[brie22]

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

[gabemart]

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 ambition of quality. I could go further and make a movie that was 90 minutes of a black screen. That would be a worse movie but an even less satisfying answer.

Even if you limit the field to movies that have seen a theatrical release, the same principal applies. Some movies are shockingly bad, but are made with few little effort by people who know they are making a bad movie. These seem less interesting, less sad and less funny than very bad movies made by people trying very hard and spending lots of money.

Personally, when rating the badness of work, I judge it against my own assessment of the potential of the work. The potential isn't directly measurable or quantifiable, but it consists of things like the budget, the vision of the creator, the skill and effort of the artists involved in the creation, etc. etc.

So, for example, I think of Star Wars: Episode 1 as being a worse film than a lot of 50s low-budget sci-fi B-movies, even though I might choose to watch it more readily. The B-movies were pumped out without much effort. They're boring and poorly made on a technical level, but they never really had a chance to be any good. Episode 1 was made on a vast budget, drew on extremely rich source material, and was the culmination of unimaginable amounts of time and effort by a large number of hard-working people. For me, that makes the failure of Episode 1 more profound and more egregious.

[leephillips]

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.

[drysart]

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.

[trystero]

Exactly. And that's why none of the films made by The Asylum* are eligible to the "so bad it's good" category. They never had any ambition of being good in the first place, so why bother?

* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Asylum

[edraferi]

hmm this means we need a measure of intended quality. Perhaps budget would be a good place to start? More invested = higher expectations. of course this might be thrown off by high-minded indie flicks and hugely expensive summer sequels, so perhaps include a polynomial term to capture the outliers.

really, profitability is the best "general goodness" measure ever created.

[NAFV_P]

> I could go further and make a movie that was 90 minutes of a black screen. That would be a worse movie but an even less satisfying answer.

What about a blue screen?

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0106438/

[CamperBob2]

I like drysart's criterion above (the delta-Q factor) as a way of discriminating between lowbrow but honestly-crafted crap like the usual MST3K fodder, and expensive yet incompetent crap like SW Episode 1.

But you raise an interesting point, in that there should also be a penalty for novel, provocative work that, while perhaps well-executed, rests on principles that can never be used again, so they don't advance the state of the art or otherwise leave us with any enduring influence. Works like Blue and John Cage's 4'33 would fall into that category, I think.

[NAFV_P]

> But you raise an interesting point, in that there should also be a penalty for novel, provocative work that, while perhaps well-executed, rests on principles that can never be used again, so they don't advance the state of the art or otherwise leave us with any enduring influence. Works like Blue and John Cage's 4'33 would fall into that category, I think.

I've seen the first ten minutes of Blue, it's actually really good. After ten minutes you start seeing stuff, but you can't work out if it is your own imagination or the film itself. The concept of Blue could be advanced: I was thinking of "Gamma" - viewers are exposed to intense gamma radiation for 90 minutes.

[shabble]

Whilst I suspect you're taking the piss, I wonder if you could you induce https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_ray_visual_phenomena without receiving a medically serious dose of radiation?

Those buzzkills at the FDA have already banned any artistically worthwhile amount of X-rays from CRT televisions though[1] :(

[1] http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CFR-2013-title21-vol8/xml/CFR-2...

[NAFV_P]

> Whilst I suspect you're taking the piss, I wonder if you could you induce https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_ray_visual_phenomena without receiving a medically serious dose of radiation?

It's a joke, apologies I couldn't resist. Some art forms and certain works of art are genuinely dangerous [0].

Regarding cosmic rays, I thought it was caused my massive particles, and being able to produce them artificially would be a considerable scientific feat - its artistic relevance would pale in comparison.

> Those buzzkills at the FDA have already banned any artistically worthwhile amount of X-rays from CRT televisions though[1] :(

An old chemistry teacher of mine used to use an old TV screen as a cover for potassium+water reactions, it was about an inch in thickness.

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Serra

[ulisesrmzroche]

Penalize the avant-garde? Madness. Also, saying that they did not contribute to cinema is like huh?

[CamperBob2]

To some extent, the market already penalizes avant-garde art created for its own sake. I'm just not sure how critics should respond. If the critics bubble effusively about how great Blue and 4'33 are, what exactly are we supposed to do with that criticism, as either artists or patrons?

To me, works like these are symptoms of art forms that are well on their way to exhausting their own possibilities. What next? Green? 4'34?

[PhasmaFelis]

Last time someone created a "work" inspired by 4'33", John Cage's publisher demanded royalties. http://classicalconvert.com/2007/07/the-stupidest-music-laws... So it may be difficult to build on those ideas even if someone did figure out an interesting way to do so.

[sp332]

4'33 was like an MVP. (It wasn't exactly the first of its kind.) Artists had dealt with room noise before, but usually as a distraction instead of realizing that it's part of the experience of a piece.

As an artist, you could be more aware of the room noise as part of the performance of your work instead of getting in the way of it. As a patron, you could consciously choose a place that has noise to enhance your experience of a work.

[ulisesrmzroche]

The what? John cage has a collection at NYU college for performing arts, and there's tons of other stuff too, like Sonic Youth paid homage to him, and Philip Glass, and many others...I had to write essays about essays about him , so it's not like he's a no one or whatever.

