Best Way to Judge a Movie's Success

[davekay1971]

Inspired by the discussion going on in the 12 Years a Slave movie thread, and all credit to Throaty for bringing up this discussion. I'm interested to see how people personally define a movie as being successful. While many of us probably see several viable measures for success of a movie, I'm curious as to what most people see as the most meaningful measure of success for a movie.

Later we can all go back and try to match up answers to political leanings. I jest!

Also, in the posts, please put in your thoughts about the movies you consider most successful, and why.

[davekay1971]

A few comments:

1) I know I misspelled film in the last option. I can't figure out how to edit the poll option to correct that.
2) I know there may be some overlap in the answer choices. For example, a film that has a cultural impact is also more likely to have an impact on the film industry (I think here about Pulp Fiction, which has tons of lines/characters that are now part of our cultural lexicon, and also a film which inspired a raft of imitators)
3) I'm finding it tough to choose a choice in my own poll, and I haven't voted yet because I'm not sure which measure of success I think is best, or most important. That, of course, is the whole point...there are a bunch of good ways to define how successful is a movie. I'll vote soon, but I have to ponder my options.

Some of my most successful movies:
1) Platoon - successful in several measures. It was a good anti-war movie, was financially successful, critically successful, actually managed to convince us Charlie Sheen could act, made Vietnam a viable war-movie subject, and helped get other anti-war war movies made.

2) Lord of the Rings - again, successful on several measures. Box office monster, critically successful, actually managed to convince us Sean Aston could act (not really), made Fantasy a viable movie genre after a long history of utter junk and box office misery, and added to the Sean Bean death reel.

3) In the Still of the Night - critically successful, beautifully done movie about racial tensions and two men working through them...and filmed at a time when the idea of an African American cop working with a deep South white cop to solve a white crime was groundbreaking. One of the movies of the time that really helped move forward racial dialogue in America.

4) Spiderman (Sam Raimi) - The first of Raimi's Spiderman movies reminded hollywood that superheros can make spectacular box office. The original Superman and Batman and Batman Returns were far enough in the past that it wasn't clear to Hollywood that superhero movies could really kill it at the box office Spiderman also helped to launch the Marvel Universe into the stratosphere, which is now giving us 2-3 box office hits a year.

5) Alien - Launched the space/sci fi horror/suspense subgenre, helped (along with Halloween) to make it almost mantra to have the girl survive in who-will-be-the-sole-survivor type horror/suspense movies, and succeeded amply well in box office and critical circles.

6) Blade Runner - defines near-future cyber-punk movies, almost made William Gibson give up writing Neuromancer because he'd just seen his book done onscreen so well, and addressed the questions of "what is human" so well that no movie since has anything new to say on the subject. Box office bomb at the time, but a movie that gets more successful in every measure with age. Caveat: only the director's cut, released much later, is worth seeing.

[NashvilleDevil]

In the heat of the night not in the still of the night

[davekay1971]

In the heat of the night not in the still of the night

You are correct, sir...facepalm

[brevity]

This may be the best poll I've ever seen on DBR, based on the choices offered. I can't imagine anyone voting for "Other" because you cover just about every form of success that is possible.

While there are decent arguments to be made for any of these options, I think the last three are the toughest to argue against. Films that have been selected into the Library of Congress -- the ultimate time capsule and probably the ultimate form of enduring success -- can fit into Impact on History or Impact on Film.

All that said, I initially thought to vote "Other" because a curious form of a film's success occurred to me: the emotional and capitalist demand for a sequel. It's an appropriate measure of how audiences embraced the original over a period of time, as they watched it at the cinema and/or later at home, grabbed on to it at some level, and found themselves wanting to see more. In other words, I don't think Shrek 2 made $400 million because people loved that particular sequel.

Anyway, I decided that this measure probably fit into Impact on Pop Culture, so I voted for that. It is an imperfect measure, which cannot really take into account sagas, or stories that are designed to take place over multiple films. (Or, for that matter, beloved films that cannot have a sequel.) But it's more open of a category than Impact on History or Impact on Film, which are both too exclusive for my taste. Very few films make those cuts.

[davekay1971]

Thank you, and great reply!

