FULL OF SOUND AND FURY, SIGNIFYING NOTHING
Critics Don’t Matter
Article by Paul Preston
By now you’ve read the title and are wondering where the proof is that critics don’t matter. I’ll lead with it. Here you go:
If you take seriously a website that culls reviews from all manner of press and online opinion-spouter and rates them with vegetables, you’ll see that the top eight movies at the box office the week I’m writing this (April 8-14, 2016) are all poorly-reviewed movies. Only Zootopia sits in the top eight while also being a favorite of critics. But it’s been this way for a while.
For most of 2016, the top box office movies have been critical duds. This week, the top eight came to a 7-1 head, after weeks and weeks of 5-3 and 6-2, always favoring reviewer-lambasted films. Full disclosure – I’ve been writing reviews at TheMovieGuys.net officially since 2009, and years before that. I just love talking movies, and I’m sure many of the critics out there love that as well, especially with a blogosphere in place, featuring passionate fans who now have a voice, as opposed to only high-brow newspapers and magazines. But it’s clear that whatever opinion we put into the world, it doesn’t matter.
Once upon a time, the most critically lauded films and the box office were closer to alignment. In 1981 you could say the top ten all-time box office winners were also the best films of all time – Star Wars, The Godfather, Jaws, Rocky, The Empire Strikes Back, Raiders of the Lost Ark and even The Sting and The Exorcist. Now, horribly flawed movies with obvious problems come out – everybody goes, and nobody cares. The tickets get gobbled up, the high ticket price shoots the overall gross of a sub-par movie into the stratosphere of the biggest box office grossers of all time. So the critics…and their thoughts…don’t matter. I’m fully aware I don’t matter in this vein…but there is one way I do…
“There are times when a critic truly risks something, and that is in the discovery
and defense of the ‘new’. The world is often unkind to new talent, new creations.
The new needs friends.”
This quote is from an animated movie, but it’s Pixar, so it’s one of the more mature movies you’ll see. It’s Anton Ego from Ratatouille, extolling the critic’s biggest virtue, championing a new work, a fresh, exciting and unique venture. I love introducing people to Junebug, Dope or The Messenger, and I hear from the brave souls who branch out to see something risky and how satisfied they are and it’s gratifying.
But yet, popular movies remain things like Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest and Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, a film you stopped talking about by the time you walked out to the movie theater parking lot. If you’ve lived over two-and-a-half decades on this Earth, you can clearly see that the movie industry reflects what many have predicted and what the industry itself has been gestating for years – spectacle! To where, that’s all that’s selling. You don’t need to be at the theater for anything less than spectacle. Don’t want spectacle? Stay home! Watch House of Cards or Better Call Saul. It’s sad to think that such great characters and storytelling couldn’t survive as a movie anymore. If they were films, they’d be relegated to awards season, a small roll-out and make $8 million, domestically.
However, in being on the small screen, these great characters get more time to grow, storylines can build and work on you without rushing, which is a shame because I LOVE MOVIES. Further proof that critics don’t matter is how the films they love don’t gross enough combined to pay for the marketing campaign of the torturously bad and egg-headed Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice. Critics were screaming, “See Brooklyn!”…and you didn’t.
Critics and moviegoers just aren’t in line anymore, but the spectacle bubble doesn’t seem to be bursting anytime soon, so head out to the theaters and take it in. Receipts show that you don’t care what other people tell you, you’re going to see what you want. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go write my review of Elvis & Nixon, ‘cause you should really go see that.
