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The Greatest Movies of All Time · The Infographics Show Podcast

• 0:10
  Speaker 1: You know, I've been thinking a lot lately about how
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: usually when we talk about something like a medical diagnosis,
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: there's this comforting expectation of just absolute precision.
• 0:25
  Speaker 2: Oh totally, like it's an engineering problem.
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: Right, It feels very much like engineering. If you fall
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: and break your arm, you go to the hospital to
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: put you in a machine and the X ray shows
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: that stark, jagged white line across the bone, and the
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: doctor just points at it and says, you know, there
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: is there's the problem.
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  Speaker 2: I mean, it's entirely binary. The bone is either broken
• 0:45
  Speaker 2: or is not broken. The evidence is clean, objective, and indisputable.
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: Exactly, and we crave that kind of certainty. We really
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: like things to be visible, to be quantifiable, to be
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: easily categorized into boxes of like true or false.
• 0:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah, human nature, sure, right, Yeah.
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: But the moment you step out of the realm of
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  Speaker 1: biology and into the world of film criticism, you know,
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  Speaker 1: into the business of evaluating art, that X ray machine
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: just shatters completely. We find ourselves looking at a landscape
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: of cinematic taste that is frankly, undeniably murky.
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  Speaker 2: Oh. It is the absolute definition of diagnostic muddy waters.
• 1:20
  Speaker 2: There is no biological scan for a masterpiece. You can't,
• 1:23
  Speaker 2: you know, you can't put a film reel or hard
• 1:25
  Speaker 2: drive into an MRI machine and wait for a computer
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: to spit out a definitive score of its artistic merit
• 1:32
  Speaker 2: so true.
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: Well, welcome to Beyond Infographics. I am thrilled you're joining
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: us today for a conversation that I have been endlessly
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: ruminating on as a deep personal fascination. We are exploring
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: the architecture of cinematic greatness.
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  Speaker 2: That's a huge topic.
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  Speaker 1: It really is like, how on earth do we define
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: what makes a good movie? And why is there such
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: an enormous, sometimes outright hostile divide between what elite critics
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: revere and what everyday audiences actually want to watch.
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: That gap is fascinating, it's crazy.
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: But hey, before we trace that dividing line, if you
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: enjoy the explorations we do here on Beyond Infographics, please
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: take a quick second to drop a five star rating
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: on your app. It genuinely helps us continue unpacking these
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: intricate topics, and we really appreciate you being part of
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: this intellectual journey with us.
• 2:17
  Speaker 2: So to properly map that divide, we have to cover
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  Speaker 2: a vast amount of cultural territory today. Our objective is
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  Speaker 2: to journey from the historic institutional gatekeepers who originally built
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  Speaker 2: the film cannon right right, then move through the internet's
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  Speaker 2: complete democratization of public tastes, and finally, and this is
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: the really wild part, arrive at the actual neuroscience, like
• 2:37
  Speaker 2: the biological mechanisms of why our brains process the exact
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: same sequence of moving images in completely different ways.
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: Man, the neuroscience part still blows my mind. But let's
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: unpack the history first. Because to understand the current battleover
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: movie tastes, and if you spend like five minutes on
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: any film forum, you know it really is a battlefield.
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: Oh, absolutely brutal out there.
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: We first have to look at how the concept of
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: a masterpiece was originally constructed because for decades, you and I,
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  Speaker 1: the average viewer, we simply did not get a say.
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: The cinematic canon was built from the top down by
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: elite institutions.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, historically, a highly exclusive group of people dictated what
• 3:17
  Speaker 2: the culture considered to be essential viewing. We're talking about
• 3:20
  Speaker 2: organizations like the American Film Institute, the AFI, and the
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: British Film Institute, which is famous for its site and
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  Speaker 2: sound To Sanielpole. Right, they do it every ten years exactly,
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  Speaker 2: and it is hard to overstate the cultural footprint those
• 3:35
  Speaker 2: AFI lists had before the Internet took over. I mean,
• 3:38
  Speaker 2: I remember the original one hundred years one hundred Movies
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  Speaker 2: list being unveiled back in nineteen ninety eight.
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: Oh wow. Yeah.
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  Speaker 2: It wasn't just a quiet press release. It was a
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  Speaker 2: three hour television event broadcast on CBS. They had Jody Foster,
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: Richard Gare, Sally Field hosting it. James Woods was narrating.
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  Speaker 2: It was treated with the reverence of a state dinner basically.
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  Speaker 1: And they followed it up with a tenth of Ursery
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  Speaker 1: edition in two thousand and seven right when, hosted by
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  Speaker 1: Morgan Freeman, which carried just as much gravity totally. And
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  Speaker 1: these selections, they weren't random favorites chosen by a handful
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  Speaker 1: of people in a room. They operated on remarkably strict criteria,
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  Speaker 1: very strict.
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  Speaker 2: They pulled over fifteen hundred artists, critics, and film industry leaders.
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  Speaker 2: The parameters were rigid, like if films had to be
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  Speaker 2: feature length, they had to be American made, which they
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  Speaker 2: defined as English language with significant American creative or financial backing.
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  Speaker 1: Makes sense for the American Film Institute, right, But.
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  Speaker 2: The evaluation criteria were the real filters. Voters were instructed
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  Speaker 2: to judge the films based on critical recognition, major award wins,
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  Speaker 2: popularity over time, historical significance, and overarching cultural.
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  Speaker 1: Impact with a lot of boxes to check it is.
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  Speaker 2: They were specifically looking for technical innovation and visionary narrative
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  Speaker 2: devices that basically pushed the medium forward.
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  Speaker 1: So when you apply those highly specific filters, one undisputed
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  Speaker 1: champion said, come probably at the top of those lists
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  Speaker 1: for half a century and as orson Wells's nineteen forty
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  Speaker 1: one debut, Citizen Kane, the King of the Canon, the
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  Speaker 1: Absolute King. Now, I have been thinking a lot about
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  Speaker 1: why Kin held that number one spot with such an
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  Speaker 1: iron grip. Obviously it's a brilliantly crafted film, but the
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  Speaker 1: narrative structure is the true deviation. It completely rejected the
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  Speaker 1: standard linear biography.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah. Prior to Citizen Kane, Hollywood films heavily relied on
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  Speaker 2: what we call an omniscient perspective.
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  Speaker 1: Right.
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  Speaker 2: That basically means the camera and by extension, the audience
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  Speaker 2: acts as an all knowing observer. You simply watch events
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  Speaker 2: unfold and chronological order from a neutral objective viewpoint. You
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  Speaker 2: see the character born, you see them grow up, you
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  Speaker 2: see them face a conflict. Wells fractured that entirely.
