u/Final-Pin-9664

I absolutely love MauLer’s videos, and there’s a lot I agree with him on when it comes to criticism and analysis. I’m posting here because I have a small channel where I make theories about different TV shows and films, but recently I’ve wanted to start making longer critiques and analyses of movies myself. Because of that, I’ve been trying to really think about what makes criticism consistent, and I wanted to post my conclusion here to see what other people think about the subject.

Also, I’m posting this here specifically because I genuinely feel like this is one of the only communities online that still has the attention span to read something this long haha.

There’s one thing I disagree with pretty heavily though: the idea of something being “objectively good” or “objectively bad.”

Now before I get into where I disagree with MauLer, I want to first go over everything I actually agree with him on, because honestly, that’s most of it. I also want to briefly touch on a trend I’ve been seeing online recently, especially on Reddit, where people constantly confuse consensus with objectivity.

I'll drag this into 3 parts (please correct me if I missquote MauLer; if I do so, that is not my intention. I'm writing this solely on my memory of the recent videos and streams that I watched from him):

Part 1: Rating sites do not provide objectivity within TV or Film; they provide a consensus of opinions.

I think Mauler himself has pointed out examples of fake objectivity before. In his first A Critique of The Force Awakens, he talked about people online using ratings as proof that something is objectively good or bad, and I still see this all the time. People will say a show is objectively amazing because critics gave it a high Rotten Tomatoes score, or they’ll say Breaking Bad is objectively the greatest show ever made because it’s the highest-rated show on IMDb. But that isn’t objectivity, that’s consensus.

Consensus is just a collection of shared subjective opinions. A high score proves widespread appeal or popularity, not scientific or universal truth. For example, look at the FNAF 2 movie. It has a much higher audience score than critic score. Clearly, audiences liked it more than critics did. But if someone says, “The critics rated it low, therefore it is objectively bad and I don’t even need to watch it,” that makes no sense. You still have to actually watch the film and judge it yourself. Ratings can inform opinions, but they are not objective fact.

Then you have the opposite situation with movies like Melania, which has a high critic score and a low audience score, or the Michael Jackson film, which has lower critic scores but higher audience scores. So which one is objectively good then? Critics? Audiences? IMDb? Rotten Tomatoes? Metacritic? None of them are objective truth. They’re all just different consensuses from different groups of people.

And this is why I think the “objectively best show” argument falls apart too. Breaking Bad is ranked #1 on IMDb, but Avatar: The Last Airbender has higher Rotten Tomatoes scores, and on Metacritic they’re around the same level. So which site determines the “objective” answer? They all measure different groups of opinions, which is why I think people misuse the word “objective” when what they really mean is that there’s a strong consensus that something is good. Those are two completely different things.

Part 2: Objectivity within Film and TV

This is where I think Mauler gets things REALLY right, because there are objective facts within stories, and those facts absolutely matter when analyzing writing quality. Anakin Skywalker losing his limbs by the end of Revenge of the Sith is an objective fact within the story. Nobody can reasonably argue against it because the film directly shows it happening. In the same way, the physical characteristics of the Resistance bombers in The Last Jedi are also objective facts. Saying they are extremely slow, lightly armored, tightly packed together, and rely on manually dropping unguided bombs directly over targets is an objective fact.

The problem comes from how those facts interact with the established worldbuilding of Star Wars. The Last Jedi takes place immediately after The Force Awakens, which itself takes place decades after the original trilogy. Yet somehow, the Resistance is using bombers that are dramatically less practical than the Y-Wings and B-Wings that already existed decades earlier. The original trilogy established that smaller, faster, shielded bombers with hyperdrives existed, so introducing giant “flying bricks” that crawl toward targets and explode in chain reactions creates a major consistency problem.

The bombers are also packed so closely together that when one explodes, it wipes out the rest of the fleet in a domino effect. That is not a subjective preference about whether someone “liked” the scene or not, it is an observable tactical absurdity built directly into the scenario. The film itself shows a military formation where your own ships effectively become weapons against each other.

