What Makes a Good Movie?

The Council podcast discusses what makes a good movie. They mention the importance of relatability and spectacle in movies, as well as the impact of writing and casting. They also discuss the significance of soundtracks and how they can enhance the movie experience. They suggest that Whiplash meets their criteria for the best movie of all time. Welcome to the Council, your preeminent podcast for all things nerds. I am Evan Smite and I'm accompanied by my co-host, Reverend Connor Hill, and Cadet Thomas Weingart from the Air Force Academy. Well, let's crack a lacking. So in today's episode, we're going to try to navigate into the topic of movies and just what makes a good movie. In particular, we hope to define an as objective as possible list of qualifications to define the ideal movie and in turn, bring up some examples of some of our personal favorites and see how they measure up. It's also important to note that, you know, everyone has their own cup of tea, right? So this may be a little subjective, but this is our own personal podcast. So this is what we believe. Ultimately, our goal is to push past this and to get into the nitty gritty of what makes our minds tick and when we see a good movie. So let's just start it off with a simple question. What makes a good movie? So I would say, Evan, one big thing a movie is just saying the ability of a movie to represent things we just can't have in real life, right? What's the point of a movie if you can just go and do it? Like nobody's going to like a movie of you going to the groceries, right? We want to see some sort of Star Wars where there's spaceships flying around. So it's definitely a mixture of relatability plus the expectation of just things that are a spectacle. You want cinema in a movie. If that makes any sense. That's a fact. Well, this note, to what extent can this success be chalked up to the fantastic writing of George Lucas and any other proficient writers? We saw the public response when George Lucas' film was taken over by caffeine tenders. Well, I think that's a very valid response because that is George Lucas' baby. He had that mind idea. And now when somebody else takes it over, is it really Star Wars? Still, it's definitely something to bring about, but it's everyone has their own opinion, right? So that's up to the interpretation of the year, I'd say. It definitely depends in that case with like George Lucas and Star Wars. And I guess like she also changed a lot of the ideas. So they definitely could have just kept it as a baby Star Wars film, but she totally changed it. To make a great movie, per se, like one of the best things about Star Wars, like the animation, like the CGI involved in it. But there's movies like Avatar. So according to I really liked that movie, an article from Alice Hall and Cheryl Bracken of University of Missouri and Cleveland State University, respectively. They wrote films with impressive cinematography or visual effects such as Avatar may be enjoyed as visual and technological advancements, even if one does not feel an emotional connection to the characters. So to what extent can we say that a movie is good rather than just saying it's a piece of art? But actually diving deep more into that. So you have Avatar, which is like, you know, they went into deep, the technological thing. That's like why they got so many like views and stuff like that. But I definitely don't think that's why it's like a top tier movie. Because I think you definitely need like more of the meaning to it and more of the good roles. I mean, they made movies in like the 40s and 30s and things like that where they didn't have those. But I think they still objectively made like a phenomenal movie. I don't think just because they didn't have that technology that they wouldn't be able to be considered in the top 10. I think what Mike, the host Evan is trying to get to is a movie doesn't need that. Like look at like a Citizen Kane. There's no CGI in that, but it's Citizen Kane. I mean, right. But totally Avatar was the number one box office hit for quite a long time. I don't know how many years, but a good amount of time. And I genuinely can't remember what the story was or any article about the box office. Yeah, like the new Avatar movie that's coming out within the next month, I believe, they recently let it out that because of how much money they spent on the CGI, they actually need $2 billion at the box office in order to become profitable. And that's just insane. So now there's an interesting article talking about the necessity of star factor when it comes to entertaining a good movie. Right. So this article, what it said was that by introducing a star cast, that they were actually mitigating risk because what would happen, how they were so excited for this film that the initial couple of weeks at the box office did really well. Then because of the disappointment that they felt, it slowly died down. But that initial rise was actually enough to make it profitable. So we can't judge a movie based on the hype in the same way we can't judge a movie based on its box office results. I think the best way to describe a movie, and according to this article, it's the same, is that the way that you feel an emotional connection, it's not like people can enjoy sad films because it's what they said is that it's not quite about the balance of the emotions that you feel, but rather that they are appropriate for the situation. I agree with that. A hundred percent. And that goes into like any climax of any movie. And I think to bring up a point