Current Events > Wow, this article is depressing. "The internet is ruining movies"

(+) Yeah! (+)

https://www.agonybooth.com/internet-is-ruining-movies-26994

A little-known fact is that the 1998 Roland Emmerich Godzilla film actually made money. But the negative critical reaction hurt its box office take, and bad word of mouth shamed TriStar into giving up on its plans for a franchise. Fast-forward to today, where no amount of critical and public condemnation could prevent Transformers: Age of Extinction from breaking a billion dollars worldwide. I have yet to meet a single person who can say they liked all four of the Transformers movies, or even describes themselves as fans, but the box office take keeps going up. It seems there are hundreds of millions of people who dont care what the critics have to say.

What gets me about this is that it doesn't just apply to movies. It applies to everything.

Thanks to the internet, everyone is a critic.
Because everyone is a critic, people have stopped listening to criticism.

Look at the 2016 election. People hated Trump and never missed an opportunity to express that hate. Yet he won, because people ignored (perfectly valid) criticism.

Also, point two in the article basically states "any publicity is good publicity" and that's certainly true of Trump, even today.

(granted this was published in 2015 and the author notes that he isn't excited for Star Wars 7, claiming that rabid fanboys will buy into anything regardless of quality. after the HUGE backlash surrounding Star Wars 8 and the box-office flop that was Solo, he may want to rethink that position...)
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Criticism still hurts movies. The Last Airbender comes to mind.
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i don't like movies
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SmidgeIsntBack posted...

Criticism still hurts movies. The Last Airbender comes to mind.

being a shitty movie hurt that movie
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The thing is that most people who live on the Internet still don't understand is that the Internet is only a VERY vocal but small minority. Most people who have busy lives working a job and raising a family or doing whatever besides spending all free time on the Internet don't really care what a bunch of plump nerds have collectively decided what's good and what's bad.

Plus, movies are expensive now, especially if you have a family. You're going to take your kids to see something that you'll all most likely enjoy, like the latest big dumb blockbuster. No one is going to pay almost $100 in tickets and concessions to see some weird indie flicks.

A little-known fact is that the 1998 Roland Emmerich Godzilla film actually made money. But the negative critical reaction hurt its box office take, and bad word of mouth shamed TriStar into giving up on its plans for a franchise.

They came.
They saw.
They left disappointed.

This has always been the case.

The same year Godzilla came out was another movie called Armageddon. A humongous success that eventually lead to the Transformers movies he is whining about.

Universal has to abandon plans for their monster movie franchise after The Mummy flopped.

I'm sure there are countless more examples. If anything it seems like critic reviews have more of an impact now than they ever did thanks to Rotten Tomatoes.

The internet does give a platform for everyone who wants to use it though but I'd say this is only really an issue for nerdy movie properties with overly passionate fans.
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Yet he won, because people ignored (perfectly valid) criticism.

True, but when the media has juxtaposed valid criticisms on a person's behavior and politics with the color tie he wore to a meeting, it becomes harder for people to parse through the bullshit.
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Just because a movie makes money doesn't mean it's good

Last Airbender did $320m worldwide on a $150m budget
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I watched over 500 movies last year, and have already watched over 250 this year, and I rarely care what critics, or anybody else has to say, before deciding what to watch.
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Darmik posted...

Universal has to abandon plans for their monster movie franchise after The Mummy flopped.

That's really sad if only because it would have been fun to see some of our favorites return in *good* movies. But that latest mummy movie was a disaster.
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A shared filmography for the Universal Monsters could've been great. They pretty much pioneered the concept of a shared cinematic universe when they started putting Dracula, Frankenstein's Monster, and the Wolf Man in movies together back in the 1940s. But their approach, and their casting decisions, made the "Dark Universe" dead on arrival.

Those monsters will return eventually. There's no sense in putting them in bad movies. I'd rather watch the 1931 version of Dracula for an 11th time than to see Drac in an awful movie. And the same goes for everyone else.