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  Speaker 1: He shattered it. Yeah, and this is where I always
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: find myself pushing back when people casually describe Citizen Kane
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  Speaker 1: as like a mystery movie about a sled.
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  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, that's such a surface level read right.
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  Speaker 1: The film actually opens with that famous news on the
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  Speaker 1: March sequetes to give you some context. This sequence was
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: a direct, biting satire of the March of Time, which
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: were real, highly dramatized newsreels shown in theaters before feature presentations, which.
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  Speaker 2: Wells actually did voiceover work for in real life.
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  Speaker 1: Ironically exactly, but structurally, that newsreel sequence gives away the
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  Speaker 1: ending of the movie immediately. It outlines Charles Foster Kaine's
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: entire life story, his rise, his fall, his death, all
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  Speaker 1: before the movie is even really started.
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  Speaker 2: It literally hands you the entire plot summary in the
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  Speaker 2: first ten minutes.
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  Speaker 1: Yes, so the suspense of the film is not what
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  Speaker 1: happens next to me. This structure is more like a
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  Speaker 1: scattered jigsaw puzzle. You follow the reporter Thompson, who operates
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: as a surrogate for you, the audience. He's tasked with
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  Speaker 1: finding the meaning of Caine's dying word Rosebud.
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  Speaker 2: The famous mcguffin, right, So.
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  Speaker 1: He goes around interviewing the people from Kine's life. He
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  Speaker 1: talks to Keynes, Guardian Thatcher, his fiercely loyal business manager Bernstein,
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  Speaker 1: his disillusioned best friend Leland. And they do not give
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  Speaker 1: Thompson an objective truth.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, not at all.
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  Speaker 1: They offer fragmented, highly contradictory memories of the man. And
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  Speaker 1: while everyone fixates on finding the physical object of Rosebud,
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  Speaker 1: the sled itself isn't the answer to the puzzle. The
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: sled is just a symbol communicating the human identity. Is
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  Speaker 1: this kaleidoscope of contradictory memories and isolated moments you simply
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  Speaker 1: cannot neatly solve the puzzle of a human life.
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  Speaker 2: I love that. I was reading a breakdown of the
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  Speaker 2: film that observed how Wells explains what Rosebud is by
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  Speaker 2: the end of the run time, but he deliberately refuses
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  Speaker 2: to explain what it means exactly, And the way Wells
• 7:35
  Speaker 2: managed to translate that scattered, subjective jigsaw puzzle into a
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  Speaker 2: visual medium was through technical leaps that just left the
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  Speaker 2: industry stunned. This is a primary reason the institutional gatekeepers
• 7:46
  Speaker 2: elevated it. You have Greg Toulan's revolutionary use of deep
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  Speaker 2: focused cinematography.
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  Speaker 1: What's pause and explain that concept, because it really changes
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  Speaker 1: how you watch the movie.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, let's do it.
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  Speaker 1: In traditional cinematography, a director this is a shallow depth
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  Speaker 1: of field to force your eye to look exactly where
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  Speaker 1: they want. They keep the actor's face in sharp focus,
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  Speaker 1: and they blur the background so you can't be distracted.
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  Speaker 1: What makes deep focus different?
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  Speaker 2: So deep focus means that everything in the frame, the
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  Speaker 2: object in the extreme foreground, the characters in the middle ground,
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  Speaker 2: and the action happening all the way in the distant background,
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  Speaker 2: all of it is in sharp, crystal clear focus simultaneously. Yeah,
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  Speaker 2: and achieving this in nineteen forty one required Tolan to
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  Speaker 2: use incredibly bright lighting, close down lens, apertures, and these
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  Speaker 2: specially coded lenses. But the psychological effect on the viewer
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  Speaker 2: is profound. Instead of the director force fully guiding your eye,
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  Speaker 2: deep focus allows you, the audience, to choose where to
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  Speaker 2: look within the frame. You have to actively search the image.
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  Speaker 2: It turns the viewer into an active participant rather than
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  Speaker 2: a passive recipient.
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  Speaker 1: Which pairs perfectly with the investigative theme of the movie.
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  Speaker 1: You're searching the frame just like Thompson is searching for
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  Speaker 1: the truth exactly. And then you layer Bernard Hermann's groundbreaking
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  Speaker 1: score on top of that visual innovation. Herman came from
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  Speaker 1: the world of radio, where a sound was literally the
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  Speaker 1: only tool you had to paint a picture. He brought
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  Speaker 1: those radio techniques into film scoring in a way that
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  Speaker 1: had not been fully realized before.
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  Speaker 2: Oh, it was totally new. Herman was writing music to
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  Speaker 2: match the exact second by second duration of the scenes,
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  Speaker 2: rather than just playing a generic atmospheric track over the dialogue,
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  Speaker 2: and he utilized light motifs extensively.
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  Speaker 1: So for anyone unfamiliar with the term, elite motif is
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  Speaker 1: essentially a musical name tag. It's a specific recurring melody
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  Speaker 1: or chord progression associated with a particular character, place, or idea.
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  Speaker 2: Like John Williams does.
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  Speaker 1: Yes. The easiest modern example is the Imperial March in
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  Speaker 1: Star Wars. The moment you hear those heavy brass notes,
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  Speaker 1: you know Darth Vader is either in the room or
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  Speaker 1: on his way.
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  Speaker 2: That is a flawless modern comparison. Herman used those musical
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  Speaker 2: name tags to subconsciously tell the audience who held the
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  Speaker 2: power in a scene, even if they were just standing
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  Speaker 2: so violently in the background of Tolan's deep focused shots.
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  Speaker 2: He also integrated the music directly with the sound design,
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  Speaker 2: blurring the line between sound effects and the musical score.
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: The technical achievements are astounding, but we really can't discuss
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  Speaker 1: Citizen Kane without diving into the real world drama surrounding
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  Speaker 1: its release, which I find honestly just as gripping as
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: the narrative itself.
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  Speaker 2: Oh, the behind the scenes stuff is legendary, right.
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  Speaker 1: William Randolph Hurst, who is this incredibly powerful media tycoon,
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  Speaker 1: realized that the character of Charles Foster Kane was largely
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: a very unflattering portrait of him.
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  Speaker 2: And Hurst's retaliation was unprecedented in Hollywood history.
