[HN Gopher] Are film critics losing sync with audiences?
___________________________________________________________________
Are film critics losing sync with audiences?
Author : ingve
Score : 120 points
Date : 2022-04-12 16:02 UTC (6 hours ago)
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| bmelton wrote:
| There's an interesting concept with user reviews, in that they're
| inherently OF the people, whereas critical reviews are FOR the
| people.
|
| In a way, critical reviews are like celebrity chef cookbooks in
| that they should be considered aspirational. What we HOPE to be
| watching to please our senses of austerity, versus the pulp trash
| we might actually prefer to be watching.
|
| Similarly, sure, we might WISH we were making / eating boeuf en
| croute regularly, but if you go to a recipe site, the highest
| rated reviews is more likely to be chicken soup, or something
| more accessible / makeable on a weeknight.
|
| It's always fun to review Plex and routinely see <95% critic
| ratings, 25% user ratings> or vice versa, but the deltas are more
| often closer than not.
|
| I don't know if I have a point to make here other than to point
| out that there's utility in noting the distinctions between
| aspirational and practical, and that serious critics have always
| given off a vibe of divorcing themselves from the practical,
| preferring arthouse to action, and in both arenas, Julia Childs-
| esque figures that can bridge the gap between the aspirational
| and the practical are extremely rare.
| mikkergp wrote:
| Freakonomics just did a good podacast about this this week:
|
| https://freakonomics.com/podcast/dont-worry-be-tacky/.
|
| Essentially that what we talk about liking and what the general
| population actually like are very different.
|
| They interviewed this woman, who as an art student learned all
| about 'high art' and 'low art' and in a moment of loss of
| inspiration went back to using some low art she appreciated as
| inspirationn:
|
| https://news.artnet.com/art-world/flora-yukhnovich-2077868
| klodolph wrote:
| The highest rated reviews favor desserts & baked goods, for
| what it's worth.
| [deleted]
| wwilim wrote:
| Low budget is a breeding ground for divisive genres on both ends
| of the spectrum - crappy horror movies and arthouse experimental
| drama alike
| logicalmonster wrote:
| I don't know if this tells the entire story, but I think these
| are 2 of the bigger issues at play.
|
| 1) The corporatization of social media is a big factor. There's
| big money involved in controlling reviews. Critics and
| influencers devoted to certain fandoms inevitably get influenced,
| pressured, infiltrated by studios who expect favorable treatment
| towards their product or that entity loses access, gets attacked,
| etc. Try being a blogger who writes about something like Star
| Trek for example and consistently writing bad reviews. I'm sure
| you're going to lose any studio access for interviews and all
| kinds of good things if your criticism ever becomes a little too
| harsh.
|
| 2) Everything has become political, and the media class is
| totally out of touch from what average working people are looking
| for. A critic is going to want to rate some drama about a queer
| latinx non-binary vegan sex worker thats trying to come to grips
| with his atheism while interracial dating higher than the story
| deserves just to appear to have the "correct politics". Typical
| working people don't care as much about that, and just want to
| know if something is entertaining and worth their time and money.
| apeace wrote:
| One counter-example to your second point is _Don 't Look Up_
|
| https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/dont_look_up_2021
|
| 55% Tomatometer, 78% audience score
|
| My take with this movie is that the opposite of your #2
| happened. Lots of regular folks who are concerned with global
| warming rated the movie highly, because they care about the
| political message it sends. Critics saw it as a pretty mediocre
| movie even though the message might be good.
|
| I'm not saying you're wrong, but I do think it can go both
| ways.
|
| EDIT: I looked again, and I realized the "Critic Consensus" and
| "Audience Says" sections on that page actually match my theory.
| For whatever that's worth.
|
| Critic Consensus: _Don 't Look Up aims too high for its
| scattershot barbs to consistently land, but Adam McKay's star-
| studded satire hits its target of collective denial square on._
|
| Audience Says: _Although it can be heavy-handed with its
| messaging, Don 't Look Up tackles important subjects with humor
| and heart._
| steve76 wrote:
| jcranberry wrote:
| >A critic is going to want to rate some drama about a queer
| latinx non-binary vegan sex worker thats trying to come to
| grips with his atheism while interracial dating higher than the
| story deserves just to appear to have the "correct politics".
|
| I like reading books which teach me new experiences, or ways of
| life I've never really thought about.
|
| These types of movies are great because they expose me to
| subcultures and issues which aren't a part of my daily life.
| Even if I'm aware of them statistically understanding the
| emotional component to these kinds of stories is a worthwhile
| experience.
|
| As long as the movie isn't simply bad, I'd give it a good
| review as well.
| qiskit wrote:
| > 1) The corporatization of social media is a big factor.
|
| Yep. There was a time when I trusted internet/social media
| reviews because they weren't bought and paid for access media.
| But now, it's clear that they are also bought and paid for.
| They are now invited to press screenings and follow disney
| rules on release of spoiler reviews. Not only influencers but
| entire social media platforms are now arms of corporate PR.
|
| > 2) Everything has become political
|
| It's always been political. The only difference now is that
| ordinary people have a way of voicing their opinions.
| Hollywood, media, film critics, best sellers list, award shows,
| etc are all political propaganda. Always have been.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| floren wrote:
| > The corporatization of social media is a big factor. There's
| big money involved in controlling reviews. Critics and
| influencers devoted to certain fandoms inevitably get
| influenced, pressured, infiltrated by studios who expect
| favorable treatment towards their product or that entity loses
| access, gets attacked, etc.
|
| Remember the online rehabilitation of the Star Wars prequels
| when Disney was spinning up their crap?
| jrm4 wrote:
| Only "1" is correct here.
|
| As for "2,", come on, it's ALWAYS been political. It's mostly
| always been this way except for changes in which particular
| groups you've named.
| deeg wrote:
| You bring up a good point and there's possibly an additional,
| simpler, effect: producers of big-budget films pay for good
| reviews, both by critics and by IMDb users.
| davesque wrote:
| My more general take is that "elite" culture has diverged more
| and more from popular culture as the middle class has shrunk. I
| think it's very much connected to the trend of economic
| stratification.
| zasdffaa wrote:
| I look to good critics and they do help, but in the end what a
| critic wants to watch will differ from the average pleb like me
| because they do a lot of watching.
|
| I suppose it might be put thus: If you're eating out every day
| because that is your job you'll want good quality food with a bit
| of subtlety and care. If you're me and you've had a few days of
| keyboard work and naff all else, you want the junk-food-level
| moderately brainless entertaining tripe to distract your mind.
| paxys wrote:
| The TL;DR is that more people these days are watching and rating
| low-budget artsy movies that critics generally love but they
| don't, hence the rising discrepancy.
| AMerrit wrote:
| Interesting that the gap is with lower budget movies. It goes
| along with my gut feeling that mid budget movies are disappearing
| (I have no data to back that up), and it's as if the studios have
| optimized movie making into two types:
|
| #1 The big budget crowd pleasing blockbusters. A few flop, but
| generally audiences like them and they don't do anything critics
| can complain about too much.
|
| #2 Highly targeted low budget movies. There are small but
| consistent audiences with endless appetites for horror,
| action/thriller, etc films even at lower budgets. This seems to
| be where the biggest disconnect is, the genre fans highly rate
| their genre films even if it's direct to streaming fluff, while
| the critics see them as flawed, and broader audiences just don't
| watch them.
| ascagnel_ wrote:
| What killed the mid-budget movie was the rise of "peak TV" --
| the B-list actors that defined mid-budget movies can land a
| meaty TV role that pays them well on a consistent basis. We're
| also seeing more and more A-list talent move to anthology or
| event series, where you can make a deep dive over 8/10/13
| episodes instead of a 120-minute film.
| gigaflop wrote:
| Sometimes, I'd prefer some sort of limited series more than a
| movie. 'Maniac' was enjoyable for me because it had time to
| let things go slowly, despite taking course over what was
| probably 1 week in-universe.
|
| I may also be different from the usual audience, in that I
| try to avoid binging anything. Hour-long episodes are great
| for my WFH lunch break, and to pad some time in the evenings
| if I so desire, but I prefer to commit to watching a movie if
| I know I have the time.
|
| Molly's Game was a nice and long movie, but at over 2 hours
| long, I feel like it could have had potential at being a
| miniseries. But also, maybe not? Who knows how much
| meaningful material was left on the chopping block.
| bsder wrote:
| Matt Damon talks and laments about this. What killed the mid-
| budget movie was the collapse of DVD sales. Without DVD
| sales, there is no extended "second bite" that allows word of
| mouth to build up. So, instead, your marketing is $30-$50
| million and you need to make that back.
|
| Getting a second bite is also responsible for the recycled
| pablum with China pandering--if you say something that the
| Chinese government deems unacceptable you lose your shot at
| that market.
|
| As for "episodic", I suspect that's less a "deep dive" and
| more ADHD background watching on a phone. "Encanto" was an
| absolute poster child for this--"HEY! LOOK UP NOW!
| HEEEEEEEEY!" "Okay, volume back down. You can go back to your
| text messaging for a while." "HEY! LOOK UP AGAIN! TIME TO PAY
| ATTENTION! HEEEEEEY!" ad nauseam.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| My favorite thing about film critique is the phenomenon of anti-
| signal.
|
| There was a local-paper film critic who was just the most
| delightful curmudgeon. If there was a film done in any style that
| wasn't aping 1960 or earlier, he _despised_ it.
|
| But it made him a very useful barometer for me: I'd look at the
| movies he panned and go see those.
| elil17 wrote:
| The people who leave IMDB reviews are probably also pretty far
| away from the average audience - only a small set of people post
| reviews their and there's probably a lot of sampling bias towards
| film nerds.
| monkeybutton wrote:
| Really? I would say user reviews on Rotten Tomatoes skews more
| towards film nerds and IMDb is the more everyday sort of
| person. Between the two platforms there's a disconnect in
| users' preferences.
| cwkoss wrote:
| Critic reviews are prescriptive: what they think the masses
| _should_ watch.
|
| User reviews are retrospective: how much did they actually enjoy
| watching the movie.
|
| I think there has always been a fundamental disconnect, in that
| critics think the masses _should_ be watching 'smarter', 'more
| artistic' or, less flatteringly, more pretentious movies.
|
| The world has become a lot more political over the past couple
| decades. I wouldn't be surprised if critics are trying to be
| increasingly prescriptive, using their review to try to change
| the modern zeitgeist.
|
| I think a very interesting graph would be so see to what extent
| critics prescriptions are accurately forward-looking to viewer
| attitudes.
|
| More interesting further research could be:
|
| For movies that came out before 2010 where the user rating
| diverged from critic rating by more than 10%, are user ratings
| which were rated after 2015 in the same direction as the critic's
| divergence? There are certainly movies that I enjoyed as a
| teenager, but cringe watching today: were critics at the time
| cringing in the same way, ahead of the masses? Or are critics
| just in a pretentious bubble that is not predictive of societal
| evolution?
| bananamerica wrote:
| I'm a film major. I wrote about film on print for quite a
| while. This was not in the US. I did want to prescribe, but not
| to the masses. To other critics, to the pedantic purists that
| thought Bruce Lee was unimportant and Spielberg formulaic and
| uninspired, and that unless your name is David Lynch anything
| American is worse by default. People who thought anything with
| emotion was trash for the masses. And I was there, at the
| newspaper, saying *no*, romcoms can be of value, there's an
| artform to the action movie, the screwball comedy, and every
| genre film. I'm really proud of my time as a critic.
|
| Nowadays I see everyone shitting on super heroes and remakes,
| they're easy targets to make people think that you're
| distinguished. Complain about sequels and reboots, and I say
| "Shakespeare is remade 100 times a year, a remake, reboot or
| whatever is always an artistic reconstruction that says a lot
| about its time, it's history, it's socioeconomic context. By
| studying the multiple versions of a story, we understand
| ourselves".
|
| Many critics are just sad elitists because now they must share
| the cultural zeitgeist with everyone else, when even Roger
| Ebert, when you read his reviews, was historically a lot more
| open and fair than many of his admirers today.
| robbiep wrote:
| That's an interesting take on the remake I hadn't considered
| before. But as someone without an artsy bone in my body, I
| wish something other than superhero movies could be made
| watwut wrote:
| > Critic reviews are prescriptive: what they think the masses
| should watch.
|
| This does not seem to be accurate description of movie reviews
| I have read. Like, not at all.
| nmat wrote:
| Part of a critic's job is to educate people. A good critic
| can explain why a certain film is groundbreaking and why
| another film is recycling ideas that have been done thousands
| of times. The critic's end-goal is to push the industry to
| make better films not because of critics, but because the
| public demands it.
