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Are film critics losing sync with audiences?

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Re: Are film critics losing sync with audiences?

#11

Post by mzvkxlcvd »

okasaki wrote: post #2

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.

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.

Re: Are film critics losing sync with audiences?

#12

Post by ratww »

bio_end_io_t wrote: post #4
thenightcrawler wrote: post #3

I don't think critics should necessarily follow general audiences , anymore than you would want a food critic to rate mcdonalds.

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.

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.

Re: Are film critics losing sync with audiences?

#13

Post by yhoneycomb »

Kranar wrote: post #8

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 per…

“I hire people who think exactly like I do”

Re: Are film critics losing sync with audiences?

#14

Post by babypuncher »

Kranar wrote: post #8

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 per…

I find it distressing how many people miss the obvious selection bias at play here.

Re: Are film critics losing sync with audiences?

#15

Post by bmelton »

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 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.

Re: Are film critics losing sync with audiences?

#16

Post by vmception »

Kranar wrote: post #8

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 per…

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.

Re: Are film critics losing sync with audiences?

#17

Post by logicalmonster »

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.

Re: Are film critics losing sync with audiences?

#18

Post by AMerrit »

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.

Re: Are film critics losing sync with audiences?

#19

Post by omarhaneef »

Kranar wrote: post #8

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 per…

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.

Re: Are film critics losing sync with audiences?

#20

Post by jrm4 »

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.")

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