People complain a lot about the star ratings on The Stop Button. Just look here.
I’m not sure why it’s confusing. We’ve all been to high school, we’re all familiar with the concept of starting at empty. Films, novels, grades, whatever–they don’t start at 
or A. They start at zero. Nothing. Nada. You fill it.
The Stop Button doesn’t use letter grades because, with a letter grade, The Dark Knight would probably be a C or a C-, Iron Man would be a B+, Star Trek would be a B and so on. Fantastic Four 2 would be a B+ too. Except, if you look, I give Fantastic Four 2 a whole star more than Iron Man. Letter grades have to do with the assignment.
does not mean it’s worthless–the music in Humanoids from the Deep is good, Katie Holmes is excellent in Batman Begins . just means I’m not giving it a star for the music or for Katie Holmes. Or if I did, the star got taken away by the bad composition in Humanoids or the terrible writing in Batman.
And doesn’t mean it’s perfect. It means it’s approximately perfect. Five Easy Pieces isn’t perfect. Badlands is perfect, Magnolia is perfect.
In a lot of ways, Fantastic Four 2 is perfect–and so is Godzilla vs. Space Godzilla and, I don’t know, Versus. Because they fulfill their assignments. They don’t overextend.
Every time I get a negative comment about ratings, I wonder if I should drop the star ratings.
But then I remember–well, sometimes I talk to a friend–the negative comments are from the same kind of people who think a Batman movie is (or should be) realistic.
Rob // Jan 26, 2010 at 10:45 am
Are you autistic?