I hadn't thought of using box office of sequel(s) as a measure. But it's a good one. Some of the most successful movies have spawned sequels that were probably only financially successful because of the audience fondness for the first movie. Jaws and Jaws 2 come to mind. You mentioned Shrek benefitting the box office of Shrek 2 (although Shrek 2 was very good and well reviewed). Spiderman, similarly gave a nice initial boost to Spiderman 2 (also a good, well reviewed movie in it's own right). I wouldn't give Alien as much credit for Aliens, which had a long delay preceding it and was such a different movie from the original that it almost stands alone. You'd also have to exempt horror, as a genre, from this metric, since all marginally successful horror movies seem to spawn countless sequels.

Now that you have me thinking about sequels, a movie that may be one of the most successful of all time (compounding successful box office, critical success, awards success, sequel spawning, changing film, etc), is Toy Story. That film killed it at the box office, got great reviews, and fundamentally changed the animation industry, as well as, I think, raising the expectation bar for kids animation so high that competing studios had to get better just to avoid looking stupid.

[darthur]

This may be the best poll I've ever seen on DBR, based on the choices offered. I can't imagine anyone voting for "Other" because you cover just about every form of success that is possible.

I'm voting other .

There's really three classes of options in the poll:

- Money. This is certainly how the production companies measure success and perhaps it is indeed the most important. But as a film viewer, it does not represent me and I'm not going to pick it.
- Awards. This measures how much critics like a movie, but I don't particularly trust the awards or agree with them.
- Impact. Any movie that registers here is indeed a success by my accounting, but it's too hard to measure. Godfather and Pulp Fiction? No-brainer winners. Godfather vs Pulp Fiction? Not sure it's any easier to decide which has had higher impact than it is to decide which is more "successful" in the first place. These are good goals but bad measuring sticks.

To me, the single most important thing is how much people enjoy seeing the movie. And if I had to pick just one method to evaluate that, I would choose rating aggregations myself: IMDB and Metacritic in particular. One represents a biased sample of people who chose to see the movie (and who are internet savvy), and the other other represents a biased sample of people who are forced to see all movies. Neither is perfect, but together they represent the best method IMO.

[davekay1971]

I'm voting other .

There's really three classes of options in the poll:

- Money. This is certainly how the production companies measure success and perhaps it is indeed the most important. But as a film viewer, it does not represent me and I'm not going to pick it.
- Awards. This measures how much critics like a movie, but I don't particularly trust the awards or agree with them.
- Impact. Any movie that registers here is indeed a success by my accounting, but it's too hard to measure. Godfather and Pulp Fiction? No-brainer winners. Godfather vs Pulp Fiction? Not sure it's any easier to decide which has had higher impact than it is to decide which is more "successful" in the first place. These are good goals but bad measuring sticks.

To me, the single most important thing is how much people enjoy seeing the movie. And if I had to pick just one method to evaluate that, I would choose rating aggregations myself: IMDB and Metacritic in particular. One represents a biased sample of people who chose to see the movie (and who are internet savvy), and the other other represents a biased sample of people who are forced to see all movies. Neither is perfect, but together they represent the best method IMO.

If you wanted to go with the fan rating, I'd go with the exit grades. That way you get rid of the fan bias toward "really liked it/really hated it", which you get on elective internet reviews (ie: the only fans motivated to actually rate the movie on IMDB or another site are more likely to be the ones with strong reactions). Convert the fan exit-survey grades to a numeric and then somehow combine it with Metacritic, and you're definitely onto a good "how much did people like it?" grade. I definitely agree with the concept of blending in fan scores with critic scores, which can be wildly different.

[Reisen]

This may be the best poll I've ever seen on DBR, based on the choices offered. I can't imagine anyone voting for "Other" because you cover just about every form of success that is possible.

I, too, voted other, because while I agree the OP did a great job setting up the poll, he forgot the most basic (and obvious) metric: Profit.

This, of course, differs from the first option, profit percentage. A movie with a 5 million dollar budget can make back 10 times their budget at $50 million, but that is nowhere near as successful as a $50 million movie making half a billion.

While box office and ticket sales are very important, they only take into account the revenue side. Pure profit shows the relationship. A movie that can earn a huge profit percentage on a huge box office is the definition of financially successful.

Note, I really like the idea of sequels / spawning a franchise, from both an art and finance perspective.

From the art perspective, my choice would be "film that influenced other films / defined a genre". Something like "Memento" comes to mind here.

