As many of the casual and professional “critics” these days offer up their cinematic dissections with neither a usable numerical rating system nor an adequate explanation of their feelings, I find it prudent to reveal the reasoning behind Soap Opera Phantom and the system that I shall employ from hereon out. This manifesto will show my intentions for the site as well as the methods that I will use; in writing it, I hope to clear up any misconceptions about what I am doing here and, perhaps more importantly, how I aim to do it.
This blog is meant to provide those of you who feel that modern movies – and the inherently broken review culture surrounding them – have become, to put it kindly, gruesome. Mainstream (and a large bit of independent) cinema has become ceaselessly stagnant and fundamentally contrary to that which made the art of film so great in decades past; like a junkyard dog tethered to a post by way of unbreakable chain, Hollywood continues to chase itself in frantic circles and gnash away blindly at anything new or meaningful in its endless pursuit of mass revenue. Creativity and ingenuity have given way to overproduction and politics; films that once stood proudly as bastions of pop culture – as cornerstones of old suburbia – are now overtly plagiarized or outright remade into digital tools to advertise products, enforce social agendas upon theater patrons, and perpetuate the status quo imposed by the media to theatergoers who deserve so, so much better.
While the Internet has indeed provided a voice to armchair critics such as myself, it has simultaneously flooded the world with countless reviews that do nothing to actually assess films critically and instead aggregate into one tremendous echo chamber wherein dissent is met with scathing vitriol; ultimately, the entire premise of the review – the intrinsic meaning of criticism in the first place – is destroyed. This brings us to the first reason Soap Opera Phantom exists: to lambast the toxic and deceitful review “culture” of the day and reinstate genuine and fearless film appreciation and analysis.
It may be worth mentioning that many of the pictures I hold dear to my heart are not conventionally regarded as classic or masterful. This is not an issue – beauty lies within the eye of the beholder, and those forgotten treasures of the silver screen do not need the approval of the masses to shine; sometimes, the best film is the one you found as a child in the corners of your local video store, with neon monsters grinning upon painted backdrops all over the yellowing VHS cover sleeve, inviting you to take a chance and let yourself be taken to a new place altogether for the night. A movie need not be a commercial success nor an awards show darling to be great, memorable, or simply full of heart.
Here emerges the second reason for this blog: Soap Opera Phantom seeks to address not only classics of cinema, but also underappreciated gems that decades of passionate filmmakers have provided us with. For nearly a century of movie production in America and beyond, talented individuals have created worlds of boundless imagination and told stories of myth, magic, and monsters that have often slipped through the cracks of film criticism and fallen to the wayside. These so-called cult films were often crafted from the ground up with little or no post production and editing software to speak of, and so most typically relied on analog technology and tangible effects – such as props and costumes – to draw viewers in to entirely new realms that challenged their conceptions of what the silver screen was capable of and set their minds ablaze. While they did not always provide a social or political message or any deep reflections on life, they were nearly always genuine and true in their formation and execution. As such, they stand taller than their modern counterparts; they come from an era when craftsmanship, hard work, and creativity superseded marketability and advertising capacity, and it was apparent every time the theater lights went down.
This brings me to the third and final objective of this blog: to review modern movies with the same rigorous standards and expectations reserved for classic films. Many films nowadays aim merely to entertain, and many succeed, but many fail. Any movie deemed interesting or creative enough to merit a viewing merits a review on Soap Opera Phantom, and that review shall always be an honest and uncompromising one based on the benchmarks of yore.
Before I conclude this apology for the site and its central dogma, I feel it necessary to explain my numerical rating system. I will use a ten-point scale with the following demarcations:
0.0-2.9: Sewage
3.0-4.0: Poor
4.1-5.9: Average
6.0-7.0: Good
7.1-8.5: Exceptional
8.6-10.0: Mythological
As such, it is evident that a 7.5 is not an average film but an exceptional one, and by that same token, a 5.0 represents not a failing grade, but rather a run-of-the-mill one. A good rule of thumb is that anything above a 5 is worth watching at least once, and anything below is nothing to feel sorrow over missing – although a number alone cannot substitute for the experience of seeing a film for yourself in any meaningful way.
While my views on cinema may seem Draconian at first, I must stress that this is not the case. This blog merely seeks to honestly and fearlessly review films both new and old; my word is in no case the final one, nor is it the only one out there. The most that you ever stand to really lose from going to a movie – or renting one online – is a chunk of your paycheck and a few hours of your time, and if you are anything like me, the very experience of going to the theater is enough fun to make up for even the worst of movies.
With that in mind, I should stress that I do not want to discourage people from watching films and forming their own opinions; Soap Opera Phantom is just here to provide a few twisted little insights murmured from beneath the floorboards of the world’s stage with the meager hope that they do not fall strictly on deaf ears.
-Soap
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