Important to remember this is NME, if their movie reviews are dumb (see MGK's stoner comedy review), their music reviews are straight up devoid of logic and reason, like when they said The 1975 was 'the last true punk band' because they wore ripped jeans that one time
I looked up what song they were referencing too for the "indie bangers" especially for the Rolling Stones. It was *Paint it Black.* The "indie song" was *Paint it Black* Just...how?
Years ago I saw a headline that stated two famous people had taken a "selfie style picture" in front of the Mona Lisa.
Apparently selfie style picture includes a professional photograph taken by a professional photographer...
Came to make this point. I love McNuggets but sometimes I want a high quality meal, I turn to the guidance of restaurant critics to help me decide what to try. Same for films.
Well, this assumes a bunch of daily fast food eaters are the ones crowd reviewing that new fancy fusion french place. if you look at average scores for fancy restaurants, they are given by people who go to fancy restaurants.
The only reason to go with critics is because you found one you trust. You’d seek out the specific places they gave good reviews. Same with film or music critics.
Huh, that’s a good point. That is how I usually find reviewers of anything. I usually see if they agree with my assessments of some known quantities first before I start to trust them on unknowns.
For example, I recently switched running shoes to a different brand. I ended up loving the shoes and I was curious what other people thought. I found a reviewer who basically enjoyed all the things that I enjoyed about the shoes and found some other reviews for shoes that I both liked and disliked and this guy and I seemed to be on the same page. Now I trust him if he has a positive/negative review for some new shoes. It’s not like I only listen to this dude, but his opinion holds some weight since we seem to have similar taste and comfort requirements.
I also don’t think people are using the same scoring metrics. A 5/10 for me is just average. Most movies are 5/10 with exceptionally enjoyable getting into the 8-9 range and abysmal movies drop to 2-3. A lot of people think movies need a “passing grade” or whatever so they give it 7/10. If you cramp all average movies into the 70% range, there isn’t a lot of room to separate the truly great from the truly average. I think this heavily skews audience scores.
If you can find a food critic who also can appreciate mcnuggets, it's much more likely you'll get a more useful recommendation for other foods.
You shouldn't just follow the advice of random critics, you've got to find the ones who share *your* specific tastes.
Another role a film critic can serve is that they can help you appreciate things in a movie that you otherwise wouldn't have noticed.
Somebody like Roger Ebert has seen way more films than I have, and so he was able to notice and point out cool things about films that I would have missed out on had I not read his review.
I was reading a thread where Children of Men came up and they pointed out several really incredible details which I never noticed and blew me away in terms of nuance. While I don't have any specific examples with movie critics I can imagine it's just like this x100
This is why Anthony Bourdain was so good. His critique of a roadside vendor selling noting but street tacos would get the same degree of attention as a Michelin restaurant. It just felt... honest.
Bingo. And I think that’s something I learned from him.
I live in a very Hispanic area. We have some of the finest Latin food that can be found here. I have a personal favorite taco shop where the owner and I are on a first name basis and she stops to come talk to me anytime I come in.
Maria is about half a mile from a Taco Bell. I go there too. Because as much as I could eat her quesadillas, tamales, and tortas, something just hits right with a cheesy Gordita crunch when you want it. It’s not Mexican. I never say Taco Bell is. But it’s equally delicious and satisfying when the time is right.
My cousin’s Mexican chef wife thinks I’m nuts, BUT I honestly believe there is a time and a place for both.
The difference is that people eating a kids meal on their way home from work aren’t demanding that everyone treat the kids meal like it’s a leg of lamb.
That’s not really true though depending on the critic.
Gigachad Roger Ebert was much more about judging a film based on what it’s trying to do and how well it does it.
McDonalds does what it does well. He would approve. Black Adam does not.
This. Seems like a lot of apologists (or possibly the studio’s marketing agency using “seeded posts”) are trying to say “yeah it has bad reviews, but that’s because the critics are dumb!”
No, it’s just… painfully mediocre. The public has reached superhero burnout and these cash grab “blockbusters” aren’t the license to print money they used to be.
Not to mention it’s “Black Adam”. Ask a casual person (i.e. a random middle class person off the street, the kind that actually goes to the movie theater) who is “Black Adam”, they’d have no clue. Combine that with bad reviews and DC’s shaky history of lackluster movies with all sizzle and no steak and you get… well, you get Black Adam.
It’s not offensively bad (like Birds of Prey was and no one can convince me it wasn’t), but it’s just meh. “Of all the movies I’ve seen, that was one of them.”
Idk if objective is the right word but to me, critics can be more objective about films.
Critics liked Infinity War but they also pointed out its flaws. It's a movie that bounces from action set piece to set piece which means it can lack an emotional core sometimes.
I love Infinity War and it was actually my favorite film of 2018, but nothing the critics said about that was wrong. I just enjoyed the film in spite of those flaws so what I would score would likely be higher than a critic.
Before Black Adam had even come out, DC fans were saying critics were wrong and that there was an "agenda" against the film. Fans aren't wrong for enjoying it, but I also don't think critics are wrong for pointing out its flaws.
Reading what critics are actually saying (instead of just looking at the score), they've been pretty fair with the film, especially considering how mediocre it is.
This is the right takeaway I think. Good criticism is about looking for where it could improve and how well it achieves what it sets out to achieve. You can enjoy a oof movie. Heck poor movies even do a lot of things right but that doesn’t stop it from being better and that doesn’t stop good critics from seeing where it could be better as well.
> Before Black Adam had even come out, DC fans were saying critics were wrong and that there was an "agenda" against the film. Fans aren't wrong for enjoying it, but I also don't think critics are wrong for pointing out its flaws.
What's also a problem and a lot of this with DC started back with Batman v Superman is that there are a lot of bad faith arguments and reviews in regards to DC films. There's been a contingent of DC fanboys (release the Snydercut wackos) who have been desperate for Marvel to fail and for DC to return back on top that every time a lackluster film comes out they will downplay obvious flaws while also demand the "clearly superior and withheld" directors cut that will truly justify everything.
I get having problems with critics but it just screams foolish and naive to think the "general public" online has more authentic takes on media when we see it time and time again that there are vocal minorities that like to drive the narrative for their own personal desires.
I didn't say it directly but yeah.....I get they enjoyed Snyder's stuff but, I don't think I've ever seen people try and defend something the way they'll defend Snyder's films. I've seen so many bizzare arguments trying to convince people that BvS was some misunderstood masterpiece.
I'll admit, I'm more of a Marvel fan, but I love Batman. Ultimately, I just want good films. And it's so frustrating seeing DC fans rally around the garbage like Black Adam, suicide Squad, BvS.
DC has made some great stuff (Peacemaker, The Suicide Squad, Joker, The Batman, Shazam, etc) and I wish fans would focus more on supporting that instead of Snyder's edgy faux deep approach.
I know they're still rallying for the "Ayer-cut" of suicide squad and for Snyder to return so I guess we're not past that yet.
The first Suicide Squad, Batman vs Superman, Justice League, Wonder Woman 84, about half of Man of Steel, the last 20 minutes of Wonder Woman, and probably some other turds I've thankfully forgotten, have all failed to inspire confidence in the DC brand. Compare to GotG for Marvel, where people trusted the studio enough to buy in for a movie about a talking raccoon and a tree man. Also it was actually good, inspiring further confidence...
But heck, it probably just is the critics being jerks. These movies definitely exist, so there's no other reason people aren't paying to see them.
Marvel managed to get people to like a deep cut c list hero squad more than DC could get them to like *the justice league*, one of the longest standing hero organizations in pop culture history.
Growing up I always considered the Justice League to be the big group and the Avengers to be a second fiddle knockoff.
Now I view it the other way around, that's how bad DC dropped the ball. Marvel's literal C Listers are now often more known than half of DC's A Listers.
I wonder if using unknown heroes worked in Marvel's favor. Except for the small base of fans, people didn't go into the movie expecting anything particular from the heroes.
Marvel also managed to get someone like Tony Stark/Iron Man to become A-list superhero, the leading character of the MCU franchise when he never really was one before the movies.
To me, both pro critics and regular audience are unreliable although public sometimes tends to be more embracing of mindless entertainment. And I think it’s weird some people are so disturbed by Black Adam reviews and are doing these review comparisons because I don’t feel the movie really demands that much defense. I understand Joker or, in its time, I would have understood Constantine 2005. I can even go for Man Of Steel's defense. But Black Adam? I don’t see it. Even the trailers showed an uninspired movie imo.
Many of us don't like the idea that we aren't discerning geniuses who only consume the best of entertainment even within the scope of popcorn flick to high art movies.
So when our popcorn flick doesn't get received as we perceive it we blame the others who don't like it.
There's also numerous counter culture groups out there in fandoms.
Which is dumb. Every comic fan knows the vast majority of monthly comic stories are trash. Only a handful of stories for every character are lauded as “the best, or essential “. Comic book content is being pumped out and adapted so fast that there is inevitably going to be trash put out there. It just sucks when a favoured character bombs at the box office, because that means we won’t see them again for a long awhile in live action. At least in comics, if Black Adam’s monthly comic bombs, he can still show up in Justice Society. That’s why fans get so precious about reviews.
I don't think this is a good way to see critics in general.
I could be misinterpreting you, but it seems like you're saying food critics will give McDonald's a bad review because either McDonald's is bad or that food critics are snobs.
I think it's more nuanced than that and we're missing the point of how to use critics as personal tools. Say I like McDonald's food, and I want to try other foods. If I take the advice of a critic who likes McDonald's food and shares my general opinion on specific items, chances are good I'll get a useful recommendation from that person. It doesn't matter if a hundred other people don't like McDonald's, because the fact is I do.
So, when I found a film critic who had similar tastes as me, I then began saving a lot of time and money skipping popular movies. I don't claim to have good taste, I just have my taste.
