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Netflix Executives Say 'Bright' Success Proves Film Critics Are 'Disconnected From Mass Appeal' (indiewire.com)
Last month, movie critics slammed David Ayer and Will Smith's Netflix tentpole "Bright" movie. At present, it has less than 30 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes. But Netflix executives aren't worried. From a report on IndieWire: The abysmal reviews couldn't stop "Bright" from becoming a humongous hit on Netflix and earning a sequel. [...] According to both Netlfix bosses, "Bright's" success is proof that film critics don't matter as much when they're trying to tap into a global audience. "Critics are an important part of the artistic process, but [they are] pretty disconnected from the commercial prospects of a film," chief content officer Sarandos said. "[Film critics] speak to specific audiences who care about quality, or how objectively good or bad a movie is -- not the masses who are critical for determining whether a film makes money." CEO Hastings, chimed in to add "The critics are pretty disconnected from the mass appeal." Do ratings on movie websites matter? It's not a new topic of discussion. Last year, legendary director, producer and screenwriter Martin Scorsese said he believes real movie goers don't care about Rotten Tomatoes. But some people, including especially in the same room as Scorsese, disagree. Brett Ratner, the Rush Hour director/producer who threw the financial weight of his RatPac Entertainment behind Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice blamed Rotten Tomatoes for convincing people to not watch his movie. Along the same lines, DC fans were angry over Rotten Tomatoes's Justice League ratings .
Batman v superman and Bright rated equally on Rotten Tomatoes for Critics.
Bright rated significantly higher with audiences than Batman v Superman.
Bright had no history so it didn't even get rabid fans praising something with Batman as "can do no wrong" so the already lower score of Batman v Superman can be "downcorrected" too.
Bright was good. Batman v Superman was a messy turd of a movie.
Don't compare the two.
I watched Bright and The Last Jedi within days of each other. Bright was the better movie.
Bright didn't waste 25% of the screen time on a red herring side story that does nothing to advance the plot.
Both movies tried to make a political point. Bright did so clumsily, while the Last Jedi simply bludgeoned you with theirs.
Although the plot of neither was particularly complex, Bright was just a simple enjoyable piece of entertainment while The Last Jedi was disappointing for the dismissive way it resolved questions from the previous movie plus the manipulative way it tried to push an agenda.
Critics in general are fairly worthless. The vast majority of the current crop (whether film, video game, etc.) thinks their job is to masturbate for a few paragraphs, show everyone how insightful and woke they are, and try to wow us with how much flowery language they can pack in. Long gone are the days where their job's chief concern was about whether the subject was something the audience would actually enjoy.
Netflix seems a bit of a special case. I've already payed for the service, so when they release anything that looks remotely appealing, I watch it. That doesn't make it a good movie, it just makes it the best thing on at the moment. Bright was a decent movie (better than 30% for sure), but it wasn't mindblowing. I probably wouldn't have bought a movie ticket. That said, I've been using moviepass, so theater-going has become more like Netflix for me. It doesn't have to be some anticipated summer blockbuster, just the best thing in theaters at the moment.
Look at the swing with "The Orville" 20% vs 93% Talk about missing the mark.
I enjoyed Bright, Warcraft and King Arthur, despite all 3 getting savaged by critics (and the latter two mostly being disappointments in the US or worldwide). The problem with these movies is they are not 4 quadrant tentpole movies. Warcraft and King Arthur especially were heavy fantasy, as opposed to Lord of the Rings which has broad appeal.
Bright and Warcraft had extensive fantasy world-building, and it's just not something that appeals to everyone. My wife walked in the room while I was watching Warcraft and rolled her eyes so hard I was afraid she'd faint. BUT THAT'S OKAY. Not every movie is for everyone, something that gets lost when comparing critic reviews to audiences. Ironman and the recent Spiderman had broad appeal across genders and age groups. The DC movies did not, but were enjoyed by the very audience the movie was geared towards.
It's not good enough to distill a movie to a single numeric value when there are so many disparate audiences. So the Netflix exec is entirely right: Bright can be both savaged by critics and loved by audiences, but what he might not realize is that it's not loved by ALL audiences, but by fans of this particular genre. What's great about a movie like Bright is that it went full-bore into its world-building and that's going to have lasting appeal to fantasy fans, as opposed to being watered down.
... the way corporate execs see movies or any other media is the problem. The reality is you have new kids and people being born into the world all the time of various degree's of intelligence and education levels. So just because a movie has commercial success doesn't mean it isn't bad. Most people are stupid so movies would tend to reflect the intelligence of the average human being on our planet. It's called lowest common denominator for a reason.
The same way most of us look back on early cartoons of our youth when we are older and can see how media corporations were exploiting the fact we were young and just born yesterday. Every 15-20 years another generation of "born yesterays" appears with no memory of the past, so everything is new and exciting it's part of the reason why movies for average quality because we are a short lived species, older people have had decades of experience to refine their tastes. Those people with refined tastes eventually die and are replaced. So there's and endless wave excellence and mediocrity as generations live and die.
