Arguments used to defend games/movies etc. you're tired of seeing

[Kenbo Slice]

My friend trying to argue my criticisms for The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. All he says is "You just don't appreciate it." Yeah, I don't. You know why? Because they're splitting a fairly short book into three unnecessary three hour movies filled with characters and events that do NOTHING to benefit the plot. They're just there to pad out the movie.

 

[Dalton Bowers]

Inglourious Basterds might be the greatest movie of all time. But honestly I could watch a movie called 120 minutes of killing Hitler and come out glowing like I'd just found Jesus and my only complaint would be that it wasn't 121 minutes of killing Hitler.

 

[hermes]

The "people don't buy it because of X", when X could be decent story, decent acting, stable multiplayer or an interesting campaign...

Listen, I can understand that not being your (or everyone's) focus when deciding to purchase the game. I can understand that you liked the game despite X being flawed, because you knew X was not important for you. What I can't really agree with, is people leaving X out of the discussion, like the product minus X is the product they got for their money. As if X not only was negligible, it was not even there.

 

[bartholen_v1legacy]

Snip

Inglourious Basterds is bad? Sorry, but you're gointg to have to elaborate on that. I've seen a lot of people on this site say that movie sucks like it's some kind of consensus that everyone agrees on, and that attitude puzzles me.

Gladly. Granted, it's been a while since I saw the movie and I've been wondering if I missed something the first time around, so some of my points might change if I see it again, but:

- Inconsistent tone. Did it want to be a comedic nazi smack-em-up? Then why include the young father going home who never lives to see his son and the strangling and the torture scene? A serious drama? Then why include all the comedy antics of the basterds? A revenge fantasy against nazis? Then why make us so obviously care about so many of them?

- Tarantino's self-indulgence. This struck me in the very first scene. A random farmer in the Spanish outback just happens to speak French, German and English (or was it just 2 of those? I can't really remember) all fluently in addition to his mother tongue. Yeah, totally. It felt like Tarantino waving his arms and going "Look, look, I can have all the languages in the world spoken in my film! I make ART!!!1" See also the bit where Landa starts speaking Italian.

- Dialogues that go on forever but lead nowhere. See the scene where Michael Fassbender's character suddenly starts talking about how well Goebbels has handled the German movie industry (also for point 1) and the scene in the cellar room bar. Plus Fassbender's character never does anything despite him having lots of screen time and built up as a major player. But then he just gets axed.

- Christoph Waltz's character. This is also one of the good points of the film, but his scenes drag on for way too long. Instead of feeling like a menacing, hyper intelligent schemer he feels like an omniscient fantasy character who's just so bored by his existence he keeps talking and talking before doing anything.

- It's incredibly long, but I can't really defend my stance on that other than by saying I was really bored by its end.

If I remembered more about it then I might be able to mention more, but that's it for now.

 

[wulf3n]

"if you don't like it don't watch it" it's such a cop out non-answer that annoys me immensly

People getting upset over that response bugs me. Is that Irony or Hypocrisy... I don't know.

Essentially it's because everyone's okay with the argument when it's working for them, but get upset when it's used against them.

When the non gaming community expresses concern over the sickening level of gore and violence prevalent in modern AAA games it is the commonly accepted response, however when an issue is raised within the gaming community those on the target end of the criticism take exception to it, dismissing it is a hand wave.

 

[Sir Thomas Sean Connery]

I think a lot of people in this thread fail to understand the difference between defending a movie's/game's objective quality and people defending their enjoyment of that movie/game.

When I respond to someone criticizing, say, Die Hard 4 by telling them "It's just a dumb popcorn movie" I'm not defending the quality of the movie. I'm even agreeing that it's a dumb, poorly made movie. What I'm defending is my personal enjoyment. Giving a reason why I hold the opinion that it's an enjoyable film.

Yeah, The Hobbit is padded to shit. But if you don't enjoy it, it's true that you didn't appreciate it. I for one could watch endless hours of LotR fantasy. You couldn't. That's a difference in taste, not objective quality. In terms of quality, you're absolutely right. It's incredibly padded and changes everything about the book.

Aaaaaanywho.....

OT:
One of the more recent ones that still irks me is when people try to defend Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull's bullshit with argument "But the other Indiana Jones movies had fantastical stuff too! How is the ark so different than aliens or the refrigerator nuke?"

It's a clear difference between science fiction and adventure fantasy.

As for the nuke, as another person mentioned, it's an issue of internal conflict within a movie's logic. A movie can set up whatever set of physics it wants, but it needs to stick to that. Indiana Jones has always been set in a world where physics work relatively properly.

And before anyone brings up the Reel Physics episode, they did their calculations very poorly and came to a faulty conclusion. Also can we have that show back please? because it was mostly amazing.

 

[FPLOON]

"It gets better... Trust me..."

First off, every time I hear the phrase "trust me", I think of <link=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxeYA33SiXc>this right away... (I'm not sorry in the slightest...) Secondly, I already know it will get better, but that's only on your standards on how things get better and not mine... So, I could say that it gets worse or just stays the same throughout... Thirdly, Why don't you just show me the so-called "better" parts so that it will give me the drive to actually want to play and/or watch this... It would spoil the surprise, you say? Well, it seems we haven't met before, so I'll just say that once... SHOW ME WHERE IT GETS BETTER SO THAT I DON'T END UP WASTING MY TIME WITH SOMETHING THAT MAY NOT INTEREST ME IN THE SLIGHTEST... (Thank you...)