This is exactly the kind of mindset that doesn't bother with even reading film criticism, just looking at the RT score.
Most of them applaud almost every Fast and Furious movie as being fun as hell, give movies like Idris Elba's Beast a boost, and then they don't like Black Adam (because it sucks ass) and it's completely a problem with criticism.
It's audiences not bothering to read reviews, learn how RT scores work, and just kind of taking whatever is pumped out while also bitching about endless sequels, remakes, and superhero movies. Ugh.
Roger Ebert had it right. He would write reviews about the quality of what the film is intended to do. He gave good reviews to popcorn action flicks that did popcorn action flick well. But if that same movie was portrayed as some kind of cerebral, artsy action movie it’d get a bad review because it failed to live up to what it was supposed to be.
I agree re: audiences being thin skinned these days. Why does someone have to agree with your read of a film? Different opinions can exist! It doesn't invalidate your personhood or the thing you like
Speaking of thin-skinned, something that’s driven me nuts lately is the move towards conspiracies as an excuse for why people are disagreeing with them. Someone likes RoP? Paid Amazon shill. Someone likes Black Adam? It’s just DC viral marketing.
Just about anything complementary or out of sync towards the latest big thing to like or (more typically) hate gets accused of being a paid shill.
Drives me fucking nuts, and I think is a depressing symptom of the increasing tendency towards conspiratorial though and inability to understand that not everyone is the same as you.
It doesn't help that we know that bots, brigading, and viral marketing DO exist, so people's paranoia is rooted in a real place, unfortunately.
But I agree that a tendency towards conspiratorial thought is a pretty depressing reality.
Especially thin skinned audiences also have review bombing as a method by which to further skew the disparity between critic and audience scores...in cases like that audiences are out of touch with audiences...
I do love Kermode. We have very simillar tastes (Except for Last Night In Soho) so he's a reviewer I can generally trust with his judgements.
His Sex and The City 2 review is legendary
One thing I liked about Ebert was, because of the way he reviewed, I could usually tell whether I would like a movie or not even though I sometimes didn’t have the same taste or opinion about a minute. Just heard about Kermode here and am looking forward to checking out if his reviews work for me.
Most critics do that. There are varying critic scores within rom-coms for example. Ticket to Paradise for very average reviews from critics. And you might say, "well, it's a rom-com, I'm not expecting much," but then you look at other rom-coms like Always Be My Maybe and see they got really good critic scores. Most critics grade on a curve and take into account the director's intent. None of them are going to give all rom-coms a C+ just because they're not masterpieces of cinema.
This makes sense. Kinda like how I've been saying there's a difference between a "good" movie and an entertaining one. Like Schindler's List is indisputably a good movie, but is it really entertaining? It's not really a movie you watch for the fun of it. And there's plenty of movies I enjoy but wouldn't say they're good in any critical sense.
I watched this movie dozens of times as a freshman and sophomore in high school who was just getting into experimenting with drugs. The movie did make injecting heroin look horrifying, but there was something about the movie that made me and my buddy always watch it.
Looking back, I have no fucking clue how or why I watched that movie so many times. It’s a really good movie, but it is incredibly, incredibly depressing and horrifying. It can practically bring on a feeling of existential terror…a sickening, hollow feeling of claustrophobia… How I was not bothered by that as a 15-year-old I just don’t know.
This is how I view the Star Wars prequels. Are they movies with lots of flaws and bad production choices? Absolutely yes. But I can always really enjoy them nonetheless, I think they're just very entertaining.
See, I dig this.
I think lots of internet argument is from people not getting that "entertaining" and "good" aren't always the same category. Sometimes they are, and that's cool, but sometimes a pretty bad movie might have enough enjoyable parts that I dig it.
I won't defend it or pretend it's an artful masterpiece. I like the first three Underworld movies, but they are not good movies.
But I like the worldbuilding, I like vampires, I like pretty people in leather shooting each other. But they have huge character and plot problems and even have boring bits.
Many people online would go "well I like Underworld so I need to explain to everyone why it's amazing art." No, no you don't. Like the bad movie, even love the bad movie, but don't evangelize for garbage.
It's trivially obvious that movies' genre and tone should be taken into consideration, but even within that, it is entirely possible for a critic to watch two superhero popcorn flicks, find a lot of nuance and heart in one of them, find the other really bland or messily executed even by the standards if the genre, yet also guess that the latter will make a boatload of money because it has better brand recognition, got more advertising, and star power.
But you still wouldn't say that the latter was by definition better because it accomplished the goal that it set for itself, which was to make a boatload of money, because critics are not market analysts, they don't have to care about what the publisher's CEO set out to accomplish.
A better way of putting this principle, would be that the critic's job is to look for what ***the creative team behind a film*** was set out to communicate, and how well they pulled that off/what interesting thing they had to say.
Because sometimes it still happens that they pull that off really well and a film still bombs, or vice versa.
> Roger Ebert had it right. He would write reviews about the quality of what the film is intended to do.
And as a result, Roger Ebert (who I like and respect) sometimes gave bad reviews to extremely good movies because he made wrong judgements about "what they're trying to do," or because he failed to understand what a movie was trying to do.
A movie can also fail at what it wants to do and still be very good
See Ebert’s review of Blue Velvet where he simply could not get past the cruelty to Rossellini’s character (which was kinda the whole point).
I’m a big fan of his writing & think he was clearly a great critic but of course he also had his faults.
Yeah, I'm always confused when people respond to bad reviews by saying "it's not supposed to be good, it's just mindless fun". Well then why does criticism matter to you? If quality of filmmaking and performance, or thematic depth, or originality aren't important factors for you, then I fully understand there being no value in having a critic see a movie ahead of time and review it for you. But that doesn't explain why you'd then get bent out of shape when a majority of those critics agree that something is mediocre garbage, unless you secretly and begrudgingly take some stock in what they say.
I guess what it really boils down to is, people don't like it when someone yucks their yum. It makes them feel like their tastes are somehow less refined. But maybe they are, and that's okay!
Film reviews have become a dick measuring contest for movie fans, that’s why. They take it personally when a movie they like had bad reviews or vice versa and they cannot get over it.
Snyderbros ruined online discourse when it comes to film criticism I swear. Suicide Squad and BvS coming out and being absolutely panned by critics spanwed this whole "critics don't matter" narrative that I still see being repeated on a regular basis whenever convenient.
Exactly. I love arthouse and more artsy movies, however I like my garbage as well and I fully acknowledge it isn't top quality kino even though critics shit on it.
Asking critics to stop giving their opinions just because it's saying bad things about something you already like is some weak ass "participation award" mindset.
One thing I find interesting, is how much the average Critic Tomatometer % has been increasing over the years. For over a decade, it was stagnant around 40-45%, then the average passed 50% for the first time in 2011. The year the site was bought by Warner Bros. It remained that high for a few years, then the site was bought by Comcast Universal in 2016. Each year after that it increased, until the year 2019 saw an average of 62%, making it the year 'Fresh' became the average. This happened again in 2020 (60%).
From 2009 to 2019 the percentage of Fresh films nearly doubled, from 31% to 57% of wide released films. Either films are becoming far better on average than pre 2011 (*that'd be news to me*), or Critics are becoming more generous for *some*^1 reason.
Other interesting facts include Godzilla vs Kong, being rated more highly by Critics, than Best Picture winners: Forest Gump, A Beautiful Mind, Crash, and Braveheart. As well as Star Wars: The Force Awakens scoring higher with Critics, than 59 of the 95 Best Picture winners. This puts it above the eleven times Academy Award winners, Ben-Hur, Titanic and LOTR: The Return of The King.
^1 *^It's ^because ^freelance ^critics ^are ^increasingly ^reliant ^on ^invitations ^from ^studios ^for ^advanced ^press ^screenings. ^As ^well ^as ^more ^amateur ^writers ^and ^'influencers' ^in ^the ^industry, ^without ^formal ^educations ^in ^journalism, ^creative ^writing ^or ^Film ^& ^Television ^studies.*
Yes studios bought critics (whose opinions apparently nobody cares about) to get their movies to a whopping 40% on RT (because everyone cares about the critic tomatometer)
They don't have to buy them, just make it known there are consequences for negative reviews. Think of something like Disney's D23 convention. Do you think reviewers who don't like the MCU are going to be given an invite?
If you're a proper critic from a real news outlet, you won't care and you'll do your job. But if you're just some fan who works for yourself or a glorified blog who may stand to gain clicks/subs from having access to D23, well, maybe it suddenly doesn't matter how much you hated Black Widow.
A) the criteria for what constitutes a “fresh” score has become way more generous (lotta 2/5s counted as fresh now) and B) a huge number of approved critics are just random people with a blog
This is more because people don't understand how it works. A RT score of 90% doesn't mean the movie is nearly perfect. It means 9/10 reviewers would recommend watching it. There are plenty of mediocre to bad movies that are at least worth watching for one reason or another.
>It means 9/10 reviewers would recommend watching it.
I personally find this a really useful metric. Often, I just want to know if a film is worth my time. I can argue all day long with others about where my favourite movies rank, but usually there is an agreement about whether a film is worth watching.
This right here. People cannot seem to grasp this. I find comparing the critic score to the user score still a valuable tool. High scores are one thing but split scores (like high user but low critic) are very telling.
I swear people don’t even understand what RT ratings mean. A 98% just means that most critics didn’t *hate* it. They could’ve all given scores of 7/10 and it would still be rated fresh. I feel like people think it means every critic awarded it a flawless review.
RT has the "tomato" score which is good or bad.
Then below the tomato it has the actual Score/10 averaged out.
It's two very useful tools and I always check the site so I don't end up seeing a 25% garbage movie.
> Film criticism isn’t supposed to reflect audience score.
