Yesterday I mentioned that, inspired by the movie Ultraviolet, I had developed a unified theory of bad movies, complete with a four-category classification system. We’ll start with the Category I bad movie. The Category I movie is the cinematic embodiment of Sturgeon’s Revelation: “90% of everything is crap.”

• Type: Category I
• Also known as: “extruded Hollywood product” (h/t Charles Stross)
• Example: The Karate Kid, Part III
• Circumstances for watching: Insomnia, long airplane trips, waiting in a lobby of some sort, friend or relative worked on the film

Although Category I movies represent the vast majority of films made, this is not meant to be pointed criticism of Hollywood per se. Sturgeon’s Revelation is ironclad, and applies to all works of art produced throughout history. If we could wave a magic wand and double the raw talent of everyone in Hollywood on both the creative and business sides, we might see the percentage of Category I movies dropping to 88% or so. No matter what you do in the art world, there’s a lot chaff that gets in the way.

Nor do I mean to suggest that Category I movies only come from Michael Bay and his ilk. Some movies are born Category Is; others might have solid acting, dialogue, editing, and so on while still managing to be far less than the sum of their parts. For example, take Woody Allen’s recent Match Point. “Allen’s best in ten years,” the critics said. “London has revitalized him,” the critics said. I actually emerged from the theater sorta kinda liking Match Point, until my friend quite sensibly pointed out that the only reason the plot slogged forward was because every character was necessarily A) an idiot, B) despicable, or in almost all cases, C) both.

Of course, a movie’s Category I-ness varies in the eye of the beholder. For example, I suspect most people think of Armageddon as a classic Category I: stupid, bombastic, bad dialogue, the whole package. But for me it nearly crosses over into Category III, because the bad physics is just so, so offensive. On the other hand, I thought Starship Troopers was a run-of-the mill Category I, and even had some parts that were enjoyable.^[1] But Sammy felt nothing but burning hatred for that movie. The stupid tactics, the ineffective weaponry,^[2] the total absence of the Mobile Infantry’s powered armor suits. There’s a brief scene where a squadron of space fighters swoop through a canyon, firebombing everything below them. Sammy: “Where the hell were those guys before? Why weren’t they doing that all the time?” For yet another data point, Sammy and I saw Mystery Men and literally fell forward out of our seats, crying laughing at the “Limousine Attack” scene. Everyone else in the sparsely-populated theater was stone silent. So to each their own.

While creating a Category I movie is easy, Category II, III, and IV movies are special cases. Creating a Category II+ movie takes special drive, talent… possibly even malice. So on that note, it’s on from the merely mediocre to the truly wretched! Join me, won’t you?

1. I particularly liked the subversive thread running through the Starship Troopers movie: that the humans probably started the war and were almost certainly the bad guys. The hilarious propaganda newsreels, dressing the commissioned officers like the Nazi SS, and so on. Plus it had plenty of eye candy, if you disregard Jake Busey.

2. Seriously, if each enemy warrior bug takes ten seconds of concentrated fire from several marines to take down, you shouldn’t even be bothering with ground operations. Contrast Starship Troopers with the far superior Aliens: the Space Marines in Aliens had the weaponry for the job, they were just badly outnumbered or otherwise constrained. (“So, if they fire their weapons in there, won’t they rupture the cooling system?”) Additionally, the Space Marines were able to reassess their situation and come to entirely sensible conclusions. (“I say we take off and nuke the entire site from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.” Yes! Exactly right! A bit too late, though.)