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  Speaker 1: He commanded a literal media empire. He used that power
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: to order his newspapers to completely ban any advertisements, reviews,
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: or even casual mentions of the movie. Just total blackout,
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: total blackout. And then there's this incredible historical flashpoint. Friday
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: Magazine published a provocative article comparing Kin to Hurst, point
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: by point. The magazine quoted Orson Wells, essentially mocking Hurst.
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: According to the article, Wells said he couldn't wait until
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  Speaker 1: the famous gossip columnist Luella Parsons, who worked directly for
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  Speaker 1: Hurst and had previously been very friendly with Wells, found
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: out that the picture was an attack on her boss.
• 11:15
  Speaker 2: The fallout from that quote was severe.
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: Wells frantically denied ever saying it. The magazine eventually had
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: to walk it back and admit the quote might have
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: been fabricated, but the damage was irreversible. The heads of
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: r CHAO theaters were threatened with industry boycotts.
• 11:28
  Speaker 2: It got really ugly, it did.
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: There were even documented attempts by studio executives tied to
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: Hurst to simply buy the film negative from r KAO
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: and burn it to ashes before it could ever reach
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: the public.
• 11:39
  Speaker 2: That's just wild to think about.
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: Though.
• 11:41
  Speaker 2: It is worth noting that Kane wasn't solely a caricature
• 11:43
  Speaker 2: of Hurst. The film is kind of an amalgamation of
• 11:47
  Speaker 2: several prominent figures from that era. Oh interesting, Yeah, Like
• 11:50
  Speaker 2: the character of Thatcher, the stern banker who takes young
• 11:53
  Speaker 2: Kane away from his mother, was loosely modeled on JP Morgan.
• 11:57
  Speaker 2: The character of mister Bernstein was actually named after doctor
• 12:00
  Speaker 2: Maurice Bernstein, who was Orson Wells's own guardian in real life.
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: Wow, I didn't know that.
• 12:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah, But regardless of the inspirations, the film became a
• 12:09
  Speaker 2: cultural lightning rod. When you combine a highly controversial narrative
• 12:12
  Speaker 2: with unparalleled technical master and structural pioneering, you get the
• 12:16
  Speaker 2: exact recipe for institutional canonization.
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: So it makes complete logical sense why the elite critics
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: crowned the greatest of all time for half a century.
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: But here's where the story shifts. Because the definition of
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: a masterpiece is not carved in stone. As the generations
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: of people voting on these lists change, and as the
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: voting bodies deliberately expand to include more international, diverse and
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: contemporary voices, well the canon evolves. It does, and sometimes
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: it evolves with quite a jolt.
• 12:46
  Speaker 2: It certainly does. That brings us to the immense shockwave
• 12:50
  Speaker 2: that reverberated through the global film community recently. As we
• 12:53
  Speaker 2: establish the British Film Institute's site and sound poll is
• 12:56
  Speaker 2: conducted every ten years. Well for the twenty twenty two edition,
• 13:01
  Speaker 2: the Institute made a conscious decision to significantly broaden their
• 13:04
  Speaker 2: vader base. They reached out to a much wider, more
• 13:07
  Speaker 2: global array of critics, academics, festival programmers and directors. Right
• 13:12
  Speaker 2: the result was a monumental disruption of the established order.
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  Speaker 1: It was a total dethroning. Citizen Kane, which has ruled
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: for decades, and Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo, which had actually managed
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: to take the top spot in the previous twenty twelve poll,
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: were both knocked down, and the new number one film
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: of all time was announced as Gene Dealman twenty three
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: k do Commerce ten eighty.
• 13:33
  Speaker 2: Boossells a mouthful of a title it is.
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: This is a nineteen seventy five film directed by the
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: Belgian filmmaker Chantale Akerman.
• 13:39
  Speaker 2: The announcement caused a seismic shift in cinematic discourse. For
• 13:43
  Speaker 2: anyone who hasn't experienced it, Gene Dealman completely defies traditional
• 13:46
  Speaker 2: narrative expectations. It is a lingering, unvarnished, three and a
• 13:50
  Speaker 2: half hour observation of one woman's deeply mundane daily existence.
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: Three and a half hours.
• 13:55
  Speaker 2: Yes, you watched the titular character, a widowed housewife, perform
• 13:59
  Speaker 2: her daily chore in real time. You watch her peel
• 14:02
  Speaker 2: potatoes in silence. You watch her make beds, shine shoes,
• 14:06
  Speaker 2: brew coffee, and run errands, and occasionally, to financially support
• 14:10
  Speaker 2: her teenage son, she engages in sex work in her bedroom.
• 14:14
  Speaker 2: But the camera is locked down and static. There are
• 14:17
  Speaker 2: no dynamic sweeps or deep focused tricks here. The pace
• 14:20
  Speaker 2: is incredibly deliberate and the cuts are sparse.
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: Anchorman really forces the viewer to sit in the quiet
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: desperation of this apartment she does.
• 14:28
  Speaker 2: It forces the viewer to experience the suffocating weight of
• 14:31
  Speaker 2: this woman's routine. It's not designed to entertain in the
• 14:34
  Speaker 2: traditional sense. It is designed to immerse you in a specific,
• 14:38
  Speaker 2: marginalized experience of time.
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: And let me tell you, the pushback online was immediate
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: and intense. It polarized the film community instantly. If you
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: browse through vintage movie poster forums or readd its, true
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: film communities or letterboxed reviews in the days following the announcement, well.
• 14:53
  Speaker 2: I was reading those thereas it was chaotic.
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: It was you saw people calling it the ultimate case
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: of the Emperor's New Clothes. You had viewers who willingly
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: sat through the near four hour runtime in art house theaters,
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: openly wondering if it was genuinely a profound piece of
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: art or just an exhausting academic exercise meant to torture
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: the audience for the sake of being avant garde.
• 15:15
  Speaker 2: The reactions fractured into two very distinct camps, and I
• 15:18
  Speaker 2: think it's important to lay both out clearly.
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 15:21
  Speaker 2: On one hand, you had online commentators and certain traditionalist
• 15:25
  Speaker 2: critics claiming that the integrity of the poll had been compromised.
• 15:28
  Speaker 2: They argued that the expanded voter base was artificially pushing
• 15:31
  Speaker 2: a woke agenda by intentionally elevating a feminist, anti capitalist
• 15:36
  Speaker 2: film over traditionally crafted classics, simply to make a contemporary
• 15:40
  Speaker 2: political statement that.
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: Was definitely a loud section of the internet it was now.