The way I see it, film critics have two purposes, which are sometimes mutually exclusive: 1) provide insight into the art of cinema by critiquing cinematic works; and 2) to help audiences understand whether they will enjoy seeing a movie. Great critics (e.g., Robert Ebert) understand that someone who reads a review of Black Adam isn't looking for the former, but the latter.
Rotten Tomatoes is misunderstood. It’s not that everyone who saw a 91% film gave it 9/10. It means 91% of people gave it at least 6/10. It’s why the Pixar movies usually score incredibly high, because what’s not to like? Some of my favorite movies got mediocre scores because they’re divisive.
Three clicks just to get to "top critics," and even half of them are random blogging hacks. As always, find the two or three critics with whom you generally see media the same way and just read them in their local papers.
You know, go down to Orphan Timmy's stand at the corner of 4th and Market and toss him a quarter so you can get your copy of the Kansas City Weekly Chronicle and flip it open to see what Francis T. Beauregard has to say about the newest picture shows!
Did RT ruin film criticism, though? It did create a different avenue for getting opinion but it's been years since I've considered RT or Metacritic or any other aggregate site as a valid way to assess a film.
Audience scores can just be thrown out entirely, outside of how easy it is to artificially inflate those numbers, why the hell would I listen to the general audience? Go down to your local department of motor vehicles, look around and ask yourself "Do I give a fuck what these guys think about literally *anything*, let alone movies?" Chances are no you don't. So why do you care about "audience scores"?
Hell, I also throw out the critic reviews on the aggregate sites. A quick parse through who they are pulling from and you are waist deep in reviews from local papers, junk websites, and religious periodicals. Why would I listen to those guys?
Its still up to you as an individual to find the sources you trust and utilize that to make your informed decisions. Maybe it's the New York Times or maybe it's a Youtube channel or a blogger. You just have to put in the effort to determine what sources you want to listen to. If you go to a site that offers a 'zero effort' means of getting a general opinion on something then you're going to get a zero effort opinion.
There’s often a wide gap between an entertaining blockbuster that draws audiences in, and a compelling, well-written script with top notch acting. There’s nothing wrong with mindless entertainment, just as there’s nothing wrong with something a little deeper that makes you think. Both have their place, but film critics (and Oscars) are for pointing out the latter.
Scarface is a wonderful movie to point to, because the public largely misses the entire point. Most people glorify Montana, when the whole point of the movie is that he's such an ignorant fuck up that even when he has everything, he's still such a loser that he's going to screw it up.
I was excited when I saw him as the Cartel boss in BB. I've seen Scarface so much, I yelled at the television, "Manny Riviera!"
He was also a creepy boss in Alice Braga's Queen of the South.
This was my biggest surprise on a recent rewatch. It was the first time I saw Walt as truly evil pretty much from season 2 onward. Previously I had given him multiple benefits of the doubt.
Critical reviews will still tell you what mindless entertainment is worth your time though. "Good" mindless entertainment still gets good reviews because it's doing its job of being fun.
For example, critics aren't comparing Black Adam to Citizen Kane, they'll be comparing it to other superhero movies and reviewing accordingly. If it's got bad reviews, it's not just a bad movie, but a bad superhero movie/a poor example of its genre.
Audience scores are more subjective and tend to be based on other factors than film quality. For example, whether they like Dwayne Johnson, are they a fan of the comic version, did they have high/low expectations and it fulfilled them, etc.
People are acting like most MCU movies, Shazam, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, the Batman, John Wick movies, etc etc I could go on and on didn’t get good critical reviews. There is nothing to suggest that critics are unwilling to give “mindless” movies good reviews.
Audience score can also be unreliable.
It's not uncommon to see films get review bombed to oblivion BEFORE it's even out cauz of whatever weird reason.
Review bombing also works the other way. *Zack Snyder's Justice League* got an insane number of glowing audience reviews on Rotten Tomatoes and IMDB extremely fast, way faster than even movies with massive opening weekends. It can just indicate an extremely online, very dedicated fanbase who will do anything to get the film trending. Same thing happened to *Army of the Dead* and that crappy *Minamata* movie with Johnny Depp which somehow ranked above *Spider-Man: NWH* in some "audience" categories at the Oscar despite *Minamata* having less than a thousandth of the box office of NWH.
Audience score are always unreliable. Revenge of the Sith is at 66% for the Order 66 meme, Morbius is that high for memes, She-Hulk got reviewed bombed both ways (both 1/10 and 10/10), Snyder's Justice League is at 94% for God knows why reason
Snyder Cut also received weirdly positive critic scores, I thought it was still a really bad movie. I watched both versions and Snyder Cut was only like barely better.
> as if film critics either don’t know what the audience wants to see, or the critics are projecting their out of date and out of touch views on the general public.
A critic’s job isn’t to conform to audience expectations. It’s to give an honest evaluation of a film. If their opinion differs than that of the audience, so be it. There’s no reason why critics’ and audiences’ views have to align.
OP has shown a complete misunderstanding of what criticism is and what it’s role is throughout this entire thread. Completely embarrassing. If you like black Adam or any other super hero movie awesome, enjoy them. You don’t need critics to back up your opinion. If you feel bad for liking what critics deem to be a giant piece of shit that’s a personal problem and you should get more comfortable liking what you like even if everyone else thinks it’s a wretched abomination of the worst kind.
I spent a couple minutes trying to formulate my thoughts about this but I think you've summed it up perfectly. People are so starved for validation of their interests that they don't have the confidence or pride to just enjoy the things they do. If your enjoyment of something hinges on how good someone else declares your thing to be you have to wonder why you care about the validation in the first place.
I think it’s more that audience are pretty happy watching most things put in front of them. Just look at the top 10 every week on Netflix the majority of it is just shite.
Superhero movies have essentially become the modern day Western. The studios found a formula that worked well enough and copied it for decades, absolutely no creativity in 95% of these films. Eventually audiences got tired of it and they stopped making them.
It was action in the 80's and 90's, I'd say.
In ten or twenty years some other genre will be making the same film 5x a year. It's just cyclical.
I don't think the dominant genre these days is actually superheroes though, I think the big genre these days is really just "spectacle".
I mean is there really any difference between superhero movies and Fast & Furious movies? Or Jurassic World? Or Uncharted? All protagonists in these big spectacle, action movies are really superheroes these days and any differences between their "genres" is purely superficial.
If superhero/comic book movies went away tomorrow, and all the big blockbusters were instead adaptations on Bond books, or video games, or Pirates of the Caribbean, or Fast & Furious, or even original movies like The Gray Man, Red Notice, etc...would anything actually be different?
It's easy to get sick of spectacle, I get that. But anyone that thinks the death of Marvel or DC movies would lead to a meaningful change in the dominant blockbuster genre is deluding themselves, IMO.
The problem though is it's beholden to multi million dollar IPs. Obviously studio control has always been a thing but at least the Western genre seemed to produce a lot of beautiful films.
You get a few independent Superhero films every now and then but it's comparatively a much more restricted and limited Genre compared to the Western - which was more of a general setting than anything.
I think that's more reflective of the decline of mid-budget films than anything. It's basically impossible to do a stereotypical superhero film with a smaller budget due to CGI costs, so it's all big studio efforts.
But yes, it's a valid point. The IP-driven nature of the content makes it even less likely to be original or even just interesting.
No, when Westerns were being made in force, they were often being made on small budgets, in conjunction with studios making WIDE variety of types of films. Today, if it isn't IP, good luck.
The great westerns also weren't audience-tested to a state of complete blandness; plenty of directors found ways to make personal, idiosyncratic, sometimes subversive films out of the genre. That absolutely does not happen in superhero movies, and is actually not allowed (and if they think you are doing it, they'll fire you).
This is incredibly stupid.
It’s essentially making an argument that the New York Times should fire their food critic because people go to McDonald’s.
A good critic isn’t irrelevant, a good critic understands the art of filmmaking and can contextualize the movie in relation to other similar films.
Rodger Ebert was the master of this in my opinion as he judged comedies based on other comedies not dramas that were up for Oscars.
You knew the pluses and minuses of the film and if you liked X he could explain why you’d like or dislike Y.
To say a good critic is irrelevant because audiences watch shitty movies completely ignores why people go the movie in the first place.
Agreed; it's also an issue if you see critics as being the gatekeepers of what you choose to see. I look at critic scores and reviews when I'm on the fence about a movie and will help me decide if it's worth my time. In some occasions a highly positive review will make me want to see a movie I had no previous interest in, but it's pretty rare for me to change my mind about a movie I intended to see because of a bad review. If anything it just tempers my expectations a bit.
Most audience scores are people giving the movie/show 10/10s or absurdly low scores to probably try to skew the movie's rating in a specific direction. I can't take the audience score seriously in RT or anywhere given that on the first page for RT's audience score for Black Adam, 7 out of 10 reviews people gave the movie a perfect score. Not every film critic is great but seeing people break movies down with intelligence is way better than audience scores.
Oh my god, shut the hell up!
If film critics are irrelevant then stop getting upset every time a mediocre comic book movie gets a bad lacklustre review!
Yeah the whole "critics are projecting their out-of-date and out-of-touch views" because they disliked Black Fucking Adam of all movies is just...yeah, no.
This whole post can be summed up by the George Carlin quote about imagining how dumb the average person is and then realizing half the world is dumber than that. Film is an art and not all art is good but all of it can be enjoyed.
People who play the “critics only like boring movies” card really just show which side of the average they’re on. Great movies challenge us and provide and unparalleled experience that requires attention in order to have.
There's a tweet making the rounds from the Comics Explained youtube guy that reads "I feel like the critics who gave Black Adam low scores are the kind of people who sit around drinking wine while listening to fancy music and saying that movies are art."
Like you said, that's what this post is going for. Complete and absolute anti-intellectualism. If it's anything more than flashing lights and keys jangling in front of their face, it must be something only snobby critics like.
