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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.

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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.

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.

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

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