How do bad movies exist?

All month, I’ve been on crunch mode writing my memoir.¹ And, because I’m such an auteur bitch, I’ve also been obsessively thinking about the ingredients that make for compelling storytelling. All this dovetails nicely with how much my wife and I enjoy watching movies together in the evening.

And by “watch”, I’m actually describing how I hold onto the remote control so that I can pause the film every 47 seconds to describe exactly why this or that is such effective cinema.² I had thoroughly forgotten how much of a fucking film nerd I am, and in another life I’d probably be a professional DJ who moonlights as a film critic.

As much as the movie industry has firmly established itself as a cultural juggernaut, I’d argue it remains seriously underrated as an art form. The reason? The vocabulary of cinema — its grammar, its syntax, its visual language — is deceptively subtle and incredibly easy to overlook. And lest you get the wrong idea, while I can occasionally appreciate three-hour marathons of black & white art house monologues, my favorite movies are disproportionality action blockbusters. Some of the movies I’d personally consider perfect would be Total Recall (1990), Terminator 2 (1991), and…Atonement (2007).

Pleb viewers, even those of ordinary intelligence, might find it difficult to pinpoint exactly why a movie feels “good” or “bad” to them. But even if the articulation isn’t there, the instinct is. Unfortunately the gap has been worsened by insufferably snooty film critics, who have needlessly cloaked it in pretension jargon. Thankfully, that trend has changed by a bevy of YouTubers who have stuck it to their parents and turned their film degree into something that could sustain at least one (1) human life.

There’s too many channels to recommend. Lessons from the Screenplay perfectly explains how an ensemble of contrasting characters are utilized to further sharpen and hone the central theme. The sadly shuttered Every Frame a Painting made me appreciate just how much of a bona fide cinematic genius Jackie Chan is. There’s also no shortage of excellent hour-long videos about how amazing Pirates of the Caribbean (2003) is at efficient exposition, among other things.

But if you want a film school speedrun, nothing else compares to Red Letter Media’s legendary feature-length takedowns of the Star Wars prequel trilogy (Episode I, II, and III). I can’t even remember watching any of the prequel movies themselves, but I’ve watched RLM’s reviews multiple times and they just never get old. George Lucas deserves a lot of credit for his dogged work on the first 1977 film³, and taking the right inspiration from the Japanese silver screen, spaghetti Westerns, and Flash Gordon sci-fi pulp. But holy shit the prequels are horrendously and unambiguously bad on so many levels.

Lucas had verifiable acting talent on hand, but he somehow managed to torture them into performing with the flattest cardboard affect imaginable. You can’t blame the actors, because none of the character’s motivations make any sense — people just do incomprehensible things in order to avoid inconveniencing the plot.

My favorite, most baffling example, comes from when the infamous galactic bounty hunter Jango Fett (father to Boba) tasked with assassinating the senator Natalie Portman (don’t ask why). Jango wears basically the same armored suit that Boba got famous for, which conveniently means having access to a jetpack and an array of high-tech bombs and weaponry. Natalie had just narrowly survived an explosion on her spaceship but, cursed with perpetually being a dumbass, decides that the best place to hide out is in a skyscraper with an incredible view right underneath a flying car highway.

So, easy, right? Jango apparently decides that flying up to Natalie’s window and KA-CHUNKing a grenade into it was apparently too easy, so he subcontracts the job to another assassin, one who conveniently can shapeshift! Woah, cool! This would normally set up some exciting stakes — how exactly do you defend against a shapeshifting assassin?? Well apparently Zam thinks shapeshifting into one of Natalie’s entourage is also too easy, so she decides to send a drone to Natalie’s window instead. Alright, now we’re talking again! Just strap on the galactic equivalent of C4 to the drone and now you’ve raised the tension again; how will they get out of this one??

Well, the drone doesn’t carry any explosives. It instead carries bugs. As in, two giant centipedes, presumably poisonous.

I have so many questions.

Once the centipedes are deployed, do they have some sort of target acquisition? Targeting would presumably require a signature of sorts from the target (DNA? Scent? Lock of hair?) but that would require getting close enough at least once, which defeats the whole purpose of subsequently airdropping deadly worms.

Maybe the centipedes are dumb missiles that just randomly seek out the nearest warm body once they’re released? But then you need some serious storage equipment to properly keep a deadly bioweapon around; you can’t get lax and let them escape into the vents! But how? They apparently fit into some sort of pneumatic tube, but it’s so small that it only makes sense as a deployment canister rather than permanent housing. Do you have to transfer them from their permanent terrarium into their drop-pod? How long can they live inside that tiny canister? Is there a little porthole where you can give them food and water? How do you clean something that has toxin residue everywhere?

Moving on, flying drone technology is logical enough, but this particular application is the deepest cut. Finding an illicit drone manufacturer who can provide a window-cutting model doesn’t seem too implausible, but this drone needs to combine drilling through glass with the ability of injecting foot-long centipedes. The drill bit needs to be directly in front of the worms deployment porthole! And the porthole needs to remain extremely secure throughout (you don’t want a latch to open prematurely and dump its cargo all over rush hour traffic) but also you cannot have the mechanism jam at a critical moment! All of these problems could’ve been solved by using a tank of butane!

None of the above even matters, because Natalie’s useless security detail chatting it up in the room next door still managed to “hear” “sensed” the worms slither in and rushed in just in time to save her. It’s all so stupid.

What isn’t stupid, however, is this banger song:

1. It’s going well!

2. My wife loves me very very very much.

3. I don’t care about Star Wars in general. The original trilogy was very visually appealing, but they’re OK as movies. I have no idea what has happened with the franchise in recent years except some people were very mad for some reason or another.