with endings, right, we can talk about endings that aren't really an ending, an ending that's up for interpretation. I think that has somewhat of a play for a good movie. What do you personally get out of that movie? How does your mindset play into your enjoyment of the movie? Everyone has a different mind. Everyone has a different viewpoint on the world. Like Bright Side of the Island or something? I'm acting like a Shutter Island, you know, or like the end of Inception. Huge, right? Is he in the dream or is he not? Right? And that is up for interpretation. That is your own personal, what's happening? That's the big thing about like Shyamalan films and other things like that, is that when you're able to watch a movie and then step back from that movie watching experience and just like flip that cognitive switch and you recognize not only did they set it up, they prepared it for this fantastic ending that just wraps everything up so well. Exactly. Like what did they do in the beginning of the movie to set these pieces in motion so at the end it all comes together? And especially if you're watching a movie and you're just like, you're just on the movie and like walking over and you're thinking about the movie and like what just happened with it? I think that's like an epitome, like a great movie. It makes you think about it. It makes you think about it. Exactly. I would have to agree with that. I can't find like Sherlock Holmes movies that do so well. But also you can't make it like too far-fetched, like into the sadness. It's almost like a little relatable. So that goes into a different question though because like we enjoy Star Wars movies, right? And the whole point of that movie is that it's absurd. It's a galaxy far, far away. It's basically like an outline. I think the problem with saying something needs to be realistic or something needs to be sci-fi, that's purely subjective. I know what you mean, but with a lot of cases, I mean for Star Wars, you can have only certain spots that could be relatable because you think like, alright, Anakin goes through all that torture and stuff. You can feel some empathy in Sadnessworm because a little bit actually happens and stuff like that. Even though of course he's not going to be on the middle of space, whatever planet, and then gets burned to death and then comes back. I mean, that's not true. But I mean, the part where he's actually sad about it and he mourns for it. I mean, it's definitely like a real human emotion. And I would say that that's just an extension of a qualification being the script and the writing. Just because you can make a far out plot with the entirety of Star Wars, but in reality it's grounded in emotions that we can relate to. And I think based on that, it's based on how well the director, the screenwriter, can write that scene. 100%. 100%. So we touched on this briefly and it was just like the idea of having a star factor to bring in the initial view. And I think that is an important point to note. You need to have good acting because if you get someone out there who doesn't know what they're doing and they're just talking in monotone voice and they can't relay what they're trying to, like the emotions that they're trying to give off in a given scene, I don't think that that can be considered a good movie without good acting. And it's not so much star factor. It's not like, hey, we're going to have all these devout Harry Styles fans showing up to the Eternals movie just to see him. That's not the type. I'm thinking that we need to see stellar acting for stellar writing. I think those two go hand in hand. Yeah, true. You've got to tell the story. And it has to be, you have to think that that's the actor for the role, right? I think a really good example of this is Back to the Future, right? They had a different actor the entire casting. They made the entire movie with a different actor, but then it was not Marty McFly. So they got in Michael J. Fox and it was perfect. They made that amazing movie. Did they really do that? Yes, 100%. They made the entire movie. And at the end, they were like, that's not our movie. We can't do that. That's not Marty. And then they got Michael J. Fox from Family Ties and then it was perfect. I never thought I'd hear Michael J. Fox from Family Ties. Because that was the reason. Back in time, yeah. It's like the same thing with Jack Reacher. The book is totally based off of a guy who's like 6'6", 6'8", things like that. So when the people who read the book watched the movie, they all complained that Tom Cruise was the guy acting as Jack Reacher, even though he did a good job. But still, he did not fit in the whole exact. Yeah, 100%. It wasn't him. Tom Cruise is a good actor, but it wasn't Jack Reacher. He can't play Jack Reacher because he's not him. Yeah, so there's a lot of things that go on. 100%. I would have to agree with that. So I'd say that we definitely have two criteria, and that's it needs to be good writing and it needs to maybe not be a perfect cast. Like they don't need to be very skillful actors, but if the point is to be like an awkward teenager, then maybe you don't need a good actor. Maybe the whole point of having a bad actor is that it can adequately portray that role. A good example of that, just off the top of my head, Paul Dano in Little Miss Sunshine. He plays an amazing role. He's an awkward teenage kid. You're not going to put The Rock there. It's just not going to work. It's just not going to work. So you don't want a good actor for the wrong role. It has to be the perfect fit. And so it's hard to