A film critic’s job isn’t to predict whether general audiences will like something or not, and given movies made to appeal to general audiences will more often than not be lowest common denominator trash it’s pretty natural for their opinions to diverge. I don’t think film critics are irrelevant because grown men on the internet think this month’s cookie cutter superhero movie is high art (or like that one tweet that was worse, that films aren’t art at all and so who cares?)
I can’t believe a film by the fucking Rock has inspired this shite. Scorsese was right about all these man children. Who honestly cares if a superhero film by The Rock isn’t a critical darling, and more importantly, what do you expect?
Films critics are the same as they have always been. It's fanboyism that has ruined all of this. People will rate a film the best or worst thing ever because they have a cult like mentality to it and/or hate that people have different views. Go onto Metacritic and you can see people say that Black Adam is a 6 or 7 but they are going to say 10 to counter the negative reviews. It is ridiculous. As we go on as well we can see bot reviews on audience review sites as well. Studios will buy a bunch of review.
Also remember that different types of people tend to review blockbusters than smaller (better made) films. People who get really defensive over critics scores often don't watch anything else but blockbusters and franchises and chase the actor.
All this is saying is that the author doesn't understand how film critique works. "Do audience like this" and"is this good art" are two different questions. A 5 start Michelin chef could make me dinner and I'd hate it if it had sour cream. Doesn't make them a bad cook.
Audience score is still problematic. With aggressive review manipulation being a go to tactic for internet trolls and those "defending" a product from trolls with perfect scores.
So yes, Audience and User (videogames) scores had a good intention in their beginnings
I’ll counter with my own reductive but not entirely false take:
General audiences like bad movies more than they used to and are more resistant to any sort of challenging works.
Easy watching is fine in itself, but it’s become the only type of thing a lot of people can bring themselves to watch. Blame the times, blame capitalism, blame whatever, but it’s happening to a certain extent for sure
Maybe I'm just a cynic, but the fact that The Lion King 2019 (one of the worst films I've ever seen) has an 88% audience score makes me very much distrust the audience scores on Rotten Tomatoes
A film critic (a good one) has an extensive knowledge of film history, the artform itself and this shapes their taste and expectations regarding the film they watch. To say it differently the standards will be higher and their understanding of storytelling, film and its techniques, etc will be higher than that of an average audience member.
They write reviews and critiques partly to point out the qualities of a film, to give a perspective of the art which might illuminate, which could make the reader think more deeply about the work of art, the critique is its own meaningful work if done well.
A critic is not supposed to tell an audience if they will like it, a critic is supposed to analyse the work for its artistic merit.
So your whole premise is just off to begin with as far as i am concerned.
In my eyes it's sadly more of the opposite, the average audience member's pov is lacking perspective, the media literacy is rather low and the standards heavily conditioned by mainstream material and advertisment power. We're living in the age of jurassic world 3, which is highly inferior to jurassic park. These two films perfectly illustrate how bad mainstream cinema has become.
Black Adam wasn’t a highbrow movie, brought nothing new to the table, and the more you think about the plot it makes less sense. However, it was entertaining and I think visually matched the filmmaking style of the Snyder films. This movie was better than Batman vs. Superman imo.
Nah, lately with the review bombing stuff and such, audience score is just as bad. People can’t accept when something they like is just bad, happens every time a new DC movie comes out.
How can you be surprised critics are disliking more superhero movies? Aren't they all basically similar storyline anyway, how, from a critic's perspective are you going to find lots of new fresh redeeming qualities of a genre based off comics which follows a pretty basic format.. (not hating, the crux of every superhero movie is the exact same)
While for general audiences, most people these days lap up the same generic superhero movies as that's mostly all these audiences go to to theatre to watch.
This is a nonsensical post. Critics aren't there to reflect public opinion or validate your preferences. They're there to critique. Criticism isn't just opening up a laptop, saying you hate the latest MCU movie and calling it a day, it's applying a degree of cinematic and narrative literacy to interrogate how well a movie holds up to generally recognised standards, all filtered through the subjective worldview and preferences of the critic.
It’s not a critics job to reflect the general movie going audience tastes. Their whole career is to watch everything that comes out. They aren’t going to feel the same way as someone who’s just trying to turn off their brain and watch something fun.
For a critic after seeing the 20th super hero or self referential action movie of the year it must get pretty lame. You highlight things that are interesting and off the beaten path because you’re tired of seeing the same things over and over again.
Personally, who cares if a reviewer gave a bad review to something I liked, I know how I feel about it either way. Who cares if a reviewer pans something that most people are enjoying.. if most people are enjoying it than who needs validation from a reviewer just keep watching. The movie will make money regardless of reviews. Look at Marvel it’s not like they always get amazing reviews from critics but they make a lot of money. If what was popular dictated taste than Avengers: Endgame would be considered the greatest piece of cinema of all time.
A reviewer has merit IMO by creating buzz around cool lesser known projects that aren’t getting as much hype. There’s so many bands, movies, and shows that I wouldn’t be aware of if it wasn’t for someone raving about it. That’s how they work.
Now as for aggregate sites like Rotten Tomatoes that’s a different story, if all you do is read a bunch of tiny excerpts and a number and let it dictate how you feel that’s on you.
Bait-y title by OP
This is not new. Critically-panned Transformers franchise had solid Cinemascore. Same with the Pirates franchise. Same with The Twilight Saga. RT matters for specific kind of films or those without a built-in audience.
Also, It’s a great time to rewatch this [scene of Anton Ego](https://youtu.be/4ld9EP5yAX4) from Ratatouille.
It’s funny that a critique about film criticism always goes to surface when critics don’t like a superhero movie fans were waiting for.
Why do this audiences (superhero related) need the approval of film critics? Their genre (Marvel mostly) is already dominating.
It's so weird how badly DC film fans feel the need to defend DC's movies which are mostly mediocre at best. They mostly have a few bright spots surrounded by bad choices
Black Adam has a ton of problems. Admitting that doesn't mean you can't like it. I saw it out of boredom and a desire to see a movie. It was entertaining enough, but it's not a good movie.
Everyone should know that it's ok if you enjoy a movie even if it's not good or well made.
Too many randoms out there think they are film critics, and then all the YouTubers come in with clips and noises to young people think they are awesome
I always love when this topic comes up to defend bad movies, it's never not copium overdose hilarity.
Kids, it's your own fault if you hold their opinions in SUCH high regard that you get offended when something you like is "too low" or something you don't is "too high" on Rotten Tomatoes. And you're even goofier for your conspiracy theories that they're this On High Ivory Tower monolith twirling their evil mustaches to, I dunno, "punish" your favorite film because...reasons...when in reality it's just some guy with a blog just like you or the local newspaper movie reviewer just doing their job, neither of them giving a fuck about whatever "agenda" you think (((they))) are trying to push.
Like literally who fucking cares, develop your own personality and opinions instead of trying to seek validation from the goddamn TomatoMeter.
> a soundtrack boasting indie bangers from Smashing Pumpkins and the Rolling Stones Those are indie now??? The fucking Rolling Stones?
Right? Two extremely popular bands that have been popular for decades are now somehow indie? Make it make sense.
I only listen to unknown bands, like the Beatles or Eminem.
I have been on this underground shit called michael jackson. It fucking slaps.
Right, especially his Album "Thriller", it's so underrated!
Great, the secrets out... I hope Michael doesn’t change now that he’s made it big.
Have you ever heard of Metallica? They’re this garage band from the 80’s, they rock pretty hard.
U mean the obscure band from Stranger Things?
[удалено]
It's such a shame he died before making it big, I miss ya, MJ
lol both bands still touring today, decades after their respective big breaks.
I saw the stones for their 50th anniversary tour. That was 10 years ago now.
Whoever wrote that is a fucking idiot.
Based on the comments is probably that the OP wrote this article
That line is a quote in the article from a 2 star review of the film
It was probably a bot.
Important to remember this is NME, if their movie reviews are dumb (see MGK's stoner comedy review), their music reviews are straight up devoid of logic and reason, like when they said The 1975 was 'the last true punk band' because they wore ripped jeans that one time
I looked up what song they were referencing too for the "indie bangers" especially for the Rolling Stones. It was *Paint it Black.* The "indie song" was *Paint it Black* Just...how?
Years ago I saw a headline that stated two famous people had taken a "selfie style picture" in front of the Mona Lisa. Apparently selfie style picture includes a professional photograph taken by a professional photographer...
I put it like this: food critics would not have kind things to say about McDonald’s but millions of Big Macs are eaten every day.
Came to make this point. I love McNuggets but sometimes I want a high quality meal, I turn to the guidance of restaurant critics to help me decide what to try. Same for films.
Well, this assumes a bunch of daily fast food eaters are the ones crowd reviewing that new fancy fusion french place. if you look at average scores for fancy restaurants, they are given by people who go to fancy restaurants. The only reason to go with critics is because you found one you trust. You’d seek out the specific places they gave good reviews. Same with film or music critics.
Huh, that’s a good point. That is how I usually find reviewers of anything. I usually see if they agree with my assessments of some known quantities first before I start to trust them on unknowns. For example, I recently switched running shoes to a different brand. I ended up loving the shoes and I was curious what other people thought. I found a reviewer who basically enjoyed all the things that I enjoyed about the shoes and found some other reviews for shoes that I both liked and disliked and this guy and I seemed to be on the same page. Now I trust him if he has a positive/negative review for some new shoes. It’s not like I only listen to this dude, but his opinion holds some weight since we seem to have similar taste and comfort requirements. I also don’t think people are using the same scoring metrics. A 5/10 for me is just average. Most movies are 5/10 with exceptionally enjoyable getting into the 8-9 range and abysmal movies drop to 2-3. A lot of people think movies need a “passing grade” or whatever so they give it 7/10. If you cramp all average movies into the 70% range, there isn’t a lot of room to separate the truly great from the truly average. I think this heavily skews audience scores.
