It’s fascinating how there’s often a dissonance between what we enjoy, and what we know to be genuinely good.

There’s an idea of objectivity in art, particularly film, that is established in screenwriting classes where they use words like “need” and “must” to describe how someone is supposed to shuffle sand around their own personal sandbox. Hopefully we can learn to take elements of these “rules” with a grain of salt, but some rules genuinely have a point. In most films, you want a level of cohesion and understanding. If a person's life is at stake, it’s probably in the best interests of the filmmaker if we’ve grown fond of them, or we’re able to feel how devastating of an effect their demise will have on the storyline that we’ve hopefully grown to be invested in. Then there are elements of general logic and reasoning, visual cohesion and immersion, etc etc. But, to what extent do these things ultimately matter if we’re having a good time?

It all begins with an idea.