• 15:44
  Speaker 2: On the other hand, the film's staunch defenders argued that
• 15:47
  Speaker 2: Akerman achieved something genuinely revolutionary with the medium. They argued
• 15:52
  Speaker 2: that by forcing the audience to sit through the meticulous,
• 15:54
  Speaker 2: unedited drudgery of domestic labor, the film creates a subjected
• 15:59
  Speaker 2: experience of time that no other movie has ever accomplished.
• 16:02
  Speaker 2: They view it as a necessary stripping away of the artificial,
• 16:06
  Speaker 2: comforting gloss of Hollywood cinema.
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: Just to be exceptionally clear here, we are not taking
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: a side on that debate today. The core takeaway for
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: us is that the divide exists, and it highlights how
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: subjective the criteria for a masterpiece have become. But Jean
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: Dielman isn't the only challenging patience testing film that the
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: elite canon champions. If you look further down these institutional lists,
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: you find works like Yes, Susio Oz's nineteen fifty three
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: film Tokyo Story.
• 16:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Tokyo's Story is a beautiful, devastating portrait of postwar Japan.
• 16:36
  Speaker 2: Ozu's visual style is famously distinct. He frequently shoots from
• 16:40
  Speaker 2: a very low angle, roughly the eye level of a
• 16:42
  Speaker 2: person sitting on a traditional To Tommy Matt.
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: It's such a specific look, it really is.
• 16:47
  Speaker 2: The film follows an aging couple who travel from their
• 16:49
  Speaker 2: quiet rural home in Onomichi to visit their adult children
• 16:52
  Speaker 2: in the bustling metropolis of Tokyo. But when they arrive,
• 16:56
  Speaker 2: they find that their children were consumed by their own
• 16:59
  Speaker 2: modern lives and are simply too busy for them.
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: Oh, it's heartbreaking.
• 17:03
  Speaker 2: It is It's a quiet, devastating study and polite generational
• 17:06
  Speaker 2: neglect and the slow dissolution of the traditional family unit.
• 17:10
  Speaker 2: Only their widowed daughter in law Norico shows them any
• 17:14
  Speaker 2: genuine warmth or hospitality. It's a masterpiece of social realism,
• 17:18
  Speaker 2: but again it requires a viewer willing to engage with
• 17:20
  Speaker 2: a slow, contemplative rhythm.
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: You also see this embrace of the challenging in Stanley
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: Kubrick's nineteen sixty eight epic two thousand and one, A
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: Space Odyssey. I mean, think about trying to pitch the
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: concept of that movie to a studio executive today.
• 17:33
  Speaker 2: It laugh you out of the room totally.
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: You're proposing a film that uses groundbreaking practical visual effects
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: to tell a sprawling story spanning millions of years, covering
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: the dawn of human evolution, the minute of space travel,
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: and the existential threat of an artificial intelligence named HL
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: nine thousand. But you're going to execute this vision with
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: almost no dialogue for vast stretches of the runtime. You
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: are going to set the opening sequence of apes discovering
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: tools to Richard Strauss's symphonic poem also sprats Sarathustra and transition.
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: Millions of years into the future by matching the cut
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: of a throne bone to an orbiting satellite. It is
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: a hypnotic, brilliant piece of visual poetry. But it is
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: certainly not a breezy, casual Friday night watch.
• 18:20
  Speaker 2: No, definitely not. And the presence of these demanding films
• 18:22
  Speaker 2: at the top of the cannon raises an important question
• 18:25
  Speaker 2: regarding the actual utility of these institutional poles. Critics frequently
• 18:29
  Speaker 2: face accusations of elitism.
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: Oh all the time.
• 18:32
  Speaker 2: They're accused of championing obscure, agonizingly slow, or difficult films
• 18:36
  Speaker 2: just to signal their own sophisticated palettes to their peers.
• 18:40
  Speaker 2: But there is a strong argument that these poles serve
• 18:42
  Speaker 2: a vital cultural function. They force the culture out of
• 18:45
  Speaker 2: its comfort zone.
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: That's a great point.
• 18:47
  Speaker 2: Without the site and Sound pole or the AFI lists
• 18:49
  Speaker 2: acting as a spotlight, millions of viewers might never discover
• 18:53
  Speaker 2: these international, challenging, boundary pushing works. These institutions ensure that
• 18:58
  Speaker 2: cinematic history isn't written exce exclusively by opening weekend box
• 19:02
  Speaker 2: office receives.
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: I understand that perspective. It preserves the history of the
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: art form, but as we transition our focus into the
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: modern era, we have to acknowledge a fundamental shift in reality.
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: We no longer live in a world that we have
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: to wait ten years for a British magazine or an American
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: institute to descend from the mountain and tell us what
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: qualifies as a masterpiece.
• 19:23
  Speaker 2: Thank God for that.
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: Honestly right, the Internet came along and handed a very
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: loud megaphone directly to the audience.
• 19:29
  Speaker 2: It resulted in a complete democratization of taste. The institutional
• 19:33
  Speaker 2: gatekeepers entirely lost their monopoly on defining greatness and speaking
• 19:37
  Speaker 2: of democratization, before we get into how audiences took the wheel,
• 19:41
  Speaker 2: just a friendly reminder that if you're finding value in
• 19:44
  Speaker 2: how we break down these cultural shifts, please take a
• 19:47
  Speaker 2: moment to rate beyond infographics five stars.
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: It really lets us know we are hitting the right
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: notes for you.
• 19:52
  Speaker 2: So when we talk about the audience taking control of
• 19:55
  Speaker 2: the narrative, there is one film that stands as the
• 19:58
  Speaker 2: ultimate undern liable champion of.
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: The people you were referring to, Frank Darrabunn's adaptation of
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: The Shawshank Redemption. Absolutely think about the unlikely trajectory of
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: that film. It was released in nineteen ninety four, which
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: was a remarkably crowded year for cinema. You had pulp fiction,
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: you had Forrest Gump. A tough year to compete exactly,
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: and upon its initial theatrical release, Shawshank largely bombed at
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: the box office. It did not connect with the broad public,
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: but the studio Castle Rock Entertainment, along with Turner Broadcasting,
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: believed in it and pushed it incredibly hard. In the
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: secondary market. They manufactured and shipped out something like three
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: hundred and twenty thousand VHS rental copies to video stores
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: across the country.
• 20:40
  Speaker 2: That is an insane amount of tapes.
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: It was a massive gamble, but through sheer accessibility, it
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: became the top video rental of nineteen ninety five Live
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: and then TNT started broadcasting on a near constant loop.
