To further elaborate my point, there is currently a film out there that celebrates the awful, Bad Teacher starring Cameron Diaz. As illustrated in this review, Diaz’s character is an awful teacher who doesn’t care about her students and is motivated entirely by money. The characters who do care about their students are presented and weird and warped, and painted as the villains. In the end, Diaz’s character learns nothing and fails to grow as a person.
This miniwave of anti-intellectualism films is disappointing to say the least, but is probably a natural offshoot of summer blockbuster films designed by committee to appeal to the lowest common denominator. Even Transformers 3 is getting faint praise for being not as awful as Transformers 2, but despite the critical drubbing Transformers 3 will get, it will also be extremely profitable, and not inspire filmmakers to go above and beyond the limited box they’re placed in. There is no incentive to be better, studios are focused on trying to get people to go pay more to see awful films in 3D, and the consumer loses again. Sometimes, the winning move is to stay home and read a book.