| jrm4 wrote:
| I mean, the biggest thing to remember for me is that the
| criticism is part of the entertainment. It feels as if things are
| even different from the Siskel and Ebert era, where you could be
| pretty sure that their review was driven by how much they liked
| the film. There's money in hot takes and extremes.
|
| (My personal belief is that this is strongly reflected in the
| extremes seen in the superhero movies. I enjoy them and they are
| fun, but e.g. the variation between the Marvel and DC ones is
| just not that extreme. They're all "Dude, appropriately humbled,
| fights and beats other very similar dude.")
| okasaki wrote:
| I've done this analysis for games. My theory was that the
| correlation was falling because the ratings of old games were
| dominated by players playing old games now and then rating them,
| and they were more likely to play games for which there is
| already a consensus that they are good (old bad games are mostly
| just forgotten). Whereas for current games the games being played
| are more random.
| mzvkxlcvd wrote:
| also consider the fact that you might have a 40 year old
| reviewing videogames when the target audience is like 4 years
| old. my kid and the typical video game reviewer probably have
| different opinions about the latest paw patrol game.
| cbozeman wrote:
| I sometimes hear this, but I disagree.
|
| If you're 40 years old, you need to be able to consume any
| kind of media and then place yourself into the mindset of a
| younger person and judge it from that mindset - because you
| used _to be_ that younger person.
|
| Truly exceptional media is good enough to transcend the age
| barrier and is enjoyable for everyone, e.g., _The
| Incredibles_ is enjoyable for young kids because it 's a
| cartoon and it's flashy and exciting, it's enjoyable for
| young boys who want to be the "best" at a sport, it's
| enjoyable for girls transitioning to puberty because of
| Violet's storyline, it's enjoyable for men who have lost some
| of their steam and can relate to Mr. Incredible, and it's
| enjoyable for women because of the struggles Elastigirl has
| as a mother and a homemaker. Even Syndrome is shown as a
| sympathetic villain who is evil _not because he is a bad
| person_ , but because he was dismissed and ignored by his
| idol. There are plenty of people who can relate to _that_.
|
| _Ghostbusters_ (1984) is another expertly crafted movie that
| is fun for kids, but well-written enough to be incredibly
| enjoyable for adults.
|
| When my young cousins or my nephew corral me into playing a
| game with them, I'm not playing it from my 41-year old
| perspective, I'm playing it through _their_ eyes.
|
| If you can't do that, then don't review content. Content
| always has a specific audience. Really great content can
| weave together enough bits to at least satisfy every
| audience. Exceptional content manages to speak _deeply_ to
| _every_ audience. I still feel that 's why The Incredibles is
| one of the best movies ever made. The struggles shown in that
| movie are relatable for every single person on the planet.
| BizarroLand wrote:
| Plus, considerations for things like, can my 4-year-old
| decipher the controls to achieve what is achievable in the
| game without excessive frustration? Is the story
| entertaining enough to keep a kid engaged commensurate with
| it's cost? Is the game age appropriate? Does the kid talk
| about the game after having played it? Does it provide food
| for thought or conversation at all? What are the chances my
| child will remember this game fondly as they grow?
|
| All of these things and more are the kinds of things that a
| 40 year old should consider in their review of a game,
| especially considering that a 16-25 year old game reviewer
| might miss on them in favor of other aesthetics.
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| The funny thing is that games used to be FAR more punishing
| than they are today. Give an 8 year old (or hell, a 16 year
| old for that matter) Super Mario Bros. Watch their reaction
| when they get to World 1-3 or something and then lose all
| of their lives and realize that the game doesn't care, they
| have to start ALL the way from the beginning. Compare that
| to Elden Ring, which has difficult boss fights but
| otherwise isn't any harder than any level of one of those
| old games.
| BlargMcLarg wrote:
| >Compare that to Elden Ring, which has difficult boss
| fights but otherwise isn't any harder than any level of
| one of those old games.
|
| I haven't played Elden, but for comparison's sake, I
| haven't had any trouble picking up SMB3 blind nor did I
| find any of the levels individually more difficult than
| most high rank monsters in Monster Hunter Rise. SMB1
| definitely isn't a difficult game either bar a few
| specific levels, 8-3 being the most notorious.
|
| The biggest thing I see people struggle with is patient,
| reactive and/or predictive gameplay. Any game with
| counter mechanics relying on tight windows showcases
| this: most people either fail to utilize them or simply
| don't bother. Let alone emergent counterplay. The other
| part, you can't just statstick your game through most
| older non-RPGs, where newer games provide you with many
| more methods to allow more failure.
| treeman79 wrote:
| I recall as a small child ordering Castlevania from the
| Sears catalog and having to wait many weeks for it to
| arrive. It would certainly be many more weeks before I
| would get any other game to play and there were a few
| other distractions.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| Another possibilty is that audience scores are easier to gamify
| via the use of bots relative to critic scores (which I assume are
| limited to identified critics who work for major media outlets).
| One way for a movie's PR/advertising group to generate buzz is to
| flood rt with positive movie reviews for example.
|
| I suppose you could detect this by correlating individual movie
| advertising budgets with rt audience scores across the board?
| duxup wrote:
| Just from a review reader perspective:
|
| I don't want critic scores to necessarily go hand in hand with
| audience scores.
|
| I have no idea what a given audience member wants. Random user
| reviews might rave that "Fast and Furious" speaks to the truth of
| the human condition, but I'm kinda skeptical and don't really
| know what that means coming from their perspective ... maybe
| question that person's life / film viewing experience.
|
| Now if the Fast and Furious is a fun summer flick that isn't dumb
| enough to make me roll my eyes too often, I want to know that. I
| might be in the mood for that. But few if any user reviews will
| tell me that reliably.
|
| I look for different things from critics and users.
|
| The ratings matter less to me than where they are coming from /
| what they tell me.
|
| I also miss Roger Ebert.
| meinersbur wrote:
| If you found a professional critic that you understand that
| might be. Otherwise with a random critic's assessment I don't
| know more than an aggregated audience score. I guess the
| equivalent would be a weighted score preferring other users
| that have rated movies you both watched similar to you, as some
| sites do (such as moviepilot.de).
|
| As the OP shows, horror movies are not for everybody and few
| professional critics seem to like them. If I like them, I think
| it's hard reading a reviewer's opinion who does not like them
| helps me finding out whether I like the newest horror flic.
| They most probably will not write about what a typical genre
| movie make good, but why they don't like time in general. An
| extreme example is
| https://www.polygon.com/2015/6/1/8687867/rock-band-4-preview
|
| On the other side, a critic who likes movies such as
| https://youtu.be/uNg13Ju5HN8 is a sure sign for me to stay away
| from it ;-)
| brimble wrote:
| A review's not just a review, and that's that: a review has an
| _angle_ ; a _philosophy_ ; a _purpose_.
|
| Is the film good art? Does it approach the sublime? Does it
| achieve what seems to have been its goals? Will it probably
| please most viewers? Separately, and maybe very differently,
| will it probably please _its intended audience_? Does it seem
| to _have_ an intended audience, in that you can imagine any
| group of people it might be intended to appeal to (seems funny,
| but some films are bad in ways that make it hard to even
| discern what this might be)? Is the craft itself particularly
| skillful?
|
| A good reviewer will make it pretty clear--if not in the piece
| itself, elsewhere that's accessible--which of these is playing
| into whatever final, concise rating they give, or to the
| overall tone of the review, and it can be _totally valid_ to
| base a review in just _some_ of these criteria--in fact, it can
| be hard to cover all of them in one piece without creating an
| unreadable, confusing mess, and then someone 's still going to
| demand some boiled-down star rating or whatever at the end,
| which could mean any number of things and is nearly worthless
| without context.
|
| There are whole books and courses about how reviews and
| criticism work, including those intended for a wide non-
| academic audience, what their purpose is, how to approach them,
| how to structure them, et c.
|
| Ebert is a great example of a reviewer who largely tried to
| meet films on their own terms, with the result that, if a movie
| looked like something you might like, and Ebert gave it even 2
| stars, you'd probably like it well enough. If it wasn't
| normally something you'd like or didn't immediately look
| appealing... well, you better read the review, even if he gave
| it 3 stars. That made him an excellent reviewer for a broad
| audience, but it doesn't mean his approach was the only, or
| most correct, one (not to downplay how good he was).
|
| [EDIT] Haha, all of which is to convey that I agree with you,
| and expect and want _very_ different things from a professional
| reviewer vs. audience reviewers.
| kodah wrote:
| Ebert was one of the last real effigies of _good_ reviewing.
| The folks who took over after he died haven 't really done his
| name justice.
|
| That said, I think "reviewing" took on much more than what
| Roger Ebert stood for. I don't think he saw himself as a
| gatekeeper of quality as much as someone who could put the
| summary of the experience of watching a movie in text quite
| succinctly. Nowadays with things like rotten tomatoes, it
| literally is a rating, and it's definitional gatekeeping.
| bombcar wrote:
| This is the whole point of reviews I feel - you get to know a
| reviewer and you can use their review to decide if you want to
| see it. They may absolutely hate the movie, but the way they
| hate it makes you know you'll enjoy it.
|
| "Review aggregators" have killed much of that I feel.
| ghaff wrote:
| I assume there's also been a fairly dramatic falloff in
| professional reviewers given the state of newspapers. Not
| that people writing reviews as a hobby or as a twenty-
| something working for pennies for the "exposure" can't do a
| good job. But you're probably going to get a lot less
| consistency if nothing else.
| bombcar wrote:
| True, back when newspapers were a "every city has one or
| two" there'd often be a _local_ reviewer writing for that
| paper. Then it went to syndicated reviews and now I 'm not
| sure I can even name a single reviewer.
|
| Also, you have access to much more information about a
| movie if you want it, instead of having to figure out if
| you want to see a movie based on three inches of column.
| KaiserPro wrote:
| film critics tend to be "connoisseurs" which means that they
| prise the unusual, technical or some other subtle feature that's
| only really obvious after lots of repeat viewing.
|
| Not only that, they are intensely competitive to heap praise on
| cool stuff and dump shit on stuff that's not "cool"
|
| For example Crash one the best picture oscar in 2006. Its a shit
| film. Yes it talks about racism, and that perhaps the racist
| isn't that bad because he's got a sick dad. But still he can feel
| up a black woman though, thats allowed.
|
| Its just such an unsatisfying movie.
|
| near that time https://www.the-numbers.com/box-office-
| records/worldwide/all... all these came out, and there are some
| genuinley entertaining movies in there. V for vendetta, The
| queen, casino royal
|
| All sorts.
|
| But the critics loved crash because it was "brave"
|
| was it fuck. It was a mashed about script that barely survived
| the gazillion re-writes and "tweaks" from producers that have
| more money than sense.
|
| In short, most critics should be ignored, and placed in the same
| bin that contains "film theorists"
|
| As someone who was both forced to take a film theory module in
| uni, and then went to work in the movies for ten years, I can
| firmly tell you that film thoery is mostly wank
|
| 1) author theory. Nope, its a massive team effort, no such thing
|
| 2) Feminism in hollywood: there is none. there are like 6 female
| directors of rank, of which at least two are only there because
| of their dad. Most screen writers are male as well. Any female
| script will be "tightend" by a committee of men, you known to
| make it sell.
| [deleted]
| amp108 wrote:
| I think at least part of it has to do with the fact that, if
| you're a critic, you see probably 500+ movies a year. You are
| likely to get bored with things that the casual viewer doesn't,
| and it might even be hard to tell it's happening to you. So
| you'll recommend something that's more "challenging" just because
| it's different, even if the rewards are thin for the average
| moviegoer.
| brootstrap wrote:
| Some people are just looking in the wrong places. Tim and Gregg
| have kept me in touch with quallity Cinema. 5 bagger for sure.
| astrange wrote:
| And in sausage rolls.
| munk-a wrote:
| I think there are some confounding variables that make this
| analysis extremely difficult.
|
| First off I'd like to establish that in the 90s film critics had
| no idea what audiences like, most of the famous film critics were
| film majors who values cinematography well above what standard
| audiences would rate it - a poorly shot movie with guns and
| explosions would be a box office darling while a black and white
| drama in the style of ingmar bergman would delight critics (I'm
| not badmouthing these movies btw - they just didn't tend to be
| audience favorites). Additionally, pre internet we essentially
| had no access to unprofessional opinions - hobby magazines and
| word of mouth were the only things that could counter a bad
| review from the globe or times.
