rw2516

I'm sure there were much more interesting people living in France at the time of Romeo and Juliet, why isn't the story about them? They weren't even real people!
Titanic is just the setting for a retelling of Romeo and Juliet just as West Side Story did the same thing with street gangs.

dhmac

That is not a very good analogy. I'm not criticizing putting fictional characters in historical settings, I'm criticizing putting a less interesting story in place of a more interesting story, which in this case, I think the fictional story is a lot less interesting than the historically accurate one. As for Shakespeare, he wasn't one for historical accuracy, but he knew how to tell an interesting story with good characters. Being historically inaccurate is OK with me if it makes for a better story.

rw2516

If you mean a historical accurate telling of the sinking(docudrama), that would be an entirely different kind of movie altogether. This movie isn't about the Titanic, the ship is just the background setting for a love story. I'm positive there were far more interesting people on the ship. I doubt an accurate telling of what they did from boarding the ship till the sinking would be very interesting. A bio of someone on the ship would be interesting with the Titanic showing up about 3/4 into the movie. The bottom line is they set out to remake Romeo and Juliet foremost. The arguement would be how good a version of Shakespeare's story it is rather than how good a Titanic movie it is.

mndtrp

It's been a long time since I've seen it, so I don't know how I would feel now, but I used to like it quite a bit.

GoldenJCJ

I still like it very much. It's one of the few movies that make me tear up while watching it. Wallace's final "freedom" scene always gets to me when he sees his wife walking in the crowd.

Historically inaccurate but entertaining nonetheless.

Supermallet

This. Braveheart is a good, but flawed film. Gladiator is a bad and seriously flawed film.

whoopdido

Once again this thread is proving my point. Gladiator is getting shit on. 8.4 at imdb. 85% by the users at rottentomatoes and 8.7 by the users at metacritic.

And to the displeasure of many on this board, it received oscars for best picture and best actor. Despite getting shit on at this site, it appears that the majority of the movie going public loves Gladiator.

Supermallet

The majority of the movie going public loves Transformers 3.

PopcornTreeCt

I know people shit on Gladiator for a myriad of reasons but it's no worse than Braveheart. Braveheart isn't this deep, moving epic. It's just as silly as Gladiator but Gladiator excels with its badass arena battle scenes. Neither is high art and I'll take Gladiator over Braveheart any day of the week.

whoopdido

I love it when the minority tries to come up with reasons why the majority is wrong.

Michael Corvin

While both films may be flawed, Gladiator comes off as a second rate Braveheart.

They're both best picture winners for crying out loud. Even though I'm not a fan of Gladiator, I'd still take it over some of the best picture winners of the past decade.

emachine

Not a fan

GoldenJCJ

I actually just re-watched Gladiator again a few days ago. I'd only seen it one other time in the theater and it bored me to tears. However, re-watching it on Blu-ray (oddly enough, it came packed with Braveheart) I actually rather enjoyed it. Joaquin Phoenix gave a truly outstanding performance. Russell Crowe may not have been worthy of the Oscar but I think Phoenix's performance was.

Supermallet

I love it when people use majority opinion to suggest that people who disagree must be wrong.

MoviePage

I absolutely loved Braveheart when I was 17, and I watched it many times.

I feel that my tastes have...matured since then. I don't think it would be possible for me to sit through the whole thing again now. I voted "It's OK," because that's pretty much where it lives in my memory. It has some nice touches, but the characters are absurdly cartoonish and the whole thing is pretty ridiculous overall.

MoviePage

Also, Braveheart won the Best Picture Oscar for the same year that gave us Oliver Stone's Nixon, Tim Robbins' Dead Man Walking, David Fincher's Se7en, Terry Gilliam's Twelve Monkeys, Rob Roy, and the Ian McKellen Richard III, none of which were even nominated. So that whole discussion is a bit irrelevant to a discussion of quality, as it should be.

whoopdido

All else being equal, isn't it safe to assume that if 9 people think that the sky is blue and 1 person thinks that the sky is pink, then the sky must be blue?

If you can't use majority opinion as a way to come up with an answer to a question, what can you use?

mcnabb

I am a huge fan of Braveheart, but I still think Apollo 13 should have won the Oscar for Best Movie that year.

arminius

Look at my sig.

