What makes a show/book/movie/comic good what makes it bad?

Comments

• eriophora zia

  2015-01-31 10:50:43

  I have cut a caper with the dancing mad god

  In the broadest sense:

  
  

  Good - enjoyable, evocative, aesthetically appealing, engaging, graceful in handling sensitive issues, purposeful, characterization is subtle but intense and clear when looked at in a broader light, thoughtfully combines multiple elements of the medium (light, music, sound, setting, page structure and layout)

  
  

  Bad - boring, any of the -ists done gratuitously because the author is a bigot, non-aesthetic, callous in its handling of sensitive issues, lacking a grasp or understanding of people and characters 

  
  

  Sometimes it only takes a blatant mishandling of one element of a work to completely ruin it. Even if your aesthetics are spot on with taste and excellence, you're going to have a bad time if your soundtrack doesn't match or if your characters are paper thin. One can still appreciate the aesthetics, but balanced against the show as a whole they likely won't stand up. 

  
  

  
  
• One-Winged Eagle

  2015-01-31 10:57:46

  Man is a most complex simple creature: see what he weaves, and how base his reasons for doing so.

  First, I ask myself what purpose I am consuming this media for. Is it for the purpose of humor? To feel sad? Excitement? If it does these things, then that is a point in favor of its quality.

  
  

  If the work surprises me by making me feel or care about something I normally wouldn't, then that's another point.

  
  

  If the characters are engaging, if the events that we follow them through I can understand and relate to, that's another point.

  
  

  If the characters are given sufficient life by their performers or puppeteers, then that's another point.

  
  

  If the plot elements and story structure does not snap me out of it, then that's another point.

  
  

  If the story makes me want to tell a story like it, from another perspective, then that's another point.

  
  

  If the whole of the work lets me frame it into an author's body of work and lets me draw further conclusions, then that's another point.

  
  

  If the whole of the work makes me want to disregard the author entirely, compelling me to make my own conclusions and understandings about the work, then that's another point.

  
  

  If I seek out other works like it in the same vein, mood, style, genre, tradition, because now I am intrigued about what else can be done, then that's another point.

  
  

  If the work does something different from its contemporaries, and it does it in a noticeable way that appeals to me, that I appreciate, then that's another point.

  
  

  If there's just some minor, completely arbitrary thing that I'm not even sure why I like it but that I know that I do, then that's another point.

  
  

  If this work annoys someone that I dislike, the spiteful thought of it warms my days, and that's another point.

  
  

  That's how I think of the quality of media in general. If you want me to go into specifics about what I think is good in specific types of media, that will take me a very long time.

  
  

  To be clear, when I say "point", I don't literally add them up. It goes into the arbitrary and nebulous reference system of "Things I Like."
• Tachyon

  2015-01-31 11:25:53

  ^{i will watch the heck outta this pumpkin patch}
  

  i guess the question was kind of overly broad.  i wondered, but i don't think i thought this thread through enough.
  
  These are good answers though, thanks.
  
• Imipolex G

  2015-02-01 08:03:59

  Touch the cow. Do it now.
  

  good: interesting, aesthetically appealing, thought-provoking, emotionally engaging, unusual and original, involving on multiple levels, weird, surprising, imaginative, referential, genre-bending, transgressive, sheer depth of creative vision. Any combination of those helps.
  
  bad: boring, thoughtless, extremely cliche, callous handling of sensitive issues (as eriophora said), aesthetically ugly (and not in a good way) or bland, creator bashing you on the head with their politics or whatever (usually), extremely commercial, stereotyped.
  
  there are probably other things but that's all I've got right now