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The author shows it with the gender of the voters, but it would very probably have been the same with IQ, education level, zipcode, country, income level, etc
Nowadays, people always try to find ways to be offended. A women-led movie got bad ratings? It must be the patriarchy! Nobody wonders if it might have been just a bad movie, as I, as a man, also enjoy women-led movies (I mean movies in the cinemas, not what you think :P). Hoewever, the new Ghostbusters just looks like a big horrible painful joke, and that's why the ratings tanked.
Given it's so hard to even assess statistically, how many men are among movie raters, this entire article stands on weak feet.
Music Industry and Film Industry have essentially just become about personalities and big money. They can peddle garbage because everyone buys it.
I just hope that books are not next because that is all that remains of quality entertainment.
What I do have two problems with is the framing of this article when it comes to the new Ghostbusters film. This quote is a useful starting point for looking at those problems:
"More specifically, a vocal portion of men on the internet — shall we say — go out of their way to make their voices heard when it comes to judging entertainment aimed at women"
First of all, is the new Ghostbusters film meant to be aimed at women? If you look at it at a superficial level perhaps. To me, when you take on a beloved film franchise, you should make something that stays true to the spirit of the earlier films. The earlier Ghostbusters films have appeal across the board, why can't the new film have the same?
Secondly, the issue people are having with the Ghostbusters reboot is not really because all the new Ghostbusters are female. I, for one, think it was a good idea to do so, as it provided something new, and could have helped it to break from conventions whilst still providing something recognisable as a Ghostbusters film. The main problem people have with the film (and yes, they are just basing it on trailers at this point), is that it appears to be a generic, formulaic comedy with Ghostbusters dressing. For example, with the 'sassy black lady' Ghostbuster, the vast majority of the backlash isn't because she's a woman, the majority of the backlash is because she's playing a hackneyed stereotype. There were other parts of the trailers that were similarly paint-by-numbers Hollywood comedy.
Perhaps the trailers did the film a great disservice and there are better moments to be found in the film itself, but early impressions are not too great IMO.
The last "movie" I enjoyed was Terminator 2. Not too long after that, I realised that I had seen all possible combinations of ways that you can tell a story in 90 minutes. Music Industry and Film Industry have essentially just become about personalities and big money. They can peddle garbage because everyone buys it. I just hope that books are not next because that is all that remains of quality entertainment.
The last "movie" I enjoyed was Terminator 2. Not too long after that, I realised that I had seen all possible combinations of ways that you can tell a story in 90 minutes. Music Industry and Film Industry have essentially just become about personalities and big money. They can peddle garbage because everyone buys it. I just hope that books are not next because that is all that remains of quality entertainment.
To give a counterexample, what about Memento? What had you seen before Terminator 2 that was like Memento?
I see a few overlapping effects here:
1) Aggregators like Tomatometer rank based on broad appeal. That's why Toy Story is one of the highest scored of all time (if you don't like Toy Story, you're dead inside), and Fight Club can be beloved to many but still not A grade.
2) Audiences are slowly getting tired of cynical reboots. Sure, I understand the harsh reality that means Hollywood has to play as risk averse as possible, and that recycling beloved IP has slightly-better-than break even results on average, but you can't expect movie watchers to gush over story retreads.
3) Yes, the loudest and most obnoxious voices on the internet are also the ones who will go to the most trouble to tank your reviews. This is not specific to movies. The fact that men are doing this for Ghostbusters does not reveal an inherent misogyny overall, just that said mysoginistic neckbeards are more likely to invest their time in trolling the internet (the 4chan effect).
I have no trouble with an all female lead cast. I just wish they didn't waste all that potential on such a crappy regurgitation.
I have no opinion on Ghosbusters, but I just wanted to add that maybe it's not all out of spite and out of hatred towards media aimed at women? I'm a man and I would on average rate any rom-com that I saw with my fiancee much lower than she would - but at the same time, she would usually rate any action move that I liked much lower than I would. It's not because I hate women or she hates men - it's just.....not every…
To some extent it's the nature of a polarising topic. It's just that when it's a male/female split, it's easier to detect and analyse, so it's easy to build an article around.
The argument here is when men post internet reviews of "female oriented films", they tend to be far more critical than women are of "male oriented films". And in this case at least, (based on people who probably haven't seen the movie) men are more likely to post negative reviews of "female movies" than women are to post positive reviews.
So, to use your example, Internet meta-scores for rom-coms are not very helpful. Sure, if your fiancee wants to see one, you can work out how much you're going to hate it based on how badly other men reviewed it, but if she wants to go see one with her sister, then the internet scores tell her almost nothing. She really wants to know "do people who normally like rom-coms like this movie?" but she gets to see a relatively meaningless "5 out of 10" (based on 10 women averaging 9/10, and 20 men averaging 3/10)
Yes. and Im one of those men. Maybe, just maybe STOP marketing those 'women shows' to men?
Remember recent Deadpool marketing campaign around Valentines Day painting it as a romantic comedy? This is what most 'movies and shows aimed at women' do, because they just cant let of the male market $$. "Hey go watch this cool new SciFi movie" never mentions its a Urban fantasy romance novel with 70% screen time taken by woman protagonist crying on someones shoulder.