What Makes a Movie or TV Show Good? From My Perspective

ChatGPT Image May 13, 2026, 01_24_56 PM.png Today, I want to share a comment that some of my friends make fun of me for, because I say it after almost every movie: what makes a movie or a TV show good?

First of all, it is important to say that all of this is just my personal opinion, so let’s not turn it into an argument. Art is subjective, and everyone watches a movie with different expectations. Some people care more about acting, some care about cinematography, some care about the story, and some just want to have a good time. But from my perspective, the thing that makes a movie or TV show truly memorable is something a little different.

If you ask me this question, my answer would not simply be production quality, runtime, casting choices, visual effects, or how famous the actors are. Of course, all of these things matter. A good cast, strong visuals, and high production quality can make a project more enjoyable. But I do not think they are the main thing that makes a story stay in our minds.

In my opinion, what makes a production good is its ability to balance fantastical elements with the reality of real life in an incredibly accurate way, and then continue the story within that balance. A movie can have time travel, superheroes, impossible detectives, magical worlds, or unbelievable coincidences. But if those elements are connected to real human feelings, real problems, and emotions we can understand, then the story becomes much stronger.

Let me explain with examples, and it will make more sense.

There is a movie called About Time. It tells the story of a young man who has the ability to travel back in time, a power passed down from father to son, and he uses this ability for love. When you think about it, the fantastical element is time travel. In real life, none of us can go back and fix a mistake, repeat a moment, or change the way a conversation went. But the realistic side of the story is love, family, regret, growing up, and learning to appreciate ordinary moments. These are things that almost everyone can relate to.

That is where the balance becomes important. If the director had focused too much on time travel, the movie could have easily turned into a complicated science fiction story. We would start asking questions about logic, timelines, paradoxes, and rules. In that case, the emotional side of the movie might lose its power. The love story would not feel as meaningful, because the fantasy element would dominate everything.

But the opposite would also be a problem. If the movie ignored the fantastical side and focused only on romance, then it might become just another classic romantic drama. The time travel would feel unnecessary, like a random trick added to make the film different. What makes About Time special is that it does not let either side completely take over. The fantasy gives the story charm, but the real emotions give it meaning.

Of course, love is not the only parameter for this idea. When we look at Sherlock Holmes, we see a similar situation. Realistically, there probably should not be a person who can notice every tiny detail, read people’s lives from their clothes, predict behavior from small movements, and solve extremely complicated cases almost instantly. This is not exactly normal human ability. But because Sherlock is placed inside a world that still feels realistic, his extraordinary mind becomes exciting instead of ridiculous.

The streets, the crimes, the people, the conversations, and the social environment around him feel close enough to real life. So when Sherlock does something almost impossible, we accept it. We enjoy it. His intelligence feels like a fantasy element, but it is still connected to real human behavior, real crime, and real psychology. That is why it works.

I think this is also why many superhero movies succeed or fail. A superhero flying through the sky or saving the world is obviously unrealistic. But if the character has real fears, real losses, real responsibilities, and real emotional conflicts, then we care. The power itself is not enough. The audience needs to see something human behind the power. Otherwise, we are only watching visual effects.

For me, the best stories are the ones that make us think, “This could never happen, but I understand exactly how that character feels.” That sentence is the perfect balance. The event may be impossible, but the emotion must be real. A movie can take us to another planet, another timeline, or a completely imaginary world, but it still has to remind us of something from our own lives.

That is why I always come back to this idea after watching movies or TV shows. A good production does not have to be fully realistic. In fact, being too realistic can sometimes make a story boring. But being too fantastical without emotional truth can also make it empty. The magic happens in the middle, when impossible things are used to tell very real human stories.

So, from my perspective, what makes a movie or TV show good is not just how expensive it looks, how famous the actors are, or how original the concept is. It is the balance between imagination and reality. It is the ability to make the unreal feel emotionally true. That is the kind of story that stays with me after the screen goes dark.

I.S.A

Bio

Hello, I’m İbrahim Sait Akarçeşme. I was born on March 8, 2005, in Lüleburgaz, a town located in the European part of Türkiye. Both of my parents are literature teachers. As a child, I struggled to adapt to school and changed schools frequently. My parents’ profession also required our family to move often, which made that sense of instability even more pronounced.

The earliest memories I can clearly visualize begin in Bursa, around the time I started primary school. I was a child who loved playing football, although I was never particularly talented at it. I disliked school and hated doing homework. I have an older sister and a younger brother.

My primary school years in Bursa were shaped by constant transitions. I first spent a year at one of the city’s most modern private schools. Then I transferred to a public school. During our final year in Bursa, I attended the public school for the first semester before returning, in the second semester, to the private school where I had originally begun my education.

During those years, my father decided to take steps toward becoming the mayor of Çamoluk, our family’s hometown, in order to repay what he described as a debt of gratitude to the place he came from. I was too young to fully understand what was happening at the time. However, after he was elected mayor of one of Türkiye’s least socioeconomically developed districts, our family moved there.

I went from studying at one of the country’s most modern private schools to attending what could reasonably be described as a village school in one of Türkiye’s smallest districts. I completed the rest of primary school and continued there until the end of middle school. It was an unusual period of my life, filled with experiences that others might describe as traumatic. Still, I see those years as a period that led to some of the most important changes in my character and perspective.

