Welcome to the House of Fun

This might be a bumpy ride than normal. I just started pondering this and I'm not sure I've got this thought worked out yet.

What is fun? I know, that's much like asking 'what is funny?' and trying to explain it scientifically. It's not possible, its not interesting, and its not funny. Certainly there is a 'fun' reaction to things and, in most people, this reaction seems to fade with age, perhaps due to the responsibilities of life, perhaps due to cumulative experiences, or perhaps due to the fact that 'eliminating' fun is considered part of growing up. Whatever. If I keep the question too open at this stage, I'm writing a book and that's not the goal here. Not at this point anyway.

For the sake of creating a more focused discussion, we will agree that geeks have fun with whatever they are geeky about, remembering how we've defined 'geek' in the past. When exposed to their subject of interest, the geek, no matter the age of the subject, has a chemical reaction occur in their brain that creates a feeling of enjoyment that is considered to be 'fun'. It's not that this segment of the population is the only one that can experience fun from the subject of interest, but, largely, the geek has become a geek for that subject of interest because of the 'fun' reaction within them. For example, not everyone that attends a baseball game is a baseball geek, but baseball geeks are more likely to attend a baseball game or to be drawn to a baseball game. Squares are rectangles but not all rectangles are squares. Or something like that.

Let's focus the discussion further. Movies. There are people that attend movies for the sake of going, people that expect certain things from the movies they see, people that just enjoy the night out, etc. The audience for any given movie is likely to be a mix of people there for many different reasons. Most will have differing reactions to what they see and hear. Based on my general geek friends, I'm going to generalize people into three basic groups, knowing that people can move from one group to another.

Positive: this group is out for the movie to show them a good time. They will focus on what they enjoyed in the film. Plot holes or mistakes caused by editing may concern them but they will often consider 'filling the gap' to be their job. It's not that this group is not critical, that they blindly enjoy everything they see, or that they are easily entertained, they feel that the filmmakers were trying to entertain them and it's their job to be entertained so they try to fill that role.

Neutral: this group tends to flip between positive and negative regularly based on the subject matter of the film so it's not easy to anticipate their reaction to a film. They may react very positively to one film and very negatively to another. They may respect a positive reaction to a movie they didn't enjoy or a negative reaction to a movie they did enjoy. They are more likely to not have an extreme reaction to a film, being able to enjoy it without professing love or hate. Not wanting to demand the return of money and time is considered more acceptable to them. This group tries to enjoy what the filmmakers provide them but know that, sometimes, things don't come together in the right way to make something they'll enjoy but maybe someone else will enjoy it and that's okay.

Negative: this group tends to be more demanding of the entertainment placed in front of them. They are considered 'negative' only because they often have a more negative reaction to movies. It's not that they necessarily WANT to hate the movie in question, but that some part of it was just so bad to them that they can't help but focus on that as opposed to the parts of the movie that were good to them. Perhaps its a plot hole, or many plot holes, perhaps its one of the cast that doesn't quite 'fit', perhaps its a special effect that doesn't go off correctly. Perhaps it's just not unique enough, feeling very generic. They will often have a list of reasons why they feel the way they do about the movie in question. They may expect a movie to have some sort of message, even if hidden. This group can't understand why more movies can't come together and be 'right' in the ways that their favorite movies are 'right'.

There are more extreme versions of all of these categories. There are positives that just love everything blindly. There are neutrals that get dragged to a lot of movies that aren't in their areas of interest. There are negatives that can't explain why a movie sucked but insist that it did. There are certainly some variations in these basic levels, some details left unexpressed, but, looking at many of my friends, this is what I see as those default areas.

The positives feel that the negatives can't have fun at the movies, or don't understand that some movies are just there to be uncomplicated fun, 'popcorn movies'. The negatives feel that the positives are too forgiving, or too blind, to see the problems in the film and why they are problems. Then there's usually some sort of yelling about foreign films and subtitles.

They are, of course, all right. It's just their reaction to the movie and there's nothing necessarily wrong with a reaction. Everyone has an opinion and has a right to it. There's a lot of factors that build into that reaction.

Expectation. What did the trailer make the movie look like? Were all the funny bits in the trailer to make it look like more of a comedy than it was? Did it look like an action film but was a satire? Sometimes you expect one thing and get another. Sometimes that's a good thing and sometimes not. 'I didn't think it would be as funny as it was!' 'The trailer made it look like it was going to be a big action movie but it got all talky and dark at the end.' 'I expected zombies. There were no zombies. Boo!' Often, the lower the expectation, the easier it is to enjoy the product involved.

Source material. Is there any? This can often feed into expectation. Is it based on a book? TV show? Comic Book? A remake of an earlier movie? How familiar are you with the source material? Not at all? A little? Mostly? A lot? How faithful do you expect the filmmakers to be to the source material? How faithful did the filmmakers say they'd be to the source material? Positives are more likely to go with the flow of the movie version, even if very familiar with the original source material, judging the filmed version on its own merits as it's an adaptation. Negatives are more likely to expect the filmed version to be like the source material as what's the point of adapting something and tossing out most of the elements of the original?

Mood going into the theater. Rough day? Grouchy? Have to get up early tomorrow? It might be harder for the movie to win you over. Chipper? Feeling comfortable after a good meal? You're more likely to enjoy what you see.

A consider myself a neutral and mood is important to me. A bad mood that's dispelled by a movie usually gets a positive reaction from me. It must have been good to get me out of that mood, right? The converse is also true. That movie must have been pretty bad to wreck such a good mood.

If this makes no sense or feels incomplete, well, I warned you. Just remember that the title of the blog only promises rambling. I need to eat lunch now anyway.