[snowdenscold]

Any way to edit the poll so we can make a maximum 2 or 3 choices? That might give us some more insight into people's thoughts since it's so hard to pick just 1 there.

[throatybeard]

I voted "impact on film," insofar as I believe that reference and allusion are really important, and films that affect other films are the most important films. As y'all know, I teach a class on The Wire, and I spend a whole class (late in S3) on the influences of revisionist Westerns and the first two Godfather movies on III.11, Middle Ground.

That said, that's not my answer. My answer isn't in the poll.

My answer would be "aggregated critical opinion, from a significant remove."

I place a lot of weight on expert opinion. Maybe a lot of people thought John Carter of Mars was a great movie. It certainly made some bank. I think it was the worst movie I've ever sat through the entirety of. But there is a long history of the experts messing things up in the short term and getting them right in the medium or long term. Ebert made his rep on being the only guy speaking up for Bonnie and Clyde at the time, when he was not really anybody. The Victorians thought several of the "Big Six" Romantic poets sucked. Bach was lost until Mendelssohn re-discovered him.

But in the long run, the people who spend their lives studying something really seriously get stuff right. Christopher Frayling knows more about the revisionist western than almost anyone. I value his opinion more than any of y'all's, sorry. I care most about the aggregate opinion of the people who study whatever the subject is most carefully, maybe adjusted for a few years remove. People were so-so on Vertigo at first; now you would be hard pressed to find a real film critic who thinks it's lousy.

Treating the list in the newspaper of the current bank on the movies in theaters this week might be the worst possible way I can think of to assess quality of those films. We might as well assign values to the letters the titles start with and value it that way.

[throatybeard]

Also, re: "impact on popular culture."

Look, I like The Princess Bride as much as the rest of you. It's mildly amusing, even though I'm not ten anymore.

People shouting "Inconceivable!" does not make that movie great. It was good, OK, funny. That doesn't make it one of the greatest films ever.

[davekay1971]

Throaty, thanks for the great responses!

I agree with your view that a duration of time after release of a movie helps a great deal with evaluating the movie's importance and quality. Blade Runner was not well regarded at the time it was released, and it was a box office dud. Now it's considered to be a seminal work of science fiction.

I think the same movie can be looked at as successful in two very different ways at two different times. The immediate measure of success is probably financial. The long term is more of a measured evaluation of quality. Titanic and Avatar are both wildly successful movies in box office terms, and I think both will go down in history as fluff that rocked the box office. Same with Avengers. None of those movies is likely to be movies that people watch or study 30 years from now.

[brevity]

The subjective nature of this poll is part of what makes it great, though I wonder where in the discussion "success" became equated with "quality."

Obviously there's a correlation. In order for a film to have an impact (whichever kind), there has to be some sort of consensus among a large group of people that this particular film excelled at doing something. Even if that large group of people is "American adolescents" and the film's excellence is "the official treatise of juvenile sight and sound gags." There was a success based on some collective opinion of quality.

I agree with throatybeard in the value of specific critics. It seems likely that a discerning filmgoer can find a professional critic doppelganger somewhere in the universe. Where I personally disagree, however, is in the value of aggregate criticism. I understand that high Metacritic scores can validate a very popular movie that most audiences also considered to be very well made, and low Metacritic scores can reinforce a real stinker that was appropriately received by the general public. But what's interesting is when critics collectively rally around a film that is of limited appeal, or try in vain to poke holes into films of unstoppable popularity.

When I was a bit of an amateur critic, it was obvious where I sided. Critics had opinions, which embodied personal standards of film viewing. It's good to have standards. I was with them entirely, following their roadmaps, seeking out arthouses in an effort to improve my film diet. That didn't make me any better of a person, but at least I felt like I was approaching filmgoing the right way. And then I outgrew my relationship with critics, mostly from just hating films they all loved. I felt like I was suddenly being steered wrong.

I stopped identifying with critics once I understood their position. Watching movies is their job, and like most jobs, it has a way of not being fun. Having to watch, say, 300 movies a year would be mind-numbing. The same ideas and conventions, over and over. After a while, maybe what appeals to critics isn't what's best, but what is most different. This is probably why films with incestual themes tend to be so highly rated. I use this extreme example, but it's pretty much where critics have lost me. It's not so much a matter of taking offense, which I do, but wondering why on Earth I'd want to spend money and time witnessing that, when a simple nap would be preferable.