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: It became the ultimate lazy Sunday afternoon cable television state.
• 21:00
  Speaker 2: Because of that widespread, unpretentious access, the film organically found
• 21:05
  Speaker 2: its audience, and that audience didn't just passively enjoy it,
• 21:09
  Speaker 2: they developed a deep reverence for it. The emotional core
• 21:12
  Speaker 2: of the film, the enduring themes of hope, friendship, and
• 21:15
  Speaker 2: institutional resilience. It just resonated universally. Consequently, it absolutely dominated
• 21:22
  Speaker 2: the IMDb Top two fifty list for years, propelled entirely
• 21:26
  Speaker 2: by hundreds of thousands of user votes. It stands as
• 21:29
  Speaker 2: definitive proof that organic, audience driven word of mouth can
• 21:32
  Speaker 2: construct a cinematic canon just as powerfully and perhaps more
• 21:35
  Speaker 2: permanently than a panel of fifteen hundred elite critics.
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: That audience power has only centralized and accelerated over the
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: last decade. Look at the rise of Letterboxed. The platform
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: was founded in twenty eleven by Matthew Buchanan and Carl
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: von Rando in New Zealand, and its growth has been exponential.
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: It's frequently described as the good Reads for movies.
• 21:54
  Speaker 2: That's a perfect description.
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: It was recently acquired in a majority stake by the
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: Canadian investment firm tiny A Deal valued the platform around
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: fifty to sixty million dollars. Now boast well over thirty
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: million active users.
• 22:05
  Speaker 2: It's evolved way past being a simple utility for logging films.
• 22:10
  Speaker 2: It's become a vibrant social space and a cultural phenomenon
• 22:13
  Speaker 2: in its own right. It's no longer just a haven
• 22:16
  Speaker 2: for hardcore film nerds. It dictates broader cultural conversations.
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: It really does. It's reached a level of cultural penetration
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: where massive celebrities are maintaining highly visible public movie diaries
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: on the platform. You have actors like Ioe Debiri, acclaimed
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: horror directors like Mike Flanagan, filmmakers like Edgar Wright, and
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: even legends like Martin Scorsese using the platform to share
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: their cinematic diets with the public.
• 22:41
  Speaker 2: Scorsese on Letterbox is just delightful.
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: It really is. But as much as I champion these
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: user generated platforms, there's a distinct mathematical quirk in how
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: we aggregate audience sentiment that we need to clarify. Specifically
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: regarding Rotten Tomatoes.
• 22:55
  Speaker 2: Oh, this is a crucial area of confusion. The mechanics
• 22:58
  Speaker 2: of Rotten Tomatoes are fundamental misunderstood by a huge portion
• 23:01
  Speaker 2: of the general public. People often look the percentage score
• 23:04
  Speaker 2: and assume it represents a qualitative grade like a test
• 23:07
  Speaker 2: score in school, like an A plus or C right.
• 23:10
  Speaker 2: But Rotten Tomatoes utilizes a strict binary system. A review
• 23:14
  Speaker 2: is categorized either as fresh or it is categorized as rotten.
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: It's a simple thumbs up with thumbs down it's not
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: an average of the critics one to ten scores.
• 23:24
  Speaker 2: That is the key distinction. Let's explore the mathematical consequence
• 23:28
  Speaker 2: of that system. Imagine a perfectly pleasant, inoffensive, well crafted
• 23:32
  Speaker 2: movie is released. It might be a polished animated sequel
• 23:35
  Speaker 2: like Toy Story four or a universally respected classic like
• 23:39
  Speaker 2: Twelve Angry Men. Sure, every single critic who watches it
• 23:42
  Speaker 2: might think, yes, that was a solid and enjoyable experience.
• 23:45
  Speaker 2: I will give it a seven out of ten. Because
• 23:47
  Speaker 2: every single critic gave it a positive passing score, the
• 23:50
  Speaker 2: film achieves a one hundred percent on Rotten Tomatoes.
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: Okay, that makes sense.
• 23:53
  Speaker 2: Now, contrast that with a highly ambitious, daring, complex, three
• 23:57
  Speaker 2: hour epic. This film deeply moves ninety five percent of
• 24:01
  Speaker 2: the audience to tears, and they passionately declare it the
• 24:04
  Speaker 2: greatest film ever made.
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 24:05
  Speaker 2: However, five percent of the audience finds it's pacing too
• 24:08
  Speaker 2: slow or its themes too abrasive, and they actively hate it.
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: You give it a thumbs down.
• 24:12
  Speaker 2: Exactly that masterpiece. A film like The Godfather Part Too
• 24:15
  Speaker 2: ends up with a ninety six percent on the aggregator.
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: Let's ground that in a real world analogy. It's very
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: much like grating a restaurant based solely on a binary
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: would you eat here again? Question?
• 24:27
  Speaker 2: Oh, I like that.
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: Imagine there's a neighborhood diner down the street that serves
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: a universally acceptable, perfectly fine standard grilled cheese sandwich. It's
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: not going to change your life, but nobody hates a
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: grilled cheese. Every single person who eats there gives it
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: a thumbs up. That diner earns a one hundred percent
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: fresh rating.
• 24:46
  Speaker 2: Right, one hundred percent of people said sure, it's fine.
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: Exactly Now, across town, there's a Michelin star sushi restaurant
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: that is relentlessly pushing the boundaries of culinary art. Ninety
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: five percent of the patrons who dine there have a transcendent,
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: active shifting meal that they will remember for the rest
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: of their lives. But five percent of the people who
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: walk through the door simply to test the tempture of
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: raw fish, so they give it a thumbs down. Right,
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: the sushi restaurant earns a ninety five percent If you
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: look purely at the aggregate math, the system tells you
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: the diner's grilled cheese is a higher culinary achievement than
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: the Michelin.
• 25:18
  Speaker 2: Star Soushi that is brilliant. The aggregator inherently smooths out passion.
• 25:23
  Speaker 2: The percentage tells you about the breadth of general consensus,
• 25:26
  Speaker 2: not the depth of the audience's love. It measures acceptability,
• 25:30
  Speaker 2: not greatness. And when you recognize that audiences and professional
• 25:34
  Speaker 2: critics are frequently utilizing completely different internal metrics for what
• 25:38
  Speaker 2: makes a film good, you begin to understand the fription
• 25:41
  Speaker 2: that occurs when those two worlds collide.
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: If we're looking at a huge gap between critics scores
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: and audience scores, there has to be a fundamental difference
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: in what they're actually evaluating. It can't just be that
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: one group is somehow smarter or better at watching movies
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: than the other. And when those differing metrics clash, we
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: get a phenomenon that industry inside referred to as the
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: Sundance curse.