|
| Secondly, I think, like we saw with pretty much all "old media"
| that critics took their damn sweet time to transition over to the
| internet. In the early days of rotten tomatoes you'd rarely see
| newspaper critics within the tomatometer - those criticisms were
| the property of their respective media companies and they didn't
| want to give the milk away for free. As such it's taken a while
| for the professional grade critics to actually fully move into
| the new space - mostly by way of replacement. Old critics die and
| retire and new critics fresh out of film school start their
| career running a blog and being tech friendly.
|
| From those two points, while I find the data in the article quite
| well calculated theoretically I think it's hard to really draw
| any conclusions - the conversion rate of critics would need to be
| better understood and the pre-internet critic inaccuracy would
| need to be evaluated. There are some great examples of films that
| were absolutely panned by critics but ended up being extremely
| beloved classics[1] and, then, we've got all the cult hits like
| RHPS which, when originally screened, had the vast majority of
| critics simply walk out on.
|
| 1. A NYT article about "classics" that got negative contemporary
| reviews on release https://archive.ph/kiDVH
| nix0n wrote:
| One possibly overlooked factor is the death of Roger Ebert, who
| managed to be both a man of the people and respected among
| critics (possibly because he was also an excellent writer).
| shantnutiwari wrote:
| Were they ever in sync? I've always seen critics as a "negative
| recommendation" -- if a critic recommends a movie, it's usually
| bad and vice versa (and like all rules there notable exceptions
| like Thor Ragnarok, which both critics and normal people loved).
|
| And this is true not just in movies but books as well. Critics in
| both domains love the "ooh lala, fancy pancy hard to understand
| arty farty" book/movie that doesnt make sense but makes the
| critics feel smarter than the holloi polloi.
|
| Critics have always recommended movies that wouldn't appeal to
| the working Joe , in a sort of condescending manner. (and yes,
| like all rules, there are exceptions)
|
| Coming to this article-- as someone who isn't a data scientist, I
| wasn't sure what point the author is making? Correlation is 0.7--
| eh?
| jokethrowaway wrote:
| Critics are overall a good influence in movie picking in my
| experience - you just need to understand when they have an
| agenda and they push some crap movies just because they want to
| push some social message down your throat.
| michaelmrose wrote:
| Have you ever considered that there might actually be something
| to "ooh lala, fancy pancy hard to understand arty farty" movies
| that you are merely unable to appreciate and that your failure
| to appreciate any virtue doesn't constitute proof of its
| nonexistence?
|
| The whole point of pursuing the opinion of critics isn't
| averaging them to see what smart people like its in finding
| critics whose taste isn't wholly out of line with yours and
| using recommendations to cut through the crap and find things
| worth watching.
| munk-a wrote:
| Artsy movies are great... sometimes, and unartsy movies are
| also great sometimes.
|
| Sometimes I want to watch the Seventh Seal and sometimes I
| want to watch Die Hard - both movies have their place but a
| lot of critics tend to lean strongly into arthouse movies and
| sell them well above their actual appeal. I think one of the
| hardest parts of being a genuinely good critic is being able
| to leave your own tastes at the door when walking into a new
| performance - and those tastes are generally ones that have
| been honed by an education in classic works. Some movies use
| extremely bold cinematography choices to add a lot to their
| work (I'd point out Sin City and Schindler's List both of
| which made extremely good use of high contrast black and
| white (mostly) filming to add heaps to the story) but then
| you've got so-so art-house pieces that play into those
| familiar tropes without delivering anything of real value.
|
| It takes a really good critic to watch a movie they really
| personally enjoyed and tell everyone that it's probably not
| for them - please do talk about what you liked to inform like
| minded people - but don't give a 5/5 just because it appealed
| to your specific tastes.
| michaelmrose wrote:
| Isn't their specific taste the only thing of value the
| critic is adding.
| jimmyjazz14 wrote:
| I used to love artsy stuff then I realized that often they
| are not any better or deeper they just appear to be or the
| depth and meaning is projected on them through interpretation
| which has its place I guess.
| [deleted]
| sjtindell wrote:
| That doesn't ring true to me at all. In aggregate, the opinions
| of professional critics always push me towards better movies or
| tv shows. Go watch some of the best rated movies of the year on
| Rotten Tomatoes by critics, then the best rated by users. It's
| immediately clear the critics picks are not just better but
| leaps and bounds better. I have the same experience with
| restaurants. What my friends say is their favorite restaurant
| is usually something like a local hole in the wall taco place
| that makes amazing carne asada. That's not bad, and it's great
| for that one person or that one dish/experience. But generally
| a pick from the Michelin guidebook is going to be a completely
| different experience start to finish, down to the smallest
| details. It's objectively better.
|
| It sounds like you, understandably, are very much on defense
| and think of critics as "arty farty" from the jump. Perhaps you
| saw someone say a super artistic french film was great and it
| seemed like nonsense to you, or you saw some chef serve up a
| gastro-scientific jelly bean for $500 and it's colored your
| view pretty heavily.
| alistairSH wrote:
| _What my friends say is their favorite restaurant is usually
| something like a local hole in the wall taco place that makes
| amazing carne asada. That 's not bad, and it's great for that
| one person or that one dish/experience. But generally a pick
| from the Michelin guidebook is going to be a completely
| different experience start to finish, down to the smallest
| details. It's objectively better._
|
| Continuing this thought... There's also nothing inherently
| wrong or bad about the local diner (or the generic recipe
| blockbuster movie). They fill a niche. People like easy
| comfort food and they like relatively mindless entertainment.
| But, they also enjoy a fancy meal that is also an experience
| and movies that challenge their notions about the world and
| make them think.
|
| I enjoy a Michelin meal. I wouldn't want one every day - I'd
| be both bankrupt and become jaded to the experience. Same
| with movies. Most of the time, I'm ok with another
| MCU/Avengers spin-off, but sometimes I want Memento or
| Hunger.
| 2muchcoffeeman wrote:
| > _Critics have always recommended movies that wouldn 't appeal
| to the working Joe , in a sort of condescending manner._
|
| Finding a critic that's in line with your taste is like finding
| a doctor that works for you.
|
| It's sometimes about understanding goes the critic rates films
| too. They may be the sort that very rarely gives the top score.
| So 2.5/5 is actually quite watchable.
|
| My favourites were Margaret and David At The Movies. They both
| had their vices and combined they matched my tastes. I could
| often predict their ratings.
| nacho2sweet wrote:
| Movie company marketing for blockbusters 100% revolves around
| controlling a fandom that will review bomb things while a lot of
| the general public won't even participate in a RT audience score
| or IMDB rating.
| bumblebritches5 wrote:
| unfocussed_mike wrote:
| No, I don't think so. I think they get it largely right.
|
| How many reviews of movies have you seen from a senior,
| experienced reviewer got a film really totally wrong?
|
| I don't mean "hated a movie that genre fans will like", or
| "dunked on a trashy movie", because in almost all cases those
| reviews acknowledge their biases and even the people who like
| that sort of thing will get the picture.
|
| I mean: really wrong.
|
| In recent years I can think of only one major movie that was
| seriously misunderstood by a major critic: Cloud Atlas was
| totally misperceived by Mark Kermode. And even he changed his
| opinion on a second viewing.
|
| In general I wish other things were reviewed as fairly as films
| are; too many reviews of things/services are poisoned by
| motivated reasoning.
| humanrebar wrote:
| Movie critics tend to give mediocre movies a bump when they
| like the message or think it otherwise is politically
| desirable.
|
| Similarly, critics tend to downplay movies that have a more...
| blue collar?... appeal, no matter the artistry or purpose of
| the film. For instance, Taken gets 59% with critics on Rotten
| Tomatoes. It was a hugely important and impactful film. It
| basically spawned/revived a whole subgenre of action film.
| thenightcrawler wrote:
| I don't think critics should necessarily follow general audiences
| , anymore than you would want a food critic to rate mcdonalds.
| [deleted]
| bio_end_io_t wrote:
| On the other side of the coin, you can have situations like in
| 1989 when Jethro Tull beat Metallica for Best Hard Rock/Metal
| Performance at the Grammy's.
| ascagnel_ wrote:
| The Grammys have notoriously been considered out-of-touch for
| some time, even when you compare them to the other big awards
| shows (Tonys, Emmys, Oscars).
| kevinventullo wrote:
| Or when Macklemore beat... basically anyone else that was
| nominated. But I'm not sure the Grammy's represent critical
| consensus?
| ratww wrote:
| That's not critics, though. Grammy voters are people who work
| in the music industry. To qualify you even need creative or
| technical credits.
|
| I bet that critics in 1989 overwhelmingly preferred
| Metallica's album to Jethro Tull's, which at this point was
| kind of a has-been.
| dvh wrote:
| But then again, there's a reviewbrah...
| ulucs wrote:
| A reviewbrah mention on hn? My joy is immeasurable and my day
| is made.
|
| Honestly, gaining trust of audiences is also part of a
| critic. Else you're just a loud contrarian/populist.
| [deleted]
| chrismeller wrote:
| So the main takeaway here for me is that more low budget ("indie"
| or "film festival", my terms) movies are getting to theaters and
| being loved by critics, but people hate them.
|
| My wife and I have a rule in our household. Anything that was
| awarded at a film festival (Sundance in particular) I will not
| watch with her. This analysis backs up the feelings I've had that
| lead to that agreement...
|
| Any movie that does well with critics or at a film festival has
| "a strong message" or "teaches us something". That's all well and
| good, but I don't need these expensive (EUR20/ticket) modern
| fables. I'm paying to be entertained, not to be lectured to.
| JaimeThompson wrote:
| What sorts of films don't lecture?
| rhapsodic wrote:
| ruined wrote:
| >What sorts of films don't lecture?
|
| the kind that confirm my existing ideology.
|
| i don't know if you've noticed, but people who do things that
| i understand are totally normal, and people who are different
| from me have dumb ideas. it's annoying when they talk.
| chrismeller wrote:
| Blah, blah, blah...
|
| Not every moment has to be a teachable one.
| Izkata wrote:
| Most entertainment-oriented films. There's a big difference
| between "has a message" (which those usually do include) and
| "lecture" aka "beat you over the head with".
| delusional wrote:
| I think most blockbuster "entertainment" movies are MORE
| heavy handed in their preaching. The big differentiator for
| me is that they preach what is already assumed. It's not
| that they don't lecture you, it's that they lecture you in
| what you already agree with. In that sense entertainment-
| movies are more like sermons from your pastor. It's a
| reframing of a story you've already been told a million
| times, so your brain can just switch off and absorb the
| message uncritically.
| nemothekid wrote:
| > _Any movie that does well with critics or at a film festival
| has "a strong message" or "teaches us something"._
|
| If you find that every time you watch a film festival movie you
| are being lectured too, I think it has more to do with your
| wife's film choices, not the indie circuit. Nicolas Cage's Pig
| was a very well received movie at plenty of film festivals last
| year, and it's just about a chef searching for a pig.
| chrismeller wrote:
| Yes, I'm sure there is a movie here and there. Honestly, I
| don't care enough to even compare the list anymore, that's
| how we came up with the rule.
|
| Edit: and I think we'll all try to forgive you for
| recommending anything with Nicholas Cage...
| djkivi wrote:
| Speaking of Nicolas Cage, he did a thoughtful Reddit AMA a
| few days ago:
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/movies/comments/tzxev3/hello_im_ni
| c...
| chrismeller wrote:
| To cover the comments, particularly the guy whose comment is
| dead, yes, raunchy comedies. Also 90% of the Blockbuster
| movies.
|
| Perhaps I'd have done better if I said I don't like being
| preached at.
|
| For an example, Juno: Yes, I get it, unwed mothers are bad.
| Should I watch a Lifetime special about it just so I can cry
| about how horrible things are?
| the_af wrote:
| The message you got from "Juno" is "unwed mothers are bad"?
|
| Wow.
| pessimizer wrote:
| I think the numbers are just a distraction. What the critics like
| is informed by the desire to maintain access to the studios and
| the quality of the goodies they've been given (access
| journalism/junket whores), and what the public likes is informed
| by the size of the marketing spend and what the critics have
| already written before they saw the film.
|
| A better proxy for public sentiment would be viewer scores from
| test screenings.
|
| For me, it would be easy enough to blame any increasing
| divergence on the fact that now, due to the internet and consumer
| culture/conventions, critics scores matter less and direct
| marketing spend matters more. That would also account for why
| genre films diverge most, because each spends the budget of a
| small country on promotion.
