What Makes A Movie Good?

My son recently asked me what my all-time top two favorite movies are. To my surprise, I was actually stuck for an answer. My inclination was to put "Star Wars" at number one for purely sentimental reasons. After all, it was my childhood love for that movie that led to my love of film as an art form ever since. And so that movie has pride of place.

But number two? I racked my brain and ran through all the titles I could recall, and I found it was really difficult to come up with a clear silver medal winner. My biggest problem was deciding by what criteria my choice would be made.

Genre? Effects? Story? Cinematic flair? Characters? Emotional impact? Ideas? Actors? Directors?

I could pick a winner for each, but in the end, I settled on the one that best embodied all of these: Raiders of the Lost Ark.

I would say that Raiders was also great for what it didn't have - something you almost can't escape anymore, namely, a political message. Contrast this with the latest "big summer movie" X-Men: First Class. It's a big action film with fantastic effects, a compelling story, cool characters, and it's doing well in the box office.

In a recent article on FoxNews.com, James Pinkerton reviews the film not for its visuals or plot, but rather for its modern take on the subtext of the original "X-Men" comic book franchise.

Back in the early 60s, Lee intended “X-Men” to be a parable about racial prejudice in America. The X-Men (and Women) were a minority of mutants, and, as such, they suffered discrimination and alienation. But of course, they had superpowers, and so while they were sometimes shunned for their differentness, they were also feared for their power.

In the new film, a subtle shift has taken place, and the issue of prejudice has been subtly replaced with a modern idea. "[T]he theme of the film--in between, of course, the stunts and explosions--is tolerance for difference. And so the new X-Men becomes a kind of coded meditation on the related themes of bullying and gay rights" (emphasis mine).

Unlike Raiders, this isn't just the director's views coloring a few character's actions. The dialog has been written to strike certain soundbite chords. Pinkerton illustrates:

[O]ne mutant has been working as a super-smart nerd in a civilian job--when he is discovered to have feet that are like hands, so that he can grip on to things, upside down, like an arboreal mammal. When his feet-secret is finally revealed, he is asked, how did he get away with it? His answer: “Well, they didn’t ask, and I didn’t tell.” That, of course, is a play on the “don’t ask don’t tell” controversy in the U.S. military.

Pinkerton then leaps into the deep end by exploring the possibilities of the speciation of the human race through medical technology, genetic manipulation, and natural selection. He speculates that the film will be a box office smash because it "probes our deepest Darwinian feelings--and fears." Apologies if reading that just gave you whiplash from rolling your eyes with gusto. It did for me.

The reason why the civil rights movement of the '60s was successful was because it rang with the truth that despite our outward appearances, we have a common nature and destiny. We are all created in the likeness of our Creator and endowed with rights that allow us to seek and enjoy Truth. The trouble with the new, twisted ideal of "the tolerance of difference" is that it seeks to affirm the differences in our behavior as being like that of the color of our skin. Worse, it doesn't seek to promote a unifying truth, but holds short, merely asking us to accept that "what is right for me may not be right for you."

Ironically, Pinkerton hits on a key point in the film when he notes that "[m]ost of the major characters have a moment when they discover, to their visible relief, that they are not alone in their mutant-ness--others are like them" (emphasis mine). We all strive for that same relief. No matter what our color, class, gender, or creed, we are alike in both our origin and in our final destiny.

Whether or not we realize it, we all pursue the same happiness. But it can only be found by adhering to a common Truth, and seeking one another's common good. We cannot live with our eyes closed in celebration of a myriad of false or half-truths. That doesn't lead to genuine eternal happiness, but only the sort of short-lived narcissistic happiness that is celebrated more and more by the elite class while their lives publicly crumble on the front pages of the tabloids.

Maybe one day, a small band of rebel filmmakers will band together and bulls-eye the Hollywood "exhaust port", destroying the liberal class' "death star", the Leftist Propaganda Movie. I yearn for the day when movies like Memento, The Dark Knight, and Inception are the rule, not the exception. You could say it's my "new hope".