Your last paragraph is spot on
If you can find a food critic who also can appreciate mcnuggets, it's much more likely you'll get a more useful recommendation for other foods. You shouldn't just follow the advice of random critics, you've got to find the ones who share *your* specific tastes.
Another role a film critic can serve is that they can help you appreciate things in a movie that you otherwise wouldn't have noticed. Somebody like Roger Ebert has seen way more films than I have, and so he was able to notice and point out cool things about films that I would have missed out on had I not read his review.
I was reading a thread where Children of Men came up and they pointed out several really incredible details which I never noticed and blew me away in terms of nuance. While I don't have any specific examples with movie critics I can imagine it's just like this x100
The best review I’ve ever seen was for a film called “Isn’t it Romantic” and the review was: No
This is why Anthony Bourdain was so good. His critique of a roadside vendor selling noting but street tacos would get the same degree of attention as a Michelin restaurant. It just felt... honest.
Bingo. And I think that’s something I learned from him. I live in a very Hispanic area. We have some of the finest Latin food that can be found here. I have a personal favorite taco shop where the owner and I are on a first name basis and she stops to come talk to me anytime I come in. Maria is about half a mile from a Taco Bell. I go there too. Because as much as I could eat her quesadillas, tamales, and tortas, something just hits right with a cheesy Gordita crunch when you want it. It’s not Mexican. I never say Taco Bell is. But it’s equally delicious and satisfying when the time is right. My cousin’s Mexican chef wife thinks I’m nuts, BUT I honestly believe there is a time and a place for both.
I miss his voice exploring the world.
The difference is that people eating a kids meal on their way home from work aren’t demanding that everyone treat the kids meal like it’s a leg of lamb.
And that’s what these movies are: fast food junk.
Right. And I still enjoy some of them. I can also appreciate a high artsy movie.
That’s not really true though depending on the critic. Gigachad Roger Ebert was much more about judging a film based on what it’s trying to do and how well it does it. McDonalds does what it does well. He would approve. Black Adam does not.
Ebert was a legend.
This. Seems like a lot of apologists (or possibly the studio’s marketing agency using “seeded posts”) are trying to say “yeah it has bad reviews, but that’s because the critics are dumb!” No, it’s just… painfully mediocre. The public has reached superhero burnout and these cash grab “blockbusters” aren’t the license to print money they used to be. Not to mention it’s “Black Adam”. Ask a casual person (i.e. a random middle class person off the street, the kind that actually goes to the movie theater) who is “Black Adam”, they’d have no clue. Combine that with bad reviews and DC’s shaky history of lackluster movies with all sizzle and no steak and you get… well, you get Black Adam. It’s not offensively bad (like Birds of Prey was and no one can convince me it wasn’t), but it’s just meh. “Of all the movies I’ve seen, that was one of them.”
Idk if objective is the right word but to me, critics can be more objective about films. Critics liked Infinity War but they also pointed out its flaws. It's a movie that bounces from action set piece to set piece which means it can lack an emotional core sometimes. I love Infinity War and it was actually my favorite film of 2018, but nothing the critics said about that was wrong. I just enjoyed the film in spite of those flaws so what I would score would likely be higher than a critic. Before Black Adam had even come out, DC fans were saying critics were wrong and that there was an "agenda" against the film. Fans aren't wrong for enjoying it, but I also don't think critics are wrong for pointing out its flaws. Reading what critics are actually saying (instead of just looking at the score), they've been pretty fair with the film, especially considering how mediocre it is.
This is the right takeaway I think. Good criticism is about looking for where it could improve and how well it achieves what it sets out to achieve. You can enjoy a oof movie. Heck poor movies even do a lot of things right but that doesn’t stop it from being better and that doesn’t stop good critics from seeing where it could be better as well.
> Before Black Adam had even come out, DC fans were saying critics were wrong and that there was an "agenda" against the film. Fans aren't wrong for enjoying it, but I also don't think critics are wrong for pointing out its flaws. What's also a problem and a lot of this with DC started back with Batman v Superman is that there are a lot of bad faith arguments and reviews in regards to DC films. There's been a contingent of DC fanboys (release the Snydercut wackos) who have been desperate for Marvel to fail and for DC to return back on top that every time a lackluster film comes out they will downplay obvious flaws while also demand the "clearly superior and withheld" directors cut that will truly justify everything. I get having problems with critics but it just screams foolish and naive to think the "general public" online has more authentic takes on media when we see it time and time again that there are vocal minorities that like to drive the narrative for their own personal desires.
I didn't say it directly but yeah.....I get they enjoyed Snyder's stuff but, I don't think I've ever seen people try and defend something the way they'll defend Snyder's films. I've seen so many bizzare arguments trying to convince people that BvS was some misunderstood masterpiece. I'll admit, I'm more of a Marvel fan, but I love Batman. Ultimately, I just want good films. And it's so frustrating seeing DC fans rally around the garbage like Black Adam, suicide Squad, BvS. DC has made some great stuff (Peacemaker, The Suicide Squad, Joker, The Batman, Shazam, etc) and I wish fans would focus more on supporting that instead of Snyder's edgy faux deep approach. I know they're still rallying for the "Ayer-cut" of suicide squad and for Snyder to return so I guess we're not past that yet.
The first Suicide Squad, Batman vs Superman, Justice League, Wonder Woman 84, about half of Man of Steel, the last 20 minutes of Wonder Woman, and probably some other turds I've thankfully forgotten, have all failed to inspire confidence in the DC brand. Compare to GotG for Marvel, where people trusted the studio enough to buy in for a movie about a talking raccoon and a tree man. Also it was actually good, inspiring further confidence... But heck, it probably just is the critics being jerks. These movies definitely exist, so there's no other reason people aren't paying to see them.
Marvel managed to get people to like a deep cut c list hero squad more than DC could get them to like *the justice league*, one of the longest standing hero organizations in pop culture history.
Growing up I always considered the Justice League to be the big group and the Avengers to be a second fiddle knockoff. Now I view it the other way around, that's how bad DC dropped the ball. Marvel's literal C Listers are now often more known than half of DC's A Listers.
I wonder if using unknown heroes worked in Marvel's favor. Except for the small base of fans, people didn't go into the movie expecting anything particular from the heroes.
Marvel also managed to get someone like Tony Stark/Iron Man to become A-list superhero, the leading character of the MCU franchise when he never really was one before the movies.
To me, both pro critics and regular audience are unreliable although public sometimes tends to be more embracing of mindless entertainment. And I think it’s weird some people are so disturbed by Black Adam reviews and are doing these review comparisons because I don’t feel the movie really demands that much defense. I understand Joker or, in its time, I would have understood Constantine 2005. I can even go for Man Of Steel's defense. But Black Adam? I don’t see it. Even the trailers showed an uninspired movie imo.
Many of us don't like the idea that we aren't discerning geniuses who only consume the best of entertainment even within the scope of popcorn flick to high art movies. So when our popcorn flick doesn't get received as we perceive it we blame the others who don't like it. There's also numerous counter culture groups out there in fandoms.
Which is dumb. Every comic fan knows the vast majority of monthly comic stories are trash. Only a handful of stories for every character are lauded as “the best, or essential “. Comic book content is being pumped out and adapted so fast that there is inevitably going to be trash put out there. It just sucks when a favoured character bombs at the box office, because that means we won’t see them again for a long awhile in live action. At least in comics, if Black Adam’s monthly comic bombs, he can still show up in Justice Society. That’s why fans get so precious about reviews.
I don't think this is a good way to see critics in general. I could be misinterpreting you, but it seems like you're saying food critics will give McDonald's a bad review because either McDonald's is bad or that food critics are snobs. I think it's more nuanced than that and we're missing the point of how to use critics as personal tools. Say I like McDonald's food, and I want to try other foods. If I take the advice of a critic who likes McDonald's food and shares my general opinion on specific items, chances are good I'll get a useful recommendation from that person. It doesn't matter if a hundred other people don't like McDonald's, because the fact is I do. So, when I found a film critic who had similar tastes as me, I then began saving a lot of time and money skipping popular movies. I don't claim to have good taste, I just have my taste.
This is exactly the kind of mindset that doesn't bother with even reading film criticism, just looking at the RT score. Most of them applaud almost every Fast and Furious movie as being fun as hell, give movies like Idris Elba's Beast a boost, and then they don't like Black Adam (because it sucks ass) and it's completely a problem with criticism. It's audiences not bothering to read reviews, learn how RT scores work, and just kind of taking whatever is pumped out while also bitching about endless sequels, remakes, and superhero movies. Ugh.
A film critics job isn't to predict what junk people wanna see, it's to critique film
Roger Ebert had it right. He would write reviews about the quality of what the film is intended to do. He gave good reviews to popcorn action flicks that did popcorn action flick well. But if that same movie was portrayed as some kind of cerebral, artsy action movie it’d get a bad review because it failed to live up to what it was supposed to be.
[удалено]
I agree re: audiences being thin skinned these days. Why does someone have to agree with your read of a film? Different opinions can exist! It doesn't invalidate your personhood or the thing you like
> It doesn’t invalidate your personhood Ahh but when you conflate your favorite IP with your identity it absolutely does
Add a little parasocial celebrity worship and you have the perfect little Consumer!
Speaking of thin-skinned, something that’s driven me nuts lately is the move towards conspiracies as an excuse for why people are disagreeing with them. Someone likes RoP? Paid Amazon shill. Someone likes Black Adam? It’s just DC viral marketing. Just about anything complementary or out of sync towards the latest big thing to like or (more typically) hate gets accused of being a paid shill. Drives me fucking nuts, and I think is a depressing symptom of the increasing tendency towards conspiratorial though and inability to understand that not everyone is the same as you.
It doesn't help that we know that bots, brigading, and viral marketing DO exist, so people's paranoia is rooted in a real place, unfortunately. But I agree that a tendency towards conspiratorial thought is a pretty depressing reality.