|
| edit: sorry for not being an amateur psychologist about this or
| moaning about ivory tower elites, but these are products.
| oehpr wrote:
| my... I see you have adopted an appropriate name.
|
| By this logic I could just spend all my budget on telling the
| public a movie is great, then show them a grey rectangle for 2
| hours and get rave reviews.
|
| If this is not the case, then to what degree is it one or the
| other? Where would you put your ratios?
| frumper wrote:
| You know, I think there would be people in this thread that
| would call that a good movie. It challenges you to think
| about cinema differently and provides a unique theater
| experience.
| nonameiguess wrote:
| You probably need to do some data cleaning and validation before
| drawing any conclusions. A fair number of critical darlings are
| somewhat topical movies about current relevant social issues and
| they can be subject to review bombing by audiences, often
| audiences that don't even see the film. I'm not sure if IMDB
| really does much about that. Rotten Tomatoes at least stopped
| letting you review a movie before it was possible to see it after
| Captain Marvel had thousands of bad reviews before it even came
| out, but they still don't verify you saw the movie. They surface
| verified reviews closer to the top, but the ratings from
| unverified raters still count.
|
| This was, of course, much less of a thing in 2000 than in 2019.
| he0001 wrote:
| I feel like it's the opposite. You are losing touch with the
| critics. As today there are so many and you are not as "faithful"
| towards one source anymore. You are getting reviews from all
| sorts of sources, good and bad.
| Sophistifunk wrote:
| It will always be this way. Movie / music reviewers are in love
| with the artform itself, and view each movie / album as an
| artefact through that lens. Joe sixpack wants to see some
| exciting or funny stuff, or some heartwarming stuff, and to see
| some baddies get their comeuppence for once, or to briefly live
| vicariously through some sort of heroic or inspirational
| archetype.
|
| Viewers don't even have to disagree with reviewers in order to
| ignore their advice. They're just not looking to bask in the
| wonder of the artform, but to be taken on an emotional journey.
| gubatron wrote:
| thereare5lights wrote:
| Yep
|
| You have critics saying things like
|
| > "I recognized the humour in the film, but connected with none
| of it," O'Connell wrote in his review.
|
| > "By rooting Turning Red very specifically in the Asian
| community of Toronto, the film legitimately feels like it was
| made for Domee Shi's friends and immediate family members. Which
| is fine -- but also, a tad limiting in its scope."
|
| https://www.cbc.ca/news/entertainment/turning-red-review-pul...
|
| https://www.npr.org/2022/03/12/1086040083/turning-red-contro...
| ulrikrasmussen wrote:
| Film reviews are not supposed to be a predictor of general
| popularity I think
| shadowgovt wrote:
| It really depends on the critic. Some critics try to be an
| "everyman viewer" and break down the films they see based on
| whether they think folks will like them. Others just have the
| attitude of "my taste, take it or leave it."
| trophycase wrote:
| General population has terrible taste, movie studios are now
| buying fake audience reviews to pump the ratings, they also buy
| critics but I assume they've always done that. Pretty hard to
| argue that critics are out of touch when the general population
| votes Avengers: Infinity War a top 10 movie of all time when it's
| released.
| shrimpx wrote:
| Critics seem to rate movies on a global scale. How can I give
| this movie 9/10 when Citizen Kane is a 9/10? On that scale, this
| movie is at most a 6. Unsurprisingly, popular genres get trashed
| on that scale.
|
| Normal folks rate movies subjectively. Was it really awesome and
| did I love it? Then it's a 10.
| humanrebar wrote:
| > Unsurprisingly, popular genres get trashed on that scale.
|
| Except kids movies. I think they get graded on a huge curve. I
| think "I took my kid to it and I don't hate myself" gets an
| automatic three stars or something.
| BizarroLand wrote:
| There should be a comparison system based on genre, by the best
| ever, this year, and this decade.
|
| Format would be something like:
|
| Compared to the best 10/10 all-time movie of the Genre, Movie
| A, Movie X is a 7/10. Compared to the other movies of the genre
| in the last year, Movie X gets a 8.5/10. Compared to the other
| movies of the genre this decade, Movie X gets a 7.75/10. Final
| verdict, 7.75/10, if you like movies in this genre you will
| probably enjoy Movie X.
| eldenwrong wrote:
| A few of them still do that. Most of the other ones just woke
| signal
| [deleted]
| sydthrowaway wrote:
| The best critic is Critical Drinker on YouTube
| skinnymuch wrote:
| On Cinema at the Cinema has been going strong reviewing 2-3
| movies each episode for nearly a decade across a dozen seasons.
| The host and one of his guests appear to buck the trend and know
| what audiences want.
| nomdep wrote:
| A fascinating example of a blog with comments that work. The
| commenters are polite, informed, and return to reply when the
| author engage them
| sydthrowaway wrote:
| brendangregg.com is like this
| innocentoldguy wrote:
| 20 to 30 years ago, movie critics seemed to review movies by
| giving information on the content of the film and what the film
| did well/poorly. Today, it seems that movie critiques are little
| more than smug attempts at clever prose.
|
| It seems to me that film critics used to focus on films.
| Nowadays, film critics seem focused on themselves.
| zeouter wrote:
| I like reading reviews from film critics, they often pick up on
| things I don't, and enrich my perspective on the movies, even if
| I don't feel the same as they do.
| Melatonic wrote:
| Have they ever been in sync?
| DharmaPolice wrote:
| I don't know about in sync but I think there might have been
| more common ground in the past. Movies like The Godfather,
| Jaws, Goodfellas, Pulp Fiction or Shawshank Redemption
| sometimes feature highly on both critics and the public's
| favourite movie lists. I doubt many serious film critics are
| going to be putting any of the Marvel movies in their top 10 of
| all time yet there are large numbers of people out there who
| would.
| oblak wrote:
| Yes, when you were a kid and didn't know any better.
| ahelwer wrote:
| I suspect film might just be dead as an artistic medium that can
| be enjoyed by lots of people. I maybe go to a movie theatre once
| every couple of years these days, the rest of the time I watch
| things at home. It's a hard ask to set aside two contiguous hours
| (or more!) to watch a film when there are so many good series or
| video games that demand less contiguous attention. People will
| rant about attention spans I guess but it's really a matter of
| what quality of entertainment you can fit in with the rest of
| your life. If I watch a film in the evening that is pretty much
| the only thing I do with that evening; not so with other
| entertainment formats. The two hour film is also like the
| equivalent of a short story: there's the mental barrier to entry
| of loading new characters and settings and world rules into your
| head, and so I find it more difficult to read anthologies of
| short stories than a novel of the same length.
| stnmtn wrote:
| Almost all my friends echo your sentiment that film is much
| harder to commit to than a TV show; and I can't disagree more.
| Watching a TV series means I'm committing to 8+ hours per
| season, across many days of my life. A film, even a 2 hour one,
| I watch in an evening and can enjoy taking it in in full, with
| all questions that it wants to answer itself being answered. A
| TV show will end with cliffhangers each episode just to make
| sure it demands your attention again tomorrow night.
|
| That's not to say TV=bad, movies=good; just that IME respect
| your time way more and are easier to commit to most nights.
| fleddr wrote:
| Both of you should give this lecture to people in the third
| world.
|
| The act of sitting on a couch, watching something
| entertaining that thousands of people put work in to produce,
| is a "commitment". And in fact, the commitment is too much.
| Because for this same commitment, one could replace it with
| several smaller ones that entail the exact same thing, but
| with even less thinking.
|
| If only there were a device that would just directly inject
| the memory of a movie into our brains, saves us from all this
| "effort".
| Kranar wrote:
| One of the interview questions I ask all UX Researchers is to
| open up rottentomatoes, sort recent films by rating and then look
| at the movies that have the lowest critic scores. Almost always
| you can see the audience score for those movies is much higher
| than the critic scores. I then ask why this is the case.
|
| The overwhelming majority of answers involve critics being out of
| touch with the audience, critics being perhaps snobby, or
| watching movies in an elitist fashion whereas the audience just
| wants to sit back and relax, not think too much, just be
| entertained.
|
| A very small minority of UX Researchers come to the correct
| conclusion, which is that most professional critics have to
| review every single movie, whereas the audience typically only
| goes to see movies that they are likely to enjoy, so that one
| should not be surprised that the audience score will often be
| significantly higher than the critic score.
|
| Those researchers are typically the ones I hire.
| vmception wrote:
| and whats the explanation for the opposite? when critics scores
| are much higher than audience scores?
|
| I assume "out of touch" but almost any explanation I think of
| and ridicule could be seen as a strawman argument, so I'll wait
| for your response.
| LordDragonfang wrote:
| Not GP, but looking at the relative difference graph[1] two
| hypotheses occur to me:
|
| 1) Most of the categories that are over-represented are ones
| that individuals watch out of obligation, rather than desire.
| A large portion of people watch documentaries (and
| biographies/historical films) because they feel they
| "should", because they feel like they should learn something.
|
| Same for drama - these often include Oscar-bait that many
| people watch exclusively because it's nominated, not because
| they're actually interested in the movie itself.
|
| Likewise, animation is (by volume) mostly synonymous with
| children's entertainment, so there are going to be a lot
| parents forced to watch what their kids are watching.
|
| All of these line up with OP's hypothesis of obligation over
| choice.
|
| 2) War and westerns being overrepresented, well... film
| critics historically have a reputation of being Men of a
| Certain Social Demographic, and this is likely reflected even
| in modern film critic culture.
|
| [1] https://stephenfollows.com/wp-
| content/uploads/2021/03/Differ...
| joebob42 wrote:
| I could imagine the answer being:
|
| People went to see these movies not because they wanted to
| per se but because critics said they were amazing. And
| because they went mostly due to critical reviews, anyone who
| didn't like it was even more likely than normal to be like
| "wait I feel tricked this was bad"
|
| This might be a bit of a stretch, but it seems almost
| plausible.
| dnissley wrote:
| Two more possibilities:
|
| - A film may have been marketed as one particular type of
| movie via trailers (e.g. as a horror film) but was actually
| a different type of movie, often a subversion of the genre
| it was marketed as (e.g. ended up as social commentary). So
| audiences feel deceived and report that in their ratings.
|
| - Similarly, there are movies that are "applause lights"
| where critics are obliged to give positive ratings due to
| the social significance of a film (e.g. made by a woman /
| featuring a woman in a lead role). But the movie might just
| not be that good, and audiences report this in their
| ratings.
| vmception wrote:
| > social significance of a film (e.g. made by a woman /
| featuring a woman in a lead role)
|
| for a less divisive example: movies about the film or
| theatre industry get high marks and fit your example
| while the audience is left scratching their heads
| ripe wrote:
| Excellent point. Critics have often remarked that movies
| about Hollywood tend to get Oscars just because of the
| subject matter, which Academy members like.
|
| Also, a less cynical example: some movies are about
| something new: you might see people who live in a
| developing country, e.g., Somali fishermen in Captain
| Philips, or in unusual occupations (e.g., WWF wrestler in
| The Wrestler). Most audiences just want to relax and not
| learn something new, but critics love these kinds of
| movies.
| _moof wrote:
| You really don't think film critics being different from the
| general population has _anything_ do with it? They 're trained
| to see things in movies that most people don't. I get that you
| want people to say "selection bias" but that's not even close
| to the only significant factor at play here. You have two
| populations, which is also a classic statistical phenomenon.
| You even get close to this in your discussion of selection bias
| --they watch a lot more movies, and are thus more experienced--
| but you don't seem to want to allow this, which seems odd.
| lhorie wrote:
| > audience typically only goes to see movies that they are
| likely to enjoy
|
| That doesn't really explain the opposite phenomenon: movies
| that have higher critic rating than audience rating (e.g.
| movies like Mulan and Turning Red come to mind). IMHO, if you
| were to apply that rubric across all movies, the conclusion you
| should get is that critics and general audiences are simply
| different demographics and that it is normal for discrepancies
| to arise from sampling different demographics, not that general
| audiences are more biased towards what they like to watch. For
| example, parents wouldn't necessarily pick kids movies as their
| first choice of entertainment if age appropriate-ness wasn't a
| consideration (I think a lot of parents can relate to being
| sick of replaying Frozen, for example)
| omarhaneef wrote:
| Never thought of that but it makes a lot of sense!
|
| Edit: worth noting that this also creates an implicit
| prediction about the extent to which the advertising is an
| accurate representation of the movie. This could go in the
| opposite direction and audience scores would be lower than the
| critical assessment.
| dragontamer wrote:
| > Those researchers are typically the ones I hire.
