The Correct Way To Hate
Is Cinema Struggling Due To Our Addiction To Criticism?
I remember walking out of the theater after first watching the original Suicide Squad film not overly impressed, but certainly not filled with an undefinable rage, punctuated by foaming at the mouth.
My friends, however, were not only MORE than verbally displeased with our choice, but actively participated in jeering the film to a degree that had me feeling as if I’d missed some sort of specific slight which flipped a switch in seemingly everyone in the theater BUT me.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not on my knees worshipping every film the general theater going audience may find a flow of flaws with, but I’m no owner of any particular pitchfork either..
I feel like this split between myself and the rest of Earth’s film critics started with the epidemic of superhero flicks.
While my preferences may find their origins within the standard Marvel Vs. DC conversation, I feel general consensus tends to strong-arm me in regards to a particular opinion more than anything else.
I never find myself arguing against any singular stance, but rather my thoughts begin to drown in a sea of overwhelming negative opinion before I’ve even finished stammering through my tepid initial feedback.
I too enjoyed Andor, but while I may not be jumping for JOY over The Acolyte, I’m certainly in no way psychologically disturbed because of its widely perceived “errors.”
I love a good nit-pick as much as the next guy, but even I found it difficult putting my head back on after fan blacklash spun it ‘round swiftly.
I loathed the unstoppable torrent of pandering that was Rise of Skywalker like everyone else, but after the first two episodes of The Acolyte, I couldn’t help but plead that we not act like everything that isn’t the fucking Dark Knight is an affront to God.
Is THAT where it started? For my money, this particular opinion feels right.
The first domino of critic entitlement seems to fall near The Dark Knight Rises.
While its predecessor deserved every accolade and ounce of praise, twelve years later, I’m still trying to wrap my head around those initial rumblings of backlash.
Despite the lack of confidence in my stance, I feel the origin of everything stems from the fact one particular actor wasn’t favored as much as Heath Ledger. The Dark Knight became the superior film, and a more modern game of cinematic oneupsmanship was afoot…
This series wasn’t as good as Nolan’s. Zack Snyder didn’t have nearly as much comedy as Marvel’s Cinematic Universe, and let’s not get started on Sony attempting to board bandwagons that are already short three wheels.
Also, what IS woke?
PeopleWhoUseBuzzWordsToStirThePotSayWhat?
I feel like attempting to navigate the waters of that PARTICULAR pitfall opinion is a fruitless expedition, however I will state it is MY belief that recent box office failures are due more to being wildly out of touch with the desires of the general public, and forcing projects down pipelines with no demand for them whatsoever.
I feel that YES, inclusion, representation and diversity are CORNERSTONES for quality entertainment, but it’s hard to distinguish between the reasons of failure when lazy scripts, uninspired dialogue and paint-by-numbers plots walk hand in hand WITH those broken barriers.
I understand the need to make a profit and to produce lucrative projects.
One of the first things I do reading up on the reputation of a film, is to look up the budget to box office ratio.
Nobody ACTUALLY sells a commodity aiming to wind up in the negative.. Right?
With modern films, however, you’d think studios were all-in on the smallest concept before taking a moment to realize the demographic they’re aiming to please has never really provided the monetary gains they sought through courtship.
I feel there was a meeting at some point where I either missed the invitation, or was purposefully left out of the loop.
Somewhere along the road we decided to go into something EXPECTING it to be horrible, so that by the time we end our viewings, the only thing that remains is a cavalcade of false confirmation bias.
What IS good?
It certainly wasn’t when Rotten Tomatoes got enough stroke that we started seeing “fresh” ratings in TV ads for currently running films.
Is the benchmark the entitled opinions from critics on Rotten Tomatoes, or is it somewhere else entirely, lost and blindly shifting from day to day?
I had friends who would REFUSE to head to the theater if the film of choice fell below a certain percentage score.
Now everything that brought me joy is gleefully raked over glowing coals, and the entertainment once derived from living through adventures with fictional heroes, stems from tearing down the flaws in narrative.
Heaven forbid.
We are all truly in the end times…
ALSO,
Who cancels a film starring one of the most beloved humans in the midst of their resurgence?
It’s not difficult to make the simplest objective observation that these films have lost their very soul.
The heart of creation, which led to seemingly endless innovation, special effects & creativity, has been beaten into one of the most shocking submissions to the almighty dollar I’ve ever seen.
Opinions of live action Disney remakes aside, I challenge ANYONE to watch both 2003’s Peter Pan & 2023s Peter Pan & Wendy and tell me the latter wasn’t done solely to make a quick buck.
