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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.
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 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"
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...