Inverse cost and quality law

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

David 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

1. "David Foster Wallace Biography and Information about the author". DavidFosterWallace.com. Archived from the original on 14 September 2008. Retrieved 12 March 2022.
2. "David Foster Wallace Found Dead". Huffington Post. September 13, 2008.
3. "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2009-05-20. Retrieved 2008-09-15.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
4. "Terminator 2: Judgment Day - Box Office Mojo".
5. Foster Wallace, David. "F/X Porn". Waterstone's Magazine. Retrieved 18 February 2014.
6. Foster Wallace, David (November 6, 2012). Both Flesh and Not. New York: Little Brown & Company. ISBN 978-0316182379.
7. "Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)". Rotten Tomatoes. Fandango Media. Retrieved October 12, 2018.