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Bad Movie Classification System: Part One

Yesterday I mentioned that, inspired by the movie Ultraviolet, I had developed a unified theory of bad movies, complete with a four-category classification system. We'll start with the Category I bad movie. The Category I movie is the cinematic embodiment of Sturgeon's Revelation: "90% of everything is crap."

Type: Category I
Also known as: "extruded Hollywood product" (h/t Charles Stross)
Example: The Karate Kid, Part III
Circumstances for watching: Insomnia, long airplane trips, waiting in a lobby of some sort, friend or relative worked on the film

Although Category I movies represent the vast majority of films made, this is not meant to be pointed criticism of Hollywood per se. Sturgeon's Revelation is ironclad, and applies to all works of art produced throughout history. If we could wave a magic wand and double the raw talent of everyone in Hollywood on both the creative and business sides, we might see the percentage of Category I movies dropping to 88% or so. No matter what you do in the art world, there's a lot chaff that gets in the way.

Nor do I mean to suggest that Category I movies only come from Michael Bay and his ilk. Some movies are born Category Is; others might have solid acting, dialogue, editing, and so on while still managing to be far less than the sum of their parts. For example, take Woody Allen's recent Match Point. "Allen's best in ten years," the critics said. "London has revitalized him," the critics said. I actually emerged from the theater sorta kinda liking Match Point, until my friend quite sensibly pointed out that the only reason the plot slogged forward was because every character was necessarily A) an idiot, B) despicable, or in almost all cases, C) both.

Of course, a movie's Category I-ness varies in the eye of the beholder. For example, I suspect most people think of Armageddon as a classic Category I: stupid, bombastic, bad dialogue, the whole package. But for me it nearly crosses over into Category III, because the bad physics is just so, so offensive. On the other hand, I thought Starship Troopers was a run-of-the mill Category I, and even had some parts that were enjoyable.^[1] But Sammy felt nothing but burning hatred for that movie. The stupid tactics, the ineffective weaponry,^[2] the total absence of the Mobile Infantry's powered armor suits. There's a brief scene where a squadron of space fighters swoop through a canyon, firebombing everything below them. Sammy: "Where the hell were those guys before? Why weren't they doing that all the time?" For yet another data point, Sammy and I saw Mystery Men and literally fell forward out of our seats, crying laughing at the "Limousine Attack" scene. Everyone else in the sparsely-populated theater was stone silent. So to each their own.

While creating a Category I movie is easy, Category II, III, and IV movies are special cases. Creating a Category II+ movie takes special drive, talent... possibly even malice. So on that note, it's on from the merely mediocre to the truly wretched! Join me, won't you?

1. I particularly liked the subversive thread running through the Starship Troopers movie: that the humans probably started the war and were almost certainly the bad guys. The hilarious propaganda newsreels, dressing the commissioned officers like the Nazi SS, and so on. Plus it had plenty of eye candy, if you disregard Jake Busey.

2. Seriously, if each enemy warrior bug takes ten seconds of concentrated fire from several marines to take down, you shouldn't even be bothering with ground operations. Contrast Starship Troopers with the far superior Aliens: the Space Marines in Aliens had the weaponry for the job, they were just badly outnumbered or otherwise constrained. ("So, if they fire their weapons in there, won't they rupture the cooling system?") Additionally, the Space Marines were able to reassess their situation and come to entirely sensible conclusions. ("I say we take off and nuke the entire site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure." Yes! Exactly right! A bit too late, though.)

Posted by Evan Goer on Jun. 20, 2006 at 8:55 PM | Comments (9)

Comments

You forgot to mention under "Circumstances for watching": A friend or relative work on or starred in the film.

Posted by Adiv on Jun. 21, 2006 at 6:32 AM
Good point! Updated.

Posted by Evan on Jun. 21, 2006 at 8:21 AM
I'll refrain from commenting on <cite>Starship Troopers</cite> since I could go on for a while...

Anyway, what I really wanted to say was surely <cite>Armageddon</cite> is not merely mediocre. It's not that any particular element was all that unusually bad (although of course the physics was extremely dreadful, but we've seen that before in lower budget films). The real key, I think, seems to be that the quality-to-production cost ratio for <cite>Armageddon</cite> is the lowest of any movie ever by a fair margin. For that alone one could hardly suggest that <cite>Armageddon</cite> belongs with 90% of anything. It exceeds them all in badness, if only because they spent so much money to achieve so much badness. So, yes, Category I seems a stretch.

Posted by Ben Martin on Jun. 21, 2006 at 6:30 PM
Don't forget, "Armageddon" had Ben Affleck in it, which certainly didn't help matters.

Posted by Andrei on Jun. 21, 2006 at 7:49 PM
Agreed, the quality-to-production cost ratio for <cite>Armageddon</cite> is particularly low, even for a Michael Bay / Jerry Bruckheimer product. But as I'll be explaining shortly, there are special criteria for qualifying for Categories II, III, and IV. Stepping from I to IV is not exactly a straight progression from "run-of-the-mill bad" to "extremely bad".

Since we're on the subject of expensive, stupid summer flicks: I'm going to go out on a limb and predict that <cite>Pirates of the Carribean: Dead Man's Chest</cite> is going to suck. The first <cite>Pirates</cite> had all the makings of a solid Category I, but it turned out to be much more fun and charming than anyone really expected. Because of this, most people have high expectations for the sequel, but this line of thinking is just an instance of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gambler's_fallacy">Gambler's Fallacy</a>. We just got lucky with the first one. The sequel has all the same bad elements lurking, plus the burden of having to be bigger and louder and more <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyetic">toyetic</a> than its predecessor.

Posted by Evan on Jun. 21, 2006 at 11:11 PM
I can't wait to see what category my "favorite" bad movie falls in! I'll let you know once I see all four categories (or suggest another category if you disappoint).

Posted by Russ on Jun. 22, 2006 at 12:37 PM
The bad tactics in Starship Troopers weren't just limited to the ground forces either. The fleet in orbit that dropped them off was in such a tight formation that even slight evasive manuvers caused them to collide. In space. My brain is starting to itch with the memory.

Posted by Sam on Jun. 22, 2006 at 5:26 PM
Russ -- I don't know what your favorite bad movie is, but I'll bet it's a Category II.

Sam -- If you'd bothered to read Chapter Two of the <cite>Galactic Tactical Manual, 4th ed.</cite>, you'd understand that ships flying in superclose formation look much cooler than ships flying hundreds of kilometers apart. Sadly, Admiral Ozzel will not be releasing a 5th edition of his magnum opus any time soon...

Posted by Evan on Jun. 22, 2006 at 7:37 PM
I've actually heard some people preferred Armageddon to Deep Impact, which in my opinion was a movie that fairly accurately depicted what humanity would have done after discovering we were all going to die. The people worry me, as Armageddon to me symbolizes all that is shameful in a Hollywood movie: Bad lines, cliches in every single scene, Ben Afleck, no attention to detail, predictable conflicts and really no one person who you could find yourself willing to cheer for. I was hoping they were all gonna die. But I knew they weren't.

Posted by Patrick on Jul. 05, 2006 at 11:27 PM

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This entry was posted on June 20, 2006 by Evan Goer.

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