I'm not exactly anti-critic now. Based on my own instincts, which I generally trust, I can tell what I am more likely to see or avoid. I will seek out a review if I'm on the fence, overlooked a possibility, or (most likely) want to read choice words about an awful moviegoing experience. Criticism is a tool of limited use to me. And while I can live with the notion that aggregate criticism can measure quality, I must voice my disapproval when it is used as the main measure of success.

[darthur]

I stopped identifying with critics once I understood their position. Watching movies is their job, and like most jobs, it has a way of not being fun. Having to watch, say, 300 movies a year would be mind-numbing. The same ideas and conventions, over and over. After a while, maybe what appeals to critics isn't what's best, but what is most different. This is probably why films with incestual themes tend to be so highly rated. I use this extreme example, but it's pretty much where critics have lost me. It's not so much a matter of taking offense, which I do, but wondering why on Earth I'd want to spend money and time witnessing that, when a simple nap would be preferable.

I agree with this very strongly, and it was why, in my answer, I also specifically included IMDB as a counterbalance.

By and large I align pretty well with critics, but there definitely are times (and the AFI top 100 lists come to mind) where the critics just lose me completely.

[throatybeard]

I'm not exactly anti-critic now. Based on my own instincts, which I generally trust, I can tell what I am more likely to see or avoid. I will seek out a review if I'm on the fence, overlooked a possibility, or (most likely) want to read choice words about an awful moviegoing experience. Criticism is a tool of limited use to me. And while I can live with the notion that aggregate criticism can measure quality, I must voice my disapproval when it is used as the main measure of success.

Let me reiterate that I'm talking about aggregated critical opinion from a significant remove. I don't use current reviews to decide what to see in the theater, either. Indeed, I see almost nothing in the theater, and I Netflix stuff four and six months later. When I do go to the theater, it's because a person I know or a critic I respect or a director I love gives me considerable incentive to deal with the asspain that is the movie theater.*

I also use acquaintances as proxies for professional critics, I guess. I know who I think has awful taste, middlebrow taste, and good taste. I make judgments accordingly, and it takes quite an endorsement to get me into a movie theater. I don't want to get personal with anyone in particular, but let's just say, when people started getting really excited about Avatar, I took stock of which people were really excited, and decided not to bother with Dances with Blue Aliens, sorry, I mean, Avatar. There was an article in the Raleigh N&O back in like 1997-98 or whenever, about a woman who had gone to the theater to see Titanic fifty times. That woman's endorsement could probably make me wait to see Godfather I until it came out on DVD. But years later, I would value the critical consensus about Godfather I even if I were wrong initially.

This is what we are. We're humans. We have limited experience and we have to take in information from others, and value that information according to the source. Women, using limited data, have to decide which douchebags they're going to allow a first date. I can't believe they mess with any of us. I also can't believe anyone paid to see Titanic.

I agree that the AFI top 100 lists are a bit of a mess, but those aren't based on real, thoughtful, six- or eight paragraphs reviews by AO Scott or Rogert Ebert or Pauline Kael.



* - I'm sure that this sounds snotty, but my background is as a member of Classical music audiences, and in those, there are only two rules--sit down and shut up as long as the artistic event is unfolding. Loudly sucking 500 calories of soda, masticating on 1000 calories of popcorn, getting up and down, and talking, all of those are frowned upon. Don't get me wrong--I like throwing back some bourbon in the bar at Powell Hall at intermission. But I shut up when they play the music. I've given up on the Met HDCasts in the movie theaters, because people act like they're in a movie theater instead of a concert hall, and I can see the things six months later on PBS anyway, which isn't like being in the House, but loses nothing compared to a movie theater.

[davekay1971]

real, thoughtful, six- or eight paragraphs reviews by AO Scott or Rogert Ebert or Pauline Kael.

.

Glad you mentioned AO Scott. I find his reviews to be some of the most thoughtful on the internet. Roger Ebert, with all due respect for his long and great career, kind of lost me a little in his later years. I felt like his reviews were missing something. I haven't read any Pauline Kael, but will do so.

Not starting with Thor 2, however. That's going to be my guacamole, shredded beef burritos, and margaritas theater meal in the near future (not too healthy, not broadening my palate, nothing particularly memorable, and not especially healthy...but enjoyable while consumed, even if it gives me a bit of indigestion and a headache later).