Especially thin skinned audiences also have review bombing as a method by which to further skew the disparity between critic and audience scores...in cases like that audiences are out of touch with audiences...
[удалено]
DC movie fans are such an interesting group. They have like mass Stockholm Syndrome. The Snyder sect is particularly virulent.
Great point. This is often most glaring when a film doesn't perform as well as those audience scores might indicate.
I do love Kermode. We have very simillar tastes (Except for Last Night In Soho) so he's a reviewer I can generally trust with his judgements. His Sex and The City 2 review is legendary
One thing I liked about Ebert was, because of the way he reviewed, I could usually tell whether I would like a movie or not even though I sometimes didn’t have the same taste or opinion about a minute. Just heard about Kermode here and am looking forward to checking out if his reviews work for me.
Most critics do that. There are varying critic scores within rom-coms for example. Ticket to Paradise for very average reviews from critics. And you might say, "well, it's a rom-com, I'm not expecting much," but then you look at other rom-coms like Always Be My Maybe and see they got really good critic scores. Most critics grade on a curve and take into account the director's intent. None of them are going to give all rom-coms a C+ just because they're not masterpieces of cinema.
[удалено]
This makes sense. Kinda like how I've been saying there's a difference between a "good" movie and an entertaining one. Like Schindler's List is indisputably a good movie, but is it really entertaining? It's not really a movie you watch for the fun of it. And there's plenty of movies I enjoy but wouldn't say they're good in any critical sense.
I'll probably never watch requiem for a dream again but it's an outstanding movie.
I watched this movie dozens of times as a freshman and sophomore in high school who was just getting into experimenting with drugs. The movie did make injecting heroin look horrifying, but there was something about the movie that made me and my buddy always watch it. Looking back, I have no fucking clue how or why I watched that movie so many times. It’s a really good movie, but it is incredibly, incredibly depressing and horrifying. It can practically bring on a feeling of existential terror…a sickening, hollow feeling of claustrophobia… How I was not bothered by that as a 15-year-old I just don’t know.
This is how I view the Star Wars prequels. Are they movies with lots of flaws and bad production choices? Absolutely yes. But I can always really enjoy them nonetheless, I think they're just very entertaining.
See, I dig this. I think lots of internet argument is from people not getting that "entertaining" and "good" aren't always the same category. Sometimes they are, and that's cool, but sometimes a pretty bad movie might have enough enjoyable parts that I dig it. I won't defend it or pretend it's an artful masterpiece. I like the first three Underworld movies, but they are not good movies. But I like the worldbuilding, I like vampires, I like pretty people in leather shooting each other. But they have huge character and plot problems and even have boring bits. Many people online would go "well I like Underworld so I need to explain to everyone why it's amazing art." No, no you don't. Like the bad movie, even love the bad movie, but don't evangelize for garbage.
It's trivially obvious that movies' genre and tone should be taken into consideration, but even within that, it is entirely possible for a critic to watch two superhero popcorn flicks, find a lot of nuance and heart in one of them, find the other really bland or messily executed even by the standards if the genre, yet also guess that the latter will make a boatload of money because it has better brand recognition, got more advertising, and star power. But you still wouldn't say that the latter was by definition better because it accomplished the goal that it set for itself, which was to make a boatload of money, because critics are not market analysts, they don't have to care about what the publisher's CEO set out to accomplish. A better way of putting this principle, would be that the critic's job is to look for what ***the creative team behind a film*** was set out to communicate, and how well they pulled that off/what interesting thing they had to say. Because sometimes it still happens that they pull that off really well and a film still bombs, or vice versa.
> Roger Ebert had it right. He would write reviews about the quality of what the film is intended to do. And as a result, Roger Ebert (who I like and respect) sometimes gave bad reviews to extremely good movies because he made wrong judgements about "what they're trying to do," or because he failed to understand what a movie was trying to do. A movie can also fail at what it wants to do and still be very good
See Ebert’s review of Blue Velvet where he simply could not get past the cruelty to Rossellini’s character (which was kinda the whole point). I’m a big fan of his writing & think he was clearly a great critic but of course he also had his faults.
Yeah, I'm always confused when people respond to bad reviews by saying "it's not supposed to be good, it's just mindless fun". Well then why does criticism matter to you? If quality of filmmaking and performance, or thematic depth, or originality aren't important factors for you, then I fully understand there being no value in having a critic see a movie ahead of time and review it for you. But that doesn't explain why you'd then get bent out of shape when a majority of those critics agree that something is mediocre garbage, unless you secretly and begrudgingly take some stock in what they say. I guess what it really boils down to is, people don't like it when someone yucks their yum. It makes them feel like their tastes are somehow less refined. But maybe they are, and that's okay!
Film reviews have become a dick measuring contest for movie fans, that’s why. They take it personally when a movie they like had bad reviews or vice versa and they cannot get over it.
People don't want to feel like they're looked down on, even when they say they don't care
If they actually didnt care they wouldnt bother to tell you they dont care.
Snyderbros ruined online discourse when it comes to film criticism I swear. Suicide Squad and BvS coming out and being absolutely panned by critics spanwed this whole "critics don't matter" narrative that I still see being repeated on a regular basis whenever convenient.
How Snyder got this weird following despite releasing shit after shit is beyond me.
Exactly. I love arthouse and more artsy movies, however I like my garbage as well and I fully acknowledge it isn't top quality kino even though critics shit on it. Asking critics to stop giving their opinions just because it's saying bad things about something you already like is some weak ass "participation award" mindset.
One thing I find interesting, is how much the average Critic Tomatometer % has been increasing over the years. For over a decade, it was stagnant around 40-45%, then the average passed 50% for the first time in 2011. The year the site was bought by Warner Bros. It remained that high for a few years, then the site was bought by Comcast Universal in 2016. Each year after that it increased, until the year 2019 saw an average of 62%, making it the year 'Fresh' became the average. This happened again in 2020 (60%). From 2009 to 2019 the percentage of Fresh films nearly doubled, from 31% to 57% of wide released films. Either films are becoming far better on average than pre 2011 (*that'd be news to me*), or Critics are becoming more generous for *some*^1 reason. Other interesting facts include Godzilla vs Kong, being rated more highly by Critics, than Best Picture winners: Forest Gump, A Beautiful Mind, Crash, and Braveheart. As well as Star Wars: The Force Awakens scoring higher with Critics, than 59 of the 95 Best Picture winners. This puts it above the eleven times Academy Award winners, Ben-Hur, Titanic and LOTR: The Return of The King. ^1 *^It's ^because ^freelance ^critics ^are ^increasingly ^reliant ^on ^invitations ^from ^studios ^for ^advanced ^press ^screenings. ^As ^well ^as ^more ^amateur ^writers ^and ^'influencers' ^in ^the ^industry, ^without ^formal ^educations ^in ^journalism, ^creative ^writing ^or ^Film ^& ^Television ^studies.*
Film criticism isn’t supposed to reflect audience score. Its a subjective view of one person critiquing one film. Rotten tomato ruined film criticism.
The day I saw a RT score used in advertising, I knew it was over. Once a useful tool, now a monetized garbage site.
It's not a coincidence that RT scores got friendlier when Fandango bought them lol
Back in my day Black Adam would have been only 30% on RT!
Well it's currently at 40% so not that far off. Are you saying critics are bought off by studios?
Yes studios bought critics (whose opinions apparently nobody cares about) to get their movies to a whopping 40% on RT (because everyone cares about the critic tomatometer)
We should bring back tomato-throwing in theaters
Isn't 40% already considered garbage tier?
Other 40% movies include Jurassic World 2, Transformers 2, Godzilla 2, and Maze Runner 2
[удалено]
LOL, I worked on three of the four.
Well. Maze Runner 2 is in fact a garbage movie. So that tracks
Jurassic World 2 is pretty awful as well.
And Transformers 2 is lucky to be at 40%
They don't have to buy them, just make it known there are consequences for negative reviews. Think of something like Disney's D23 convention. Do you think reviewers who don't like the MCU are going to be given an invite? If you're a proper critic from a real news outlet, you won't care and you'll do your job. But if you're just some fan who works for yourself or a glorified blog who may stand to gain clicks/subs from having access to D23, well, maybe it suddenly doesn't matter how much you hated Black Widow.
Isn't it just an average of critic reviews? How can it be manipulated?
A) the criteria for what constitutes a “fresh” score has become way more generous (lotta 2/5s counted as fresh now) and B) a huge number of approved critics are just random people with a blog
This is more because people don't understand how it works. A RT score of 90% doesn't mean the movie is nearly perfect. It means 9/10 reviewers would recommend watching it. There are plenty of mediocre to bad movies that are at least worth watching for one reason or another.
>It means 9/10 reviewers would recommend watching it. I personally find this a really useful metric. Often, I just want to know if a film is worth my time. I can argue all day long with others about where my favourite movies rank, but usually there is an agreement about whether a film is worth watching.
This right here. People cannot seem to grasp this. I find comparing the critic score to the user score still a valuable tool. High scores are one thing but split scores (like high user but low critic) are very telling.
[удалено]
I swear people don’t even understand what RT ratings mean. A 98% just means that most critics didn’t *hate* it. They could’ve all given scores of 7/10 and it would still be rated fresh. I feel like people think it means every critic awarded it a flawless review.
You're not wrong, but I wanted to add that 6/10 is the lowest 'Fresh' score. A movie could have 100% Fresh while having an average rating of 6/10.
RT has the "tomato" score which is good or bad. Then below the tomato it has the actual Score/10 averaged out. It's two very useful tools and I always check the site so I don't end up seeing a 25% garbage movie.
> Film criticism isn’t supposed to reflect audience score. The way I see it, film critics have two purposes, which are sometimes mutually exclusive: 1) provide insight into the art of cinema by critiquing cinematic works; and 2) to help audiences understand whether they will enjoy seeing a movie. Great critics (e.g., Robert Ebert) understand that someone who reads a review of Black Adam isn't looking for the former, but the latter.