|
| But there's no evidence that demonstrates either possibility
| (or if the reality is a 3rd, 4th or 5th possibility).
| ashtonbaker wrote:
| That's a clever way of looking at it. Did you come up with it
| yourself? If not, I wonder what you think it says about a
| person that they were exposed to this idea before they
| interviewed with you, versus after.
| klodolph wrote:
| IMO it seems obvious to me, but that might be because I took
| a statistics class in college.
|
| (Not "obvious in retrospect"--I've had a number of personal
| discussions with people where we talk about the difference
| between critic & user scores on Metacritic.)
| wccrawford wrote:
| You also don't have any emotional or financial investment
| in the situation, though. ;)
| Kranar wrote:
| No I did not come up with it myself. It's a common pitfall in
| statistics known as selection bias [1].
|
| My problem is that if I ask a researcher about selection
| bias, they have no problem defining it for me and even giving
| me a textbook example of it. But when I present to a
| researcher a real life scenario that is highly susceptible to
| selection bias, they will almost all fail to identify it.
| It's a problem where many people are able to compartmentalize
| knowledge but fail to actually make use of that knowledge in
| practice.
|
| As a run a quant firm I see this among so many researchers
| across many disciplines. They fully understand a concept when
| you ask them directly, but they fail to put those concepts to
| use outside of a very direct and artificial setting.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selection_bias
| Cederfjard wrote:
| Do you agree that without proper research backing it up,
| you can't say for sure that this discrepancy is due to
| selection bias, even if on the surface it looks like a nice
| fit?
|
| If you had said that you're looking for candidates to raise
| it as a possible explanation, instead of seemingly firmly
| asserting that it is the one and only correct answer, you'd
| probably have less replies arguing with you here (or
| perhaps if you do have such research readily available, to
| have shared it).
| Kranar wrote:
| No I don't agree with you. I think my comment is a
| reasonable statement of the situation. Is it a 100%
| correct statement that is absolutely categorically true?
| No, but most people who are not looking to be pedantic
| and win an Internet argument won't go looking to nitpick
| the details of my statement.
|
| What most level headed people will do is understand that
| my statement is about how you can not reliably compare a
| group of people who are predisposed to enjoy a movie to a
| group of people who review almost every single movie
| that's released, regardless of their predisposition
| towards it. People are welcome to argue that and honestly
| I'd expect nothing less, but it's a basic statistical
| principle that I expect every single researcher I hire to
| be well familiar with and if they're not, then I make the
| choice to not work with them.
|
| >you'd probably have less replies arguing with you
| here...
|
| There is also a selection bias among the people who
| comment on HN and they too are not representative of how
| most of the community feels towards a topic. The people
| who want to nitpick the specific wording of my statement
| are certainly entitled to do so and will likely find
| something to nitpick regardless of how I framed my
| statement, but it's not a particularly interesting
| discussion to follow up on.
| yakak wrote:
| Sure, though I think the other implication from the
| difference stated is that critics have sampled randomly
| or more often and can therefore recognize derivative work
| where a target audience that shares a limited interest in
| film will almost uniformly perceive novelty. I think
| realizing something is a poor knock off is the basis of
| snobbery.. so it is strange not to accept that answer.
| Kranar wrote:
| That's a very strong assumption to make, I could easily
| assume that most casual movie viewers watch the same
| derivative knock-off action/horror/comedy films over and
| over and over again without issue. You think Adam Sandler
| is the highest earning actor/producer because his
| audience perceives a great deal of depth novelty in his
| work?
|
| The answer that requires the fewest assumptions and is
| consistent with almost all basic statistical analysis is
| that a group of people predisposed to like a movie will
| rate that movie higher than a group of people who watch
| movies regardless of their predisposition towards it.
| ashtonbaker wrote:
| If you're using "selection bias" to refer to the fact that
| these two groups are selecting movies using different,
| biased methods, doesn't that imply that there's some way of
| sampling that would not be biased? But no matter what you
| do, an average critic and an average moviegoer are likely
| to disagree on many films. I would expect the explanations
| behind this to be more of a function of differences between
| the groups, which explains 1. why critics will occasionally
| enjoy a film more than the general population, and 2. why
| this disagreement can drift over time. Both of which are
| not accounted for by your analysis. I'm definitely not
| saying you're wrong - quite the opposite, just that there
| are other interesting things to discover here.
| pie42000 wrote:
| "A very small minority of UX Researchers come to the correct
| conclusion, which is that most professional critics have to
| review every single movie"
|
| Could you provide your sources? This seems like it could be
| very incorrect, or only partially correct. Keep in mind
| rottentomatoes is owned by movie studios so they have a vested
| interest in changing the formula for disregarding audience
| ratings. I think they already disregard ratings below a certain
| threshold and other weird shit.
| logicalmonster wrote:
| > come to the correct conclusion,
|
| What makes you so sure that this is the correct interpretation?
| Both things could be true at the same time: there could be
| selection bias at the same time as critics are perhaps out of
| touch and snobby.
|
| You could backtest this theory: see if perhaps critics scores
| were at one time a bit closer to general audiences or not. I
| think you'd find that at one time good critics were a bit
| closer to general audience scores.
| handmodel wrote:
| Looking at the mechanisms alone I think its pretty unlikely
| that film critics have not shifted over time.
|
| The standard film critic job in the 80s/90s was a local
| newspaper. That meant your audience was men/women of various
| ages and political beliefs who happened to live in the same
| area. If you were a successful critic you had to write
| something that appealed to all of them. This was actually a
| vital service that people used to determine if a movie was
| good.
|
| Now the typical movie critic is online and has an audience
| which probably has a singular viewpoint. This isn't bad - but
| makes it unlikely the critics with "everyman" sensibilities
| would do well. People who consume an above average amount of
| film reviews will have their views represented more.
|
| Chuck Klosterman (who was once a local newspaper movie
| reviewer and now writes to a certain type of audience online)
| has written about this.
| tshaddox wrote:
| It's also possible for critics to have systematically
| different preferences than movie-goers that don't deserve to
| be described pejoratively as "out of touch" or "snobby." In
| fact, that's precisely what I would expect and hope to see
| from people who are professional critics. I wouldn't want
| expect a list of best restaurants from a food critic to be
| identical to the list of top restaurant chains by revenue (1:
| McDonalds, 2: Starbucks, etc.).
| sundarurfriend wrote:
| > It's also possible for critics to have systematically
| different preferences than movie-goers that don't deserve
| to be described pejoratively as "out of touch" or "snobby."
|
| When the person writing a review has "systematically
| different preferences" from the people they're writing for,
| "out of touch" is exactly the right description for that
| ("snobby" - not necessarily).
| tshaddox wrote:
| Or put another way, maybe you're _not_ the intended
| audience if you're reading a film critic's work only to
| decide if you might like a film and you repeatedly find
| that your tastes are very different than that critic's.
| im3w1l wrote:
| McDonalds is much cheaper than a fancy restaurant, so it
| should come as no surprise that it has worse quality. But
| with movies, people are chosing the lower rated movies even
| though it doesn't save money.
| logicalmonster wrote:
| > I wouldn't want expect a list of best restaurants from a
| food critic to be identical to the list of top restaurant
| chains by revenue
|
| That's a very good point that the role of the critic is to
| provide their own expertise and opinions on the overall
| subject. But the critic still has to be within the ballpark
| of popular tastes if the expectation is a mass audience
| that really trusts their recommendations, right?
|
| Many Americans might listen to a food critic that said that
| he thought some pasta dish at some Italian restaurant was
| the best, even if pasta is not currently everybody's
| favorite food. But if he he recommended boiled snails or
| braised calf brains, many people might ignore his judgement
| because it's a bit too far out of range of what they're
| comfortable with. At a certain distance from popular
| opinion, a mass audience might no longer trust that critic.
| Just a thought.
| tshaddox wrote:
| > But the critic still has to be within the ballpark of
| popular tastes if the expectation is a mass audience that
| really trusts their recommendations, right?
|
| Well, no, because I'm pretty sure most film critics
| aren't trying to _directly_ provide a "yes or no"
| recommendation to a general movie-going audience. I've
| read plenty of film criticism that was entertaining and
| informative despite me having very little shared taste
| with the writer. And I suspect if you asked film critics
| to straight up predict what the RottenTomatoes audience
| score for a film would be, the aggregate of film critics'
| predictions would tend to be closer to the RT audience
| score than the RT critic score itself.
| toast0 wrote:
| > But the critic still has to be within the ballpark of
| popular tastes if the expectation is a mass audience that
| really trusts their recommendations, right?
|
| Not really. A professional critic usually writes a
| longish review describing the item and why they liked or
| disliked it, as well as the conclusion. If they are good
| at description, that's useful to me even if I don't share
| their likes and dislikes. If they hate things I love,
| then I can look for their negative reviews as places to
| start. If they love things I hate, their seal of approval
| is a good sign for me to keep walking. I can trust their
| recommendations even if I don't follow them, if I think
| they are fair and honest and have consistent opinions. If
| their opinions blow with the wind, I probably won't trust
| their opinions, even if they agree with mine.
|
| I found Anthony Bourdain trustworthy, but I do not like a
| lot of the dishes that he really did (no thanks to organ
| meat and blood sausage), so I wouldn't blindly follow his
| suggestions.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| Also - a non-trivial percentage of ratings on Rotten Tomatoes &
| iMDB (and all review sites) come from accounts that have
| reviewed more movies than there is time in a human life to
| watch.
|
| The amount fake user reviews can skew a rating is not to be
| taken lightly - and IIUC - Rotten Tomatoes & iMDB might be
| filtering out some/a lot of spam - but definitely not even
| close to all of it.
|
| The same is true for GoodReads - the amount of teenage
| booktubers that have reviewed 10k+ books is awfully
| suspicious...
| mdoms wrote:
| I disagree completely with your conclusion and I offer the same
| level of evidence you did.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| davidktr wrote:
| Then how do you explain that there are systematic differences
| for certain film genres? The article has a graphic on it. The
| differences are by no means uniform. Crowds love Action and
| Thriller, critiques History and Documentary. D'oh.
|
| That is not to say there is no selection bias. But the
| population of critiques and film-going crowds are almost
| certainly different in education, lifestyle etc. That has
| certainly an effect on the observed discrepancies.
| parkingrift wrote:
| Written another way...
|
| You interview people, ask them their opinions, and hire those
| that agree with your opinion.
|
| The most excellent way I've seen to hire a group of people
| biased toward a singular way of thinking.
| pie42000 wrote:
| "The score, made up of audience ratings on a scale of 100, is
| calculated by taking the percentage of people who rated it at
| least 60 out of 100 (or 6 out 10) and multiplying it by 100%."
|
| The critics score is calculated with a different formula. Do
| you discuss this with candidates?
|
| Maybe research your interview questions a bit more before using
| them.
| Kranar wrote:
| I absolutely do go over that, I also go over Metacritic and
| point out that this phenomenon applies to movies, video
| games, music, books, and almost all review systems that
| segregate professional reviews with customer reviews.
| fullshark wrote:
| Gotcha type interview questions with a single "trick" that you
| either get/have seen before or don't provide terrible signal
| imo.
| thaway2839 wrote:
| The comment literally states that it's one of the questions
| they ask, which is the exact opposite of a gotcha question.
|
| And the specific question can lead to a conversation, which
| may "reveal" the answer (obviously, I don't know whether this
| is the correct answer), but at the very least it reveals
| whether the interviewee thinks about selection bias, among
| other concerns.
| tshaddox wrote:
| > The comment literally states that it's one of the
| questions they ask, which is the exact opposite of a gotcha
| question.
|
| Huh? "Gotcha question" doesn't imply it's a single question
| that's not part of a series of questions. A "gotcha
| question" is simply a question designed such that it's very
| easy to respond with something that sounds bad or is
| incorrect.
| bee_rider wrote:
| Is it really easy not to come up with the desired
| explanation here? It seems like the most obvious possible
| answer, that people tend to watch the types of movies
| that they like. Actually it seems to provide almost no
| information unless their hiring pool is mostly candidates
| who utterly lack common sense.
| setr wrote:
| I recall reading that someone found fizzbuzz (with
| nothing fancy) to be a highly effective filter for
| programming interviews
|
| Hiring pools tend to be filled with nonsense candidates
| adfhdfhdryheryh wrote:
| No, the correct conclusion is "I don't know". There is no real
| evidence one way or the other. Their unfounded speculation
| about human nature is just as plausible as yours. In the
| interview you can generate a _hypothesis_ , not a conclusion.
