You ain't got no soul power: Good-bad v. Bad-bad

Posted by david

Disclaimer: This post is only tangentally related to software development. I've had it written for a while, but I can't quite get it to say what I want. Then I realized that, given the subject matter, a crappy post is kind of appropriate.

I recently saw the film Troll 2 for the first time. If you haven't seen this film, stop reading this right now, and add it to your Netflix queue, order it from Amazon, do whatever you need to do to watch this. Troll 2 is easily the most enjoyably awful film I've ever seen. For the uninitiated, here are some highlights:

  • Despite the title, this film has nothing to do with the first Troll movie and is, in fact, about goblins, rather than trolls.
  • The monsters in the film are very obviously little people wearing potato sacks and rubber masks. With the exception of a couple close-up shots, their lips don't move at all.
  • The premise is that goblins feed humans green-colored food that causes the humans to morph into a half-human, half-plant being that the (vegetarian) goblins can then eat.
  • Dialogue:
    • "Do you see this writing? Do you know what it means? Hospitality. And you can't piss on hospitality! I won't allow it!"
    • Sister: "How do we get him to come? By having a seance maybe?" Brother: "You're a genius, big sister!"
    • "You're grandfather's death was very hard on all of us. It was hard on your sister, your father, and on me, his daughter."

I got my wife to watch this by saying we would only watch the first ten minutes and then turn it off, unless she wanted to keep going. She did. After it was over, she turned to me and said, "We need to order this from Amazon right now". This is the type of film that you want to show all of your friends, if only because you'll be quoting it for weeks on end. ("I'm tightening my belt by one loop so that I don't feel hunger pains. Your sister and mother will have to do likewise!")

In case I've not made it clear: this is not a good movie. The plot is ludicrous, the acting would be considered bad in a community theater, and the production qualities are abysmal. Troll 2 may be the worst movie ever made, surpassing such disasters as Manos, Hands of Fate and Plan 9 from Outer Space. However, I'd like to contrast it with another film I frequenty call the worst film ever made: Batman and Robin. I saw Batman and Robin in 1997, when it was in theaters. I haven't seen it since, and have no intention of doing so. Roger Ebert is fond of saying, "Every bad movie is depressing. No good movie is depressing.". When I hear this quote, I think of Batman and Robin, which depresses me in a way no other movie does.

To recap so far: in my mind, Batman and Robin and Troll 2 are each candidates for the worst film ever made, but one depresses me and the other brings me a lot of joy. How can this be?

The most obvious difference between the two films is the size of the budgets. Watching Batman and Robin, it's clear that it was an expensive film to make, and that every dollar spent on its production could have been better spent on just about anything else. In the case of Troll 2, it's obvious that little was spent on its production (one of the lead characters received just $1500 for his performance), so while some viewers may feel their 90 minutes have been wasted, it's hard to complain too much about what went into making the movie - I expect that the catering bill for the average studio film is higher than the budget for Troll 2. I don't think the reason why one film is so much fun while the other is just depressing is as simple as budget size, however.

The sins of Batman and Robin have been well-documented, so I won't repeat them here. If you were to survey the highest-grossing films circa 1996 (Independance Day, The Rock, Mission: Impossible), take the surface elements of those films, and cynically combine them in the hopes of creating a blockbuster, I think you'd get a result similar to Batman and Robin. Every element of that film feels as though all artistic decisions were made by a group of suits trying to guess what would be most marketable. I have vivid memories of watching late-night talk shows in the months leading up to Batman and Robin's release and seeing George Clooney (who played Batman) promoting the film several times on the different shows. Each time I saw him, he recounted the same anecdote: Although Batman is supposed to be a superhero, the Batman costume he wore during filming was so heavy that, as he put it, an eight-year-old could kick his ass. What struck me after hearing that story multiple times was how manufactured it felt - as though marketers had come up with a way for him to "show his human side". The movie itself, however, is sorely lacking any human element. All dialogue that I can remember from the film consists of either exposition or short lines that play well in trailers (for example, Robin: “Batgirl? That’s not very PC.”) In short, Batman in Robin feels manufactured, as if it were never touched by human hands.

In contrast, the human elements of Troll 2 stand out - not through dialogue or character development, as in good films, but through the incompetence of the whole thing. It's impossible to watch the hammy or stilted performances and not be fully aware that we are watching actors playing roles. The cheap costumes of the trolls make it impossible for us to ignore the people playing them. The scene where one character states "everyone's in bed at this time of night" when the sun is obviously shining reminds us that what we're seeing has been filmed and (poorly) edited. That human element, I think, is what makes watching Troll 2 so much fun. It feels like you are watching a group of people try their hardest to make a good movie despite the obvious limitations of a bad script, low budget, and sheer incompetence. It feels, in fact, like the type of movie I would end up making if I were to take my savings, hire some cameras, and make a film.

What Troll 2 made me realize is that there can be an enjoyment that comes from failure that isn't schadenfreude, but that there needs to be a sincerety to that failure. Who among us hasn't seen our efforts in something turn into a total disaster? In the best films, we connect deeply with the characters - their joys, sorrows, loves, successes, and failures. What makes Troll 2 so special is that rather than connect with the failures of the characters, we connect with the failures of the cast and crew. And we laugh. Not in a cruel way, but in the way we laugh when a baby makes a mess, when young lovers kiss awkardly, whenever, in someone's flaws, we see a bit of ourselves and recognize that these flaws are not fatal, but instead are part of what makes us human.