Far Cry

[Nystul]

There is a difference between "sufficiently entertaining" and "quality".
Purely logically speaking, you don't have to make quality movies to sell tickets at the theatre. You just have to spend money on advertising/publicity.
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How would you define "quality" with respect to movies? Most people go to movies to be entertained, so the ability of the movie to entertain them could be considered its primary quality.

Advertising and publicity can greatly increase the amount of exposure a movie gets, but you can't sell a product forever based on hype alone. It has to have quality to have staying power. Norris, Van Damme, and Segal each had a pretty long run of success where people would go to see every movie they made. For a similar example, people are still buying DVDs of Bruce Lee's "Enter the Dragon". Publicity has very little to do with this, other than getting the ball rolling. People still watch these movies, specifically because of the incredible action scenes. Of course, the standards for action scenes have changed a lot over time... any of the previously mentioned actors would be less of an icon now because their strong abilities in the martial arts can be mimicked so well with special effects. And that brings us to The Matrix, although it had a decent storyline to go with all of the effects.