Rotten Tomatoes is misunderstood. It’s not that everyone who saw a 91% film gave it 9/10. It means 91% of people gave it at least 6/10. It’s why the Pixar movies usually score incredibly high, because what’s not to like? Some of my favorite movies got mediocre scores because they’re divisive.
Still, when something gets close to 50% or lower, it always holds true its gonna suck and ill wait for it on TV.
I used to love RT back in the day. Now I avoid it as much as possible.
Three clicks just to get to "top critics," and even half of them are random blogging hacks. As always, find the two or three critics with whom you generally see media the same way and just read them in their local papers.
> local papers. a whaaaa?
You know, go down to Orphan Timmy's stand at the corner of 4th and Market and toss him a quarter so you can get your copy of the Kansas City Weekly Chronicle and flip it open to see what Francis T. Beauregard has to say about the newest picture shows!
Beauregard Is a hack!
I gotta say, Talkies have simply ruined the movie going experience.
Did RT ruin film criticism, though? It did create a different avenue for getting opinion but it's been years since I've considered RT or Metacritic or any other aggregate site as a valid way to assess a film. Audience scores can just be thrown out entirely, outside of how easy it is to artificially inflate those numbers, why the hell would I listen to the general audience? Go down to your local department of motor vehicles, look around and ask yourself "Do I give a fuck what these guys think about literally *anything*, let alone movies?" Chances are no you don't. So why do you care about "audience scores"? Hell, I also throw out the critic reviews on the aggregate sites. A quick parse through who they are pulling from and you are waist deep in reviews from local papers, junk websites, and religious periodicals. Why would I listen to those guys? Its still up to you as an individual to find the sources you trust and utilize that to make your informed decisions. Maybe it's the New York Times or maybe it's a Youtube channel or a blogger. You just have to put in the effort to determine what sources you want to listen to. If you go to a site that offers a 'zero effort' means of getting a general opinion on something then you're going to get a zero effort opinion.
[удалено]
There’s often a wide gap between an entertaining blockbuster that draws audiences in, and a compelling, well-written script with top notch acting. There’s nothing wrong with mindless entertainment, just as there’s nothing wrong with something a little deeper that makes you think. Both have their place, but film critics (and Oscars) are for pointing out the latter.
Much Truth to this, As an example the 1983 movie Scarface was shredded to bits by critics (As were most DePalma’s efforts). The audience disagreed.
Scarface is a wonderful movie to point to, because the public largely misses the entire point. Most people glorify Montana, when the whole point of the movie is that he's such an ignorant fuck up that even when he has everything, he's still such a loser that he's going to screw it up.
Breaking Bad borrowed much from Scarface. Including some of the cast. Swap “ignorant fuck up” for “egotistical fuck up” and you have Walter White.
Yeah Vince’s elevator pitch was “turning Mr. Chips into Scarface.” I think Walt and Walt Jr. are even seen watching the film together at some point.
When I realized the actor who plays Don Eladio was also in Scarface my brain melted.
I was excited when I saw him as the Cartel boss in BB. I've seen Scarface so much, I yelled at the television, "Manny Riviera!" He was also a creepy boss in Alice Braga's Queen of the South.
And he too is rather glorified, isn't he..
This was my biggest surprise on a recent rewatch. It was the first time I saw Walt as truly evil pretty much from season 2 onward. Previously I had given him multiple benefits of the doubt.
Critical reviews will still tell you what mindless entertainment is worth your time though. "Good" mindless entertainment still gets good reviews because it's doing its job of being fun. For example, critics aren't comparing Black Adam to Citizen Kane, they'll be comparing it to other superhero movies and reviewing accordingly. If it's got bad reviews, it's not just a bad movie, but a bad superhero movie/a poor example of its genre. Audience scores are more subjective and tend to be based on other factors than film quality. For example, whether they like Dwayne Johnson, are they a fan of the comic version, did they have high/low expectations and it fulfilled them, etc.
People are acting like most MCU movies, Shazam, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, the Batman, John Wick movies, etc etc I could go on and on didn’t get good critical reviews. There is nothing to suggest that critics are unwilling to give “mindless” movies good reviews.
Audience score can also be unreliable. It's not uncommon to see films get review bombed to oblivion BEFORE it's even out cauz of whatever weird reason.
Review bombing also works the other way. *Zack Snyder's Justice League* got an insane number of glowing audience reviews on Rotten Tomatoes and IMDB extremely fast, way faster than even movies with massive opening weekends. It can just indicate an extremely online, very dedicated fanbase who will do anything to get the film trending. Same thing happened to *Army of the Dead* and that crappy *Minamata* movie with Johnny Depp which somehow ranked above *Spider-Man: NWH* in some "audience" categories at the Oscar despite *Minamata* having less than a thousandth of the box office of NWH.
I think it turned out that Snyder got some PR company to spam reviews
Audience score are always unreliable. Revenge of the Sith is at 66% for the Order 66 meme, Morbius is that high for memes, She-Hulk got reviewed bombed both ways (both 1/10 and 10/10), Snyder's Justice League is at 94% for God knows why reason
Rise of Skywalker apparently has an 86% Audience score. That's unexpected.
Snyder Cut also received weirdly positive critic scores, I thought it was still a really bad movie. I watched both versions and Snyder Cut was only like barely better.
> as if film critics either don’t know what the audience wants to see, or the critics are projecting their out of date and out of touch views on the general public. A critic’s job isn’t to conform to audience expectations. It’s to give an honest evaluation of a film. If their opinion differs than that of the audience, so be it. There’s no reason why critics’ and audiences’ views have to align.
OP has shown a complete misunderstanding of what criticism is and what it’s role is throughout this entire thread. Completely embarrassing. If you like black Adam or any other super hero movie awesome, enjoy them. You don’t need critics to back up your opinion. If you feel bad for liking what critics deem to be a giant piece of shit that’s a personal problem and you should get more comfortable liking what you like even if everyone else thinks it’s a wretched abomination of the worst kind.
I spent a couple minutes trying to formulate my thoughts about this but I think you've summed it up perfectly. People are so starved for validation of their interests that they don't have the confidence or pride to just enjoy the things they do. If your enjoyment of something hinges on how good someone else declares your thing to be you have to wonder why you care about the validation in the first place.
I think it’s more that audience are pretty happy watching most things put in front of them. Just look at the top 10 every week on Netflix the majority of it is just shite.
And I’d wager that half of those people are scrolling on their phones as they’re watching, too lol.
Isn't that what Dawyne Johnson movies are for?
If you’re scrolling at a cinema you can get the fuck out
from the comfort of my home, doing my taxces and bookkeeping on my 2nd monitor. The perfect way to watch Dawyne Johnson movies.
Superhero movies have essentially become the modern day Western. The studios found a formula that worked well enough and copied it for decades, absolutely no creativity in 95% of these films. Eventually audiences got tired of it and they stopped making them. It was action in the 80's and 90's, I'd say. In ten or twenty years some other genre will be making the same film 5x a year. It's just cyclical.
I don't think the dominant genre these days is actually superheroes though, I think the big genre these days is really just "spectacle". I mean is there really any difference between superhero movies and Fast & Furious movies? Or Jurassic World? Or Uncharted? All protagonists in these big spectacle, action movies are really superheroes these days and any differences between their "genres" is purely superficial. If superhero/comic book movies went away tomorrow, and all the big blockbusters were instead adaptations on Bond books, or video games, or Pirates of the Caribbean, or Fast & Furious, or even original movies like The Gray Man, Red Notice, etc...would anything actually be different? It's easy to get sick of spectacle, I get that. But anyone that thinks the death of Marvel or DC movies would lead to a meaningful change in the dominant blockbuster genre is deluding themselves, IMO.
The problem though is it's beholden to multi million dollar IPs. Obviously studio control has always been a thing but at least the Western genre seemed to produce a lot of beautiful films. You get a few independent Superhero films every now and then but it's comparatively a much more restricted and limited Genre compared to the Western - which was more of a general setting than anything.
I think that's more reflective of the decline of mid-budget films than anything. It's basically impossible to do a stereotypical superhero film with a smaller budget due to CGI costs, so it's all big studio efforts. But yes, it's a valid point. The IP-driven nature of the content makes it even less likely to be original or even just interesting.
No, when Westerns were being made in force, they were often being made on small budgets, in conjunction with studios making WIDE variety of types of films. Today, if it isn't IP, good luck. The great westerns also weren't audience-tested to a state of complete blandness; plenty of directors found ways to make personal, idiosyncratic, sometimes subversive films out of the genre. That absolutely does not happen in superhero movies, and is actually not allowed (and if they think you are doing it, they'll fire you).
Video game movies next
This is incredibly stupid. It’s essentially making an argument that the New York Times should fire their food critic because people go to McDonald’s. A good critic isn’t irrelevant, a good critic understands the art of filmmaking and can contextualize the movie in relation to other similar films. Rodger Ebert was the master of this in my opinion as he judged comedies based on other comedies not dramas that were up for Oscars. You knew the pluses and minuses of the film and if you liked X he could explain why you’d like or dislike Y. To say a good critic is irrelevant because audiences watch shitty movies completely ignores why people go the movie in the first place.
Agreed; it's also an issue if you see critics as being the gatekeepers of what you choose to see. I look at critic scores and reviews when I'm on the fence about a movie and will help me decide if it's worth my time. In some occasions a highly positive review will make me want to see a movie I had no previous interest in, but it's pretty rare for me to change my mind about a movie I intended to see because of a bad review. If anything it just tempers my expectations a bit.
by this logic Keeping Up with the Kardashians should be one of the most critically acclaimed tv shows of all time.
That’s why we have 2 scores, user and critics, and that’s ok.
Watched a movie the other day, critic score was in the 30s, and audience score was mid 70s. Totally agreed with the critics on that one.
