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The Story Behind the Worst Movie on IMDb

fivethirtyeight.com

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Re: The Story Behind the Worst Movie on IMDb

#72
post #43

538 is using the wrong metrics. For a movie to be truly, truly, sublimely bad, that badness needs to be recognized - people in some cases will want to watch it for its incredible badness. This means that there are going to be a disproportionate number of both 1 and 10 votes. And the winner based on this is - The Room. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0368226/ratings?ref_=tt_ov_rt

A clear conversation is difficult in the absence of a clear, canonical definition of "bad". It would be very easy for me to get a few friends together and make a 90 minutes improvised movie filmed on my phone. That would be an absolutely terrible movie, but it wouldn't be a very satisfying answer to the question "What's the worst movie?" because it would be seen by very few people and it would be made with no ambitio…

This was really insightful. It's the same in any arena: if I try to think of a "bad" novel, my mind won't even go to the acres of paperback romances or teen vampire stories: I'll think of books published in hard cover and mentioned as being in the running for the Booker prize, that happen to be trite, inept, and derivative.

Re: The Story Behind the Worst Movie on IMDb

#73
post #43

538 is using the wrong metrics. For a movie to be truly, truly, sublimely bad, that badness needs to be recognized - people in some cases will want to watch it for its incredible badness. This means that there are going to be a disproportionate number of both 1 and 10 votes. And the winner based on this is - The Room. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0368226/ratings?ref_=tt_ov_rt

Interesting. My favorite bad movie has a similar graph, but not quite so many 10's.

R.O.T.O.R. - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0098156/ratings?ref_=tt_ov_rt

Re: The Story Behind the Worst Movie on IMDb

#74
post #43

538 is using the wrong metrics. For a movie to be truly, truly, sublimely bad, that badness needs to be recognized - people in some cases will want to watch it for its incredible badness. This means that there are going to be a disproportionate number of both 1 and 10 votes. And the winner based on this is - The Room. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0368226/ratings?ref_=tt_ov_rt

That is fascinating. I've never seen The Room , but I sure want to now. It's fascinating because of some similarities to the truly worst movie in history, The Tango Lesson [0]: each movie has one person as writer, director, and star, and (apparently) focuses self-indulgently on the abortive romantic entanglements of the author, who is utterly unaware that nobody else could possibly care. The Tango Lesson falls throug…

You ever seen Annie Hall though? That's a great movie.

Re: The Story Behind the Worst Movie on IMDb

#75
post #43

538 is using the wrong metrics. For a movie to be truly, truly, sublimely bad, that badness needs to be recognized - people in some cases will want to watch it for its incredible badness. This means that there are going to be a disproportionate number of both 1 and 10 votes. And the winner based on this is - The Room. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0368226/ratings?ref_=tt_ov_rt

That is fascinating. I've never seen The Room , but I sure want to now. It's fascinating because of some similarities to the truly worst movie in history, The Tango Lesson [0]: each movie has one person as writer, director, and star, and (apparently) focuses self-indulgently on the abortive romantic entanglements of the author, who is utterly unaware that nobody else could possibly care. The Tango Lesson falls throug…

Everything Wrong With The Room: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mvuwldnG7c0

The Nostalgia Critic reviews The Room: http://thatguywiththeglasses.com/videolinks/thatguywiththegl...

Re: The Story Behind the Worst Movie on IMDb

#76

I found it odd that the article makes note that 36,000 ratings come from outside the U.S. Maybe I am missing something but wouldn't it be expected that many of a Bollywood movie's ratings would come from outside the U.S.?

I'd guess on Indian review-aggregator websites written in Hindi the trend is reversed ;)

Re: The Story Behind the Worst Movie on IMDb

#77
post #43

538 is using the wrong metrics. For a movie to be truly, truly, sublimely bad, that badness needs to be recognized - people in some cases will want to watch it for its incredible badness. This means that there are going to be a disproportionate number of both 1 and 10 votes. And the winner based on this is - The Room. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0368226/ratings?ref_=tt_ov_rt

A clear conversation is difficult in the absence of a clear, canonical definition of "bad". It would be very easy for me to get a few friends together and make a 90 minutes improvised movie filmed on my phone. That would be an absolutely terrible movie, but it wouldn't be a very satisfying answer to the question "What's the worst movie?" because it would be seen by very few people and it would be made with no ambitio…

To that extent, a comparison of box office numbers, budget, and imdb rating would be interesting. What movies have been able to buy quality at the best price? Which ones swung hardest and missed? It would be fascinating to look for common qualities within groups.

Re: The Story Behind the Worst Movie on IMDb

#78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A clear conversation is difficult in the absence of a clear, canonical definition of "bad". It would be very easy for me to get a few friends together and make a 90 minutes improvised movie filmed on my phone. That would be an absolutely terrible movie, but it wouldn't be a very satisfying answer to the question "What's the worst movie?" because it would be seen by very few people and it would be made with no ambitio…

This was really insightful. It's the same in any arena: if I try to think of a "bad" novel, my mind won't even go to the acres of paperback romances or teen vampire stories: I'll think of books published in hard cover and mentioned as being in the running for the Booker prize, that happen to be trite, inept, and derivative.

In order for it to be meaningful that something is "bad", it has to have had intentions of being "good".

Anyone can intentionally make a bad movie that's worse than a stinker like Battlefield Earth. That's nothing worth recognizing because the difference between the actual quality and the intended quality, the ΔQ, is so tiny.

"The worst movie ever" designation should go to the film that has the highest ΔQ.

Re: The Story Behind the Worst Movie on IMDb

#79
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But most of the people who has given the rating have not seen the movie. They are giving the lowest rating just to put their point forward. This is not a documentary to put the truth on the screen (I am not sure how much of the movie is fiction). I think the author calls data erroneous as the rating does not represent the actual quality of the movie - a thing which IMDB wants to achieve. He doesn't call it erroneous…

> But most of the people who has given the rating have not seen the movie I'm sure it's possible, but no rating represents the "actual quality of the movie." A rating is based on a subjective amalgam measurement that encompasses a myriad biases, even when watched and with total scrutiny.

While this is true, I would argue that there is a social expectation that an IMDB review is written by someone who has seen the movie. Especially, it is expected to be true on average with the usual "few bad apples" thrown in the mix. In this case, this expectation does not hold, and in this sense these reviews are truly anomalous (they are produced by a different process than the other ones). From the perspective of the expected usage of the reviews this anomaly is indeed possible to see as an error, rather than just slightly different behavior.

Re: The Story Behind the Worst Movie on IMDb

#80
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But most of the people who has given the rating have not seen the movie. They are giving the lowest rating just to put their point forward. This is not a documentary to put the truth on the screen (I am not sure how much of the movie is fiction). I think the author calls data erroneous as the rating does not represent the actual quality of the movie - a thing which IMDB wants to achieve. He doesn't call it erroneous…

> But most of the people who has given the rating have not seen the movie I'm sure it's possible, but no rating represents the "actual quality of the movie." A rating is based on a subjective amalgam measurement that encompasses a myriad biases, even when watched and with total scrutiny.

While true, the ratings can be useful if there is some form of understanding as to what people are rating the movie for. Most ratings cover the simplistic "I saw the movie and this is how I feel about it" kind of data. In that case, the ratings can be useful.

But if a group with an agenda comes in and rates the movie on a different set of criteria without letting the typical reader know renders the data useless.

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