quantify that. But so I think a final criteria that we definitely need to get into is the soundtrack. I think, well, I don't think that the soundtrack will necessarily make or break movies, but I think what separates the good movies from the great movies is the fact that you can have a soundtrack that adds to the movie itself. I don't know about you guys, but I remember it was like my orchestra teacher, Mr. Milman, remember? Mr. Milman. Mr. Milman. And he showed us the video and it was the background orchestra playing two different, the same scene from Pirates of the Caribbean and Jack Sparrow riding in as the ship is slowly sinking into the water. Right. But they played different backgrounds. Like they play a really triumphant one and made it seem funny and it was like energetic. But then on the contrary, they had the sad song. It was almost like he was mourning the loss of his ship. And so the idea of a soundtrack making or breaking a movie, I think that a good soundtrack can only add to it. Totally true. I mean, you also have like silent films, things like that. Like it had to be funny. Like most of the time, like if I'm watching a silent film, I have to be like Charlie Chaplin. Yeah. That'd be funny. And an epic, epic music can make an epic scene sad music. Now when it comes to silent films, I just meant that they didn't really have the technology to record and so they were making do and it was really good. And I think I think another thing to a note with music is just the absolute of the motif. Right. Like Jaws is dog. That's Jaws. You will always know when you hear that jobs like so that is also great recognition. Like it's also that's how you can also deal with story elements in it when you just see a pool of water and hear that you're like, oh, there's a shark in there. That's the genius of John Williams, though, because you're just talking about Jaws. But he has so many other soundtracks that are just known for. I guess Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Schindler's List, Harry Potter. Yeah, there's just so many. And it's hard to argue that with that, it would be as good of a movie without the Imperial March without like there's so there's so many ideas that are just like iconic. Yeah. Like you just you can't have them without John Williams. Indiana Jones would not be Indiana Jones. But that's just that is Indiana Jones. Is that a lot of things? Yeah. I think the question that I have right now is like, how good is a Jaws film without that soundtrack? Exactly. How good is any film without a soundtrack? That's what I think. That's what what my hopes are trying to get at, that the music is an integral part. The movie is the music. The music is the movie. Right. You bring up a very good point with silent films. But that's a very notable outlier to this point. But still, as you were saying, the fact that there is no sound is in and of itself a deliberate choice. And so we've got three criteria in front of us. We have stellar writing, correct casting for a role. Yeah. And then we have the soundtrack. I think based on these criteria, there's no way that Whiplash isn't the best movie of all time. 100%. It's just a at least for us, as we stated before, this is an objective. But with the criteria that we put down, nothing else beats it out. A stellar soundtrack, stellar casting and acting. And the playwriting. It's insane. It's insane. I mean, it didn't even start out with a good actors. I mean, it won like how much money to make it like a bigger film. They didn't have enough. Yeah. Enough resources to do it originally. Whiplash was filmed over a span of a week, if I remember correctly. You can look that up. I have that right now, sir. Then you get Miles Teller in there. You get J.K. Simmons. You have so much stellar acting. And then you have John Watson playing the drums, playing the iconic drum solo. That Buddy Rich's Caravan. But then you see John Watson's cover of that. I mean, there's a couple movies that try to and there's like Soul. I think I think Soul and Whiplash are essentially the same movie met for different audiences. I think that the whole idea of having a soundtrack that individually advances the plot of a movie. So the previous article I was talking about, it says that audiences valuations of their enjoyment of the film viewing experience is not necessarily shaped by the balance of the emotion fixed to your well viewing, but rather depend on their emotions and the appropriateness of the emotions. Furthermore, Zillman suggests that enjoyment is based by the way that emotions are resolved at the conclusion of the film. You see that and you pair that with the idea of there's this article it's called Effective Priming in Music Listening, Emotions as a Source of Musical Expectation. Listeners emotionally engaged with patterns of tension and release in music and expect this music to contribute to a rise in tension, dramatically fall in tension, or a change in emotional characteristics. So you see this grand build up in Whiplash. This 10 minute drum solo. And I think that that movie undoubtedly the best movie of all time. I think that there might be an argument for other things like Shawshank, right? Shawshank Pulp Fiction. But it based on these criteria at the very least, these objective qualifications, because some people might like the slow periodic structure of like a Tarantino movie. I think you look at Whiplash, especially based on these three criteria that we outlined, best movie of all time. I feel like, okay, so this has been The Council. Thank you for joining us, and as always, have a goal.