The terrible movie continuum

I consider myself something of a movie buff, because I go to the theatre nearly once a week and I'll watch nearly any genre of film. I'm also pretty articulate when it comes to ripping apart bad movies, or better still, avoiding ones that look bad before ever watching them in the first place.

Anyways, I'm amazed that so many people seem to enjoy terrible movies, and I came up with a theory as to why. First of all, we have to assume that not everyone is an idiot who can't tell the difference between quality and complete crap. It's hard, I know... but necessary. Secondly, we need to consider the average moviegoer, who does not watch nearly as many films as I do. This is the jumping off point of the theory, because it's based almost entirely on the volume of movies that a person watches.

Pretend that you've only seen a single movie in your lifetime. That movie would be terrible and great at the same time, because you have no other point of reference to compare it to. It is literally the best and worst movie ever. Now add a second film to your viewing list, and one will surely be superior to the other. Things get slightly more complicated here though. There is more than one category by which a film can be ranked. Maybe the special effects were phenomenal, but the acting was atrocious (Transformers 2, this means you!). You have to average these aspects and look at the overall quality if you're going to rank a movie properly.

The point is, every movie you watch will fall somewhere on the scale from complete trash to amazing work of art. What's more is that the scale is not fixed. It adjusts based on the quality of the best and worst movies you've seen, and the number of films in between. Whenever you see a new movie that blows your mind, the scale lengthens slightly, and movies that were once decent now become below average by comparison.

The name of the game here is relativity, and it spawns entirely from personal experience. Because no two people have the same experiences, they are unlikely to have the same opinions. This doesn't mean that you're right or wrong in an absolute sense, but you can appear to be heavily misguided when your opinions are assessed on another person's rating scale.

Basically, the more you watch, the more accurate your assessments will be. It follows the same general rules as sample size in statistics. So, the next time someone gives you a bad reference on which movie to see, break out the bell curve and explain to them why their opinion is irrelevant! Oh, and if they've seen lots of movies too and STILL can't figure it out, don't worry. They're just retarded.