battlewraith

Calling something a gift is a linguistic convention. It's not a reference to ontological status or whether the recipient is happy about the gift. The definition is one sided because there's no other side that matters. It's simply the way people communicate. Your boss doesn't gift you more hours. The IRS doesn't gift you more taxes. That's not the convention of how the word is used in English.

PI posted a still from the trailer and said that he was worried the film would be a hamfisted lecture about the current administration (presumably in the US). This was linked to a reddit post by the Critical Drinker, who I criticized as a formulaic online grifter. Shardwarrior then kicked off this discussion of critics in general, saying that the industry incentivizes critics to heap lavish praise on their films. This was a non sequitur. Even if it were blatantly obvious that all professional film critics are paid to hype movies, that would not be a defense of online grifters. It is also a false equivalence to view people that may exaggerate the positive qualities of a film in a review with people who denigrate these films along predictable ideological lines often based on a short snippet from a trailer before a film is even released.

The bad logic here is evident if you simply swap terms. Some doctors have committed malpractice, therefore it's safe to assume all doctors commit malpractice. Some cops are paid off, ergo all cops are assumed to be dirty. And so on. There was one research article posted in this exchange that studied studio bias with regard to reviewers. That study acknowledged there was influence and concluded that the result was typically a small rating shift, maybe half a star and/or a delay of 1-3 days for a negative review to be released. The conclusions of that article stated this: “The implication is not that the reviews are grossly inaccurate, on average, but I think as a consumer, you should probably rely on more than one reviewing outlet if you’re making a consumption decision,” says Waguespack."

My wife is going to subscribe to watch the new season of Andor, so we'll probably check this out.

Sony was sued over that incident and settled.

The truth of the matter is that critics vary, as do studios--or any group of people. It's not this categorical, black or white thing. Pointing to a fake critic or bad business is not an indictment of all critics or businesses. And yeah--if you're just willing to assume sweeping generalizations like this you are more likely to buy into conspiracy theories. Do better. You're welcome.

Lol oh really? Where did I equate that? PI mostly posts this stuff, but obviously people get bent if you criticize something like that. Surely this august assembly would not spend pages roasting the notion of criticism itself over nothing right? These zesty insinuations of industry wrongdoing had to come from somewhere.

All of this talk about credibility and trust in critics is because I called out the Critical Drinker. Why did I do this--because people keep referencing his garbage takes in these threads. The Thunderbolts review was a great example. In the first minute, he's disparaging Yelena as an embodiment of modern feminism. In actuality, the film as far as I could tell had nothing to with feminism unless you think fictional female superheroes fighting alongside male fictional superheroes counts as feminism. The fact that he's pandering in these reviews is made clear when he puts out a short film that features the same "girlbossy" depictions that he routinely slams big studios for doing (except executed very poorly). This to me demonstrates the gap between his grifting and his aspirations as a serious filmmaker. It's whataboutism. It would be like if you identified a specific doctor as a quack and in response someone called out controversies with Big Pharma. It's a deflection. Both can be true and it wouldn't change anything. And if f a bunch of shills from the big studios show up here, $50 in hand and start hyping up movies--that complaint would be relevant. But in reality, it's just Critical Drinker fans here pre-shitting on movies because their cohort squeezes everything through the same ideological lens.

Sounds offended to me. Particularly in relation to a trailer for a James Gunn Superman movie. Somebody watching that trailer and then being haunted by this caricature is bizarre to say the least.

That's the funniest thing about it. As someone who sees the current administration as an Onion parody come to life, I have no idea what the "political" issue is. I watched that trailer and just saw a bunch of standard Superman story tropes.

So, the first article concerns a pr firm's attempt to game rotten tomatoes over a film that hadn't even been picked up yet. And this example, which would've had a tiny sample size is extrapolated to all reviews. The research article talks about strategies the reviewers take to not piss off studios--the key one being to delay unfavorable reviews by 1-3 days. That's it. Additionally, the article talks about media outlets wanting to differentiate themselves. So reviews that come out later will tend to be more negative.