• 26:02
  Speaker 2: The Sundance curse is a highly observable trend in modern
• 26:05
  Speaker 2: independent cinema.
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: The curse usually follows a specific pattern. A buzzy independent
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: film premieres at a prestigious festival like Sundance, the professional
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: critics and attendants absolutely lose their minds over it. They
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: were like glowing thousand word reviews praising its genius. They
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: give it festival awards, and the industry height reaches a
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: fever pitch.
• 26:25
  Speaker 2: Everyone's talking about it.
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: A distributor buys it for millions of dollars, and then
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: a few months later it hits regular commercial theaters in
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: suburban multiplexes. The everyday audience buys a ticket, watches the film,
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: and walks out feeling completely baffled, alienated, or just bored,
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: and the movie totally bombs at the box office.
• 26:45
  Speaker 2: To understand the mechanics behind this curse, we can actually
• 26:48
  Speaker 2: look at the data. A researcher named Lucas Book at
• 26:51
  Speaker 2: Elon University conducted a fascinating qualitative content analysis specifically designed
• 26:57
  Speaker 2: to figure out this exact discrepancy. He isolated films that
• 27:01
  Speaker 2: had at least a thirty percent gap between the professional
• 27:03
  Speaker 2: critics score and the audience score on aggregator sites.
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: How did he structure the comparison? What was he looking
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: for in the text of their reviews.
• 27:11
  Speaker 2: He took professional reviews from major established industry publications sources
• 27:15
  Speaker 2: like Variety or The Hollywood Reporter, and placed them side
• 27:19
  Speaker 2: by side with the initial wave of audience reviews on
• 27:21
  Speaker 2: Rotten Tomatoes. The first observable difference was simple volume. Oh
• 27:25
  Speaker 2: like the word count, Yeah, exactly. The professional reviews averaged
• 27:29
  Speaker 2: around one thousand words, diving into deep analytical breakdowns, while
• 27:33
  Speaker 2: the audience reviews were brief, averaging around three hundred words.
• 27:36
  Speaker 2: But the profound finding was the content itself. He discovered
• 27:40
  Speaker 2: that the two groups were judging entirely different aspects of
• 27:43
  Speaker 2: the filmmaking process, which.
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: Makes sense when you consider the daily reality of the reviewers.
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: A critic writing for Variety watches well over one hundred
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: movies a year. It's their full time profession. They are
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: steeped in the mechanics of the medium.
• 27:57
  Speaker 2: Precisely because they watched such a high vaultolume of films,
• 28:01
  Speaker 2: their baseline for being entertained is much higher, and they
• 28:04
  Speaker 2: naturally look deeper into the construction of the film. Critics
• 28:07
  Speaker 2: primarily evaluate what the industry calls above the line variables.
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: Let's clarify that term for anyone not working on a
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: studio lot. In film budgeting, a literal line separates the
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: core creative and financial drivers from the technical crew. So
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: above the line refers to the director, the writers, the
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: producers and the principal cast.
• 28:25
  Speaker 2: Right. So, when a professional critic evaluates a film, they're
• 28:28
  Speaker 2: scrutinizing those above the line elements. They're analyzing the precision
• 28:32
  Speaker 2: of the direction, the structural nuances of the screenplay, the
• 28:36
  Speaker 2: thematic resonance, and the deliberate choices made in cinematography and
• 28:40
  Speaker 2: sound design. They view the film as a complex machine
• 28:43
  Speaker 2: and judge how well the parts fit together. Interesting for example,
• 28:47
  Speaker 2: when Robert Eggers released his horror film The which professional
• 28:51
  Speaker 2: critics lauded the meticulous, authentic seventeenth century vernacular used in
• 28:55
  Speaker 2: the script, the creeping atmospheric dread, and the highly controlled
• 29:00
  Speaker 2: patient direction.
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: The flip side of that is, the average moviegoer, the
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: general audience member who maybe goes to a physical movie
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: theater ten times a year, isn't typically looking for a
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: masterclass in seventeenth century dialogue accuracy or the subtle blocking
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: of a scene.
• 29:14
  Speaker 2: No, they're paying for an experience.
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: Exactly According to Buck's study, everyday audience is focused overwhelmingly
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: on the emotional response. They care about the visceral reaction.
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: They want to know how the movie made them feel,
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: and they tend to latch on to stand out memorable
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: moments rather than the structural hole. If you look at
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: another horror film, Hereditary, the audience discourse wasn't centered on
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: the directorial pacing. The audience was deeply viscerally affected by
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: Tony Colette's explosive, terrifying performance of grief. They remembered the
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: feeling of shock.
• 29:49
  Speaker 2: The analogy often used is that the professional critic is
• 29:51
  Speaker 2: a mechanic deconstructing the engine to appreciate how efficiently the
• 29:55
  Speaker 2: pistons fire, while the audience member is simply sitting in
• 29:58
  Speaker 2: the driver's seat telling you how thrilling the car was
• 30:00
  Speaker 2: was to drive.
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: I love that.
• 30:02
  Speaker 2: And because the Internet has given that collective audience a unified,
• 30:05
  Speaker 2: powerful voice, we have witnessed the rise of some increasingly
• 30:08
  Speaker 2: aggressive phenomenon when a movie fails to deliver the expected
• 30:11
  Speaker 2: emotional ride.
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: This brings us to the darker side of audience empowerment,
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: toxic fandoms, and review bombing. This is where the democratization
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: of taste really shows its teeth. You have deeply entrenched
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: groups of fans who will blindly praise and financially support
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: anything attached to their favorite intellectual property, regardless of the
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: actual quality of the.
• 30:32
  Speaker 2: Filmmaking it becomes almost tribal.
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: It does. And conversely, you have organized groups who will
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: coordinate massive campaigns to review bomb a movie. They flood
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: the Internet with thousands of one star ratings in a
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: deliberate attempt to tank the film's audience score before the
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: movie has even beneficially released to the public.
• 30:51
  Speaker 2: It's an intentional, aggressive weaponization of the aggregator tools to
• 30:55
  Speaker 2: control the cultural narrative.
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: Perhaps the most prominent, heavily scrutinized example of this divine
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: is Star Wars The Last Jedi. If we just look
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: at the raw numbers, the discrepancy is staggering. The film
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: secured an overwhelmingly positive ninety one percent critics score on
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: Rotten Tomatoes. However, the audience score plummeted to a dismal
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: forty four percent.
