You’ve likely all heard of Rotten Tomatoes at this point, or at least have heard about how hard critics tend to be on films that they think are box office stinkers. The truth of the matter is that Rotten Tomatoes doesn’t have any impact on the box office numbers at all. In fact at this point the critic site is just another opinion poll that has little to no real bearing on the movie industry at all. What critics say and how they go about lambasting some movies and praising others doesn’t have much of an impact on what movies people will go see. If a person is curious about a movie then it’s likely that they’ll go see it. If they think it’s something that’s not for them then they’ll tend to stay away.
Relying on critics is something that each person has to figure for themselves. Many people, myself included, feel that at times critics are simply too hard on certain movies either because of a personal bias or some outdated measuring system that doesn’t take a great many factors into account or the fact that people will make up their own minds in due course. I’m going to say it even if some people don’t believe it. Critics have easy jobs.
They criticize other people’s work, that’s their job. They take into account everything they think that is important about the movie and then seek to tear it apart more often than not to find some sort of core concept that fits their idea of what a good movie is. In doing this they ignore the many factors that make the movie great, bypassing these in order to find some intrinsic value that may or may not exist. News flash, not everything has to have this value in order to be a good movie. I don’t believe that every critic is so wide of the mark that they miss it entirely, but Rotten Tomatoes, despite being one of the more popular critic sites, has thus far been one of the most overly critical as well.
And what’s the point? Their opinions, and that’s what they are, biased opinions of people that did or didn’t like a movie, are so highly subjective that trusting their word is exceedingly hard to do because in some way it forces a person to accept that their own opinion might be wrong. Critics are not the overall bad guys of the movie industry, but their job is far too easy and subjective to be useful at times. And if they don’t really affect the box office, then why does anyone listen?
People want a second opinion just so they don’t second-guess themselves, that’s why. They want to know that they’re not making a mistake by seeing a movie that could be a disaster. Heaven forbid you put good money into a ticket and then don’t enjoy the show. Two hours out of your life is not a tragedy, especially if the chairs are comfy enough.
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