Zero or negative infinity

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VinegarBob
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Zero or negative infinity

Post by VinegarBob »

Do you ever rate movies zero? Or more accurately, do you ever give a movie the lowest rating on your particular scale?
If you do what does zero or [insert your lowest possible rating here] mean in your rating scale?
If you never rate a movie zero, why not?

I've heard many people talk about being unwilling to give something a '10' if it's not perfect, so they end up with a bunch of 9s instead. But doesn't that just make 9 the top score, which is effectively 10 by a different name then? (You should all by now be seeing Nigel Tufnel in your mind chewing gum, and saying to yourselves, 'Yeah, but these go to 11' :lol: ). Is any film, no matter how poorly written/acted/photographed etc. etc. deserving of at least one rating point, just for existing?

Looking at my ratings I have ten films rated 100 (on my scale of 0-100). I've also rated close to 200 movies a zero. Do I think the ten I rated 100 are perfect? No, I could probably pick out faults with each of them, however minor. Do I think all my zero rated movies are completely without any merit whatsoever? I suppose it depends on what you find meritorious. I mean they were lit in such a way as to enable me to discern what was going on up on the screen. They were edited so that I could at least follow what was happening, for the most part. And so on. Do those things warrant some sort of positive score? Personally I don't think they do.

I suspect with most people it's just a system of rating something relative to something else. In other words, 'this is better than that, and I gave that 99 so this gets 100'. So scoring 100 doesn't make it perfect, it's just the best of the bunch currently, and only very slightly better than the one that scored 99. Similarly, 'this is worse than that, and I gave that a 1, so this gets a 0'.

I know what you're thinking though, 'If that's the case then what happens if I already rated a film a 0, then I happen to watch The Hottie And The Nottie?' Well then you have a problem (two actually, if you assume that having watched The Hottie And The Nottie is the first), because Criticker can't handle negative numbers, and even if it could where would it all end?

paulofilmo
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Re: Zero or negative infinity

Post by paulofilmo »

I've heard many people talk about being unwilling to give something a '10' if it's not perfect, so they end up with a bunch of 9s instead. But doesn't that just make 9 the top score

until a 10 comes along

djross
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Re: Zero or negative infinity

Post by djross »

x
Last edited by djross on Wed Jul 19, 2023 10:46 pm, edited 1 time in total.

CMonster
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Re: Zero or negative infinity

Post by CMonster »

I've given a 0 to three movies. 1 is the worst movie adaptation of a book I've seen (in fairness the book isn't that good but I read it when I was young and it just clicked with me), 1 is the worst film I've even seen, and 1 is the same "film" djross rated a zero which was just depressing and its existence is offensive. The last one is probably the only one of the three that really deserves the 0.

mattorama12
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Re: Zero or negative infinity

Post by mattorama12 »

Rumplesink wrote:I suspect with most people it's just a system of rating something relative to something else. In other words, 'this is better than that, and I gave that 99 so this gets 100'. So scoring 100 doesn't make it perfect, it's just the best of the bunch currently, and only very slightly better than the one that scored 99. Similarly, 'this is worse than that, and I gave that a 1, so this gets a 0'.

I know what you're thinking though, 'If that's the case then what happens if I already rated a film a 0, then I happen to watch The Hottie And The Nottie?' Well then you have a problem (two actually, if you assume that having watched The Hottie And The Nottie is the first), because Criticker can't handle negative numbers, and even if it could where would it all end?


This describes how I rate things. 100 for me doesn't mean perfect and 0 doesn't mean zero value/merit/whatever. It is simply an attempt to set the 100 as the best movie there is, and 0 as the worst movie there is (without a necessarily linear relationship between 0 and 100).

I assume that there is no movie in existence or that will be made where I'll think to myself--wow, this is so much better than Goodfellas that it would be unfair to this movie to rank it the same. If that ever does happen, I'll rate that movie a 100, and move Goodfellas down to a 99.

On the other side of the scale, I imagine that there are probably hundreds (thousands?) of movies in existence that I would actually rate worse than Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus. So, I can't in good conscience give that a score of 0. But, having not seen them, I feel comfortable rating it a 1, which I suspect is the lowest score I'll ever actually give. The only likely exception would be rating something a 0 for more meta reasons as a sort of protest score.

VinegarBob
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Re: Zero or negative infinity

Post by VinegarBob »

djross wrote:I have, and will only ever have, one score of zero.


I suppose it's hard to imagine a film will come along that would knock The Fuhrer Gives The Jews A City - a propaganda film where the cast and crew were duped into making it then sent to Auschwitz for their trouble - off it's perch at the bottom of your heap. As a side note, you must really hate Schindler's List, rating it only 1 point above that on a scale of 0-100.

CMonster wrote:...and 1 is the same "film" djross rated a zero which was just depressing and its existence is offensive. The last one is probably the only one of the three that really deserves the 0.


I may be reading entirely too much into this, but you rated Schindler's List 90 out of 100. I'm intrigued!

mattorama12 wrote:On the other side of the scale, I imagine that there are probably hundreds (thousands?) of movies in existence that I would actually rate worse than Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus. So, I can't in good conscience give that a score of 0. But, having not seen them, I feel comfortable rating it a 1, which I suspect is the lowest score I'll ever actually give.


But...but...as you mention that means you'll probably never give a score of 0 because you'll always assume there are worse movies out there that you haven't seen. So really 1 is your lowest score! Also, it could be that Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus really is the worst movie you'll ever see. I'm with CMonster on this. If I were you I think I'd rate Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus a 0 until another movie comes along that you think is even worse - which may never happen - but if it does then you can make that movie a 0 and promote Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus to a 1 now that it's no longer the worst. :lol:

CosmicMonkey
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Re: Zero or negative infinity

Post by CosmicMonkey »

Roger Ebert never gave zero stars to a film out of the principle that the sheer amount of time, effort, skill and organization required simply to make and complete a feature-length film, no matter how terrible, was enough of an achievement to merit at-least half a star, and sentiment which I support, and now can begin to empathize with.

With the exception of one joke review, I have not given a score of zero to any film, though it is possible I may one day encounter something so broken and lacking in any value that it merits it. As for 100s, I am hesitant to awarding them, since I believe that it does imply a film to be flawless, but I have given it to two films of which I can not think of even the most minor criticism towards, and to one television series, which, though with some minor flaws, was so important both to the medium and to society as a whole that those flaws could be overlooked.

bowfinger
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Re: Zero or negative infinity

Post by bowfinger »

Rumple, did you think of this topic because of your Planet of Apes rating? :lol:

CMonster
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Re: Zero or negative infinity

Post by CMonster »

Rumplesink wrote:
CMonster wrote:...and 1 is the same "film" djross rated a zero which was just depressing and its existence is offensive. The last one is probably the only one of the three that really deserves the 0.


I may be reading entirely too much into this, but you rated Schindler's List 90 out of 100. I'm intrigued!

I was referring to The Fuhrer Gives the Jews a City. After rereading my first post I see how what I wrote could be confusing. Apologies.

VinegarBob
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Re: Zero or negative infinity

Post by VinegarBob »

bowfinger wrote:Rumple, did you think of this topic because of your Planet of Apes rating? :lol:



I did, actually. I noticed nobody else on that list gave it a 0 (although almost all of the ratings were tier 1) and it got me curious.

I think I got so sick of seeing so many movies that were godawful, or just like a hundred other movies that I developed a sort of 'zero tolerance' towards them, and if I couldn't think of anything good about a movie I would give it a zero. It works well enough, I guess. They all just go in the zero heap and I forget about them and move on. :)

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