• 31:14
  Speaker 2: That is a massive gap.
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: Massive Now we are remaining strictly neutral on the actual
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: quality of the film. What's interesting is the behavioral data
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: behind those numbers. Cultural observers noted that large clusters of
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: audiences actively organized to drive down the scores. They were
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: reacting to perceive messaging specific narrative subversions and character treatments
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: that they strongly disliked, feeling the film had betrayed the
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: core tenets of the franchise. They voted based on ideological
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: and emotional betrayal. Meanwhile, the professional critics were evaluating the
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: film based on its technical execution, its visual ambition, and
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: its willingness to take structural risks within a legacy franchise.
• 31:54
  Speaker 2: It perfectly highlights a complete breakdown and shared evaluative criteria.
• 31:58
  Speaker 2: The two groups weren't even taking the same test. But
• 32:01
  Speaker 2: to maintain a balanced perspective here, we must point out
• 32:04
  Speaker 2: that professional critics possess their own glaring blind spots. They
• 32:08
  Speaker 2: frequently exhibit a severe form of reverse snobbery.
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: Oh absolutely, the critical establishment can be incredibly dismissive of
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: broad entertainment.
• 32:16
  Speaker 2: Critics will often aggressively punish films precisely because they are
• 32:19
  Speaker 2: designed to be mainstream crowd pleasers. Take a recent example
• 32:24
  Speaker 2: like the Super Mario Bros.
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: Movie. Oh, that's a great example.
• 32:27
  Speaker 2: The critical establishment was incredibly harsh on it. They docked
• 32:31
  Speaker 2: it score heavily for relying too much on nostalgic references,
• 32:34
  Speaker 2: familiar fan service and easter eggs, complaining that it failed
• 32:38
  Speaker 2: to push a novel or challenging narrative.
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: But the irony is that is exactly what the audience
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: paid their money to see. They wanted the Easter eggs,
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: they wanted the comfort of nostalgia. They wanted to see
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: the specific video game world they loved faithfully translated to
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: a massive cinema screen to the audience. A film delivering
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: successfully on that specific promise is the very definition of
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: a good movie.
• 33:02
  Speaker 2: It serves its intended function perfectly. And this entire wide
• 33:05
  Speaker 2: ranging conversation, the sun Dance curse, the phenomenon of review bombing,
• 33:09
  Speaker 2: the critical snobbery, the historical shifting of the cannon, it
• 33:13
  Speaker 2: all rests on one fundamental, unspoken assumption. With that, we
• 33:18
  Speaker 2: all assume that when we sit together in a dark theater,
• 33:20
  Speaker 2: we are all watching the exact same movie.
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: Right, we operate on the basic logic of physics. We
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: assume the projector shines the light, the light hits the screen,
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: bounces into our retinas, and we all objectively see the
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: same piece of media.
• 33:33
  Speaker 2: That's the assumption. Yeah, but what.
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: If we literally aren't. What if the movie I see
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: in my head is biologically fundamentally different from the movie
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: you see in yours.
• 33:44
  Speaker 2: This is where we cross the boundary from film theory
• 33:46
  Speaker 2: and cultural analysis into hard neuroscience, and the implications are
• 33:51
  Speaker 2: absolutely fascinating.
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: I couldn't wait to get to this part.
• 33:54
  Speaker 2: A groundbreaking study was conducted by Pascal Wallasch, a psychology
• 33:58
  Speaker 2: professor at New York University, in cloud Oberation with Jake Rittner,
• 34:01
  Speaker 2: a graduate of NYU's Tish Cinema Studies program.
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: The methodology of this study is incredible. Walk us through
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: how they set it up to measure this.
• 34:08
  Speaker 2: So, they needed a vast data set to find meaningful patterns.
• 34:12
  Speaker 2: They surveyed over thirty two hundred ordinary viewers regarding their
• 34:16
  Speaker 2: opinions on two hundred and nine major motion pictures that
• 34:19
  Speaker 2: were released between nineteen eighty five and two thousand and four.
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: Thirty two hundred people was a huge sample size.
• 34:24
  Speaker 2: It is. They had these thousands of participants rank the
• 34:28
  Speaker 2: films using a traditional, easily understood four star system. Then
• 34:33
  Speaker 2: they took those massive data sets of regular, everyday viewer
• 34:36
  Speaker 2: opinions and cross referenced them against the established ratings of
• 34:40
  Speaker 2: those exact same two hundred and nine films by professional critics,
• 34:43
  Speaker 2: pulling data from forty two different critical.
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: Sources The findings of this cross referencing are a total
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: shock to the traditional Hollywood system. First off, they discovered
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: that cinematic taste is completely wildly idiosyncratic. You'd think after
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: a century of Hollywood marketing, they would have the formula
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: figured out. You think so, right, The standard industry logic is, oh,
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: this is a fast paced action movie with explosions. Therefore,
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: men aged eighteen to thirty four will reliably buy a
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: ticket and rate it highly. The study proved that wrong.
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: They found that broad demographics like age, gender, or income
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: do not predict what you will actually like at all.
• 35:17
  Speaker 2: It completely upends the traditional marketing algorithm that studios have
• 35:21
  Speaker 2: relied on for decades. Demographic buckets are essentially useless for
• 35:26
  Speaker 2: predicting individual cinematic taste. But the second and perhaps more
• 35:30
  Speaker 2: ironic finding was specifically about the critical establishment.
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: Now this is the best part.
• 35:34
  Speaker 2: The data conclusively showed that professional critics are terrible, statistically,
• 35:39
  Speaker 2: mathematically terrible predictors of what regular people will actually enjoy.
• 35:44
  Speaker 2: In fact, while the agreement among the critics themselves was
• 35:47
  Speaker 2: quite high, the correlation between a professional critics rating and
• 35:50
  Speaker 2: a regular person's rating was practically non existent.
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: So Mathematically speaking, asking a Pulitzer winning film critic if
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: you will enjoy a movie is basically is useful as
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: asking a random stranger waiting at a bus stop.
• 36:03
  Speaker 2: According to the data, yes, and Professor Wallach delves into
• 36:06
  Speaker 2: the biological mechanism behind why this disconnect happens. It is
• 36:10
  Speaker 2: deeply rooted in vision science. Through advanced eye tracking technology
• 36:14
  Speaker 2: and brain imaging, scientists know that when a group of
• 36:17
  Speaker 2: people watch a movie together, their physical eye movements synchronize
• 36:20
  Speaker 2: almost perfectly.