|
| This reminds me of the "why are manhole covers round" question,
| where people are judged by their ability to come up with clever
| wrong answers.
| mikequinlan wrote:
| The article claims that the difference between audiences and
| critics has been increasing over the last two decades. If the
| difference was only because audiences self-selected while
| critics had to review everything, why would it be increasing
| over time?
| KingOfCoders wrote:
| No clue, one moonshot people live more in a bubble and narrow
| their film selection?
| V-2 wrote:
| If anything, I'd expect that the audience would nown have
| more of a hit-and-miss experience than 20 years ago - with
| the abundance of streaming services at your fingertips, it's
| much easier to binge watch movies just because, whereas, say,
| having to rent a VHS tape had to bea more conscious and
| committal decision.
| pjmlp wrote:
| As someone that enjoys traveling and testing food places, the
| same applies to food critics.
|
| Most of the time when I fall again into the trap of following
| their advices about some place, I come out disappointed,
| usually getting some creative dishes that still leave me
| wishing to go eat elsewhere.
|
| I have discovered so many nice places just by randomly crashing
| into them, where one could watch from outside people were
| enjoying being there, regardless of how many stars the food
| critic gave it.
| next_xibalba wrote:
| > most professional critics have to review every single movie
|
| This isn't true. Quite far from it, in fact. Manohla Dargis at
| the NY Times, for example, averages only about 2 reviews per
| week. There are many more releases than that. Peter Travers at
| Rolling Stone does even fewer. Same with Justin Chang at the LA
| Times. Etc, etc.
|
| IMO, the explanation is going to be multifactorial. Your
| "correct conclusion" probably explains some of the gap as
| critics are still obligated to review the prestige releases
| (even if they aren't necessarily interested in seeing them).
| But surely also does the divergence between the tastes of
| professional movie watchers and Joe Moviegoer explain the gap.
|
| What's interesting is that in over-indexing on one bias, you've
| probably introduced another into your own hiring process. It
| does seem as though picking people who are careful, independent
| thinkers could still yield good hires. In the end, if you get a
| good candidate, who cares? I'd rather be right for the wrong
| reasons than just being wrong.
| robocat wrote:
| A comment on the article was: """
|
| I reviewed films for the whole of the nineties for the BBC
| and local press in Manchester rarely missing any new
| releases. With this luxury and dream job though comes a
| responsibility and after a while it became obvious that I was
| suffering from Movie fatigue.
|
| It was easy to dismiss much of Hollywood's fare as formulaic
| and worthless because we had seen too much and seen better.
| Some of the movies I panned were perfectly good films and
| many were extremely successful and popular with audiences,
| but for me they were dull, and despite fabulous production
| values left me cold. Mark Kermode (Film Critic BBC) was one
| of my contemporaries and he said: "You have to see everything
| so that when something comes along that is good you will
| really notice it." Of course, this exacerbated the fatigue
| and often meant that we were too quick to judge, and after a
| while, very little appealed because we had set ourselves far
| too high a standard to be realistic about the film's quality.
|
| If you look at the reviews in The Guardian, you will see more
| bad reviews that good. You might argue that a bad review is
| much better copy than a good review so there might be an
| editorial decision in there. To a certain extent Movie
| critics can be a poor parameter for quality and an
| injudicious contribution to its success or failure.
|
| After ten years of reviewing films, I knew it was time to
| stop. I wasn't enjoying it and I was probably doing some
| disservice to the film industry. Less is so much more. Harry
| Stafford - The Manchester Film School
|
| """
|
| And, perhaps Manohla Dargis and Peter Travers watch far more
| movies than they write reviews for.
| raincom wrote:
| Actually, both statements boil down to the same with little
| modifications: (a) being out of touch with the audience is same
| as (b) the audience typically only going to see movies that
| they are likely to enjoy. (a) is broader than (b), can subsume
| (b).
| bluehorseray wrote:
| Calling that the "correct conclusion" is absurd. Whether or not
| a critic "wanted" to see a movie shouldn't really factor into
| the review at all. At the end of the day, the typical movie-
| goer is probably judging a film based off of an entirely
| different set of criteria (excitement / satisfaction) than a
| typical movie critic (overall artistic merit). Which isn't an
| exciting conclusion, but probably more correct.
|
| I would personally rate many movies I've seen lower if you told
| me to judge it from the perspective of a movie critic as
| opposed to a general audience member (The Purge for example).
| bb88 wrote:
| I think another acceptable explanation is that movies are
| marketed not to everyone but to certain people.
|
| So say the latest horror flick that comes around is marketed to
| teens and 20-somethings. The over-30 crowd gets turned off by
| violence and gore. But that particular demographic loves it,
| and the more gore the more they like it.
|
| There's a certain group of people that loved Human Centipede,
| e.g. But it got terrible reviews. Roger Ebert refused to award
| it stars, but gave it a few positive notes regardless.
|
| And in it he even said: I have long attempted
| to take a generic approach. In other words, is a film
| true to its genre and does it deliver what its
| audiences presumably expect? "The Human Centipede"
| scores high on this scale. It is depraved and
| disgusting enough to satisfy the most demanding midnight
| movie fan. And it's not simply an exploitation film.
|
| https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-human-centipede-2010
| mrob wrote:
| On the other hand, Ebert followed the critical consensus and
| gave Freddy Got Fingered (my personal pick for funniest movie
| of all time) a zero star rating. This is a gross-out comedy
| that succeeds spectacularly at what it set out to do, but
| very few critics were willing to judge it by the standards of
| the genre. The audience scores are very polarized (currently
| 56% positive on RT), but critic's reviews are only at 11%.
| bb88 wrote:
| How does that challenge the argument that movies are
| marketed to certain groups of people? Gross out movies
| don't typically get marketed to soccer moms.
| bufferoverflow wrote:
| If your narrative was true, we would always see critics scores
| lower than the audience (assuming statistically significant
| number of critics reviewing a given movie). But we see so many
| counterexamples with radically different ratings: Spy kids, Ad
| Astra, Noah, King Kong (2005), Babe, The Blair Witch Project,
| Chicken Run, and thousands of others.
| UnpossibleJim wrote:
| Not to mention a number of films who stopped the audience
| scores, decrying "review bombing". Some of these films were
| fine, while some were objectively bad (-cough- Ghostbusters
| reboot -cough-). I have a feeling (though it is
| unsubstantiated rumor) that there are payoffs in the critics
| circles for certain movies.
| wccrawford wrote:
| It's possible that those movies failed to advertise to the
| correct audience. If they pulled in people who thought they
| were getting 1 experience, but ended up with a different
| experience, the reviews are going to be lower than if they
| hit the right audience.
|
| Critics, as noted, see everything and so they wouldn't be
| affected by bad advertising.
|
| I've definitely been wrong, in both directions, about movies
| based on their advertising.
| drugstorecowboy wrote:
| Wouldn't movie critics tend to be people to like movies in
| general? What about critics that stick to their preferred
| genre? They might start out pre-disposed to liking movies which
| could wipe out the effect of your assertion completely. On one
| hand, I think there is a good chance you are at least partially
| correct, but declaring your offhand intuition about movie
| criticism industry to be the "correct" answer is at best
| hubris.
| _dain_ wrote:
| I wouldn't consider either of these to be the "correct"
| solution. You don't need to posit anything at all about how
| film criticism works. Occam's Razor suggests (ROT13):
|
| Vg'f whfg erterffvba gb gur zrna pbzovarq jvgu erfgevpgvba bs
| enatr. Vs lbh unir gjb pbeeryngrq inevnoyrf K naq L, naq lbh
| cvpx gur zvavzhz A fnzcyrf sebz K, cebonoyl gur pbeerfcbaqvat A
| fnzcyrf sebz L jvyy unir uvture crepragvyr enax. Lbh pna
| pbasvez guvf ol fvzhyngvba. Gura pbzovar jvgu erfgevpgvba bs
| enatr: vg'f vzcbffvoyr gb tb orybj 0% fpber, fb ybj pevgvp
| fpberf "cvyr hc" ng mreb. Gura jura lbh ybbx ng gur
| pbeerfcbaqvat nhqvrapr fpber, nal aba-mreb inyhrf ng nyy jvyy
| envfr gur zrna. Ol flzzrgel, jr fubhyq rkcrpg gur zbivrf jvgu
| uvturfg pevgvp fpberf gb unir ybjre nhqvrapr fpberf, naq ivpr
| irefn va obgu pnfrf sbe ybj/uvtu nhqvrapr fpber.
| robocat wrote:
| Off topic question: Is there anyone here who reads raw ROT13?
| [deleted]
| nopenopenopeno wrote:
| I used to be a film critic for the largest newspaper in a
| pretty big US city. Movie critics absolutely do not watch every
| movie. Not even close.
| rurban wrote:
| I used to be a better professional film critic, mostly
| festival movies.
|
| movie critics do watch the best movies. eg on a festival with
| 100-250 movies they watch from 30 to 50 typically. from these
| 30-50 there are about 20 good movies, the best movies of the
| year. from these regular moviegoers watch 1-2. normal people
| do not watch the best but the worst with the biggest ad
| budget.
|
| of course critics don't watch every trash movie which starts
| every week. from 5-8 filmstarts per week, they watch 1-3.
| these weeks more, around 3, because now we have the best
| weeks of the year, with last year's Cannes movies arriving.
| and then again late fall, with the best Oscar movies being
| pushed. but eg this year's Oscars had only 2 good movies
| overall.
|
| for comparison: my letterboxd
| https://letterboxd.com/rurban/films/diary/
| Kranar wrote:
| Fair point, it's categorically true that no critic watches
| every single movie released and I definitely overstated that.
| A brief search on Statista indicates that about 700 movies
| are released a year, the average American sees 2.3 movies a
| year (in theaters), and professional critics review over 200
| movies a year, some even review 300.
|
| I maintain that given this disparity (2.3 movies a year
| versus 200 a year) my point still stands, critics will tend
| to watch movies regardless of any predisposition towards them
| whereas an audience member will be much more discriminating
| about which 2.3 movies they will pay to see.
| yhoneycomb wrote:
| "I hire people who think exactly like I do"
| tomrod wrote:
| When you have the right mental model, this is an appropriate
| approach.
|
| Not every mental model is correct, either locally to a domain
| or globally in all cases.
|
| 1 < 2, in almost all cases except for small Z_{0,1} or
| similar type cases where mod functions modify the space to
| something exotic or comparator functions are defined far out
| of the typical. If you think there is a case for 2 < 1, and
| you aren't appealing to something exotic, you have the wrong
| approach.
| ulucs wrote:
| Any mental model that assigns zero weight to the
| probability of being wrong is a wrong mental model.
|
| That said, biases arising from endogeneity might have
| negative effects too. You can't conclude a parameter should
| have a different/zero sign just because of endogeneity, you
| have to go fix your model, and re-estimate the parameters.
| tomrod wrote:
| > Any mental model that assigns zero weight to the
| probability of being wrong is a wrong mental model.
|
| This is true when there is uncertainty. It also doesn't
| connect to "I only hire people who think like I do",
| which is the context of my response, so I don't follow
| your point.
|
| Agreed on your other point that you need to instrument
| endogeneity. Another requirement is plausibility.
| Hookworm presence in Greenland should be uncorrelated to
| solar sunspots.
| babypuncher wrote:
| I find it distressing how many people miss the obvious
| selection bias at play here.
| squarefoot wrote:
| I wouldn't base any statistics on IMDB ratings, they're garbage.
| Just look at how many awful amateurish experiments there receive
| spectacular 10 star reviews within days of their release, very
| likely by cast and crew friends/relatives (or worse), then are
| buried by 1 star reviews when actual viewers eventually watch
| them.
| blablabla123 wrote:
| Do you maybe have an example? I'm always astounded how well the
| IMDB score matches how likeable a film is (minus personal
| preferences of course). 5 is basically always really bad unless
| I'm a fan of a specific actor/director/genre. The comments are
| mixed, the comments below the YouTube trailers tend to be quite
| on point though to see if a film is worth watching
| justinclift wrote:
| IMDB seems to be widely abused these days for marketing
| purposes. eg fake high ratings to try and mislead people into
| giving them a try
|
| Examples in point (both exceptionally terrible, but with very
| fake high ratings):
|
| * https://www.imdb.com/title/tt13668894 ("The Book of Boba
| Fett")
|
| * https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9170108 ("Raised by Wolves")
| akvadrako wrote:
| You have to look also at number of reviews.
|
| Then it's mostly Indian films which get ridiculous user
| ratings.