Then there’s the issue of the bombs themselves. The movie visually presents them as falling downward in space like traditional gravity bombs. Fans have tried to explain this afterward through artificial gravity or magnetic launching systems, but the actual film language frames them as standard falling bombs in a vacuum. Even if explanations can be invented later, the scene itself creates confusion because it visually contradicts how space combat is normally understood.

This is where I think objective criticism becomes legitimate. Worldbuilding relies on internal consistency. If a universe establishes certain rules and technology, later installments cannot contradict those rules without explanation and still expect the audience not to question it. The issue is not simply “I dislike the bombers,” the issue is that the movie introduces inferior and nonsensical military technology purely to manufacture tension for one sequence, even though more advanced and logical alternatives already existed in the same universe decades earlier.

That, to me, is the difference between subjective enjoyment and objective criticism. Someone can still enjoy the scene emotionally, but the logical inconsistencies within the writing and worldbuilding are still there, whether people enjoy the movie or not.

Part 3: There is no such thing as an "Objectively Good or Bad piece of Art/Film"

This is where I ultimately think MauLer’s “objective” approach starts to fall apart, especially when he applies hyper-literal logic to stories that are not trying to function like perfectly mechanical simulations. The biggest example of this for me was his criticism of Avatar: The Last Airbender. The backlash happened because a lot of people felt his method stopped being analysis and started becoming an attempt to force a mythic fantasy show into rigid real-world logic.

One major example was his criticism of the submarines during the Day of Black Sun invasion. MauLer argued that it was an objective script error not to use the submarines for the entire trip to the Fire Nation so the invasion force could remain hidden underwater. The problem is that the show itself directly explains why they cannot do this. The submarines have oxygen limitations and cannot sustain the entire journey underwater. The dialogue literally addresses the issue. So the criticism ended up feeling less like discovering a plot hole and more like missing information the show already provided. But again, that isn't saying that you can't find objective flaws; he just missed that detail in this specific scene. Which he himself stated in his TFA Part 1 essay, happens from time to time, that is okay.

Another example was his criticism of Katara discovering Aang in the iceberg. He argued that it was an unbelievable coincidence that she happened to find the Avatar exactly when the world needed him most. But this is where genre matters. Avatar is a mythic fantasy story built around things like balance and spirituality. Stories like this are not trying to imitate random real-world probability. The “chosen hero appears when the world needs them” idea is foundational to fairy tales, myths, and epic fantasy in general. Treating that as an objective writing flaw feels like criticizing the genre itself rather than the execution.

His focus on travel times and Appa’s flight speed had similar issues. He tried mapping out distances between locations and calculating whether Appa could realistically travel that fast. But animated fantasy storytelling often uses visual shorthand and pacing compression. A montage of Appa flying over landscapes is not necessarily intended to function like a literal GPS timeline. It is communicating emotional pacing and narrative movement. Applying strict real-world aerodynamics to a magical flying bison in a stylized animated world misses the purpose of how fantasy storytelling works.

The same thing happened with Avatar Roku’s appearances. MauLer criticized Roku as if he randomly appears whenever the plot needs help, but the series actually establishes consistent spiritual rules around how those manifestations work. Roku appears through spiritual locations, solstices, or through Aang channeling the Avatar State and his past lives. The show treats this as spiritual mysticism, not as a mechanical superpower system with scientific precision. I think his standards for internal consistency can sometimes become too rigid when applied to mythic or symbolic storytelling.

This is why I think there are limits to purely “objective” criticism. Stories are not engineering blueprints. Filmmakers and writers sometimes intentionally bend realism, coincidence, or logic in order to create emotional payoff.

A perfect example is Hitchcock’s Vertigo. Scottie suffers from severe acrophobia throughout the film, yet during the climax he suddenly overcomes it and climbs the tower because of his emotional desperation and obsession. If someone applied hyper-literal checklist criticism to the film, they could call this an “objective flaw” because trauma and psychological conditions do not realistically disappear in a single moment. Judy also makes irrational and self-destructive choices throughout the film that could be criticized as inconsistent if viewed only through cold logical analysis.

