The criminal is the creative artist; the detective only the critic.
G.K. Chesterton, The Blue Cross: A Father Brown Mystery
Everywhere I look these days, it seems the cool thing is now to be the critic. And, to be fair, I can understand why. There’s no shortage of media out there, what with the increasingly pervasive need to flood the market just to try and hold someone’s attention for half a minute, and with such a deluge of stuff there’s plenty ripe for critique.
The fact that major studio pictures seem to be tripping over their own ankles right off the block only adds fuel to the fire. The push to content for content’s sake has led to studios leaning on quantity over quality. Budgets have ballooned, but miserably chopped up scripts and hellishly overworked CGI artists make everything seem worse than it was decades ago. Frankly, it sucks. I love stories (stop me if you’ve heard that before), and seeing what’s come from the supposed grand storytellers in Hollywood is disheartening at best. I should be ecstatic when I hear a studio picked up some random property I love, but I dread it. I’ve found myself firmly in the “please leave that stuff alone” camp. What a terrible time for media.
See? There I go. It’s so easy to fall down the path of criticism. Easy to tear down what others build. Now, I won’t claim there’s a lot that doesn’t deserve the treatment – I think I made myself pretty clear on my thoughts of most current cinema – but I find most criticism to be pretty terrible in its own right. The internet is full of people who will tell you something is awful without any objective analysis. There are great critics around, if you know where to look… and if you have the time. MauLer, for example, I’ve come to really appreciate. His analyses of why films fall on their faces are actually buckled in with objectivity. Unfortunately, they tend to be twice as long as the films themselves. Buckle up.
Actual validity and usefulness of the critique aside… it’s just so easy to fill your plate with negativity. I’m kind of over it. Alright, so there’s a lot of trash out there now. Fine, I just won’t see it. I don’t need to. There’s so much great cinema, so many incredible novels, so many captivating stories out there, why do I need to fill my head with all this tangential negativity? I’ll watch MauLer because I can learn from him – he’s taught me a lot about the importance of scene construction, attention to detail, and, most importantly, just making sure the story is flippin’ consistent. And let me tell you, it’s been immensely valuable.
So, what am I doing instead? I’m diving back into the product itself. I’ve got the extended cuts of the LotR trilogy on deck – shame on me for never having seen the extendeds, really – I’ve been back to reading Banks, as you know, and I’ve been watching the 2010’s Planet of the Apes trilogy, which, two movies in, has been so much better than it has any right to be. Sure, I’ll stumble into plenty of garbage along the way, but them’s the breaks, no? Either way, I’ll be watching these with a creator’s eye, not just a viewers. Analyzing them, picking them apart, figuring out what makes them tick. Learning.
Because, you see, critiques will always be around. You can’t please everyone. But, good art will remain timeless and we could all use a little more.
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