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| Film critics want triumphs.
|
| Audiences want to be entertained.
|
| Will Smith was a ridiculous, inauthentic disaster in King
| Richard, but won Best Actor anyway.
| monocasa wrote:
| The critics don't decide the Oscars, the academy does. It's
| more a political thing than a statement of quality.
| lamontcg wrote:
| I feel like the mass of people are ossifying around the familiar.
|
| People like re-watching the same stuff that they've already
| watched, they're comfortable these days watching reboots of the
| same superhero movies. They like big budgets and flashy special
| effects. They don't like being challenged by anything.
|
| Even when it comes to something like online forums, something
| like reddit is mostly a wasteland of the same 50 or so jokes
| endlessly recycled, with people desperately trying to be clever,
| but not too clever, to hit that sweet spot of mediocrity that
| gains piles of "updoots".
|
| I don't know if its always been this way and I'm just more
| annoyed with it lately.
| mordae wrote:
| > People like re-watching the same stuff that they've already
| watched, they're comfortable these days watching reboots of the
| same superhero movies. They like big budgets and flashy special
| effects. They don't like being challenged by anything.
|
| Weird, why would mass of people try to escape reality instead
| of watching more documentaries and getting inspired to change
| the world for better? This truly is a conundrum.
|
| What could be the common denominator, causing the mental health
| crisis, mishandled epidemic, ecological crisis, political
| crisis and economical crisis all at the same time? Shouldn't we
| be all like seeing it like every day?
|
| It surely wouldn't be something trivial. Like a constant stress
| from universal competition. /irony
| afavour wrote:
| I don't think the OP was suggesting more documentaries, just
| more varied drama. It's indisputable that we're watching the
| same superheroes get rebooted in a way we previously weren't.
| tonguez wrote:
| " Weird, why would mass of people try to escape reality
| instead of watching more documentaries and getting inspired
| to change the world for better? This truly is a conundrum."
|
| it's more that this shit gets shoved down people's throats
| intentionally because it's a way to prevent people from
| organizing to improve their lives and stop being exploited.
| if all anyone has ever seen is capeshit, they're going to be
| less mentally capable to deal with the complexity of real
| life. same reason why china bans blood in video games: so you
| don't have a language to even express what is happening to
| you, so you can't even start to do anything about it. think
| about why the movie idiocracy got shat on. they didn't market
| the movie bc they wanted it to fail bc they don't want people
| to see it bc they don't want them to be self aware bc they
| want them to be stupid because it's easier to control people
| that way. it's the same reason why the NPC meme was banned
| from twitter: because it's too accurate and too problematic
| for the people who know all to well how accurate it is and
| whose full time job is manipulating braindead npc-like morons
| that use twitter.
| jknecht wrote:
| I think it has always been this way. I worked in a video rental
| store in the 90's, and every movie was either a military story
| (Vietnam: bad, Russians: bad, current US military: good),
| courtroom drama, divorce drama, or high school / college
| comedy. A few decent psychological thrillers and campy horror
| flicks too. Basically a never-ending stream of the same movie
| with different actors. Hollywood has never been accused of
| being creative or daring.
|
| At least in the 90's, most movies were around 90 minutes.
| Nowadays, if it's less than 2.5 hours, it's a minor miracle.
|
| All that said, I'm still a sucker for mindless entertainment.
| Even if movie night has become a bladder endurance contest.
| acchow wrote:
| > At least in the 90's, most movies were around 90 minutes.
| Nowadays, if it's less than 2.5 hours, it's a minor miracle.
|
| I didn't even notice this inflation in movie length until I
| went back to try to watch older 90 minute movies. They feel
| short now, almost unfulfilling. Gladiator (2000) at 2h35m
| feels like the right pace.
|
| I think after Game of Thrones (ex the last 2 seasons), I'm
| used to more drawn out scenes and development
| riffraff wrote:
| I think the '90s had a bit more variety than the '10s and
| (for now) '20s. E.g. we seem to have lost good legal
| procedurals, thrillers, weird fiction, and "small scale" sci-
| fi.
|
| Fo example, what are the'10s equivalents of "A Few Good Men",
| "Seven", "Dark City" and "The 13th Floor"?
|
| There is _some_ stuff, but less than before, replaced by a
| massive amount of super hero movies or long-running
| franchises.
|
| As a support clue, I invite you to consider the winners of
| the MTV Movie Awards, which are more "popular" than other
| Awards: 92 Terminator 2: Judgment Day
| 93 A Few Good Men 94 Menace II Society 95 Pulp
| Fiction 96 Seven 97 Scream 98 Titanic
| 99 There's Something About Mary 00 The Matrix (bonus:
| not 90s)
|
| compare with the 10s 10 The Twilight Saga:
| New Moon 11 The Twilight Saga: Eclipse 12 The
| Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 1 13 Marvel's The
| Avengers 14 The Hunger Games: Catching Fire 15
| The Fault In Our Stars 16 Star Wars: The Force Awakens
| 17 Beauty and the Beast 18 Black Panther 19
| Avengers: Endgame
|
| I have the feeling most "risky" movies, for lack of a better
| word, have moved to streaming services.
| deltarholamda wrote:
| The 90s also coincides with the end of the theater business.
| It trickled into the 00s a bit, but not by much.
|
| You could have a first run movie in a movie theater that cost
| less than a few millions to make, and it had a shot of
| finding an audience. Movies could hang around for more than a
| couple of weeks because it didn't cost three digits to take a
| family to the theater and have a box of popcorn.
|
| Now, if the movie doesn't make $900 billion by the end of the
| opening credits, it's yanked. Movie makers can't compete with
| major studios with tent pole IP for screen space, so they've
| taken their talents to streaming services like Neflix, or
| even YouTube.
|
| There's also a communal aspect of movies in the US that's
| gone. Cultural touchstones aren't made in the movie theater
| anymore. It's all divided and subdivided by algorithms so the
| geeks and jocks (or greasers and socs, or Jets and Sharks)
| never have to mingle unless they make an effort. These days
| you can mix in a constant stream of ethnic and racial
| grievances about who is represented or not, or how much, or
| all the other social justice palaver that makes our current
| world so very lovely and livable.
| cm2187 wrote:
| I am sure that is also true, but on the other extreme I use
| IMDB ratings to suggest new movies to myself as within the
| genres I can watch (i.e. anything where the character doesn't
| wear a cape and doesn't lecture me about social justice), I
| find a high correlation between my taste and imdb ratings (and
| low correlation with most film critics).
|
| A few examples of recent movies that I would have never thought
| watching but came my way thanks to imbd ratings:
|
| Donny's Bar Mitzvah (too vulgar for its own sake, but very
| funny)
|
| Last Night in Soho (nice british movie about London of the 60s)
|
| Never look away (biopic of some german painter I never heard
| of)
| nebula8804 wrote:
| >Last Night in Soho (nice british movie about London of the
| 60s)
|
| Someone else mentioning my favorite director and best movie
| of 2021?
|
| Sir you have just made my day.
| hindsightbias wrote:
| Used to work, not so sure now. 7.5+ rating and <10k votes.
| That filters out the Marvels.
|
| Mining high ratings <1K votes yields a lot of gems as long as
| you don't hate subtitles.
| mamcx wrote:
| I find weird how is always assumed the popular movies or shows
| are "for stupid" and "bland".
|
| What has happened recently? Is that "popular" movies/shows ARE
| much better and in MORE quantity than before.
|
| Just tackling the usual suspect (Marvel), it pretty clear that
| the bar is raised from the past.
|
| And then, the "artsy" movie/show has a greater problem to be
| above the median, because the median is higher.
|
| And to bot: the blockbusters of today is ALSO more fun!
| postingposts wrote:
| If you never engage with anything that's bizarre, intellectual,
| or can be more polarizing to the audience then you're never
| really stressed out by the tension of learning or confronting
| new ideas. It has always been the case that humans select for
| comfort, and that when something is commonly adopted they'll
| make it simpler, more streamlined and less exciting.
|
| Movies, the internet, television, video games, and then
| whatever technological terror we can conceive of next will also
| subsume to the same fate.
|
| Personally I believe it's because that Intelligence at extremes
| leads to a fixed or absolute worldview, where ideas are
| somewhat crystallized and remain fixed, changed only by the
| most drastic personal occurrences. Intelligence in the middle
| of the bell curve is more related to _shared experience_ rather
| than personal experience, and as such, having a collective
| experience of the unknown actually does and can change both the
| personality and mind state of the persons consuming the media.
| (They'll watch James Bond and _feel like a secret agent_ )
| because merely having the sensory experience is intellectually
| the same as being the other person. I suppose it's an inability
| to filter or perceive which experiences come from the self vs.
| the world, which either one would need to be stupid and not
| care about the world (left side of the bell curve) or considers
| the world from a perspective of being in relationship to the
| self.
| registeredcorn wrote:
| removed
| tacocataco wrote:
| Appreciate the time you took to type it out!
|
| Can I TL;DR this into "shhhh.... Let people have fun."?
| [deleted]
| lurquer wrote:
| Perhaps you are simply getting older.
|
| You've already read the "fifty or so jokes." And, you've
| already had your fill of big-budget special effects. It now
| seems tiresome and dull...
|
| In short, perhaps you are just becoming a grumpy old man. ;)
| labrador wrote:
| I don't know who needs to hear this X is fine until
| it's not kick the can down the road in the tank
| for let's normalize Y Is it just me or
| Anyone with an opinion other than mine about trans is
| transphobic I'm calling you out
|
| Ugh, that's just off the top of my head. I'm having a hard time
| with it as well. My theory is "monkey see, monkey do" is
| actually true and people learn how to communicate in groups by
| mimicing others.
|
| > They don't like being challenged by anything
|
| I got in trouble yesterday on Twitter after making a simple
| suggestion about video techniques, got called a douche, all
| their friends jumped on me and I got blocked. It was bizarre.
| Afterwards I came up with this:
|
| _Ignorant people will attack and ignore you if you try to give
| them information they lack. That 's why they're ignorant. From
| Latin ignorantia "want of knowledge". Ignoration (1832) has
| been used in the sense "act of ignoring."_
|
| I'm abandoning social media more and more these days because so
| few people have the ability to think critically. It's mostly
| emotional reasoning and it's the same old tropes over and over
| again, endlessly.
| yoz-y wrote:
| My theory is that: You make a massively appealing thing by
| removing what people don't like, not by adding something they
| do. The truly mass market media is devoid of substance because
| of that.
|
| Hence why I feel that the most interesting things are those
| which are polarizing.
| philipkglass wrote:
| I frequently enjoy "weird" movies that audiences tend not to
| like. But there have been plenty of movies that audiences and
| critics both enjoy despite a lack of high-brow or polarizing
| content. I'm thinking of (e.g.) The Godfather, E.T. the
| Extra-Terrestrial, The Sound of Music, Contact, Disney's
| animated Beauty and the Beast, Jurassic Park, Terminator 2,
| Alien, the original Ghostbusters, most Pixar movies...
|
| I feel like there is something pretty blah about most big-
| budget movies today, but I don't think that it can be
| explained by saying that filmmakers are progressively
| removing polarizing elements. Now that I consider it, most
| big-budget action movies in the past were blah too. The
| action movies that first come to mind are the ones that I
| have enjoyed enough to re-watch, but the 1990s had plenty of
| blah action movies. Maybe the problem is just too many big-
| budget action movies.
| the_af wrote:
| > "Hence why I feel that the most interesting things are
| those which are polarizing."
|
| I strongly agree with this. To me it's impossible for
| something characterful and powerful not to generate equally
| strong dislikes. The only way absolutely everyone will like a
| movie is if it's so bland and inoffensive it cannot motivate
| anyone enough to dislike it.