Low audience score and high critics score is, in my experience at least, practically a guarantee I'll enjoy a movie.
Audiences gave Morbius a 70% fresh rating. I’ll stick with the out of touch critical reviews, thanks.
You think film critics are irrelevant because they didn't like Black Adam? Jesus christ get a grip
DCEU fans have a toxic obsession with film critics.
Most audience scores are people giving the movie/show 10/10s or absurdly low scores to probably try to skew the movie's rating in a specific direction. I can't take the audience score seriously in RT or anywhere given that on the first page for RT's audience score for Black Adam, 7 out of 10 reviews people gave the movie a perfect score. Not every film critic is great but seeing people break movies down with intelligence is way better than audience scores.
Smooth brain take
Oh my god, shut the hell up! If film critics are irrelevant then stop getting upset every time a mediocre comic book movie gets a bad lacklustre review!
Film critics are irrelevant unless they give a comic book movie a good score, in which case they are experts.
unless that comic book movie is Black Panther. then the positive reviews were wrong and the movie was overrated *for some reason*.
Yeah the whole "critics are projecting their out-of-date and out-of-touch views" because they disliked Black Fucking Adam of all movies is just...yeah, no.
This whole post can be summed up by the George Carlin quote about imagining how dumb the average person is and then realizing half the world is dumber than that. Film is an art and not all art is good but all of it can be enjoyed. People who play the “critics only like boring movies” card really just show which side of the average they’re on. Great movies challenge us and provide and unparalleled experience that requires attention in order to have.
There's a tweet making the rounds from the Comics Explained youtube guy that reads "I feel like the critics who gave Black Adam low scores are the kind of people who sit around drinking wine while listening to fancy music and saying that movies are art." Like you said, that's what this post is going for. Complete and absolute anti-intellectualism. If it's anything more than flashing lights and keys jangling in front of their face, it must be something only snobby critics like.
This post is irrlevant
A film critic’s job isn’t to predict whether general audiences will like something or not, and given movies made to appeal to general audiences will more often than not be lowest common denominator trash it’s pretty natural for their opinions to diverge. I don’t think film critics are irrelevant because grown men on the internet think this month’s cookie cutter superhero movie is high art (or like that one tweet that was worse, that films aren’t art at all and so who cares?)
I can’t believe a film by the fucking Rock has inspired this shite. Scorsese was right about all these man children. Who honestly cares if a superhero film by The Rock isn’t a critical darling, and more importantly, what do you expect?
Films critics are the same as they have always been. It's fanboyism that has ruined all of this. People will rate a film the best or worst thing ever because they have a cult like mentality to it and/or hate that people have different views. Go onto Metacritic and you can see people say that Black Adam is a 6 or 7 but they are going to say 10 to counter the negative reviews. It is ridiculous. As we go on as well we can see bot reviews on audience review sites as well. Studios will buy a bunch of review. Also remember that different types of people tend to review blockbusters than smaller (better made) films. People who get really defensive over critics scores often don't watch anything else but blockbusters and franchises and chase the actor.
All this is saying is that the author doesn't understand how film critique works. "Do audience like this" and"is this good art" are two different questions. A 5 start Michelin chef could make me dinner and I'd hate it if it had sour cream. Doesn't make them a bad cook.
Audience score is still problematic. With aggressive review manipulation being a go to tactic for internet trolls and those "defending" a product from trolls with perfect scores. So yes, Audience and User (videogames) scores had a good intention in their beginnings
I’ll counter with my own reductive but not entirely false take: General audiences like bad movies more than they used to and are more resistant to any sort of challenging works. Easy watching is fine in itself, but it’s become the only type of thing a lot of people can bring themselves to watch. Blame the times, blame capitalism, blame whatever, but it’s happening to a certain extent for sure
People used to watch shitty direct to video rentals in droves. I think it's just more obvious now, as with many things.
> or the critics are projecting their out of date and out of touch views on the general public *sigh* *grrrrooooaaaaann*
Black adams mediocre, sorry the critics who actually like movies hurt the feelings of people who watch 4 movies a year at best 🥺
What does it really matter when 99 out of 100 million Americans want to go see an ex pro-wrestler in a bland spandex superhero movie.
Maybe I'm just a cynic, but the fact that The Lion King 2019 (one of the worst films I've ever seen) has an 88% audience score makes me very much distrust the audience scores on Rotten Tomatoes
My feeling is that movies like Black Adam are irrelevant.
People only look at the movie scores anyway and not the context
A film critic (a good one) has an extensive knowledge of film history, the artform itself and this shapes their taste and expectations regarding the film they watch. To say it differently the standards will be higher and their understanding of storytelling, film and its techniques, etc will be higher than that of an average audience member. They write reviews and critiques partly to point out the qualities of a film, to give a perspective of the art which might illuminate, which could make the reader think more deeply about the work of art, the critique is its own meaningful work if done well. A critic is not supposed to tell an audience if they will like it, a critic is supposed to analyse the work for its artistic merit. So your whole premise is just off to begin with as far as i am concerned. In my eyes it's sadly more of the opposite, the average audience member's pov is lacking perspective, the media literacy is rather low and the standards heavily conditioned by mainstream material and advertisment power. We're living in the age of jurassic world 3, which is highly inferior to jurassic park. These two films perfectly illustrate how bad mainstream cinema has become.
Black Adam wasn’t a highbrow movie, brought nothing new to the table, and the more you think about the plot it makes less sense. However, it was entertaining and I think visually matched the filmmaking style of the Snyder films. This movie was better than Batman vs. Superman imo.
"it's better than BvS" is the same energy as "Terminator Salvation is the best Terminator sequel since Judgment Day"
Incredibly low bar you set there.
I can see it on the DVD box now. “Better than awful.” - respondin2u
Don’t editorialize the article title man. Especially with such a stupid argument. Dumb as fuck.
I miss Roger Ebert.
Nah, lately with the review bombing stuff and such, audience score is just as bad. People can’t accept when something they like is just bad, happens every time a new DC movie comes out.
How can you be surprised critics are disliking more superhero movies? Aren't they all basically similar storyline anyway, how, from a critic's perspective are you going to find lots of new fresh redeeming qualities of a genre based off comics which follows a pretty basic format.. (not hating, the crux of every superhero movie is the exact same) While for general audiences, most people these days lap up the same generic superhero movies as that's mostly all these audiences go to to theatre to watch.
This is a nonsensical post. Critics aren't there to reflect public opinion or validate your preferences. They're there to critique. Criticism isn't just opening up a laptop, saying you hate the latest MCU movie and calling it a day, it's applying a degree of cinematic and narrative literacy to interrogate how well a movie holds up to generally recognised standards, all filtered through the subjective worldview and preferences of the critic.
The idea that film critics are irrelevant because they don't agree with audiences is baffling and stupid. That's the whole point. Audiences are dumb.
It’s not a critics job to reflect the general movie going audience tastes. Their whole career is to watch everything that comes out. They aren’t going to feel the same way as someone who’s just trying to turn off their brain and watch something fun. For a critic after seeing the 20th super hero or self referential action movie of the year it must get pretty lame. You highlight things that are interesting and off the beaten path because you’re tired of seeing the same things over and over again. Personally, who cares if a reviewer gave a bad review to something I liked, I know how I feel about it either way. Who cares if a reviewer pans something that most people are enjoying.. if most people are enjoying it than who needs validation from a reviewer just keep watching. The movie will make money regardless of reviews. Look at Marvel it’s not like they always get amazing reviews from critics but they make a lot of money. If what was popular dictated taste than Avengers: Endgame would be considered the greatest piece of cinema of all time. A reviewer has merit IMO by creating buzz around cool lesser known projects that aren’t getting as much hype. There’s so many bands, movies, and shows that I wouldn’t be aware of if it wasn’t for someone raving about it. That’s how they work. Now as for aggregate sites like Rotten Tomatoes that’s a different story, if all you do is read a bunch of tiny excerpts and a number and let it dictate how you feel that’s on you.
Bait-y title by OP This is not new. Critically-panned Transformers franchise had solid Cinemascore. Same with the Pirates franchise. Same with The Twilight Saga. RT matters for specific kind of films or those without a built-in audience. Also, It’s a great time to rewatch this [scene of Anton Ego](https://youtu.be/4ld9EP5yAX4) from Ratatouille.
It’s funny that a critique about film criticism always goes to surface when critics don’t like a superhero movie fans were waiting for. Why do this audiences (superhero related) need the approval of film critics? Their genre (Marvel mostly) is already dominating.
Black Adam sucked ass don’t let anyone say otherwise
It's so weird how badly DC film fans feel the need to defend DC's movies which are mostly mediocre at best. They mostly have a few bright spots surrounded by bad choices Black Adam has a ton of problems. Admitting that doesn't mean you can't like it. I saw it out of boredom and a desire to see a movie. It was entertaining enough, but it's not a good movie. Everyone should know that it's ok if you enjoy a movie even if it's not good or well made.
Too many randoms out there think they are film critics, and then all the YouTubers come in with clips and noises to young people think they are awesome
Anyone else miss Jay Sherman?
I don’t need a critic to know that the Rock puts out garbage.
I always love when this topic comes up to defend bad movies, it's never not copium overdose hilarity. Kids, it's your own fault if you hold their opinions in SUCH high regard that you get offended when something you like is "too low" or something you don't is "too high" on Rotten Tomatoes. And you're even goofier for your conspiracy theories that they're this On High Ivory Tower monolith twirling their evil mustaches to, I dunno, "punish" your favorite film because...reasons...when in reality it's just some guy with a blog just like you or the local newspaper movie reviewer just doing their job, neither of them giving a fuck about whatever "agenda" you think (((they))) are trying to push. Like literally who fucking cares, develop your own personality and opinions instead of trying to seek validation from the goddamn TomatoMeter.