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.
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.
really, profitability is the best "general goodness" measure ever created.
What about a blue screen?
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.
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...
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.
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?
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.
http://www.ted.com/conversations/14056/why_is_absolute_silen...
Also, You can't just say 'The Market' as if it was all one bucket. Or some 'God' thing that punishes.
But no, a game company is the worst because a bunch of fanboys rallied to say so.
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.
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.
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.
The Nostalgia Critic reviews The Room: http://thatguywiththeglasses.com/videolinks/thatguywiththegl...
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.
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...
I would be interested to see how its rating has changed over time.
There are certainly films that are "so bad they're good", but then there are just bad films.
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.
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.
R.O.T.O.R. - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0098156/ratings?ref_=tt_ov_rt
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