The reality is without critics directors would not be able to maintain any kind of semblance of quality. Since it's usually people who are intelligent that are making movies for audiences less intelligent than themselves.
The Bright "professional" critics were probably thinking:
"Finally a movie that if I trash talk it to boost my critic-cred, it won't endanger my invites to movie premiers and pre-screenings from the big studios"
The Last Jedi got similar numbers. The critics adored it, the fans hated it.
Of course, in that case, it is because Disney punishes professional reviewers for bad reviews by blocking their access to movie. I am sure shenanigans like that go on with other companies, too. So, I don't give an ounce of credibility to professional reviewers, as they are obviously just paid shills.
Years ago I used to go to the movies with a friend alot, often a couple of times a week for years. We would just turn up and see whatever was playing next.
From that experience I can say I became very much jaded about typical movies.
After watching so many movies where its almost the same story structure over and over it became hard to really enjoy most movies. You have seen almost the same movie countless times before. Anything that is visually different or told in another style or ANYTHING seemed much better.
Since then its made me think this is probably why critics and casual movie viewers don't have similar experiences.
If you eat donuts for a living you will critic aspects of a donut that a casual eater would never care about. Its not boring if you haven't seen the same story 100 times before.
RT Critics have it below 30%; the audience is more like you, 86%.
I like RT for this - I can pretty easily figure out that a movie like this is going to be pretty enjoyable, but probably not earthshattering or innovative.
If both the critics and the audience agree that it sucks, though, it will probably suck. See any Adam Sandler movie.
They took the idea of running a society by social media scores from Black Mirror, but little else. In Black Mirror, your score was taken into account by other people and companies to a silly degree but it ended there. In the Orville episode, everything including government did this; your score determined the outcome of your court cases for example. The plots are rather different as well.
I like the Orville. Feels like old school Trek with a bit of weird humor thrown in. Part of that old school feeling comes from having planet's like the 80s where people speak English: that's precisely what a lot of old SF did, asking you to suspend disbelief on that part and focus on the rest of the story, which can be told succinctly because they don;t have to deal with a language barrier as well. Modern SF is having entire books and movies about that language barrier (which is fine by the way).
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
From the hardcore SW geeks(like myself) Star Wars was terrible. It's a "okay space opera" it's a "okay non-SW cannon movie" but anything else it's just well terrible. And you'd find that most of us would have been happier without Space Mary Poppins and the ignoble death of Admiral Ackbar, or the shoehorning of nobody characters that were one dimensional, and garbage like "but I SAVED YOU!" as Finn decides to try and save the rebel base. The movie itself was terrible, it didn't even do a full run in China which is a big market. It lasted 2 weeks, with a ~92% drop off in week 2. Hell, if you really need to see how badly the movie is doing, they're already selling the toys for $1. If they'd turned around and used the EU cannon material of Thrawn, Mara Jade, and so on? You'd be seeing people cheer from the rafters, because not only is there a line of continuation, but the characters have more depth the Rey "thy Mary Sue" Super-force User and it likely wouldn't be such a flat movie.
The problem is Disney and the team of writers decided to pull the "fuck the hardcore fan" we'll make it for everyone else. And it failed just as badly as the Ghostbusters remake. Hell the media followed the same script: "It's not *our* fault it was, bad. It's all those alt-right trolls! Look even more trolls! That's why it's bad. NO REALLY TROLLS!" They're still doubling down on it at this moment, but I'll bet if I was a fly on the wall in the head office of Disney there would be an awful lot of worry, and attempts to push the entire team of writers and so on right out the door to try and salvage the franchise. And if you think TLJ is just an isolated incident? The new Han Solo movie has also been going through extensive rewrites, re-filming of scenes, and the main actor is apparently so wooden that they had to have an acting coach on scene. Don't be surprised if the new Han Solo movie bombs that Disney "put's it on the shelf" for a few years.
Om, nomnomnom...
That feature is one of the best things about RottenTomatoes. You can gain quite a bit of insight by comparing the critics score to the audience score.
A lot of "critic pleaser" movies are not that enjoyable. Some are political or social statement movies that almost require a critic to proclaim it good, even if it is terrible. The audience has no such compulsion. Similarly, there are a lot of popular movies that just plain stink. So seeing the critics aggregate can help with that as well.
There are a lot of genres that are difficult for critics. Like broad comedies or horror movies. If you are thinking of going to a comedy, you aren't asking if it is "better" than "12 Years a Slave". You want to know if it is a solid example of the genre. Similarly, if you are in the market for a slasher film, you want to know if it delivers on being a well made slasher film, not whether the critic thinks slasher films are good. The audience score can help with this problem, since generally only people who went to the movie are rating it. And presumably you don't go to the movie if you weren't in the market for that type of movie.
If you see critics and audiences agree, you can generally count on their opinion, good or bad. And if they disagree, you can gain a bit of insight into why the critics scored it like they did. All of which adds up to helping you decide where to spend your entertainment dollar.