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: Like everyone looks at the same thing at the same
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: time exactly.
• 36:24
  Speaker 2: We all instinctively look at the explosion on the left
• 36:27
  Speaker 2: side of the screen. We all focus on the actor's
• 36:30
  Speaker 2: face when they speak. Furthermore, the visual processing centers located
• 36:34
  Speaker 2: at the back of our brains sync up perfectly. We
• 36:37
  Speaker 2: are mechanically biologically receiving the same raw visual data.
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: Okay, so the visual hardware, the eyes, and the visual
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: cortex is working the exact same way for everyone in
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: the theater.
• 36:47
  Speaker 2: Correct. However, the large regions of the prefrontal cortex, which
• 36:51
  Speaker 2: is the highly complex part of the brain where we
• 36:53
  Speaker 2: process abstract meaning, where we store our core personal values,
• 36:58
  Speaker 2: and where we generate our emotional responses do not synchronize
• 37:01
  Speaker 2: at all. Wait, really, really, the activity in the prefrontal
• 37:04
  Speaker 2: cortex remains entirely unique to the individual while watching the film.
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: This is where I have to pause and try to
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: reconcile this. If our brains are physically biologically creating entirely
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: different emotional realities and assigning different meanings from the exact
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: same light, hating our retinas, how on earth can anyone
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: ever recommend a movie to me? If my prefrontal cortex
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: is as unique as a fingerprint? Is the very concept
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: of a movie recommendation essentially impossible.
• 37:32
  Speaker 2: It's not impossible, but it requires a total abandonment of
• 37:35
  Speaker 2: demographic thinking and a shift toward behavioral mapping. Walach's research
• 37:40
  Speaker 2: points to the efficacy of what we call taste clusters.
• 37:43
  Speaker 2: Since we know age and gender don't work, you have
• 37:45
  Speaker 2: to group people purely by their historical idiosyncratic preferences.
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: Okay, so looking at past behavior.
• 37:51
  Speaker 2: Right, If you and I both genuinely loved ten highly specific, bizarre,
• 37:55
  Speaker 2: obscure movies in the past, the data suggests we belong
• 37:58
  Speaker 2: to the same taste cluster. Therefore, if you watch an
• 38:01
  Speaker 2: eleventh movie and love it, there is a very high
• 38:03
  Speaker 2: statistical probability that my prefrontal cortex is wired similarly early
• 38:07
  Speaker 2: enough that I will process it the same way and
• 38:08
  Speaker 2: love it too. This behavioral clustering is actually the foundational
• 38:12
  Speaker 2: logic driving the Netflix recommendation algorithm.
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: It ignores who you are on paper, and focus is
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: entirely on what your brain has responded to in the
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: past exactly.
• 38:21
  Speaker 2: And within these data clusters, the study identified a fascinating
• 38:25
  Speaker 2: phenomenon they called super predictors. These are ordinary, everyday people,
• 38:30
  Speaker 2: not trained professional critics, whose highly specific, seemingly random personal
• 38:35
  Speaker 2: tastes happen to perfectly align with the broader general public's
• 38:38
  Speaker 2: reactions across a huge variety of genres.
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: That's a real thing, like a cinematic superpower.
• 38:44
  Speaker 2: Basically, yeah. Wallash went so far as to suggest that
• 38:47
  Speaker 2: Hollywood studios should stop screening their upcoming films for critics,
• 38:50
  Speaker 2: and instead they should identify and hire these super predictors
• 38:54
  Speaker 2: as highly paid consultants. Because these individuals possess a natural
• 38:58
  Speaker 2: biological and psychological alignment with a mass audience, they can
• 39:01
  Speaker 2: predict a hit far better than an industry professional.
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: As we draw all these historical and scientific threads together,
• 39:08
  Speaker 1: I am arriving at a fundamental realization about why we
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: argue so passionately about this art form. When you and
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: I are standing in the lobby after a screening fiercely
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: debating whether a movie was good or bad, we're not
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: actually debating the objective qualities of the movie itself. The
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: movie is just a piece of virtual reality. It's a
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: neutral stimulus.
• 39:27
  Speaker 2: It is a standardized visual and auditory stimulus applied to
• 39:31
  Speaker 2: wildly non standardized minds.
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: Exactly because the film is just a trigger, the elements
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: you like or dislike about it bypass logic and go
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: directly to the heart of who you are. The movie
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: maps your personal values, your specific sense of humor, your
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: unhealed traumas, your political leanings, and what uniquely upsets you.
• 39:49
  Speaker 2: It's very true.
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: When you passionately defend the film, you are essentially arguing
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: about the validity of your own identity, merely disguised as
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: a movie review.
• 39:58
  Speaker 2: It's a profound shift in perspect Film criticism, whether published
• 40:02
  Speaker 2: in a prestigious magazine or typed into a letterbox app
• 40:05
  Speaker 2: isn't just an evaluation of art. It's a public exercise
• 40:08
  Speaker 2: in expressing our core psychology.
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: It truly is. Thank you so much for joining me
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: on this deep exploration today. If you enjoyed mapping out
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: the architecture of cinematic taste with us, please remember to
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: give Beyond Infographics a five star rating. It truly means
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: the world to us and helps us keep these conversations going.
• 40:26
  Speaker 2: And if we follow the logic of this neuroscience to
• 40:28
  Speaker 2: its ultimate speculative conclusion, it leaves us with a fascinating,
• 40:33
  Speaker 2: almost science fiction question to ponder after the show.
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: Lay it honest?
• 40:38
  Speaker 2: If our movie preferences are such a highly accurate reflection
• 40:41
  Speaker 2: of our deeply idiosyncratic core values and the unique personal
• 40:45
  Speaker 2: wiring of our prefrontal cortex, could we eventually use our
• 40:48
  Speaker 2: letterbox profiles or our streaming algorithms for far more than
• 40:52
  Speaker 2: just finding our next favorite film?
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: Oh? Where are you going with this?
• 40:55
  Speaker 2: Could a movie rating system eventually be refined into a
• 40:58
  Speaker 2: psychological diagnostic tool? Could an algorithm analyze your top ten
• 41:02
  Speaker 2: favorite films and accurately predict your political compatibility with a stranger,
• 41:06
  Speaker 2: or even be used to match you with your perfect
• 41:08
  Speaker 2: romantic partner Next.
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: Time you find yourself scrolling through someone's movie ratings on
• 41:12
  Speaker 1: a first date. Keep that in mind you might basically
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: be looking at a neurobiological X ray of their soul
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: until next time.