There are a lot of lists of “the 100 best [fill in the blank] of all time” and other such nonsense. For example, the American Film Institute has famously published a list of the 100 greatest American Movies of all time. How good is this list? Allow me simply to point out that Cabaret appears nowhere on it. Enough said.
It seems rather nonsensical to try to choose between, say, Schindler’s List and Duck Soup, and perhaps unfair. For one thing, Liam Neeson dresses a lot more nattily than Groucho Marx. Although, on the other hand, both films are about problems created by the crazy antics of dictators… But I digress. The underlying flaw in the entire enterprise is that the goals of different movies are so wildly disparate that it makes no sense at all to compare them directly.
He wants his shirt
It seems to me that it would be far more interesting to twist the game a little, mix it up, maybe make things more interesting. To this end, I propose a new scale for measuring movie greatness, based on the 1999 film Galaxy Quest. According to my scale, this modest little comic homage to Star Trek fandom is perhaps the greatest film ever made. Allow me to explain.
When you enter a movie theatre, you arrive with certain expectations. Maybe you’ve read a positive review of the movie, or a friend has told you they liked it, or perhaps you’ve only heard what folks in Hollywood like to call the “high concept”. This is where the entire film is reduced to a single phrase, ideally one you can blurt out to a potential funder over hors d’oeuvres at the Chateau Marmont in less time than it takes the poor bastard to escape, once he’s realized that you crashed the party just to pitch your screenplay. An actual example of high concept: “Three Jews on a Dude Ranch”. See? Now you don’t even need to see City Slickers. You have just experienced the entire movie in six words.
But what if you arrive with no expectations? What if you know the film is going to be atrocious, an utter waste of your time? Your decision to see it has merely been a clever ruse for getting out of the house on Christmas day, while trying to find someplace, any place, where you can get away from those annoying Christmas carols. You are walking into this one with your eyes wide open, knowing full well what perilous fate awaits you. All of the ominous signs are there: It stars Tim Allen, it’s some sort of Star Trek parody, and the previews have led you to expect that it will be painfully cheesy. On the other hand, it does have Alan Rickman, and that’s promising, although you remember that in the trailer he was wearing some kind of alien thing on his head that made him look vaguely like a turtle, which can’t be good.
But you go anyway, settle down with your jumbo sized popcorn and strawberry Twizzlers, and prepare for the worst.
One hundred and two minutes later you emerge, amazed, enthralled, reeling with disbelief. It was funny and clever and actually had a plot with parallel character arcs that really worked and theme and back story and timing and great comic performances and just the right rueful sense of irony and Rickman was in utterly top form and even Tim Allen somehow got the whole “yes, I may be William Shatner but it’s ok because I know I’m William Shatner” thing and …. which is about the point where you realize you are hyperventilating and you go to find a chair in the lobby and sit down to think.
And that’s about the time, to make sense of what has just happened, you are going to need a little thing that I call the Galaxy Quest Scale (GQS). It is a rating system for movies that works like this: You assess your expectation going in of how good a particular movie could possibly be, given what you know. And then you assess your opinion of the movie after you’ve seen it. Divide the first number into the second number, and voila, you have computed that film’s GQS. It’s really that easy. Below is a simple diagram that explains the somewhat arcane mathematics involved:
|
Does anyone else have a film that they feel rates a particularly high (or low) GQS?
A SLIGHT CASE OF MURDER WITH EDWARD G. ROBINSON IS THE BEST MOVIE EVER.
I agree with you on Galaxy Quest. My wife had watched about three epsiodes of Star Trek in her life, while I grew up on it. We both thought it was one of the funniest movies ever.
I was certain that “The Court Jester” would be terrible, and laughed all through it.
I can imagine this happening with “10000 BC.” It could turn out to be a deeply personal film about flawed characters you can really believe in, filled with subtle humor and life. Sort of like “Mostly Martha” but with Aurochs.
Or not.
the scale works best when expectations are exceeded. high expectations can ruin even the greatest film. i am amazed at the number of people disappointed by There Will Be Blood.
for me high GQS flicks include 50 First Dates, the Wes Craven Nightmares on Elm Street (1 and 6), Blair Witch Project (which I saw, somehow, without any expectations despite the marketing barrage), and Pan’s Labyrinth (so well-hyped that I went in expecting disappointment).
I add my endorsement for Galaxy Quest, which is one of my favorites…
Monsters, Inc. probably makes the scale for me, since I was totally skeptical about it going in but now think it’s a perfectly delightful film. Maybe the new version of 3:10 to Yuma meets the criteria– I was expecting something completely different and ended up enjoying it immensely (so much so that I actually like Russell Crowe as an actor as a result).
I loved Pan’s Labyrinth– but I was expecting to love it– and hated There Willl be Blood even though I’m a big Cohn brothers fan. The “dashed expectations” phenomenon should probably produce a rating scale, too:
How bad a movie actually is
___________________________
How good people said it would be
“Snakes on a plane” was designed to rate very high on the GQS, yet, somehow, even with ridiculously low expectations, it rated less than a one on that scale, where as “no country for old men”, IMHO, rated very high on the scale, even given the extreme expectations I placed on it. (it was a coen brother’s movie, whereas “there will be bloof” was an PT anderson movie [which I have yet to see])
I am often disappointed by movies because of my unrealistic expectations. My good friend refuses to watch previews for just that reason. She will watch movies based on recommendations, but she wants no more information that whether or not it is worth seeing. In fact, I often watch movies based on her suggestion because of this. She is rarely tainted by unrealistic expectations in either directions.
But I love previews so.
Oops, I meant to say No Country for Old Men… I should really avoid attempting to type thoughtfully when I’m tired… 😉
Top on my list on that scale is the 1982 film Android directed by Aaron Lipstadt.
I honestly think that Galaxy Quest is the funniest movie I have ever seen, and would dare to assert that it might be the funniest movie ever made. Case in point, if I type:
“HEY! Don’t open that! It’s an alien planet! Is there air? You don’t know!”
Did you instantly start laughing at the memory of Sam Rockwell saying that line? Of course you did, because it is pee-your-pants funny. Best. Movie. Ever.
BTW, I’m the in-house editor at the Coolidge Corner Theatre in Brookline, MA, and one of my jobs is to make original funny trailers to lure hipsters in to our after-midnite series. Next weekend we’re showing Galaxy Quest, and I decided to dedicate the trailer to Guy…perhaps my favorite character in the movie (although they’re all good).
Check it out, if you’re so interested:
http://vimeo.com/8756714
Dear Ken
What do you do when the GQS goes to infinity ?
MW