What's good?

[duktapeman90]

So I have these two friends: ones a film major, the other's your stereotypical COD/Halo fanatic. So when it comes to movies, friend 1 loves movies like Inception and Black Swan, while friend 2 thinks the Borne movies are the best thing ever. Now even thought I find myself more like the former, I can't seem to convince myself that friend 2 is wrong, though friend 1 has no problem with that.

So I guess what I;m getting at is this: Are there any aspects of movies (or games or music) that make them objectively better than others or is it all just perspective and preference? And if so, does that make things like ratings and awards useless?

 

[Onyx Oblivion]

It's all perspective and preference.

If you've noticed, I rarely call anything as out-right bad on this site. Pretty much Justin Beiber's music is the only thing I make such claims with, and even then, I never really insult Bieber himself.

I may not have enjoyed Red Dead, but I gladly admit that it is a good game. Just not my thing.

I may not have enjoyed Firefly, but I'd never call it bad, either.

 

[SuperCombustion]

perspective and preference is what really matters.
e.g. I still think the spyro series is the best ever yet reviewers say otherwise and I'd be better off playing Black Ops rather that setting things on fire. I hate Call of Duty despite all its awards...
Case and Point.

 

[benderinTime]

There is no objective judgement of "good" or "bad" as those are opinions. The second you say something is bad it is no longer fact, it is opinion.
The best way to figure out if reviewers are good or not (For an individual) is to see if they share similar viewpoints on games you've both played or movies you've both seen. If that is the case, then you might be able to trust them in terms of quality judgement.
That's how I see it, anyways.

 

[Cowabungaa]

Good? Well, what I find important to keep in mind is what the director/company/etc intended to make, mostly because I see a lot of people here shouting that something sucks only because it doesn't comform to their tastes.

Take The Room for example. The director wanted to make an involving drama movie. Did he succeed?
Indeed. So I'd say that's bad. It's not even remotely what the director said it should be, it didn't reach it's goal. By a mile in this case.

In other words; if it works like it's supposed to, it's good, even great if it works very very smoothly. Halo for example gets a lot of flak for not being a lot of things. Thing is; did it ever tried to be those things? Did it ever promise to be something that it didn't end up being? If no is the answer, then it's good, whether you like it or not.

Mind you, promises are not the same thing as expectations. Unrealistic or simply faulty expections can be the developer's fault if he makes a lot of simply faulty promises, but they don't have to be.

For example, I must admit that I overhyped myself for Spore. I should've payed closer attention to the facts instead of floating of to a fantasy world with infinite possibilities. Fable, thanks to Molyneux's big mouth, is the example of the opposite; a not too shabby game that despite it not being bad isn't good either thanks to all kinds of promises about it that weren't fulfilled, giving people all kinds of expectations about it.

 

[tippy2k2]

There are aspects of film/gaming/literature (I'm going to refer to all of it as art) that are objectively good and bad. There are objective ways to see if the art is good or bad.

This does not say you can't hate objectively good art and love objectively bad art but there is a line. It's not black and white, in fact, the majority is going to be gray but the line is there. Figuring out what is objectively bad is much much harder than figuring out what is good.