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| > that sweet spot of mediocrity that gains piles of "updoots"
|
| Being truly excellent does not mean maximizing popularity. It's
| a trap. But it also means a lot of smart people learn this
| early and can't deal with modern self-marketing. I think this
| dynamic negatively affects culture. The solution, I think, is
| smaller communities.
| tacocataco wrote:
| How about 2000ish people?
|
| Add more and people start seeing each other as strangers
| instead of neighbors (IMO).
| gotaquestion wrote:
| I thought the reboots were in order to retain property rights,
| and that with 2-3 years between reboots aimed at teens, there
| are a new batch of teens. So it seems like a win-win: renew
| property rights and lure in the new batch of teens.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| That's specifically true only for Spiderman I think.
| Reportedly[1] Sony loses the rights if they go too long
| without producing a Spiderman film.
|
| 1: This is treated as fact in many places, but was very hard
| for me to source. The most definitive statement I could find
| was contemporary with the MGM/Sony dispute being resolved:
|
| > The Marvel-Sony contract requires the studio to begin
| production of a Spider-Man feature quickly; the actual
| deadline could not be obtained. It also places Columbia on a
| short leash in scheduling sequels, requiring in some cases
| that financing for a sequel be arranged within months of the
| release of the previous feature[2].
|
| 2: https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-
| xpm-1999-mar-02-fi-13115...
| aidenn0 wrote:
| I get the sense that it's cyclical. In rock music, there was
| the stadium rock of the 80s that gave way to more punk
| influenced music in the early 90s, which became fairly
| commercial and same-y by the time the 00s arrived.
|
| There's probably already some movement in film that is new and
| different that most people don't know about, but 20 years ago
| everybody will claim to have already been into "back in '22."
| the_af wrote:
| > _" they're comfortable these days watching reboots of the
| same superhero movies"_
|
| This in particular. I don't mind the odd superhero movie, but
| they seem wildly overrepresented in big budget movies.
|
| It feels it's also frequently a retelling of Spiderman or
| Batman. I don't think I can stand another Spidey or Batman
| origin story, or another "...and the next villain is hinted at
| to be the Joker!". Occasionally there's a "superhero team"
| (usually the Avengers, but sometimes a more obscure team) or
| some other lone hero. Even with less known superheroes, the
| story beats and plot structure is always a familiar one.
|
| I'm sure there are exceptions, and I'm sure my mind is playing
| tricks on me (as I get older, I tend to consider a "recent
| reboot" something that actually happened 10 years ago!), but
| still...
| speeder wrote:
| Batman currently is the only profitable DC franchise...
|
| For example there was an article making rounds about how of
| the Top40 most sold DC comics recently, Batman is in 37 of
| them.
|
| Basically, Batman sells, other DC properties, not so much.
| Even Superman is struggling.
|
| I have no idea why is that, but I suspect that is because
| most DC characters require too much skill to write well (for
| example superman is literally invincible and indestructible,
| the only conflict you can have in his stories are
| psychological, ethical, etc... ones. But instead crappier
| writers kept relying on the stupid kryptonite, because that
| is the only way to force Superman to have a not-boring action
| sequence if there are no psychological, ethical,
| sociological, etc... restraints).
| bhuber wrote:
| Sony literally cannot stop making spiderman movies. Part of
| the deal when they bought the rights from Disney in 1998 was
| they have to make at least one spiderman movie every 5.75
| years, or the rights are forfeit.
| https://www.octalcomics.com/when-does-sonys-spiderman-
| rights...
| bmicraft wrote:
| You're saying disney hat the rights to Marvels spider-man
| in 1998?
| skinnymuch wrote:
| Innocent mistake on OPs part I assume. Marvel sold the
| rights of X-men and Fantastic Four to Fox and Spider-Man
| to Sony. Paramount made a big mistake not doing anything
| except being the distributor for set periods of time.
| gigaflop wrote:
| "These Days" in particular('Rona Season), I feel like a lot
| is/has been getting produced to keep up with increased demand.
| More people spending time indoors, means more people sitting on
| the couch looking for things to watch.
|
| From this, I think it's safe to assume that the lowest common
| denominator is growing fastest. Why put in original thought
| when you can use an internal plot-point checklist or AI/ML to
| guess at what the focus groups would say anyways?
|
| It's not like the big production companies wouldn't move
| towards that model on their own.
| alan-hn wrote:
| Just as a tangent: let's start with the AI/ML produced movies
| already. I honestly think they would be hilarious
| stonemetal12 wrote:
| It is just a short but "Today is spaceship day" is weirdly
| hilarious.
| gigaflop wrote:
| I feel like AI/ML and some pre-rigged models could be used
| to build a web-hosted sitcom. It would take a lot of
| technical work, and a lot of writing chops to make it
| watchable, but it could be done.
|
| Look at Space Ghost: Coast to Coast, a show that was made
| by reusing old animations. If someone writes a script (use
| humans for now), then the AI/ML can stitch together the
| animation.
|
| Once there's a corpus of material, start letting the AI
| determine plot points, and have humans vet and write it.
| Over time, let the AI take more and more control over the
| direction of the show, making sure to introduce new
| characters or events as needed.
| bluefirebrand wrote:
| When it comes to movies, I think it's because high concept
| stuff gets focus grouped to the point where it is recognizable
| for average audiences.
|
| Many movies you can see there is a grain of some great idea for
| something new or interesting, but you can almost see exactly
| where studio execs said "no that's too complicated dumb it down
| for the audience"
|
| And the weird indie auteur stuff is almost universally horror
| films these days it seems. Which means I personally am super
| not interested.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| You're writing this just as "Everything Everywhere All at Once"
| is doing awesome in theatres.
| dabbledash wrote:
| I think critics always value novelty more than the average
| person. It makes sense. They probably watch so many movies that
| anything derivative gets old fast. If I've seen the same trope
| ten times any critic has probably seen it a hundred times, and
| it's going to bother them in a way it doesn't bother me.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| Maybe that is why they prescreen with the general public not
| critics (also GP will do it for free, for the movie ticket
| and the bragging rights)
| dogleash wrote:
| >They don't like being challenged by anything.
|
| "Challenging" is such a bullshit term. It implies there's
| something meaty for your brain to chew on, but 9/10 times it's
| a pretentious way to write off people who don't like hamfisted
| righteousness that fits squarely into run-of-the-mill positions
| and ideas that are Hollywood-safe.
|
| Those movies are pablum just as much as marvel franchises or 90
| minutes of fart and dick jokes.
| unfocussed_mike wrote:
| I tend to mischievously misapply the word "Challenging" to
| movies I think shouldn't have been made because they expose
| the bigotry of their audience.
|
| Like all the _Taken_ movies, or _A Boy And His Dog_ , or
| anything Steven Seagal made after he discovered Russian
| money.
| bumblebritches5 wrote:
| 1123581321 wrote:
| Look wider. I think you can find plenty that would be
| described as challenging, that is a legitimate artistic
| exploration or funny/dramatic/frightening in a new way.
| Foreign films are a relatively easy way to explore this now.
| If you are concerned about escaping a filter bubble of
| foreign directors palatable in your country, start with a
| country that interests you, then search for their top films
| by decade or their most admired directors' imdb or wiki
| pages.
| BizarroLand wrote:
| Keep in mind that most of the foreign films that you can
| find with subtitles tend to be among the best films the
| country has ever produced, or the ones that fit their
| cultural climate the best.
|
| You're not getting the direct filmgoer experience of that
| culture, just the best fruits, and that's perfectly fine
| because if you like their best you may find more in their
| second-best that you will also absolutely enjoy, just like
| in Westernized media.
| 1123581321 wrote:
| Excellent point. It can be rewarding to find someone and
| watch all of their films, for better or worse. And then
| branch off from an actor, writer or production role
| (editor, etc) to explore more you won't necessarily find
| in a listicle.
|
| Just like books, I guess. :)
| unfocussed_mike wrote:
| > Keep in mind that most of the foreign films that you
| can find with subtitles tend to be among the best films
| the country has ever produced, or the ones that fit their
| cultural climate the best.
|
| This is really not true from what I can see. European
| films are routinely subtitled for other languages. (They
| used to be dubbed instead).
|
| And even cheap and cheerful Bollywood and Chinese movies
| find a distributor and a bad translation.
|
| Perhaps this is more of a problem on US streaming
| services. You do have to want to find these things, to
| some extent. But almost all cinema is produced with a
| global audience in mind.
| asiachick wrote:
| Interesting article that shows via data that yes, critics are
| losing sync with audiences. Not that they were ever in sync?
| Although the data suggests that actually they are not that far
| off.
|
| For me, I've always attributed a big difference of critics vs the
| general population is that critics have seen 10x the movies and
| so movies an audience finds interesting are often "been there,
| done that, and better" to a critic.
|
| Other things I see which I'm not sure the cause and effect are
| movies that seem (to me) to be highly rated by critics for their
| message, direct or indirect, and not for whether they are
| actually good movies. An example to me (I know it's mistake to
| list one but I'm going to do it anyway), is Moonlight (2016). I'm
| not saying it's a bad movie but movie of the year? I saw it and
| other than remembering that it's about gay black men I remember
| absolutely nothing about the movie. It had zero impact for me. My
| feeling is it was chosen for its messages. That black men can be
| gay too. That black actors should be given more diversity in
| roles. That there should be more diverse movies with black leads.
| All of which I agree with. But the movie itself, while definitely
| a well made movie, had zero impact on me as a movie. I don't
| remember it. Conversely say, Women in the Dunes (1964), that
| movie will stick with me for the rest of my life.
|
| Another random personal observation is it seems like "they" (the
| creators), have, at least for documentaries, figured out the
| formula for always making them crowd pleasers. They're the
| highest rated category both by my own experience looking up
| movies, and by the article. For me though, I've pretty much
| decided not to watch documentaries anymore because I see the
| formula and because I see they are super manipulative. Following
| the formula they can make you believe almost any conclusion about
| their topic.
| jokethrowaway wrote:
| The problem is that people that end up being film critics,
| celebrities and journalists are not representative of the
| population at large and they're mostly (with plenty of
| exceptions) susceptible to the politicised division that curse
| our time (which is a result of the technology we have available
| nowadays).
|
| The end result is that politics doesn't simply bleed into art (as
| it always been) but forces the people in art to create propaganda
| tools.
|
| When you say that half of the population is batshit crazy and
| this message is propagated through popular media everywhere, you
| end up with a scism.
|
| In the same way as people are growing disillusioned with
| celebrities and newspapers, they're also putting miles between
| themselves and film critics - and Hollywood for that matter.
|
| I'm looking forward to The Daily Wire (an American conservative
| publication) building an Hollywood alternative and making movies
| without the wokeness. Their first movie, Run Hide Fight has
| critics at 43% vs the audience at 93%.
|
| The data presented in the article is interesting but I feel it's
| lacking a dimension. It's not about quantity, it's about the
| extremes.
|
| The feminist reboot of Ghostbusters has critics at 73% vs the
| audience at 49% which is telling me more about this issue than
| knowing that critics like documentaries more than the average
| person.
| andrewclunn wrote:
| When reviews became numerical and used to recommend content via
| algorithms, was it any wonder they became as broken as any other
| form of rating online? Incentives and emergence shape everything.
| Want a good critic? Find someone (an individual) with tastes
| similar to yours. The aggregate is always a distorted mess of
| corrupt business practices, incompetent hot takes, and people you
| disagree with mucking up the waters. That there is or was ever
| "critical consensus" should be the least reassuring thing.
| yason wrote:
| Huh, have critics ever been in sync with audiences?
|
| For my whole life, I've learned and then observed that critics
| evaluate primarily the cinematic quality of a film, i.e. does the
| film as a piece of art work as a whole when considering acting,
| directing, screenwriting... This is generally a different axis
| from entertainment which is what people often care about when
| looking for something to see.
|
| If a critic likes a film it's because it is good cinema. If
| you're in the film-watching mood you would likely appreciate that
| film if it has high critical scores. But if you want something
| easy or you want to see a guaranteed uplifting film with your
| friends before going out to a pub round, you want entertainment
| and then you don't want to look at the critics scores.
|
| You might want to infer something from the review text because
| often critics do tell you if the film is entertaining and a good
| watch. The film still got 1 star out of 5 because it was not good
| cinema.
| imbnwa wrote:
| Are film critics losing sync with the average person who actually
| goes outta their way to rate movies on IMDB?
| shadowgovt wrote:
| > As making and releasing movies has become easier, we have seen
| an increase in the number of low budget films hitting the big
| screen. At the same time, these films have become increasingly
| more divisive, although I'm not sure why.
|
| I believe we can expect one from the other. Hollywood and
| Rockefeller Plaza are _huge_ gatekeeping infrastructures; the
| sheer number of specialists you need to get buy-in from to make a
| film in the traditional system means there are multiple layers of
| people with veto power (or creative control) over an idea.
|
| Decreasing price-to-entry means more people can bypass larger
| pieces of those edifices, which means fewer gatekeepers between
| the creative and their idea hitting a screen. Couple that with
| increasingly bypassed distribution channels (not every film needs
| to hit a theater), and you're likely to see a more diverse set of
| minds creating content for people to consume.
|
| Diversity can breed divisiveness if people are of a critical
| bent, and since we're talking about critics and film audiences, I
| think we'd expect that link in this context.
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