Elliot Kessler

I love bad movies. They’re fun to watch and are usually pretty entertaining. But how can I enjoy something even if I know it’s bad? Isn’t that an oxymoron? How could something bad be good? I find that trying to break the mold and try something new, even if it doesn’t work, is much better than trying to fit the mold and do what’s been done over and over. I prefer bad movies over boring ones.

Most of us agree that “Spider-Man 3” is a bad movie. It has too many villains to follow, never fully developing any of them, we see Peter Parker doing a cringy dance across the sidewalk, and the whole Venom subplot feels like something out of a cliche 80s cartoon. It is bad. They tried working with Venom, a fan favorite, but the director, Sam Raimi, didn’t know anything about the character. They also tried adding Sandman and Harry Osborne’s Goblin in there, putting way too many villains in one film and making Peter have to fight with himself when the Venom symbiote takes over. So, we have a plot where Peter finds out that Sandman was his uncle’s real killer, we have a plot where Harry Osborne takes up his father’s mantle as the Goblin, which is put on the sideline for most of the film, and we have a plot where Peter is infected by black goo from space and has to fight himself. We could have had the Harry Osborne plot and the Venom plot together, but I think the Sandman plot put way too much on the shoulders of this film. It should have been its own movie.

So, if I think it’s so bad, why do I prefer to watch that over most of the Marvel films coming out today, including the first two Tom Holland Spider-Man movies? Because it tried something new. It isn’t a film simply going through the motions to take the money at the box office. After the success of the last two “Spider-Man” films, they could have stuck with the same old formula they used previously and created a half-baked shell of a movie, and people would have paid a lot to see it. But Sony and Raimi wanted to give fans something special. They tried to give them something new and exciting while maintaining the feel of the last two films.

Sure, this film is bad and cringe, but it’s refreshing to watch a film try something new and be different from the rest of the pack rather than continuously do the same things over and over. Besides, with the cheesy dialogue and Peter’s strut and hip-thrusts across the sidewalk, you’re bound to get a few laughs. There’s a reason this movie has been memed so many times.

Another film that I think is bad but I still love, is the underrated classic Disney film, “The Black Hole.” I love watching this film. It’s so cheesy and clearly a knockoff of “Star Wars,” but it’s fun and engaging. It blends the idea-driven story-telling of classic science fiction with the fun, campy action of “Flash Gordon” and, of course, “Star Wars.”

“The Black Hole” follows a spaceship crew as they encounter a large science vessel that is thought to be lost. The vessel sits right next to a black hole without getting sucked in. Only one scientist on board the vessel remains and intends to enter the black hole.

It’s a weird story with a lot of interesting concepts and a lot of fun action sequences. It is cheesy, campy, and, yes, a bit cringe in some places. But it is a very fun movie, and I would recommend it to anyone. It is very underappreciated.

So, we talked about bad films and why I enjoy them. Now let’s talk about good films that I hate. Let’s talk about Disney.

Disney is a fantastic film company that has produced many incredible and groundbreaking films. I enjoy many Disney movies (like “The Black Hole”), but most of the recent Disney movies have felt very half-baked. They’re only pumping out movie after movie because they know that the films will almost always make money, not because they make a lot of quality films. But people seem to enjoy their films, and I can’t understand why.

Most of Disney’s new movies have been the same thing over and over. Take “Jungle Cruise,” for example. It takes so many tropes and plot points from the “Pirates of the Caribbean” movies to try and become the next “Pirates of the Caribbean,” but it doesn’t work. They’re simply going through the motions and doing what they did before without adding anything new. In fact, they lost something with “Jungle Cruise” that they had with “Pirates,” and no, not just money. They lost the meaning of their story. “Jungle Cruise” had nothing to say, whereas “Pirates” leaned heavily into the theme of breaking the bonds of society and forging your path.

That’s the thing with simply going through the motions to make stories. You lose the story’s meaning. Writing isn’t something you can just go to a class for, and the teacher says, “This is how you make a story good.” Well, that’s exactly what happens in creative writing classes, but those classes don’t teach you how to make a story great because they can’t. How to write is easy to teach. It’s how to tell a story that the storyteller must simply understand. Using only a formula to write might make stories that are just good enough, but it will never make the best stories.

What are your thoughts? What are some bad movies that you enjoy? Thank you so much for reading! Have a fantastic day.