The myth of objective quality -- a psychological analysis.
"They're stupid! They're stupid! I have a right to like what I like! It's all subjective." Well...yes. You're right. But there's a kind of subjective most people are not aware of. It's called intersubjective.
This is when there's a general universal agreement in a group. In the strongest sense, this refers to the human race in general.
When a building is being made, the architect can't just say, welp, everyone has different tastes, I'll just shoot for the best. There are standards universally held. The doorways have to fit humans, the material has to withstand earthquakes etc. Non factual, but non arbitrary. Generally accepted to be true.
This kind of subjectivity is everywhere. It's generally accepted amongst Americans that 'color' has to be spelled a certain way (although Canadians and English would disagree), it's generally accepted that if you're playing in sports, you should try to win (unless you're lazy), it's generally accepted that murder and rape are wrong. That Gordon Ramsey can cook. That poop smells bad. Etc.
As someone who has studied the craft of screenwriting for many many years, I've come to understand that this kind of subjectivity applies very heavily to movies and story-telling, and that taste is really a matter of how the mind rationalizes whether these standards are met, to what extent, and how tolerant you should be if some are not. Even genres exist as a way of setting up expectations for demographics. Read reviews, they almost all boil down to the same ideas and principles. Character motivations were ill defined, plot and logic holes, pointless scenes, dumb character choices etc. Ask people why they liked a movie, it can usually be categorized into similar reasons. It's generally accepted that I should get as many people as possible to like my work. Still having a hard time with that...:(
Anyhoo, intersubjectivity is a challenging thing for the mind to comprehend, because it creates the illusion of objectivity. Think of it this way. When Francis Ford Copolla spends years studying the craft of writing and directing, puts all his heart and soul into a project, and it becomes universally lauded and hailed as a classic, thirty years down the road of time, it's very easy to think of a film as "objectively good." And why not. We feel that a building should factually be built to specifications, that it's factually wrong to rape, that you factually have the right to your opinion, in the case where a sense of effort, intelligence and standards factor into our perception, it's all to easy to lose sight of the difference.
But we have to remember, these standards aren't factual or scientific, they're...human.