The Editors of Rotten Tomatoes - Rotten Movies We Love

Nobody sets out to make a bad movie.

I dont think any studio executive or commercial filmmaker has ever said, You know what would be fun? Lets make a terrible movie. One that audiences will really hate and laugh at in all the wrong ways and make merciless fun of; one that lets critics practice their comedy writing skills as they see just how brutal they can be in their tearing down of our film. That would be the perfect use of many, many millions of dollars of our money and really great for our reputations.

No, bad movies arent made on purposethey just sort of slowly happen. Scripts are developed in earnest. A screenwriter has a spark of inspiration that they then sequester themselves away for months to develop. A studio reads it and takes a shine to something, whether its the overall idea, a character they like, or the entire script. They see something commercial in it, something that theyre pretty certain will draw people out of their homes, into their cars, and down to the local multiplex, where theyll pull out their hard earned cash and plunk it down to spend two hours sitting in the dark having the time of their lives watching the end result of whatever drew the studio and the filmmakers to the script in the first place. A production crew is put together and actors are cast. The movie goes into production and there are problems and fights and disagreements along the way, and maybe people are fired and maybe the film is taken away from the director after the studio doesnt like the directors version and the final cut is finished by committee. Or maybe everything goes swimmingly.

Then enter the audiences and the critics.

Audiences dont have any horse in the race when it comes to the success of a movie. The only thing theyre rooting for is to not waste their money on a bad or unsatisfying experience. As filmmakers, we can all sit around and high-five each other about how great we think our movies are and how cool our shots were and how we were right to make it way over two hours long because how could we possibly lose any of those perfect moments we spent so much time shooting and editing. But audiences dont care about that. Some will watch the movie in the spirit in which we intended and really look deeply into its hidden meanings. Others will sit there going This is dumb, or This is boring, or Look at how weird that actors hair is, or focusing on any of the myriad things that those of us who make the movies just assume people are going to go along with.

And then there are the critics. Most of us assume that the critics will love our movies. Were pretty sure theyll get exactly what we were going for and appreciate the way we did it. We know theyll watch our films in the spirit in which we made them. Theyll laud our successful moments. Theyll forgive our shortcomings. Theyll judge our work in the context of the audience for which it was intended. Theyll be fair and kind and understand how hard it is to make a movie with all the compromises and politics and challenges we have to deal with along the way.

Then the reviews come in and theyre terrible. Then opening weekend comes and nobody shows up. Then the finger pointing starts. The script should have been better! The director should have listened to us! The studio gave us bad notes that they demanded we follow! They ruined the movie! Our vision was compromised! The critics were too hard on us! The audience didnt get it! We were ahead of our time!

Some of these things may be true. They may all be. Or we could all have been delusional. Whatever the cause, we are now sitting with something none of us ever wanted or could have predicted we would have.

A bad movie.

None of the movies in this book are bad movies. Some werent great but tried their best to be. Some were amazing but nobody realized it because they were expecting something else. Some just got better the more we watched them.

I like to say the biggest hurdle to getting people to like your movie is simply getting them used to the idea that it exists. They go into the theater with a set of expectations based on the trailer and the poster and the word of mouth theyve heard, and if the movie is different from the image they had formed in their minds, they then spend the whole time watching it through a different lensa lens of disappointment, of confusion, of longing for it to be the thing they wanted it to be. So when it ends, they say, I didnt like that. And then, for them, it is a bad movie.

But movies have a way of rehabilitating themselves. Many are like wine. They get better with age. Thanks to DVDs and streaming services and cable TV, youll come across a movie you saw once and didnt like, but youll start watching it again anyway, and since you know whats coming, youll find yourself enjoying it more the second time. Youll start to appreciate the characters and the performances. Youll start to see the humor in it when originally you saw the movie as taking itself too seriously. Or, many times, youll stumble across a movie youd heard was bad and have read scathing reviews about and then youll watch it to make fun of it and end up loving it instead.

Thats the beauty of movies. Once theyre finished, theyre set in stone. They dont change. They present themselves as earnestly as they did the day they opened. And theyre always ready and waiting to entertain you, to plead their case for being worthy of your time even long after everyone who worked on the film is gone.

Thats why those of us who make movies do it in the first place. So, before you denounce any of our work as bad, give it a second chance. Just like so many of the movies youre going to read about in this book, it may deserve another lease on life.

Making movies is hard. But watching them doesnt have to be. It should be fun. Hopefully this book will help more people realize that.

Paul Feig

Director of movies that some people think are good and some people think are bad