IKR? Especially when the whole Supes-in handcuffs things has been done in other films and animations.

The problem is that, when you are dealing with social media "critics" they are, as you say, driven by clicks--which are fueled by the algorithms driving the various platforms. Material that is more contentious is going to be more visible to viewers. A punchy video trashing a film along ideological lines is going to get more views then a measured, reasonable discussions of a film's quality. And content providers can see this in their metrics and have strong incentive to cater to more sensationalized content in order to make more money.

Right, so if they never posted anything positive, about anything, ever --THEN they would be grifting. LOL! Yes I've watched their content. The video I linked, if you removed the context, would be indistinguishable from his actual content. Always huh? Got some quotes?

Whataboutism. You should maybe not listen to those people either. I looked up reviews of the Marvels. Audience reviews are generally higher than the critical reviews were. And if you look on something like Rotten Tomatoes for instance, the highly rated critics gave it an even worse score. So that's not a profound indictment of critics.

Ah the irony, given how little it takes to elicit that kind of response from you. But let me clarify things. It's not about difference of opinion or worldview, particularly regarding a film that hasn't even been released yet. (maybe you'll even see it if your mates give the thumbs up). It's about grifters. Shitty, formulaic would be critics who crap on films to entertain an aggrieved audience who wants to see these films fail. They'll call out "what we all know" and then clutch their sphincters tight as they wait for the receipts to trickle in, praying for a flop to prove them somehow right. Fortunately, any shtick gets old and played out. And sometimes they themselves reveal why nobody should take them seriously.

I'm hopeful that people will eventually stop letting social media hacks poison their perception of pretty much every big tent superhero film that comes out. Edit: to be clear, CriticalDrinker is one such hack in case there was any confusion.

Wyatt Russel as John Walker seems like 20% Snake Plissken mixed with 35% Jack Burton.

I always love to hear auteurs weighing in on Disney movies.

Yeah I knew who they were. I still don't see who was really wanting to see this on the big screen. The characters were niche af. The 2008 series that the movies seem to be based on was cancelled after 25 issues. Regardless, the point is that if Gunn had failed people would be saying "yeah that was obviously a bad idea for a general audience."

There are like 6 fight scenes in the movie. Then there is a humorous team building scene, a scene where Bob tries to help them escape soldiers, and a kind of metaphorical face-down-your-demons scene where they help Bob. I don't think it was lacking action. I think that issue might be that the fight scenes probably come across as less consequential in the scheme of things. The characters are very upfront about being underpowered and ill-equipped to deal with the situation.

If something works, people will act like it was obvious it would work. If something doesn't work, people will act like it was obvious it wouldn't work. Who was clamoring to see a Guardians of the Galaxy film? Who thought, based on comics sales, that obscure characters like Rocket Raccoon and Star Lord were good source material for a big budget franchise? I sure as hell didn't. And if Gunn hadn't pulled it off, people would've been pointing to all of the obvious reasons why it was a bad idea.

There's action in this film, but imo it's almost like an inversion of a typical action film where you have skimpy characterizations inbetween big action setpieces. This movie was about characterization and the action was really just there to move things along. Which worked because the actors gave really solid performances and made these characters relatable and likeable.

Nobody in my family wanted to see this movie. After watching a lot of reviews and reading people's reactions to it, I got mildly interested. I talked my wife and older son into going and we all liked it. There was a fairly decent crowd and they seemed to like it. As we were leaving, I could hear people telling each other that they liked it. It was a lot more entertaining than I thought it would be.

The Russo brothers just did The Electric State, which had a massive 320 million dollar budget and was horribly reviewed. I think that demonstrates the problem with assuming that you can bank on previous successes. And I don't think that Disney is just willy-nilly throwing noobs at projects. I think they typically assign people based on their previous work, which i think is a rational strategy but no guarantee for success. Josh Trank was selected to direct the ill-fated 2015 Fantastic Four based on 2012's Chronicle, which was a really good indie superhero film.