Also, You can't just say 'The Market' as if it was all one bucket. Or some 'God' thing that punishes.

[KeithMaguire]

It's probably worth mentioning that Blue is more than a curiosity. It really is a profoundly moving film - one of Jarman's finest. If the synopsis of it on IMDB appeals at all I'd encourage you to track it down.

[discardorama]

For me, "badness" is the difference between what (I think) the director thought of the movie, and what I thought of it.

[cheriot]

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.

[bentcorner]

I tried watching Episode 1 last weekend, I really did. I lasted about 2 minutes into Jar Jar before turning it off.

[thwarted]

A triumph only equaled by its monumental failure.

[scott_s]

They're not actually interested in talking about "the worst movie in history." That's just a hook to talk about what they really want to talk about: crowdsourced ratings are subject to organized groups with an agenda.

[Reedx]

This is true. Just look at how EA was voted twice in a row as the Worst Company in America. They have problems, sure, but it's ridiculous for it to beat out companies such as Monsanto, Bank of America, Comcast, Halliburton, etc. Companies that have seriously harmed the country.

But no, a game company is the worst because a bunch of fanboys rallied to say so.

[sharkweek]

Oh, hi Mark...

It's really quite fascinating to me how a movie like that, so incredibly terrible with seemingly no irony in it's production, has somehow become a fantastic work of art. It's that piece in the modern museum you think looks absolutely so terrible but something about it appeals to you.

I've probably seen The Room a half dozen times in various settings (movie theater showing it in jest to a huge audience, group of friends over a few beers, etc), and it's always overwhelmingly entertaining because it's just THAT bad. It almost impresses me more that they pulled this off (unintentionally, of course) when compared to some of my actual favorite films.

[leephillips]

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 through the bottom of the badness scale into a realm where it can't even be enjoyed for its unredeemable awfulness. Everyone I was with thought it was dreadful, and what was left of the audience shuffled out shaking their heads.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120275/

[estebank]

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

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

[anigbrowl]

Everything Wrong With The Room:

Paradoxically, this video manages to be more irritating than the terrible film it talks about. It's particularly ironic that the reviewer complains about Tommy wiseau saying 'hi' too often, and then peppers the video with metallic pings every few seconds while making nonsensical unfunny asides to viewers.

[dolphenstein]

After you've watched The Room, read "The Disaster Artist: My Life Inside the Room, the Greatest Bad Movie Ever Made". It is a fascinating tale! (And is being turned into a movie of it's own starring James Franco)

[ulisesrmzroche]

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

[tragic]

The exceptions to the rule are where the writer/star/director is aware of their own ridiculousness - see also Curb Your Enthusiasm.

I haven't seen The Room, but the ne plus ultra of that kind of self-indulgence for me is Garden State. 90 minutes of Zach Braff's daddy issues and romantic wish fulfilment - I've had better afternoons. (It amazes me that it picked up an audience more or less on the basis of having The Shins on the soundtrack.)

The Star Wars prequels fall into that category, even if Lucas isn't in them. Proves very well that he should be shot on sight if ever he approaches a typewriter again. Not a fanboy of the first films by any measure, but at least Lawrence Kasdan or whoever can string a couple of lines together. Left to his own devices, Lucas is capable only of bloated, soulless tech demos.

[joosters]

As an aficionado of bad movies, I agree that there is more to a bad movie than just low review scores. Entertaining bad movies need a certain something to them. The worst kind of movie is a dull and boring one.

The 'best' bad movies are hard to quantify. I certainly can't think of any 'good' bad movies that planned or aimed to be regarded as bad. As another commenter said, you need the creators to believe that they were making something worthwhile...

[dwd]

Try a movie like Bad Taste which for years I recommended as it's so bad it's good: "I'm a Derek and Dereks don't run". You can imagine my surprise years later when they announced the director for LotR.

I would be interested to see how its rating has changed over time.

[bronbron]

I don't think that's always true - there are certainly movies that are "so bad they're good" (and thus become the fodder of MST3K/RiffTrax). But, there are movies that are just straight-up bad and can never be redeemed even by the likes of MST3K. For example, the Paris Hilton movie the author briefly discusses.

There are certainly films that are "so bad they're good", but then there are just bad films.

[pilsetnieks]

That is nothing compared to "Manos: The Hands of Fate" (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0060666/ratings?ref_=tt_ov_rt)

Unexpectedly, however, "Plan 9 from Outer Space" is rated much more evenly for a film that's been considered to be the worst of all time.

[drblast]

Manos is bad in the I-can't-even-watch-this-for-fun-without-MST3K kind of way. And even then it's a slog.

I'm a die-hard MST3K fan and I've only seen Manos two or three times.

Even so, I Heart Huckabees tops my list of movies that I just can't watch. That one's actively grating rather than just incompetent.

[donutz]

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

[__david__]

That's pretty low. Netflix doesn't even have this movie listed. How does one go about finding an obscure movie like that?

My personal favorite bad movie has always been "Cool As Ice" [1], but even that seems to be rated higher than R.O.T.O.R.…

[1] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0101615/ratings?ref_=tt_ov_rt