You don't often know if a movie is good until you've finished it, because it all depends on how the story came together in the end.
You can spend 2 hours watching a moving, emotional story that teaches you something new about the human condition and the choices we make in our lives.
Or you can spend 2 hours that turns out to be full of plot holes and inconsistent characters, where nothing makes sense in the end and you've utterly wasted your time.
In what universe would you not want to have that information before watching? Especially if you're generally a busy person and only get to watch 10-20 movies a year.
I truly don't understand the attitude of "just pick one", whether it's for movies or other things. That reviews are "micro-optimization". Like, do you just not value your time? Do you not care about quality?
It's not like reviews are always right. But one film with 98% on Rotten Tomatoes vs. one with 45%... that's a really strong signal. Why on earth would you choose to ignore that?
You aren't wrong but it's not an argument you're going to win. A bad restaurant or a dumpy hotel, etc won't kill you either, yet most people rely heavily on crowdsourced reviews. It's just a part of the culture today, given how prevalent ratings are. This isnt 1940, so suggesting, out of the blue, "just go watch the movie regardless if it is any good" isn't going to convince someone to do so.
> Life is about more than optimizing the movies you watch.
Where did I say it wasn't? That's a straw man.
But if you're going to watch a movie for the next two hours, then yeah -- your life is going to be about that movie. So why not choose wisely?
> Watching a bad movie is not going to harm you. Maybe you'll take something away, maybe you won't.
Straw man again. And again -- why not choose quality instead of choosing ignorance and rolling the dice?
> Much like having a bad day is unlikely to ruin your life - it'll just give some nice context to the good days.
Again, straw man. Nobody's talking about ruining your life. But why intentionally choose a bad movie...?
> And we're talking about watching them on the plane, so the "busy person" argument really doesn't apply here.
To the contrary. For a lot of busy people, the plane is one of the few moments they have time to watch a movie. So it sure does apply.
You're arguing in favor of choosing bad things, because it's not going to ruin your life. Huh? Shouldn't we have a higher bar for the things we try to choose to spend our time on? You're describing standards that are the lowest of the low -- as long as it doesn't harm you, it's fine. Don't seek anything better. Yikes. I've rarely come across a life philosophy more depressing.
This isn't a straw man - I'm not claiming you think life is all about movie optimization. I'm making the point that the effort of optimization might not be worth it in the broader context.
> Straw man again. And again -- why not choose quality instead of choosing ignorance and rolling the dice?
Also not a straw man. I'm illustrating that the downside of a bad movie is so minimal that extensive optimization might not be justified. This directly addresses your argument about opportunity cost by suggesting the cost is actually quite small.
> Again, straw man. Nobody's talking about ruining your life. But why intentionally choose a bad movie...?
Again, not a straw man. I'm making a proportionality argument about how much a sub-optimal movie experience actually matters in practice.
> To the contrary. For a lot of busy people, the plane is one of the few moments they have time to watch a movie. So it sure does apply.
Even on a plane, the stakes just aren't that high. A less-than-perfect movie isn't going to meaningfully impact your life regardless of how busy you are.
> You're arguing in favor of choosing bad things, because it's not going to ruin your life. Huh?
You're interpreting my position as "arguing in favor of choosing bad things," but that's just not accurate. I'm suggesting that the effort of optimization might outweigh the minimal downside of occasionally watching something mediocre. There's a middle ground between actively choosing bad things and obsessing over choosing only the very best.
> A less-than-perfect movie isn't going to meaningfully impact your life regardless of how busy you are.
There are movies I've seen that changed my life. If I'd watched a dumb movie instead, yes my life actually would have been meaningfully impacted for the worse. That's the power of art.
> I'm suggesting that the effort of optimization might outweigh the minimal downside of occasionally watching something mediocre.
It takes a few seconds to check Rotten Tomatoes. A movie is around two hours. In what universe would you rather waste a couple of hours in order to save a few seconds?
And it's not occasionally watching something mediocre. Most movies are mediocre. You have the choice of usually watching something mediocre, versus usually watching something high-quality.
Again, you're strawmanning with "obsessing over choosing only the very best". Where did I describe an obsession? I'm just saying, check Rotten Tomatoes to help pick a good movie. There's just no universe in which the tiny effort to do that is going to outweigh the two+ hours of boredom and frustration of a bad movie.
I genuinely don't understand how you can take the position you're taking with movies, when checking Rotten Tomatoes takes seconds (a minute if you're checking several) and a movie lasts for hours.
It's not perfect, but it's a very strong and useful signal.
Never in my life have I seen something with 98% and thought, well that was a crap movie.
And never in my life have I seen something with 35% and thought, that was amazing!
It's more in the 75-90% range where you have to consider the "dimensionality" of the thing, like whether it's a genre you like, or which individual reviewers match your tastes more precisely.
Because life just isn't perfect. If you go seeking this perfect optimization in every aspect of your life then the world is going to be a continual disappointment.
To me, unanimous positivity means a boring movie that takes no risks. I'd rather watch a people-love-it-or-hate-it film.
Usually tho I just watch trailers and judge the actors' chemistry to decide if I would enjoy watching those characters. What other people thought of it is not especially relevant. Particularly on flights I've watched some amazing foreign content that I just would not have stumbled upon if I was just watching whatever topped rotten tomatoes.
Better bring your tablet or similar device with your choice of content. Airplane screen quality is bad and movies are edited in weird ways (for being acceptable for all ages and cultures on loss of anything else)
You can spend 2 hours watching a moving, emotional story that teaches you something new about the human condition and the choices we make in our lives.
Or you can spend 2 hours that turns out to be full of plot holes and inconsistent characters, where nothing makes sense in the end and you've utterly wasted your time.
In what universe would you not want to have that information before watching? Especially if you're generally a busy person and only get to watch 10-20 movies a year.
I truly don't understand the attitude of "just pick one", whether it's for movies or other things. That reviews are "micro-optimization". Like, do you just not value your time? Do you not care about quality?
It's not like reviews are always right. But one film with 98% on Rotten Tomatoes vs. one with 45%... that's a really strong signal. Why on earth would you choose to ignore that?