Guy Ritchie is one of my favourite movie directors. I loved the characters and storytelling in *Snatch*, and have been a fan ever since. After the release of *King Arthur: Legend of the Sword*, I started to miss the original, clever Ritchie movies. Maybe Guy had lost his touch? But then *The Gentlemen* hit the screens and it felt like Guy Ritchie was back. What had changed? My guess is that higher budgets constrain creativity.
So, I crunched the numbers and produced these graphs. Lo and behold, the lower budget flicks are much more variable: some big wins and some big losses.
Sources: IMDB, The Numbers. Tools: Google Sheets, like a boss.
If there was an objective measurement of script quality, I suspect you’d find an inverse relation between script quality and budget. Small budget films must sweat the script. Big budget films have too many cooks in the kitchen and then try to fix it in post.
Ngl I loved a couple of good flops. Operation fortune for example… It was shit but guy Ritchie and Hugh Grant is *chef’s kiss
If these budgets aren’t inflation adjusted I think that takes a lot away from this analysis.
Alternate explanation:
– Higher budget movies are more visible.
– More visible movies get more reviews.
– The more ratings are being averaged, the harder it is to end up with an extreme (good or bad) average result.
Could maybe confirm or disprove this by looking at the number of votes that were averaged into the IMDB ratings, and seeing if those are a stronger or weaker correlation.
It makes sense that more money involved, means more people involved doing more things, some “design by committee”, some “tragedy of the commons”
Need another line in for rev though… just because critics pan it doesn’t mean it flopped. Ask Michael Bay.
less creative control = more mediocrity.
big money involves people providing the big money sticking their noses into your project
Higher budget means more risk for losses so less artistic risk taken.
Counterpoint: big budget movies are by design intended to reach larger audiences and thus by design are less riveting, high in quality, creativity, novelty, etc, because all of those things are too risky.
It’s like comparing Taylor Swift’s shake It off to Tool’s Schism. There is *some level of objectivity* to music, and I don’t think any serious listener would say shake it off compares, even remotely, to Schism. It’s obviously the lesser song. But it was designed to reach more audiences, and it did. (For quick reference, Schism has about 150m plays on YouTube music, whereas shake it off has about 3+ Billion). You would NEVER get to 3 Billion views with even the most amazing prog rock tool song ever, as most people just wouldn’t “get it.” (I’m not a giant tool fan btw, I just thought they were an easy example).
And of course, this isn’t specific to music or movies. It’s a common theme and almost any medium that produces content: Avant garde vs mass consumption.
A sample of… 16… What made you choose these?
Higher budget = Pressure from those providing the budget to play it safe
How did you arrive at this list of movies? I like them all but obviously aren’t a superset of movies
Interesting graph but I think it needs a larger sample size to be credible
I’m not sure I agree with the trend lines on this chart.
If you remove Snatch, Lock Stock, and Swept Away the trend line is essentially flat. Those are also his first three movies he created. Isn’t it also likely that as a new director Ritchie had higher variance in quality and as his career went on he fell into a groove and became most consistent with his quality (for better or worse).
It’s really amazing that Lock Stock was made for just over a million bucks. They really got their money’s worth on that one.
I was surprised to see this was about Guy Ritchie because I’ve had the exact same observation through years. Then I was surprised again to see The Gentleman’s budget now. I liked it quite a bit back when I watched it and remember thinking that “this is his best high budget movie”. Thanks for this.
So these are just cherry picked? There have been a lot more movies than you have dots since 1998.
That alone makes this misleading in my opinion. Need more clarifications to make a cherry picked chart like this.
18 comments
Guy Ritchie is one of my favourite movie directors. I loved the characters and storytelling in *Snatch*, and have been a fan ever since. After the release of *King Arthur: Legend of the Sword*, I started to miss the original, clever Ritchie movies. Maybe Guy had lost his touch? But then *The Gentlemen* hit the screens and it felt like Guy Ritchie was back. What had changed? My guess is that higher budgets constrain creativity.
So, I crunched the numbers and produced these graphs. Lo and behold, the lower budget flicks are much more variable: some big wins and some big losses.
Sources: IMDB, The Numbers. Tools: Google Sheets, like a boss.
If there was an objective measurement of script quality, I suspect you’d find an inverse relation between script quality and budget. Small budget films must sweat the script. Big budget films have too many cooks in the kitchen and then try to fix it in post.
Ngl I loved a couple of good flops. Operation fortune for example… It was shit but guy Ritchie and Hugh Grant is *chef’s kiss
If these budgets aren’t inflation adjusted I think that takes a lot away from this analysis.
Alternate explanation:
– Higher budget movies are more visible.
– More visible movies get more reviews.
– The more ratings are being averaged, the harder it is to end up with an extreme (good or bad) average result.
Could maybe confirm or disprove this by looking at the number of votes that were averaged into the IMDB ratings, and seeing if those are a stronger or weaker correlation.
It makes sense that more money involved, means more people involved doing more things, some “design by committee”, some “tragedy of the commons”
Need another line in for rev though… just because critics pan it doesn’t mean it flopped. Ask Michael Bay.
less creative control = more mediocrity.
big money involves people providing the big money sticking their noses into your project
Higher budget means more risk for losses so less artistic risk taken.
Counterpoint: big budget movies are by design intended to reach larger audiences and thus by design are less riveting, high in quality, creativity, novelty, etc, because all of those things are too risky.
It’s like comparing Taylor Swift’s shake It off to Tool’s Schism. There is *some level of objectivity* to music, and I don’t think any serious listener would say shake it off compares, even remotely, to Schism. It’s obviously the lesser song. But it was designed to reach more audiences, and it did. (For quick reference, Schism has about 150m plays on YouTube music, whereas shake it off has about 3+ Billion). You would NEVER get to 3 Billion views with even the most amazing prog rock tool song ever, as most people just wouldn’t “get it.” (I’m not a giant tool fan btw, I just thought they were an easy example).
And of course, this isn’t specific to music or movies. It’s a common theme and almost any medium that produces content: Avant garde vs mass consumption.
A sample of… 16… What made you choose these?
Higher budget = Pressure from those providing the budget to play it safe
How did you arrive at this list of movies? I like them all but obviously aren’t a superset of movies
Interesting graph but I think it needs a larger sample size to be credible
I’m not sure I agree with the trend lines on this chart.
If you remove Snatch, Lock Stock, and Swept Away the trend line is essentially flat. Those are also his first three movies he created. Isn’t it also likely that as a new director Ritchie had higher variance in quality and as his career went on he fell into a groove and became most consistent with his quality (for better or worse).
It’s really amazing that Lock Stock was made for just over a million bucks. They really got their money’s worth on that one.
I was surprised to see this was about Guy Ritchie because I’ve had the exact same observation through years. Then I was surprised again to see The Gentleman’s budget now. I liked it quite a bit back when I watched it and remember thinking that “this is his best high budget movie”. Thanks for this.
So these are just cherry picked? There have been a lot more movies than you have dots since 1998.
That alone makes this misleading in my opinion. Need more clarifications to make a cherry picked chart like this.
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