Inception and the bigger question of what makes for a good movie

Frankly I dont think that Inception is one of the best movie made ever. Neither it is a very good movie. It is an above average movie. I think it was more of action movie rather than anything new.. some of the scenes was good camera work but on the whole it was a Van damme movie with slightly better actors and more convincing script.

But the world disagree. This is based on numerous facebook posts and astonishing imdb ratings.
So does my opinion matter. I have always this question of what makes up for a good movie.
There have been instances in the past where my opinion of a movie/serial was sharply divergent of the minority. And there have been cases when I have presented my divergent views, where friends have accused me of being a show off/pseudo intellectualism. "You have become corrupt enough to enjoy these simple pleasures of life".

See I can understand where my friends are coming from. Being a contrarian helps to identify yourself in a crowd. Many times I myself have been agitated by people who present their opposing views to commonsense just for argument sake.

Showoff in your hobbies is a normal way to get peoples' attention. If someone says that they like English rock music and have no qualms for any Hindi music, that person may seriously like English music or may be just trying to showoff.

Pseudo intellectualism is another charge for which I dont have a defense. Finally whether "Dead Poets society" is better than "Terminator" as a movie is a matter of personal opinion. Whether you are a pseudo or really like it, you need to go into ones dream and check it on a sub-conscious level.

But I had a different point to make when I started to write this blog. My question is does my opinion matter about what makes for a great movie. If you follow utilitarian principle or market based theory, whatever movie makes money shall be made more. So if "Inception" and "Transformer" is liked by majority of people, that shall make for what society shall produce more in the form of "entertainment".

This outcome of encouraging crass movies may be harming my personal liberty of "not able to watch more movies which I like". But this freedom is not the fundamental tenet of individual freedom which needs to be protected from being abused.

Then I came across John Mill's version of "greatest-happiness principle". Here is a snapshot of principle lifted from wiki .

"Mill's famous formulation of utilitarianism is known as the "greatest-happiness principle". It holds that one must always act so as to produce the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people, within reason. Mill's major contribution to utilitarianism is his argument for the qualitative separation of pleasures. Bentham treats all forms of happiness as equal, whereas Mill argues that intellectual and moral pleasures are superior to more physical forms of pleasure. Mill distinguishes between happiness and contentment, claiming that the former is of higher value than the latter, a belief wittily encapsulated in the statement that "[i]t is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool, or the pig, are of a different opinion, it is because they only know their own side of the question."

Mill defines the difference between higher and lower forms of happiness with the principle that those who have experienced both tend to prefer one over the other. This is, perhaps, in direct contrast with Bentham's statement that "Pushpin is as good as Poetry", that, if a simple child's game like hopscotch causes more pleasure to more people than a night at the opera house, it is more imperative upon a society to devote more resources to propagating hopscotch than running opera houses. Mill's argument is that the "simple pleasures" tend to be preferred by people who have no experience with high art, and are therefore not in a proper position to judge. Mill supported legislation that would have granted extra voting power to university graduates on the grounds that they were in a better position to judge what would be best for society. It should be noted that, in this example, Mill did not intend to devalue uneducated people and would certainly have advocated sending the poor but talented to universities: he believed that education, and not the intrinsic nature of the educated, qualified them to have more influence in government."

I can put forward this version of political philosophy to protect my right to get better movies. Good movies are higher form of happiness and hence shall be encouraged over bad popular movies. Am I claiming to be intellectual enough to know what makes for a good movie and hence higher pleasure? Am I arrogant enough to know more than choices of majority of the world? Well that is the charge against which I don't have good defense. I need to think more about this.