This question comes from a panel of movie critics I recently heard discussing the deplorable state of modern cinema and why so many movies are so bad.
We could make the same argument about every other art form out there—books, TV, music, visual art—all of it. Some notable exceptions are outstanding. The rest is horrifically bad.
The truth is that this has been the case throughout history. The vast majority of art is going to be terrible.
There have always been throw-away books of cheap, forgettable nonsense since the earliest days of the printing press.
Every court in Europe had their own musicians and composers to entertain the wealthy. Composers were writing music for the masses and for the theater. We only remember the greats because they were the only ones producing music worthy of remembering.
This is the case for all artistic mediums. Our era isn’t any better or worse than any other. Most of what is good enough to remember gets drowned out by the noise of all the crap that isn’t. We won’t recognize what’s good until after the slop dies out. Then we’ll look back and see what really shone and stood the test of time.
This panel pointed out that certain movies we now consider the greatest films ever made were derided and ignored when they first came out. The first Star Wars movie was hated, insulted, and discarded when it first came out. Test screeners walked out on it and the studio wanted to cancel it because they thought it was terrible.
This happens all the time in every artistic medium. The greats don’t get recognized because they’re ahead of their time and don’t match the current formula. Then time passes and they differentiate themselves from all the formulaic drivel that everyone else is producing.
So what makes a piece of art actually good? What makes us remember a book or movie, reread it or rewatch it, and pass it on to our friends and loved ones to get them to read or watch it, too?
One of these panelists stated that a movie was good if it mimics reality. He stated that the more realistic it is, the better it is. He stated that modern movies aren’t good because they don’t offer realistic portrayals of reality.
These movies don’t represent human relationships correctly. The characters don’t act in realistic ways, make realistic decisions, or suffer realistic consequences when they make bad or immoral decisions. The storylines don’t follow logical trains of thought to a definite conclusion.
The visuals of modern movies are considered good when they most closely match reality. They immerse us in a world so thoroughly that we forget we’re seeing something that isn’t real. Good movie visuals can do this even when we’re seeing something that doesn’t exist in reality such as a fantasy or science fiction world.
My answer to this question takes this concept a step further. A book, movie, or other piece of art, in my opinion, has to accomplish another level of realism before we consider it good. The visuals, characters, storyline, and descriptions of the work are not enough to make the finished product good. The work needs something else.
A book, movie, or other work of art has to match the realism of following a real human developmental arc. Each of us as human beings is going through a developmental arc. The story has to reflect this in order to be good.
The characters have to undergo changes to their personalities and respond to their circumstances in normal, realistic human ways. Otherwise, the story comes off as contrived, forced, and unrealistic. It throws us out of immersion and repels us.
We need to see these characters going through universal human inner conflicts related to their circumstances regardless of how outlandish these circumstances are. In fact, this element of storytelling is even more important as the outside circumstances become more outlandish.
Think of the greatest movies you’ve ever seen such as Star Wars, The Matrix, and Lord of the Rings. We consider these movies great because of the human element and inner struggle the characters went through. The outer setting and astonishing fantasy elements mean nothing if the human element of the story doesn’t make us identify with the characters.
We identify with Neo because he’s going through something each of us can relate to. We are actually all going through the same thing in the allegorical sense of living in the Matrix and trying to wake up to what’s really going on around us. This is why the term, “The Matrix” has become common slang in our society—because we all understand and relate to the process.
We’re all going through these inner conflicts every minute of the day. This is why we consume fiction in the first place—to see this process reflected in the characters’ humanity. This is what makes a character relatable. We don’t care about some stranger going through some traumatic experience. We need some touchstone that allows us to connect and share that experience so we don’t feel alone in our own inner turmoil.
The final and most important element that makes a piece of art great is that it tells us something at the end. It comes to a definite conclusion and leaves us with a thought-provoking message of some kind. All great art does this. Bad art doesn’t do this.
This is another dimension of realism that a story or piece of art absolutely cannot live without. Why? Because this is what life does. A series of events doesn’t not make a story because life is not a series of events. We’re all developing, growing, changing, and learning all the time.
Each of us has gotten to moments of realization and awakening in our lives where a lightbulb went off in our minds. We realized in hindsight that nothing was what we thought it was. We’re able to see all the events leading up to this moment and we learn from that moment.
This is reality. We don’t see a story as realistic without this defining moment. If we read a book or watch a movie that doesn’t have this element, we feel we’ve wasted our time with it. We ask, “What was the point of that?” The series of events leading to the conclusion could have been logically consistent. They could have been realistically portrayed. We could have engaged with the characters the whole way through.
The ending is where the artist makes or breaks the work. The ending makes the work either great or terrible. It either leaves a lasting impression or we look back at a steaming pile of excrement that wasted our time and came to nothing in the end.
We can all think of countless examples of both these kinds of artistic works. Every great work of art must have a good ending. The ending isn’t an afterthought as most of modern TV and cinema seems to think. The ending isn’t superfluous or something to be left until the last minute to decide.
The ending is nothing less the most important part of the work. The ending is where the rest of the world will decide whether to memorialize the work as one of the greatest examples of its generation or throw it on the ash heap of history.
Every artist should decide on the ending and clearly flesh it out before you start on the rest of the work. Clarify in your mind exactly where you are going and know ahead of time where you are leading your audience. If you don’t have that, you don’t have a piece of art. You have an experiment at best and possibly a steaming pile of excrement that no one in their right mind would want to consume. The audience will rightly feel that you wasted their time and you’ll be wasting your time, too.
Good art takes planning. It doesn’t just happen by accident contrary to what most people think. Being creative takes work. It doesn’t make itself. That’s the artist’s job—to put in the effort and make it great. Inspiration might strike. The rest is up to you. That’s what artists get the credit for—for refining that inspiration into something that works for everyone, especially the audience.
The audience needs to see and feel that you did this deliberately and that you intended to lead them to this conclusion. They won’t respect you as the artist if it just happened by accident.
This is why AI will never be able to replace truly great human art. It can’t reproduce these connections and lessons that make us all human.
AI will replace the lower stratum of wannabe artists who don’t include this human element. AI can copy everything else. It can’t copy this connection because AI is incapable of understanding what it takes to be human.
Only the great artists will survive AI because these artists are the only people who are truly capable of giving the audience what they need. AI can entertain us for a little while. AI can’t reflect humanity back to the audience. AI can’t recreate the subtle communication between the artist and the audience.
I use my art to communicate my ideas, dreams, thoughts, inner conflicts, and viewpoints to you as my reader. That’s what makes me an artist. You sense this when you read my work. That’s exactly why you do read my work—so you can feel that you’re communicating with another human being. That’s what art is.
We’ll never have that with AI, so AI will never completely replace art. It will only replace the trash at the bottom of the sewer, but the human race didn’t need that stuff anyway, so we haven’t lost anything.
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