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Originally Posted by Dante Hicks
If you genuinely think Queen of the Damned is a better movie than Bladerunner then there is no hope for you.
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Some people don't get nuances and subtlety. In fact a lot of people don't. That's why satire is possible, and why it's funny. It also makes things like Bladerunner so enjoyable. People either don't know or are too lazy to put things in historical contexts. I'd say that to them Bladerunner is just the sum of it's parts, the existential experience of viewing it. They don't know anything about cyberpunk and new wave. They can't make, or are again too lazy, to make connections between fictional symbolism and their lives (unless such symbolism comes in the forum of stale and jejune quotes and memetic devices that make you want to put a hole in your head).
When I see a movie I pay attention to more than just the obvious. I notice camera placement and how the shots are placed. I pay attention to the colors used, I pay attention what's laying around outside the room or outside environment - beyond what the director is wanting you to focus on. I look for foreshadowing and patterns in the story. I sometimes read up about the story and the context of the story before I go see the movie. I also don't take words from the screen play at face value - they're not being delivered by the actors ad hominem, they were written down and thought through before production on the movie began. It's symbolism, and it can have varied meaning and levels of abstraction.
That's the thing that people who place such value on banal action sequences and big fireballs and explosions will never understand. They see establishment critics (not your local dime newspaper critic) as elitist nerds because of petty ignorance and laziness. It's been my experience that such people see their own life with the same naive simplistic perspective, and they lead their lives with a blind and frustrated fatalistic attitude because they don't understand what's going on. The best part is that they don't even know that they don't understand. They don't know what they don't see in the movie, and they don't know what they aren't seeing in their lives. It's entertaining and depressing at the same time. It's why people vote for Bush.