Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Are film critics losing sync with audiences?

stephenfollows.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 421 posts

Re: Are film critics losing sync with audiences?

#21

Post by ashtonbaker »

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…

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.

Re: Are film critics losing sync with audiences?

#22

Post by tomrod »

yhoneycomb wrote: post #13
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”

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.

Re: Are film critics losing sync with audiences?

#24

Post by logicalmonster »

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…

> 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.

Re: Are film critics losing sync with audiences?

#25

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: Are film critics losing sync with audiences?

#26

Post by shantnutiwari »

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?

Re: Are film critics losing sync with audiences?

#27

Post by klodolph »

ashtonbaker wrote: post #21
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…

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.

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.)

Re: Are film critics losing sync with audiences?

#28

Post by chrismeller »

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 (€20/ticket) modern fables. I’m paying to be entertained, not to be lectured to.

Re: Are film critics losing sync with audiences?

#29

Post by floren »

logicalmonster wrote: post #17

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.…

> 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?

Re: Are film critics losing sync with audiences?

#30

Post by joebob42 »

vmception wrote: post #16
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.

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.

Post reply on HN