ST Vox explores the small minority (& bots) making a loud backlash

TBH, there are only three metrics I pay attention to: 1) Metacritic critics score, 2) RT top critics score, 3) box office rankings. Audience scores on those sites have never been anything other than social media marketing.

 

If you don’t care then why are you trying so hard to disprove or delegitimize other ratings? Lol

 

Wait, so, is there a stark divide or are we deluding ourselves?

 

When those scores are high what conclusions do you make? Is that what you base your enjoyment of a movie on?

 

To me this goes both ways though, if your looking in terms of culture I think the ST films were setup much more for a positive reception than a negative one. You go outside these forums and really a "pro PT/Lucas loyalist" viewpoint is actually a very small minority indeed, the idea of the ST as a return to the "real SW" is I think vastly more popular.

Personally my view tends to me that the Luke situation is potentially the straw that broke the camels back for a lot of viewers, people who might have put up with other issues without it end up taking a more critical view of the film as a whole because of it.

 

So are there any fans left who can still say they like all the star wars movies? I just saw TLJ for the first time and i certainly can. Sure i have a few gripes but doesn't everybody? It would have been nice to have a more enthusiastic luke but that was young luke. This is old tired get off my lawn luke. You may not be so chipper in 30 years yourself you know. Anyway having been a star wars nut since i could walk i definitely had a good time with this one! You'd have to seriously mess up like the christmas special or those two Ewok movies from the 80's for me not to like star wars.

Oh btw did you guys know the holy grail of the series TESB wasn't so well liked on it's initial release either? It's true!

 

The audience scores? I completely ignore them. I've got an R script I wrote that I use to conduct Bayesian analysis on the RT "top critics" score, then I compare those results with the MC and box office results, and that gives me a pretty good indication of overall reception to the movie. All the audience scores do is add completely unhelpful noise.

Because people are weaponising meaningless numbers for maximum Schadenfreude, and all it's doing is making it even harder to have sensible conversations about the film.

 

Honestly, does the critics score matter that much? I don’t need critics to validate my opinion. I don’t need user ratings to validate my opinion. It’s all just a way for us to analyze the strange pattern of this movie.

 

I'm a student of film and I like to understand what makes a good movie good. So I read the reviews of serious professional critics and sit up and pay attention when a broad, very positive consensus emerges.

 

I didn't like alot of movies the rest of the world tells me i should so there!

Original blade runner, Didn't get it.
The Godfather, Snore fest.
Titanic, Highly overrated and overly long romantic nonsense.
Avatar, all show and no go. Can't believe sequels are even being considered.

You like what you like. Even if it's brainless like Army of Darkness which i happen to love! "This is my BOOMSTICK!"

 

Honestly to me it depends very much on the kind of film your talking about as well as the critics in question. I personally feel with too many mainstream blockbusters and too many net critics I'm merely seeing hype and expectation thrown back at me, even more credible critics tend to increasingly go this route IMHO looking to such films as "something for the masses" rather than their own taste.

I pay far more attention to critical opinion on more ambitious less mainstream cinema, its not the be all and end all of my viewing of such cinema but it does tend to be a much better guide for quality as far less expectation and sadly far less money is involved plus the critics(who tend to be less so your blander net types) give a reaction based on there own taste not some rather questionable(and often IMHO quite condescending) standard of what the masses or children want.

 

I ignore people like Stuckman. I'm talking about people employed specifically to critically analyse films, like Mark Kermode or the late Roger Ebert, not some dude with a vlog.

 

The only opinion that should matter is your own. That's where people are going wrong. Just because somebody is paid to review movies doesn't make their view the gospel.

 

Ultimately, yes, but good film criticism can inform and educate, and highlight things you may not have noticed. It can help you come to a greater appreciation of films. I can appreciate a film beyond simply an instinctual like/dislike response.

 

Also, let’s not act like those who hate the film wouldn’t be brandishing terrible reviews about the the film if it had been savaged by the critics.

I thinks it’s ok to love, like, dislike or hate the film. I think it’s ok to acknowledge the RT score although it still seems a little dodgy to me, but I’m not about to claim everyone loved this film - that’s clearly not the case. Likewise I don’t think anyone can fairly claim everyone hates the film or that it isn’t a critical (and so far, box office hit). But after all that, what really matters is whether or not the film worked for an individual and no amount of butting heads is going to change that.

 

Someone like Kermode to me is a good example of what I was talking about, I feel for mainstream cinema with him very often I'm getting more a reflection of hype and expectation(positive or negative) and a review based on what he thinks the masses might enjoy, for less mainstream artier cinema I'm getting more of what he actually enjoys himself and I find that a far better guide to quality.

I would also that TLJ specifically for me is a film that I feel has a lot of potential to be talked up beyond its actual quality, I think it touches on many themes that seem interesting but fails to deliver substance to many of them.

 

But they only people arguing are ones trying to suggest they are wrong to make the point there is no backlash. A sensible conversation can still include whats wrong with it.

 

The forum is currently a dumpster fire of people obstinately arguing as if the film is almost universally reviled, and this is bolstered by the RT audience score.

It's OK, to not like the film; it's OK to acknowledge that it is angering some factions of the hardcore fanbase. But there's no real objective evidence (at this point) to suggest that audiences largely disliked the film or are even heavily divided.

 

I'd say that the Twitter reaction, the host of negative write-ups on IMDB, the Rotten Tomatoes audience score, and the fact it's something picked up by major news sites - suggests it goes beyond a simple hardcore faction of the audience, most of the users of these sites are not hardcore Star Wars fans by any stretch. The fact that the dissenting opinions are so present is because the audience are so divided. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2527336/reviews

 

Even I have made the argument that we won't really know for some time but whats happening here is milder than whats happening elsewhere in my opinion. Check that Yahoo link I posted a page back or so. Will will have that evidence eventually but RT and pretty much every other public internet forum is a good hint the discontent is higher than we are used to. Maybe it won't turn out that way. Who knows.

 

All of those are self-selected. Do you really think that the average moviegoer is going to create an IMDb account and write a passionately scathing review?

 

Does that matter? Isn't the damage when average movie goers read those reviews to determine their interest in seeing something? Or someone seeing a feed in their Facebook that has hundreds of irate people slagging the movie?

 

Well in that case there's no way of us knowing the audience's perception - things like audience scores are the only barometer. Stuff like IMDB score can be indicative long-term. I would bet money that TLJ's score moves below RotS's by the time it teaches TFA's voting numbers.

 

Yeah, that'll possibly dampen word of mouth, I agree. I'm actually quite curious to see how the box office legs look after a few weeks.

 

Except the whole bots hijacking rotten tomatoes has gained a lot of traction in mainstream media and the fact it's has been sabotaged seems to be a bit of a badge of honor now. In fact I see this whole tantrum of a scandal backfiring in spectacular fashion tonthe point that online fan reviews lose a ton of weight. The hospitality industry lives and dies with things like trip advisor, but these salty fanbabies that tried to sink TLJ through rotten tomatoes may have just delegitimized the process when it comes to movies moving forward. The discordance between critical review and fan axe to grind only heightened the absurdity of it all.

And no the average viewer in the general audience isn't going to view IMDb or engage in Twitter other than superficially before making a decision to see a film. As much as I loved things such as Wonder Woman or Marvelverse, I never once went searching for anything other than seeing a brief mention on twitter and thinking, "oh that's right, the movie comes out in two weeks, I should pick what day I'm seeing it."

The problem with this sabotage was the enormous discordance between the critics and and fan metrics. It was so great that one cannot help but wonder if the results have been manipulated.