You don't think that common reactions to complaints are You can't complain if you don't watch it and/or Why would you watch it if you think you wouldn't like it? so that discussion should be just, or mostly, appreciation threads?
Well, first of all you can't complain [that a movie is bad] if you don't watch it is an entirely normal response. Why should anyone care what you think about a movie you haven't even seen? You can be totally disinterested based on behind the scenes factors. You can complain that a franchise you like(d) has chosen to go in a direction you're not interested in. But when the conversation is about the movie itself, why would you waste your time arguing about something you hate the very idea of so much you refuse to watch it, and why would anyone listen to any argument coming from someone who wants to judge something without giving it any chance at all? There is no reward for making uninformed judgements and no value in reading them.
Secondly, 'Why watch if you don't like it?' is not actually an argument I can ever recall being applied to a movie discussion off the top of my head. It generally comes up in tv discussions as a result of someone making the same complaints over and over again for a whole season or multiple seasons, which understandably leads to people starting to feel fed up with someone bringing up the same things over and over again. And as understandable as that response often is, I've also always disagreed with the sentiment precisely because people do have the right to their own opinion and their own determination of when (if ever) enough is enough and they're ready to stop watching. Even if someone wants to watch something purely to justify their opinion - which will inevitably and not entirely strangely lead to some people questioning why anyone would choose to do that - it's still entirely their right and nobody else's business.
In any case, that is entirely irrelevant to the point. No one is demanding that everyone must watch everything. 'Why watch it if you knew you wouldn't like it' is not telling anyone to watch anything.
And finally, the idea that the concept of only judging and arguing about the quality of things you've actually watched naturally leads to nothing but appreciation threads is hilariously naive. Watching something you're genuinely interested in, maybe even highly excited about, in no way guarantees you'll actually like it. In fact high expectations lead to major disappointment as often as not. And there is no movie police to stop you from watching a movie you're not interested in. If you put in the time to actually be informed on the subject, then your opinion is just as valuable as anyone else's (with obvious caveats regarding specific technical expertise).
If you watched other movies from the directors or actors and they were terrible that's not direct but that is pretty big indication rather than nothing. Let alone hating a sequel to a film you hated that comes from the same writers, director, actor doing the same characters.
None of that says anything about the movie itself. Just about your level of interest and expectations. If that were even remotely useful to judge an actual movie itself, then it would be basically impossible for the same person/franchise to make both good and bad movies which is just factually ridiculous.
Standalone episodes and/or unsubtle analogies are not terrible and I don't think the TNG fans want or expect constant positivity. Picard making some people think a show having mostly standalone episodes is terrible is a pretty direct example of a sequel hurting its predecessor.

Picard didn't turn anyone against standalone episodes. If you want to blame a show for that, try the Sopranos, Breaking Bad, Game of Thrones, etc. People turned against episodic tv long before Picard was even conceived. But it was really more of a cultural shift than anything traceable to any particular series.
It's not meant to be logical or literal. It's meant to be guidance for providers of paid goods and services. "The Customer is Always Right" means "Do your best to satisfy people who give you money for stuff so that they'll keep giving you money for stuff." It's basic business sense.
And what if I choose not to watch because I've decided it is obviously terrible? How does that hurt either you or the show?
Judgments based on your personal interest are quite real. What they're not are objective. News flash: They don't have to be. You have just as much right to voice an opinion of "obviously terrible" as any other. Voicing it and acting on it before seeing the full, finished project is neither illegal, immoral or fattening.
But this leads me to a question, and since you're smarter than me and not a broken record I think you're just the right person to enlighten me:
Tell me, what are trailers for?
See, silly me, I always thought the point of them was to entice you to watch a TV series or movie. Editors, directors and producers cut scenes out of the project and put them together in such a way as to give audiences an idea of what they'll be watching. After seeing the trailer, the potential viewer can say either "yay" or "nay," and in the olden days, "nay" sayers were perfectly free to walk away without being one of the audience, whether the show will eventually be available to view for free or not. However, if you and your allies are right, and your judgment is invalid until you're part of the audience, why are trailers necessary? You can't base any kind of decision on one because, again, invalid, and having a valid judgment requires patronizing every project announced just so you can discuss it with people later. Marvel Studios could announce a Willie Lumpkin series on Disney+ with just a blurb on a blog and, according to the valid judgment theory, you'd have to watch it before deciding if it's good or not. As I see it, adhering to that standard takes away a level of choice for fans and renders a vital marketing tool completely pointless.
But you go ahead, edumacate this old boomer how the standard makes sense for anybody besides film critics and film students. I humbly await your response.
I don't care if you choose not to watch a show because you think it looks obviously terrible. Neither does anyone else. If you try to tell me that a show you haven't seen is 'obviously terrible' I will generally ignore your obviously baseless opinion, as will most everyone else except those who feel like arguing for the sake of arguing at that particular point in time.
An opinion on whether a movie or show is worth your time or money is fundamentally not the same thing as a actual judgement about the quality of the movie. If you haven't seen the movie, what you have is not a genuine judgement of the film that is in any way worth discussing. It's just you making shit up in your head, regardless of how unfunny the trailer was or how much you hated the director's last film or can't stand the lead actor's face. There's nothing wrong with that. Everyone rejects all sorts of things for all sorts of reasons. It's basic time management as well as the fundamental basis of being able to choose one thing over another without spreadsheets and focus groups. But most of us don't feel compelled to pretend our gut feelings and arbitrary choices are even remotely comparable to an informed opinion from someone who actually knows the subject.
And trailers are literally pure marketing. Half the time they deliberately paint the movie as something very different from what it actually is just because someone thinks it'll be easier to sell that way. Marvel has even inserted a sequence into a trailer which was not only not in the film but actually the exact opposite of what happened in the film purely for the sake of combating spoilers.
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