s like how we know the Mona Lisa is a better work of art than a child’s drawing. The child’s parents may have a greater subjective attachment to their kid’s art, but it’s almost universally understood that the Mona Lisa is better conceived and better executed as a work of art…
No, we do not know that the Mona Lisa is a better work of art than a child’s drawing. I will first have to see the child’s drawing, then I will judge. Saying things like “we know the Mona Lisa is a better work of art than a child’s drawing” and “it’s almost universally understood that the Mona Lisa is better conceived and better executed as a work of art” is either pretentious, or basically being brainwashed (herd behaviour), or both.
…even thought we have no way of quantifying that.
You have just contradicted yourself.
How?
First off, I was implying in my example that people were able to see the child’s drawing, not just assume it was worse.
I’m not here to argue about the semantics of the word “objective.” I’m just telling you that good films exist and bad films exist. It doesn’t matter if there’s no absolute numerical value you can attach to a film. Some films are simply poorly constructed at their foundation. I didn’t understand that was somehow a controversial opinion on this site. We call films “good” or “bad” all the time. We argue about their relative merits and what they do right and what they do wrong. We don’t just shrug our shoulders and say it doesn’t matter because no film can be quantifiably proven to be better. That’s a self-deafeating mindset to have. When I look at a film that’s riddled with plot holes, just because someone else watching the same film ignores those holes doesn’t mean the plot holes aren’t there or that their existence is subjective. Those are gaps in logic in a film. And the more we try to claim that good or bad writing is just “in the eye of the beholder,” the more common bad writing becomes in media. And as long as a few people say they thought the writing was great, suddenly it becomes “subjective” and immune to legitimate criticism.