I feel that how we approach movies has been dramatically transformed by the constant desire and seeming need to compare everything that comes forward to the last great thing…
The Acolyte isn’t bringing about the death of Star Wars.
A coven of magic wielding women used the force to create life.
And apparently THAT is enough to KILL Star Wars for everyone.
Not the fact that one of the main characters within the franchise is a child murdering, wife choking psychopath,
but clever witches.
Not blinking Ewoks, racist caricatures, Palpatine’s return or the age difference between Padme and her eventual baby daddy, but a sect of space ladies that made twins..
NOT alien blue tiddy milk,
Not the amount of digital nonsense in the prequels making them less live-action and more detailed cartoons
BUT,
A COVEN MANIFESTIN’ BABIES..
It’s worth mentioning that, Zabrak Dathomir witches were the ones to make Darth Maul’s brother nigh a GOD.
Bringing KIDS into the world however?
That’s a bridge too Goddamned far... /s
At some point around 2009, one of my closest friends discovered a YouTuber who would IMMEDIATELY become the de facto decision maker regarding what we would eventually choose to see.
Then a funny thing happened…
This one digital creator’s opinion became LAW, and differing views gained nothing but negative feedback from within the friend circle.
Critics became the voice of God, and blasphemous be he who does not tow the line.
Determining the subsequent dominoes that fell requires a more subjective look back than I feel I can manage. There’s a haze of internet feedback to filter through that existed for quite a while, but I feel the best approach is to decide when all of THAT began to back down…
Was it when the story of Game of Thrones surpassed the finished physical pages, and show runners flew blind through that infamous final season?
I feel laziness slipped in somewhere before Covid, but limped on through delays, and nearly everything Disney.
Like many overwhelming topics, I find myself asking, “How to we get back to the way we were?”
As is often the case, I hear a strong murmur from the universe, sitting calmly in the corner reminding me that maybe we’re not meant to.
Maybe the gap between theaters and streaming at home was always inevitably going to close. Perhaps studio monopolies, by their own nature, crumble under the weight of blind ambition and the gluttonous hoarding of box office receipts.
Rental stores gave way to RedBoxes which, in turn, fell to streaming.
Why fork over a small fortune for a ticket stub and popcorn, when the selected feature will be sent to your home devices within a few short weeks? Most of us can handle the anticipation, especially with the pressure of the current economy straining our backs already…
I couldn’t be bothered to stress myself over the concept of enjoying what I will on my couch, especially when fate keeps handing me features I’ve been waiting years for.
You may have hated Black Adam, (yet ANOTHER misstep by Dwayne Johnson) but you have NO IDEA how long I’ve waited to see Doctor Fate & Hawkman in a film…
The current landscape of cinema may reflect Mad Max rather well, but I can still enjoy it from the comfort of my own home, at my own pace, and without strangers guilting me over my own personal enjoyment.
Valid criticisms will always steer the ship of public opinion as it pertains to film, but I’d appreciate it if the feedback the audience is bringing forward provided more substance than the content receiving backlash….
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Speaking as somebody who had entirely cut myself off from modern cinema (I hadn't been to a movie theatre in ten years before this past summer), I've realized that I actually quite enjoy the feeling of putting myself in a room with nothing but the film and my thoughts about it. Unlike streaming, there's no need to worry about other things happening on Earth while you watch. I've found this a privilege worth paying for.
I am a naturally nitpicky person (I do write a Substack nitpicking small issues with opposing arguments, after all), but as long as the nitpicks aren't critically important, I see no reason to nitpick everything in the way that some do. When you do something like the Last of Us TV show or Hamilton, and cast a white person with a black actor, or pull a Star Wars VI, and entirely change the meaning of the ending in the re-edit, to me something feels wrong about that, and I do allow it to affect my enjoyment a lot. However, most issues people find are not as big as this. To walk about of a movie theatre feeling disappointed because a movie wasn't a 9/10 (according to whatever scale you use) feels like standards have crept too high.
I like this. The way I deal with it is I just watch whatever I want to and form my opinion about it. Then I can choose to flock to the "comment section" afterwards. Everyone is a critic nowadays and blow it all out of proportion. People be hating for the sake of hating. Like the new Indiana. I love that franchise. Sure it wasn't Temple of Doom good, but it was still a decent movie. But all you hear people bitch about is the girl and how it's woke. The movie was still about Indy!!
So I do think that it's one of the reasons why cinema is struggling along with other reasons.