The inverse cost and quality law attempts to formalize any Hollywood cinema production characterized by a large budget and, by negative correlation, poorly perceived critical attributes. American writer David Foster Wallace[1][2] coined the term and established the genre's attributes, symptoms or diagnostic features in a 1998 article titled, "F/X Porn"[3] by which Wallace primarily critiques the weaknesses of Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991), a blockbuster[4] film directed by James Cameron.
Overview
editDavid Foster Wallace, in a 1998 essay which first appeared in Waterstone's Magazine and was later anthologized in the essay collection Both Flesh and Not, posited that Terminator 2: Judgment Day was the archetype or apotheosis of the inverse cost and quality law:[5][6]
"'T2' is thus also the first and best instance of a paradoxical law that appears to hold true for the entire F/X Porn genre. It is called the Inverse Cost and Quality Law, and it states very simply that the larger a movie's budget is, the shittier that movie is going to be. The case of "T2" shows that much of the ICQL's force derives from simple financial logic. A film that would cost hundreds of millions of dollars to make is going to get financial backing if and only if its investors can be maximally – maximally – sure that at the very least they will get their hundreds of millions of dollars back – i.e. a megabudget movie must not fail (and "failure" here means anything less than a runaway box-office hit) and must thus adhere to certain reliable formulae that have been shown by precedent to maximally ensure a runaway hit."
Despite the dislike by Wallace, Terminator 2: Judgment Day is critically acclaimed. It won four Academy Awards, and review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reports 92% positive reviews.[7]
Notes
edit- ^ "David Foster Wallace Biography and Information about the author". DavidFosterWallace.com. Archived from the original on 14 September 2008. Retrieved 12 March 2022.
- ^ "David Foster Wallace Found Dead". Huffington Post. September 13, 2008.
- ^ "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2009-05-20. Retrieved 2008-09-15.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link) - ^ "Terminator 2: Judgment Day - Box Office Mojo".
- ^ Foster Wallace, David. "F/X Porn". Waterstone's Magazine. Retrieved 18 February 2014.
- ^ Foster Wallace, David (November 6, 2012). Both Flesh and Not. New York: Little Brown & Company. ISBN 978-0316182379.
- ^ "Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)". Rotten Tomatoes. Fandango Media. Retrieved October 12, 2018.
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