Sylvester Stallone is an ideal choice to direct a remake of Death Wish

I'd like to point out that most of his proofs and examples that Stallone is a good director all come from the last round. In debate, it is typical that new arguments cannot be made in the very last round. Thus, my opponent's examples, like Rocky Balboa (2006), should be ignored. I will, however, answer them anyway since some judges here do not adhere to a strict competitive debate philosophy. Rotten Tomatoes vs. IMDB My opponent is just straight up misrepresenting how IMDB's rating system works. It does not use reviews to form its ratings – it relies solely on IMDB user votes. Look at this link for Rambo: . http://www.imdb.com... If you click on the part that says "83,356 user votes" it will show you the breakdown of how the film got 7.3 stars. If you click "256 critic reviews," it will link you to the 256 articles IMDB has listed. These articles, however, are not used at all in the scoring of the movie. Why are user votes invalid as a rating? Two words: "selection bias. " If I put a poll online that asked "are you in favor of marijuana legalization," the people who are most likely to seek out such a poll to vote are people who are pro-legalization. My results will be very skewed. This is why Gallup and other polling companies randomly call people – to get a more accurate measure and avoid selection bias. IMDB is the ultimate in selection bias: who is going to seek out a movie to vote for it – someone who already liked the movie. If I watch Titanic and think it's mediocre, my first thought isn't going to be to jump onto imdb. com and give the movie 4 stars out of 10. But if some hyped up DiCaprio-crazed teenage girl LOVES the film, the first thing she will do is create 5 imdb. com accounts and vote 10 stars to Titanic on each account. This seriously happens – I remember young girls, at the time the movie came out, who saw the movie multiple times in theatres to help Titanic set a box office record. In contrast, Rotten Tomatoes uses only real reviews to rate a movie, which avoids selection bias. Rotten Tomatoes does, however, include user ratings so people can compare. I searched for "worst movies of all time" to show you how bad selection bias is. Daddy Day Camp 1% of critics liked this movie, 49% of users voted that they liked this movie Glitter (seriously WORST MOVIE EVER) 6% of critics liked this movie, 46% of users voted that they liked this movie To see how Rotten Tomatoes and IMDB compared, I took the current worst rated movie off Rotten Tomatoes front page: Wild Target Rotten Tomatoes: 13% IMDB: 6.8 out of 10 stars Seriously, don't use IMDB to decide which movies are good and which are bad. Why are Rotten Tomatoes high scores more accurate measures of a good movie than IMDB high scores? Is a 6 or 7 star movie worth watching? Most IMDB movies get these ratings, which is about equivalent to a rating of "average. " If I watched every "average" movie that exists, I'd finish on my 500th birthday. In contrast, a 70% on Rotten Tomatoes says that 7 out of 10 critics are saying this is a film worth watching. It is very unlikely you will be disappointed by said film. So the evidence still stands that Stallone's two recent directing works, Rambo IV and the Expendables were bad movies. Rocky Balboa This is such a successful franchise it is hard to screw up. Yet Stallone managed to do so in Rocky V (Rotten Tomatoes score of 24%), mostly because Stallone was the only writer on the project. [1] Stallone even stated that he felt compelled to make another Rocky movie because he had let fans down so much with Rocky V. [2] My opponent's own review of Rocky Balboa proves that the movie is a popular, feel-good Rocky franchise finale, but is far from a work of writing/directing genius. I personally fell asleep while trying to suffer through Rocky Balboa. The dialogue between Stallone and the kids running around his town is just atrocious, and Stallone is too old (60+) to make him being able to fight believable. My opponent's supposedly positive review shows that Stallone is obsessed with close up shots (the same thing the Expendables review I cite critiques him for). He has no complexity as a director. He is a one-trick pony. Read the quote my opponent cites as proving that Rocky VI was a good movie: "If you close your eyes and try to halve your IQ—aim for something between a baboon and a lemur—you might even think it's a masterpiece. " Only someone with half of a normal person's intelligence would believe Stallone is a great writer/director. He lacks any complexity. My opponent has already conceded that Death Wish requires a writer/director/actor who can deal with emotional complexity. My opponent keeps citing that Michael Ferris and John Brancato being signed on to write the screenplay for Death Wish as a huge plus. Yet their most famous work has been Terminator: Salvation (32% on Rotten Tomatoes). Based on this score, they're even worse writers than Stallone. My opponent keeps objecting that there is no guarantee another director would sign on. Again, this is the "is-ought fallacy. " Just because your first 100 choices turned the film down, doesn't mean Stallone is the "ideal choice. " That just means he is the only one left! Secondly, Death Wish is being developed by MGM, a major studio. They have cultivated relationships with many famous, talented, and far superior directors that they could convince to do a remake of Death Wish. My opponent says that Stallone didn't make a "top 40 directors" list because he is known primarily as an actor. He is correct – people don't know Stallone as a director because he isn't a particularly good one. He has, however, done well as an actor, for example in the Rocky franchise, which required very few facial expressions from him. You would at least expect him to make a top 200 list of "best male actors" wouldn't you? Yet I scrolled through all the names and he's not even there. [3] Stallone isn't good at anything he does. He does make a loveable expressionless punching bag though. It's fun to watch him bruise people's fists with his face. Any of the following top 200 action directors would be preferable to Stallone (a continuation of the top ten list I cited before): [4] Steven Spielberg, Peter Jackson, James Cameron, Sam Raimi, Richard Donner, John Carpenter, William Wellman, John McTiernan, Ridley Scott, Martin Campbell, Jonathan Mostow, John Woo, Tony Scott, Wolfgang Peterson, Fritz Lang, Clint Eastwood, Paul Greengrass, Michael Bay, George Lucas, Howard Hawks, George Romero, Michael Curtiz, Tim Burtin, Quentin Tarantino, Christopher Nolan, Oliver Stone Okay, I'm running out of characters, but you get my point. Stallone's acting (facial expressions, or lack thereof) leaves much to be desired. Stallone's writing leaves much to be desired (single-handedly ruined the Rambo franchise). And his directing record is far from stellar (2 out of 3 were flops). I leave you with the definition of "ideal choice": the "option" that "conforms to an ultimate standard of perfection and excellence. " Stallone is far from ideal. If you were choosing your "ideal choice" for a presidential candidate, would you choose someone who had lost 2 out of 3 times when he ran before? If I asked you what your ideal choice for a birthday present was, and you said "oh a BMW M3 or a 52 inch flat screen 1080p high definition television" and I instead gave you a $10 gift card to Barnes and Noble that would be similar to the studio (MGM) asking for Christopher Nolan or Steven Spielberg and instead getting stuck with Stallone. Vote con [1] . http://en.wikipedia.org... [2] . http://en.wikipedia.org...(film) [3] . http://movies.toptenreviews.com... [4] . http://movies.toptenreviews.com...