People Are Sharing All The Signs That A Movie Is Going To Be Terrible, And Here Are 30 Of The Most Accurate Ones

The thread, started up by redditor Thats_What_Sh3_Sa1d, quickly grew in popularity. At the time of writing, it had gotten over 49.2k upvotes in the span of a single day. What’s more, it got a whopping 21.7k comments. And that proves that redditors really do care about what they watch. (And, let’s be honest… who doesn’t like complaining about the movie industry from time to time?) Keep in mind though, even awful movies can have some merit. We’ve all been there—a movie we’re watching is so mind-numbingly bad that at some point it starts to be good.

In redditor Thats_What_Sh3_Sa1d's opinion, the dialogue and all of the various movie effects help determine whether the project will be a success or not. "I'm not exactly a movie critic, but I will say that the line between a good and a bad movie depends on dialogue, whether or not the lines that characters say to each other makes sense or contributes something to the film, whether or not the CGI or maybe the VFX looks good or not because that really makes an impact on a movies likeability, at least for me," they said.

"And of course if it has a good back story, if it's really going to catch your attention, that also plays a part in a movies likeability," they added.

I was curious to get the redditor's take on whether we all instinctively know whether a movie is going to be a waste of our time or not. In their mind, it all depends on the audience in question. "I personally like action movies, but I also like a little bit of romance, so if I was going to watch a movie about the history of a company, for example, I would think that it would be a waste of time. Whereas some people might think the exact opposite."

As for why filmmakers tend to make the same mistakes over and over (and over) again boils down to their lack of taste which they may not have fully developed yet. "The people making the movie either don't know what makes a good movie, or they think that a bad movie is a good one. Now again, I'm not saying that I'm a movie critic and I know everything there is to know about film, but I, and most people I think, know a bad film when they see one, and maybe some people don't. And in my opinion, for the situation to be able to change, the people making the movie should be informed as to what makes a good film rather than what makes a bad film," they shared.

Something very interesting that redditor Thats_What_Sh3_Sa1d pointed out to me was movie directors may not be at fault for making bad films. "A film can be bad just because it's bad," they told Bored Panda, pointing to 2017's 'Justice League' as an example.

"Justice League 2017 was not the best movie out there. It was so bad in fact, that they had to re-make it. And the remake was a lot better than the original because it had different directors/ However, just because it was better, doesn't mean that everybody liked it. I'm sure there were people who didn't like the better remake for whatever reason. And that's what I mean when I say a film can be good or bad despite the director," they shared that there's far more nuance involved than we expect. And reality is far from black and white, just like the view on the silver screen.

Whether the creators of the movie were self-aware or you learn to find the humor in the bad taste, either way, you inexplicably start enjoying yourself. It doesn’t happen with every gosh darn bad movie, but when it does, it’s magical. It’s a cult hit. It’s something you recommend to your friends.

The secret to bad movies being good, according to Uku Tooming in ‘The Puzzle of Good Bad Movies’ published in the Journal of Aesthetic Education, is that they give filmmakers a chance to experiment with the artistic possibilities of the project more than if the film were more mainstream. In other words, good bad filmmaking is intrinsically linked to the freedom of artistic expression.

So while many (probably most) bad films will remain truly amazingly awful because of how unadventurous and downright boring they are (who likes blatant exposition? Nobody!), a small handful might become cult classics because they dared go where others didn’t.