After spending four years in that small district, we moved to Sakarya. That was also the year I began preparing for the high school entrance exam. I was the kind of student who listened carefully in class but rarely studied afterward and almost never completed homework. Under ordinary circumstances, this might have made me a fairly typical student. But when you have an exceptionally intelligent and successful older sister, and both of your parents are educators, the pressure can become somewhat greater.

The summer following the entrance exam became one of the most important turning points in my life. My score placed me directly between two possibilities. I would either narrowly qualify for one of the schools I genuinely wanted, or I would end up at the school I had placed at the bottom of my list as a worst-case option. I do not remember ever praying as sincerely as I did during that period.

Yet I believe there is good in everything. In the end, I was admitted to the school I had not wanted to attend. That is where the high school years that shaped my character, vision, and ambitions began.

In high school, I was fortunate to become part of a remarkable group of friends who pushed me to grow in ways I had never imagined. Many of them later went on to study medicine, law, and engineering. With two of those friends in particular, despite being only fifteen or sixteen years old, we decided to build a startup rather than allow the limits and expectations of the people around us to define what was possible.

As our first step, we decided to develop a tourism project for Türkiye’s largest technology festival, competing in a newly introduced and highly competitive category. That project was called Mobil Çelebi.

Although we were still in high school and spent much of that period confined to our homes during the pandemic, I would probably describe those years as some of the happiest of my life. Imagine teenagers waking up at five in the morning, drinking coffee they did not even enjoy, and meeting on Discord to watch programming courses together.

It was difficult, but the three of us managed to maintain that level of discipline. We achieved something many people around us considered nearly impossible and earned one of the first major victories of our lives at Türkiye’s largest technology festival.

I still remember one of the judges telling us, “Even if you had competed against university students, you would still have won.” What made Mobil Çelebi more than a competition project, however, was that we continued developing it after the event was over. Even years later, we never completely lost faith in its purpose or its potential.

Had we been living in Europe or the United States, I believe we might have been able to preserve the momentum we built during high school, and perhaps today we would be speaking very differently about ourselves and our work. But the realities of Türkiye’s education system and the circumstances of that period pushed us toward preparing for the national university entrance exam. As a result, we were forced to step away from our projects, at least temporarily.

Once again, there was good in what followed. After the exam, all three of us were accepted into engineering programs. I decided to leave Türkiye and move to Poland, while my two friends chose to continue their university education at home.

When I first arrived in Poland, I had little idea what was waiting for me. During my first year, I completed a Polish-language preparatory program and experienced living in a student dormitory for the first time. After that, my formal education in Computer Science began.

Despite the temporary distance created by living in different countries, those two friends from high school continue to build meaningful things through their startups and their extraordinary potential. I sincerely wish them every success.

I see my years in Poland as a period in which I made several radical decisions about my inner life. Here, I met people whom I can describe as closer than brothers. One might expect that, after leaving my family and living abroad, I would abandon the beliefs and values I had grown up with in the name of freedom. Strangely, the opposite happened. I embraced them more deeply. Today, I have no doubt about my faith or about the responsibilities it places upon me.

If I once had a tendency to prioritize personal gain or self-interest, I feel that I have gradually lost it since coming to Poland. Money, property, cars, career, and travel no longer give me anything close to the sense of meaning I find in the hope of contributing to struggles for peace and freedom.

I could say that my philosophy of life was shaped in Poland. It was here that I first learned how to travel alone, meet my own needs, and understand what it truly means to be by yourself. For that reason, if someone asked where I feel I belong, I would probably answer: Warsaw.

Although Poland contributed greatly to my inner development, leaving behind the extraordinary group of friends I had in Türkiye distanced me, for a while, from the vision and ambition I once carried. That continued until the beginning of 2026, when I began to recover that momentum.

Around that time, I had the opportunity to meet some of the most remarkable people I have ever known. Since then, I have been doing everything I can to develop myself as much as possible. I believe the coming years will be exceptionally dynamic, particularly because of the transformations taking place in technology and artificial intelligence, as well as the decisions and responsibilities those changes may require from us.

I have spoken at length about my past. Now, let me say something about the future.

I was never raised as a child whose dreams or ambitions were meant to be limited. I have the kind of father who, if I told him, “I want to fly,” would not simply encourage me to fly, but would tell me to discover the stars as well. At the same time, I have a mother who makes sure I never lose touch with reality. If I told her, “I want to fly,” she would probably say, “Be careful not to catch a cold.”

That is why my dreams reach beyond the stars, while remaining as real as the wind touching our skin and awakening even the smallest of our senses.

I have no doubt that the world has enough resources. I have no doubt that good people exist. And I believe those people can help create a world built on peace, justice, and a form of prosperity in which no one is left in poverty.

My only hope is that I can support them and play even a small part in what I consider one of humanity’s most valuable, and perhaps most sacred, responsibilities.

My name is İbrahim Sait Akarçeşme.

I hope you remember it.

What Makes a Movie or TV Show Good? From My Perspective

Let me explain with examples, and it will make more sense.

I.S.A