It’s a topic that comes up just about every single time a bad looking movie is about to come out. The trailers look bad, the premise seems lame, maybe it has a bad director at the helm or a bad “star” in a leading role or any number of other things. You see all the stuff and declare: “Man, this movie is going to be crap” or “This movie looks terrible” or some other variation of that sentiment.
The thing is, even though ALL OF US do this (and rightfully so), inevitably some people will jump up and down and lament: “You can’t say that, you haven’t even seen it yet. You have no idea if it’s good or bad!”.
The people who say this are, 9 times out of 10, people who are already predisposed to liking the crap looking movie in question. Maybe they’re already a fan of the director. Maybe they’re already a fan of the property the movie is based on. For whatever the reasons, some people will always come along and tell you you’re not allowed to form an opinion about if a film looks bad in advance.
The basics of what they’re saying is true. If you haven’t seen a movie you can’t definitively say the movie IS good or bad. That’s 100% correct and I’ll agree with them about that. However, you can form a predictive opinion without seeing a movie. You CAN say “That movie looks like crap” or “This movie will suck”.
This is all just a very legitimate part of building up to a movie. Even the studios know we all form predictive opinions about movies before we see them… that’s why they put out trailers. They make posters and trailers in an attempt to influence your advanced opinion about a movie. The better your advance opinion is, the more likely you’ll drop $12 to hit the theater to see the movie. The worse your predictive opinion, the less likely they’ll get your money.
Look, once in a while we can be wrong. For example, in the last couple of years there have been 2 films that I swore looked horrible for a long time. But in the end, I wound up really enjoying TMNT and Punisher: Warzone. So our advanced opinions aren’t always right. That’s a good thing. But 95% of the time I find my predictive opinion was completely accurate as I ended up hating the crappy looking movies.
The bottom line is, while it’s true that until you actually SEE a movie, you can’t outright say a movie is good or bad… but at the same time we should form advance opinions. It’s what separates what we choose to see and what we don’t choose to see. It lets us talk about and debate upcoming films. The fact of the matter is we ALL form opinions about movies we haven’t seen yet as to if we think they’ll be good or bad… even the people who yell at you not to do it.
