Nit picks aren't film criticism. Here's why.
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One of my least favorite trends is how so many movie viewers will watch a movie, in bad faith, and then decide to express the distaste that they decided on before the opening credits rolled, by pointing out a potential nit pick or an alleged "plot hole." In one of my favorite recent examples, someone decided to say that James Gunn's new Superman movie was bad or stupid because they never said Ultraman's suit was lead-lined, which means Superman should've been able to see who was underneath. A post that went so viral after it was dunked on that an official Lex Luthor account from DC actually took it to task more or less saying "in the movie this genius level character has spent 3 years developing a being to destroy Superman, you really think he wouldn't have thought of that?"
As fun as this dunk is, what it really highlighted for me was was how fixating on small details or nit picks has become an integral part of movie discourse and why that's a problem. Now plenty of my favorite movie analysts have taken their swings at discussing things like "plot holes" including Patrick H. Willems and the Just Write channel, while others have highlighted the issues with CinemaSins entire lazy approach that has focused on nonstop monetization versus high-effort work.
Their work is great, and I'm not looking to replicate their main points. The general gist is that most plot holes exist for narrative reasons either to provide solid emotional beats for the characters or to keep the plot moving.
So instead I'm going to focus on something different. The difference between a nit pick and an actual problem in a movie.
The big reason? Because there's a gigantic gap between a nit pick and an actual problem with a movie. If anything, I'd argue that fixating on nit picks is a sign that maybe you should dig deeper into why you feel a certain way about a movie. So let's start with some definitions.
Definitions: Nit Pick
So what is a nit pick? For me, a nit pick is a small inconsistency within a movie. One of the most famous ones is the "infinite runway" from Fast & Furious 6. In the movie's final action beat, all of the Dominic Toretto crew are fighting on, in or around a plane that's trying to take off and Dom's crew is trying to stop them. It's a great sequence that features about 4-5 ongoing fight scenes happening at once and even a major death.
It's also a logical impossibility because the sequence runs for about 10-15 minutes and there's no way the plane would still have runway to run on before ending up in some dirt. This is a really good example because if you're engaging with the movie on its terms, this nit pick doesn't matter. The action and what it means for the plot and characters are what matter.
This is also the kind of thing as podcast like How Did This Get Made?! is perfectly suited to address because all of the hosts and their Fast & Furious signature guest Adam Scott are all on board with the inherent silliness of these movies. So when they point this out, it's a loving poke at a movie they enjoy versus a damning indictment.
Now we get to a problem.
Definitions: A Problem
A bad plot twist, is a perfect example of a problem. Structurally a plot twist is meant to do a few things. It's meant to upend the audience expectations (i.e. something they thought was true isn't) and can generally reinforce the movie's themes and biggest ideas. I'll use a good one to explain what I mean.
*Spoiler Alert* for Fight Club coming in.
*Spoiler Alert* for Fight Club coming in.
The eventual reveal that the Narrator is Tyler Durden is a classic plot twist for a reason. First and foremost it reframes how the audience views everything that's happened up to this point (aka this guy really is crazy) and sets off a seemingly impossible conflict. How does the narrator prevent all of Tyler Durden's plans if he's Tyler Durden and Durden has set up a bunch of fail safes in case this happened?
Thematically this is where the movie comes full circle and truly reveals the sad little wanna be bad ass that our narrator is. He was so desperate to feel tough, masculine and sexy that he created shredded misanthropic version of himself that's become a terrorist cult-leader. A terrifying demonstration of where male insecurity can and does lead to.
It also means that little moments you might've ignored the first time around (see our narrator beating himself up and saying "for some reason I thought of my first fight with Tyler") lock in or make a lot more sense. Fincher does a lot of this right after the reveal, demonstrating how much of the narrator's perspective was him on the outside looking in at himself do what Tyler did.
So if a movie has a plot twist and it fails to deliver surprise, doesn't work thematically or is inconsistent with the movie we've seen up to this point, then it's a problem. It's a structural issue that undercuts the effectiveness of the storytelling.
Does that mean all problems are structural? Not at all. Movies are hard to make and require a lot of artistic and technical craft to pull off correctly, which means that everything from writing, acting, and every aspect other of production can become a problem.
There are plenty of movies that are torpedoed by a terrible lead performance or a director who clearly isn't comfortable in their movie's genre. Both of which can turn an otherwise solid or serviceable movie into a slog.
And problems are why people should respond negatively to movies, not nit picks.
The Difference
My general feeling about nit picks is that, conceptually, pointing them out is fine and can be very fun. If you love a movie or a genre, you're probably best suited to lovingly jab at said movie for its foibles and faults because you know where they are and what they are.
It's why most of Mel Brooks' most celebrated work were send-ups of genres he clearly loved and knew backwards and forward including traditional Broadway musicals, westerns and the Universal Monster movies. Blazing Saddles in particular stands out by portraying old West as ugly and intolerant versus some kind of picaresque encapsulation of the American dream.
The issue is conflating nit picks as "signs of a bad movie," or as I just discussed, a problem.
Piecing together that the timeline for how a human slasher villain got from the third floor of the house to the bottom floor of the house is physically impossible, doesn't mean the movie is bad. If anything it usually means the director wanted to maintain tension or surprise the audience so you include a slight logic leap.
