I haven't taken any film theory courses, but generally I think that narrowminded people should be ignored.
To make a comparison with physics: Einstein did much good work with the general relativity, but he was narrowminded and didn't want to accept Quantum Mechanics and because of it his work was more or less stalled.
EDIT: Hey, you edited your post!
EDIT2: Another thing i thought of is that the period with the more graphical revolution (Quake, Myst, etc.) is in my opinion the period of gaming history with the least good games.
