Bobduh

Up until the ending, perfectly fine. It was really the pacing and focus that tipped me off that the film wasn't really interested in working as a traditional narrative until then. Stuff like the dance-transformations, the keiki song, the big gunfight in the middle, or the slow bus ride out of town - all of this stuff was actually gorgeous, but all of it also flew in the face of traditional storytelling. It was incredibly indulgent, and often out of character. That basically set the tone for what Rebellion was trying to do, and even then, it could have ended as a much more bloated coda to the series. But then the ending happened, and the film basically reversed several character journeys, and a clean, thematically concise loop was replaced by "mwahaha now I'll use these new powers of the universe to do _____ and _____," and that was just a mess both structurally and dialogue-wise. It felt like fanfiction of itself, which...

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@GuyShalev's theory is that the ending is basically a comment to the fans themselves - "you want too much of a good thing? Well this is what fucking happens." That's pretty clever and Rebuild-esque if it's true, but in both cases, that works almost solely as a meta-comment, and not as an actual story that makes any goddamn sense.

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Oh god, please, please, pleaaase do not use "objectively" in an artistic context. It is worse than meaningless.

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As for your question, there are infinite possible personal experiences of art, but the text itself actually does exist. If your argument for a text's meaning can be strongly supported by established elements of the work itself, then that interpretation has weight that makes it not necessarily the "one true interpretation," but at least an interpretation through which others can also derive meaning, because it isn't entirely what you yourself are bringing to the text. Art is a conversation, and art objects are not silent.

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Art criticism is meaningful because it can contextualize art and provide meaning to a third party based on an interaction between the given nature of the text and the perspective a critic brings to bear on it. If the critic isn't illustrating something that simply wasn't immediately apparent in the text or wasn't apparent in the absence of some specialized knowledge the critic possesses, then that third party might still be able to enjoy the argument, but they can also just look at the art object and say "what you're talking about has no evidence. You're full of crap."

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Even that doesn't make their criticism necessarily worthless, of course - something doesn't have to be an intended element of a work for an audience to draw meaning from it, and if you feel a certain way about a piece of art, the chances are exceedingly high at least one other person also feels that way, and might find desired acknowledgment in your articulation of that meaning.

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In the end, I'd rather discuss what I personally find compelling about a text in a way that I hope can connect to other people than try and dismissively assess its "depth level." That generally means trying to articulate how various touchstones within the text raised a particular compelling argument for me, and putting that in something of a personal context. Meaning if I can't work off stuff that exists in the text itself, it's unlikely I'll be able to make a piece of criticism that means much to anybody else. Meaning yes, the text itself is definitely important, at least for the kind of criticism I attempt to engage in.

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