The Star Wars prequels are widely regarded as the worst additions to a beloved franchise of all time. Red Letter Media’s feature-length eviscerations of each film are some of the funniest things I’ve ever seen, but I don’t agree with the central argument. I regularly sit down and watch all six movies, and you know what? The prequels are the best part of the experience every time.
Here’s why.
Continue reading The Star Wars Prequels Are Better Than You Think They Are
Metascoring, in case you aren’t aware, is the process of gauging a movie’s quality through aggregating lots of different reviews and spitting out a score based on the percentage of positive reviews it’s gotten. Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic are two very popular websites that metascore, and you’ve probably visited one or both at some point in your life.
The entire concept is bunk.
Even just the idea of applying a ‘score’ to a movie is stupid, and yet it’s become customary for critics to tack them on at the end of their reviews for some reason. We’ve all seen the five-star system, the four-star system, the percent-out-of-a-hundred system—or out of ten, but with decimals—or maybe the most offensive, the A to F grading, which treats the film as though it were a High School essay on Wuthering Heights rather than a comprehensive piece of art.
Continue reading I Hate Metascores, And You Should Too