Philzilla

Maybe, but Romeo and Juliet takes place in Italy, and Italians aren't that interesting.

Sean O'Hara

Edward II was certainly gay, but the idea that he was a swishing fairy like something out of Kids in the Hall is absurd, and the way the film played Edward I killing his son's lover as a joke is just reprehensible -- and like most things in the movie, completely made up.

Sean O'Hara

A) You're conflating objective questions with subjective ones.

B) Objective truth is independent of popular opinion. They may coincide some of the time but not always. If the majority of people believe in ghosts, UFOs, or that JFK's assassination was a conspiracy, that doesn't make it so.

Sondheim

So if someone goes to a popular and acclaimed movie and ends up disliking it, we can know that they're wrong? Even if they are able to articulately explain why they didn't like it?

Wow, that's kind of absurd.

First, you seemed to have missed a fairly fundamental component of art, which is that it's (largely) subjective (there may be certain elements of aesthetics that can be judged objectively, but whether someone thinks an overall film is good or not is a subjective thing.) A question like "What color is the sky" is mostly objective - that is, the sky is either blue or it isn't. Even then, one might quibble and say that it's a specific shade of blue, or it could be that it's a different color at the moment due to storms of pollution or whatever. Or it could be that the person is color blind, and within their own subjective experience the sky is not blue but some other color. (But that's all beside the point - we'll concede that, to most people, at most times during the day, the sky is blue.)

Of course, to twist your example around, if ten people were asked "What color is the sky, generally?" and nine people said bright yellow and only one person said blue, we would still know that the sky is generally blue to most people at most times. That might seem like an unlikely scenario, but there have been plenty of cases throughout the history of the world (into the modern day) when people have held demonstrably false beliefs. There are much better ways at arriving at truth than public consensus.

That's all irrelevant anyways because we're not talking about objective facts here. If the question had been "Do a majority of the people who have seen Braveheart or Gladiator enjoy them?" the answer would be yes - and one could use things like IMDb scores and Amazon reviews and public opinion polls to verify the claim.

On the other hand, the actual question under discussion is "Is Braveheart a good movie?" which is largely a subjective question, and therefore not subject to either consensus or scientific testing. Even if everyone in the world but you liked a movie - and I'm assuming we've all had times when we found ourselves disliking a popular and highly-acclaimed film - you wouldn't be wrong for disliking it or thinking it was bad. I really hope, whenever that happens, you're not sitting there thinking "Well, I didn't think I liked it, but I see that it has high ratings on RottenTomatoes and the IMDb so I must be wrong." It can be worthwhile to find out why other people like it so much, but you're certainly not obligated to then change your opinion to match theirs. They're not wrong for enjoying the film, but you're not wrong for disagreeing with them either.

tl;dr version - You're not wrong for agreeing or disagreeing with the majority about any given film. Also, your example is silly, and opinions aren't subject to consensus polls or the scientific method.

Edit: What Sean O'Hara said much more succinctly.

Burnt Thru

I don't think fighting in the common manner was considered being a gentlemanly thing to do. It was just the way of the world. That the Scots effectively ambushed the English force is smart by todays view of warfare but was shocking in the extreme to those living at the time. And even to today's viewing public I doubt it would show the Scottish forces off as particularly heroic to be butchering drowning men. Fighting in a field on even ground looks much more like honour and chivalry and all those things Wallace is played to represent in Braveheart.

Really? I just think it's creepy. Maybe this is why there are so many serial killers in America..

whoopdido

All I'm saying is that people in the minority can't get pissed because most people don't think like them. If 90% of the moviegoing public likes The Godfather, for example, the 10% that don't like it shouldn't go spouting off trying to belittle the 90% that do.

You're perfectly entitled to not like a certain movie or a certain style of movie and you could very well have perfectly good reasons why you don't like it, but don't waste your time trying to change the mind of the overwelming majority that do that particular movie or genre.

I've been in the situation numerous times. There are many movies I don't like that EVERYBODY seems to love. No Country for Old Men is a perfect example. That seems to be universally loved, but I hate it. I'm not going to say that the 90% that do like it are morons or sheep or whatever. I just realize I'm in the minority and keep my mouth shut.