A few months ago a Mauler fan gave their definition of a bad movie, that being any movie where over 60% of the runtime has problems. Obviously this is ridiculous, 60% is a really random-ass number to pull, and how you would even measure this is beyond me. But I think it kind of says a lot about what that style of criticism is trying to prove.
Whoever this fan is, they did a poor job of explaining what Mauler’s critique videos are actually aiming for. It’s not about some arbitrary threshold where a movie becomes bad if it has a certain number of bad things. It’s about determining whether a film is able to maintain logical consistency alongside its emotional payoffs.
There’s this misconception among some people that the struggle in filmmaking to balance emotional moments with logical plot/character progression is a zero sum game. That in order for a film to have its powerful scenes or payoffs that touch the audience on an emotional level, the film’s internal logic is worth being compromised or disregarded. These same people also often believe that a film which maintains internal logic and airtight writing will necessarily be more “boring” or less emotionally impactful than a film that sometimes gives up on logic for the sake of making an emotional scene happen.
This is a problem with a lot of modern filmmaking. Writers and directors come up with certain scenes or moments that they really want to put in the film to leave a strong impression on the audience, then they work backwards through the story to make those moments occur. The priorities are backwards here. Those emotional moments and payoffs need to be earned, and they need to make sense in context, both in the individual film and in the larger series (if there is one). Otherwise, their intended impact is diminished for anyone who notices the lapses in logic.
That’s what Mauler is looking out for. To see if those payoffs are earned or set up correctly, and whether or not the story’s logic is compromised for the sake of the scene. It’s not about the quantity of issues. It’s about whether those issues majorly interfere with or undermine what the film is trying to convey to the audience.