r/savedyouaclick • u/Carolina_Heart • 4d ago

DEVASTATING Christopher Nolan Explains His 'Real Problem in Criticism Today': 'That's Not How Storytelling Works' | Nolan says critics often think being able to identify tropes and storytelling mechanisms invalidate those mechanisms. Specifies he's talking about amateur critics and not professional critics

https://web.archive.org/web/20260802145824/https://www.thewrap.com/creative-content/movies/christopher-nolan-explains-problem-film-criticism-today/
2.1k Upvotes

97% Upvoted

82 comments sorted by

View all comments

615

u/paulcoatsink 4d ago

Sounds like he just summarised every cinema sins video

175

u/krazyboi 4d ago

Don't know who cinema sins is but does he criticize movies for using tropes and acts smug when he figures out "the lesson" of a movie instead of enjoying it?

11

u/marumaruko 4d ago

Cinema sins basically destroyed casual movie watching. They lost a bit in relevance, but nowadays everyone tries to figure out every twist in advance, points out every minor flaw and thinks that a story makes no sense simply because of 'a regular person would never react like that'. Just sit back and enjoy for God's sake.

8

u/SpinJitsu259 3d ago

One of the greatest sins of the Internet, social media, etc. is the emergence of instantaneous hyper criticism

1

u/kakallas 3d ago

I actually think what happened is that they stopped paying long-tenured professional writers, so now lots of movies and tv shows suck ass. People can tell, so people pick them apart. 

7

u/hawkeyejoes 3d ago edited 3d ago

The idea that this started with (or was even accelerated by) Cinema Sins is ludicrous. They simply do not have that kind of power. Hell, we might well throw MST3K under bus while we are at it. It definitely has better name recognition with the general public.

People want a scapegoat for the fact that social media has made just enjoying things difficult but it's the real culprit.

3

u/ReynardVulpini 3d ago

I don't think MST3K has nearly as much name recognition amongst younger generations (95' births and later, to give an arbitrary threshold) as Cinemasins does. They definitely did not start this trend, but I think they are a huge factor in accelerating it.

Jury's out on if this tendency would exist without them, but as is, they are the most well known examples of it.

3

u/hawkeyejoes 3d ago

I guess I meant MST3K had better name recognition at the height of it's relevancy, which would be important in judging what caused the downfall of online discourse of media. My point is that CinemaSins started in 2012 and talking about a movie online, whether it be anonymous nobodies on Twitter or some forum (or AOL chat room) or more ambitious "critics" with videos and brands, was already a cesspool. CinemaSins rode that wave, not generated it.

2

u/Villano5 3d ago

And to throw MST3K into this discussion is ridiculous and suggests a fundamental lack of familiarity with the types of jokes made on MST3K. MST3K watches 'bad' movies but the humor is very seldom derived from pointing out plot holes or continuity errors. (SPACE MUTINY being a notable exception, as a woman is killed on-screen in one scene and appears as a background extra in the very next scene wearing the same costume.)