It's staggering how many nit picks folks bring up would absolutely kill the tone, pacing or feel of a scene, if not an entire movie, if they were "fixed."
But then again, are these folks watching movies to truly engage with them?
This is part of what makes online discourse around movies so damn frustrating because it's really hard to tell who is engaging with a movie in good faith versus someone who has basically had a film under the gun from the opening credits....which is exactly the lens that CinemaSins views everything under.
Watching a movie, even critically, requires some degree of opening yourself up to the movie's perspective. The ever elusive, suspension of disbelief where you at least loosely accept the movie's plot, perspective and ideas because this isn't reality, this is a story. And if you can't do that, maybe you're not primed to truly analyze a movie.
If you have a negative response to a movie, that's fine. But it's not because "a person in this situation wouldn't do that," or the use of tropes. It's probably something bigger. It's probably...a problem.
In my experience, nit picks aren't the reason you do or don't enjoy a movie. They're the things that stand out even more when you're not enjoying a movie. Usually because there's a giant problem under the surface either with the movie itself.
But pointing out a problem is harder. You have to take time to think or talk it out. It requires critical thinking and some degree of media literacy to piece together.
But pointing out a problem is harder. You have to take time to think or talk it out. It requires critical thinking and some degree of media literacy to piece together.
Almost all of my negative reviews of movies require a lot of digging into what the problem or problems are. Because saying a movie "sucks" because it's poorly made, doesn't really explain how bad production values impact the final product.
And sometimes that means being honest about my own experience and biases. If the latest Naked Gun movie wasn't as awesome as it was, I would have to explain why I felt like the new movie "didn't do the franchise justice." That means unpacking what I think the original movies brought to the table and why I found them funny. It requires openness and honesty.
Every good piece of media analysis I've ever encountered, whether I agree with it or not, has done an excellent job at putting me in the writer's headspace. Because there's an honesty to it.
And a lot of the so-called modern movie fans...are not honest.
Do You Even Like Movies?
The thing I've left unsaid about the Superman nit picks earlier was something you probably all guessed. Almost all of them are coming from the "Snyder bros." Alleged super fans of Zack Snyder's vision of Superman and the DC Comic Book characters who instinctively respond to anything new in DC or Marvel as soulless trash that's so poorly thought out compared to their big brained daddy Zack Snyder.
Anyone who liked Superman isn't a real fan of Superman. They're just a shill. And I'm going to point out everything wrong with this movie or show you elements that both directors used in their movies to prove my point.
These are not fans of movies. These are cult members spewing out propaganda. Using the language of what a lot of people mistake for critical analysis to support their claims.
If someone like Ben Shapiro goes to see a critically acclaimed movie, he already made up his mind before he walked to the ticket taker. He didn't go to see Barbie hoping for a good time. He went to the movie as a performative means of complaining about any semblance of progressive ideals in art.
Which is antithetical not only to the purpose of media analysis, but also art.
You can't come into a movie ready to hate it and act like you gave it fair shot or like you understood it. Art is an empathy machine and you have to be willing to engage with it on its terms.
And then if you hate it you can salt the ground it walks on, but you've got to earn that right.
Just like I won't trash films I haven't actually watched, you can't allegedly critique anyone's art if you haven't actually listened to it.
Where Do We Go From Here?
I've seen a fair amount of people say that CinemaSins has ruined the public's abilities to engage with movies.
I don't think that's entirely true. Almost all of the movie fans I know, when pressed, are very good at explaining how and why they do or don't like certain movies. What I think social media and alleged film analysts like CinemaSins have done is commodified movie engagement in the worst possible ways. Making it reactionary. Detail oriented versus experiential. Acting like the emotional response to a movie is always fully rational or quantifiable.
Which is silly. Humans aren't rational. And neither are all our emotions or responses. Coming back to another James Gunn property, the second Guardians of the Galaxy movie, Vol. 2 is considered by some fans to be a lesser movie than the first or even the third film in the franchise.
But it's definitely the most moved I've felt by any Marvel movie for reasons that are, very personal. As someone who comes from a mixed family, a movie that grapples with those complicated emotions and the potential for emotional harm hits hard. Especially when we're dealing with a lead character who's trying to decide which of his two father figures he wants to be like or take after.
And I don't expect everyone else to like it for those reasons. If you thought it was too serious for a movie with a talking raccoon and little tree guy, I get it. But that doesn't change how it affected me.
I'm reminded of a late night clip of John Cena on the Tonight Show. In the first live interview since the COVID-19 lockdowns, John Cena spoke about his love of the K-Pop supergroup BTS, much to Jimmy Fallon and the crowd's apparent dismay. Since apparently catchy pop music is only meant for young girls and can't be enjoyed by anyone else.
Undeterred by the reaction, Cena pulls a masterful 180 by giving Fallon and the audience an in, saying that he was skeptical of the group and only knew about their legion of young fans. But once he actually listened to their music and heard the positive messages in their music about self-love and empowerment, he really resonated with it and all of the philanthropic work the BTS fan base did.
In short, he gave it a chance, and actually found some "silly K-Pop music" and its fans, genuinely inspiring at a time when, by his own account, he really needed it. That's the beauty of art. Any art.
If you give it a chance, it can move you. Give you strength. Or maybe do something as simple as take your mind off of things for a few hours. But you have to let it in.
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