But Vertigo is not attempting to be a clinical psychology documentary. It is a psychological nightmare about identity. The emotional truth matters more than mechanical realism. The irrationality is part of the atmosphere and meaning of the film itself.

That is where I think MauLer’s method can become too restrictive. Internal consistency absolutely matters, and objective facts within stories do matter, but stories are also art. They are emotional experiences shaped by tone, genre, symbolism, myth, and dramatic intent. If criticism becomes so hyper-literal that fantasy, or emotional expression are automatically treated as “objective flaws,” then eventually almost every great story ever made can be reduced into a checklist of supposed errors.

Conclusion:

So ultimately, this is where my conclusion lands. I do think objective flaws can exist within films. Continuity errors, contradictions, etc, can all objectively exist within a story. Those flaws do not magically disappear just because somebody personally enjoys the movie. I completely agree with MauLer on that part. Subjective enjoyment does not erase flaws.

Where I disagree is the leap from “this film has objective flaws” to “therefore the film is objectively bad.”

I don’t think art works that way.

Some flaws, or unrealistic elements, can actually become part of what gives a film its identity. Vertigo is a perfect example. If you stripped away every emotionally driven moment that doesn’t perfectly align with real-world psychology, the movie would fundamentally stop being Vertigo. Those elements are part of why the film works emotionally and thematically.

The same applies to different genres and styles of storytelling. Avatar: The Last Airbender is a mythic fantasy cartoon. It uses spiritual guidance and exaggerated travel logic because that is part of the storytelling style. Aang emerging from an iceberg at the perfect time fits the tone and mythic structure of the series. Appa traveling at whatever speed the story emotionally requires is part of animated fantasy storytelling. Applying the exact same standards you would apply to something grounded like Breaking Bad doesn’t always make sense because the genres are trying to accomplish completely different things.

The Star Wars prequels are another good example for me personally (yes, I said personally, correct me if I'm wrong on the Prequels). As a kid, I absolutely loved the dialogue. When I grew up I was not exposed to the massive online prequel backlash, so I mostly experienced the movies through enjoyment, memes, and discussions with friends. I genuinely found a lot of the dialogue memorable and funny, in its own weird way. Even now, my friends and I still quote lines from the prequels constantly because we enjoy them.

Years later, after watching criticism videos and hearing people break down the dialogue writing, I understood why many people hated it. I can absolutely see the arguments now. I understand why people view some of the dialogue as awkward. Those criticisms are completely fair.

But at the same time, understanding those flaws did not suddenly erase my enjoyment of the movies. The flaws still objectively exist, but that does not automatically transform the films into “objectively bad” art. If the dialogue had been written differently, would the movies technically function better? Maybe. But they also might lose some of the strange uniqueness that made me love them in the first place.

That is why I think objective criticism has limits. You can objectively identify flaws inside a story, but you cannot objectively measure the final emotional value of the experience itself. Art is not mathematics. Two people can acknowledge the exact same flaws and still come away with completely different feelings about the work overall.

So my position is basically this: objective flaws can absolutely exist within films, and liking a movie subjectively does not make those flaws disappear. But at the same time, you cannot take those flaws and mathematically conclude that a movie is therefore “objectively good” or “objectively bad.”

So, that’s ultimately where my conclusion lands. I absolutely love MauLer and his videos, and honestly, I think he’s probably the best video essayist I’ve ever watched. His attention to detail and ability to explain why scenes do or do not work are genuinely impressive, and I agree with a huge amount of what he says about writing and criticism.

That’s why I think two people can acknowledge the exact same flaws in a movie and still come away with completely different experiences. One person may see awkward dialogue, while another sees memorable charm. One person may see unrealistic fantasy logic, while another sees mythic storytelling that perfectly fits the tone of the world. Objective observations can exist, but the final judgment of whether art is “good” or “bad” will always involve subjectivity at some level.

And despite disagreeing with him on that point, I still absolutely love his content. I’m currently watching his 17-hour Star Wars Outlaws video and having an absolute blast with it. It’ll probably take me a few days to finish, but honestly, it’s already one of the best YouTube videos I’ve watched in a long time.

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