TTRPGWhiz

Booster’s been around since 1986. He started out as a real glory hound kind of showboat, but he’s had some pretty good arcs over the years. The JLU animated episode “The Greatest Story Never Told” centers him and is a great intro to the character.

A small but relevant FYI on the topic of fake quotes: https://thatparkplace.com/lois-lane-actress-rachel-brosnahan-never-said-superman-is-not-for-everyone/ A Superman For All Seasons.

Angela Spica is The Engineer's 'secret identity'; the actor is María Gabriela de Faría. Have there been updates to the status of The Authority? Last time Gunn talked about it, he did not seem optimistic.

To put a finer point on it: there is an entire cottage industry of “movie critics” who review films through an “anti-woke” lens, and it is neither subtle nor unintentional. That is who they are, who they make content for, and how they market themselves. They aren’t here to critique movies just for quality; they’re also here to critique them for traces of “the agenda”, which is of course never really defined. Peppering reviews of superhero movies with phrases like “modern feminism” and “girl bosses” is just whistling for dogs.

I don’t have a hard and fast definition for it. On one end of the spectrum, there’s legacy outlets like THR, Empire, EW, NYT, Chicago Sun-Times, Rolling Stone, etc. On the other end, there’s some random people with no press passes and a laptop. I’m sure you can see the difference. And I’m talking about the first cohort when I talk about “major outlets”. The…I guess follower count? and readership of varying platforms and critics doesn’t particularly mean anything to me, and I don’t think that’s a very useful metric for deciding if something or someone is a legitimate source of critique. Metacritic has a whole methodology to its scoring that includes more heavily weighting the reviews of certain critics. Not sure what their formula is, but it is an indication that there are varying levels of credibility in the world.

I've acknowledged multiple times that studios do shady stuff. What is the effect of early access, junkets, etc.? We can turn to one of the articles posted earlier. A ratings shift of half a star doesn’t scream “shining a turd” to me. And early access isn’t bribery to me, either. YMMV. “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."

This is not at all what’s being suggested. The point as it’s been expressed multiple titles has nothing, literally nothing to do with fake reviews. It has to do with whether or not REPUTABLE CRITICS writing for MAJOR OUTLETS have been bribed to write positive reviews. That is it. Everything else is a misreading of what has been written. The entire reason this was even brought up was the suggestion that random internet critics aren’t great sources of information. The exact kind of random internet critics who did in fact receive bribes. These are not the same thing. Some people have inferred that because a bunch of nobodies got paid for positive reviews, then the entire profession is suspect. But those people have not yet been able to produce any examples that prove their belief, so a belief is all it is. Then those people assume that if you don’t share that belief, you must believe that all critics are infallible. There is no in between; you can’t believe that internet randos and Owen Glieberman operate differently. I can understand how it’s hard to follow the logic. Because there isn’t any.

Lol yes, they are. What point do you think you’re making?

It’s not even that deep, it’s basic reading comprehension. ”Can you show me one time that a film critic at a major outlet was bribed?” ”Yes, here is a fake film critic who sent blurbs to a local newspaper, and here is a bunch of unknown Rotten Tomatoes critics being paid off for $50 each.”

lol I’m not going to take the time to point out how much stuff you just made up; anyone who can read can see it. Enjoy your bubble of assumed truths. EDIT: removed some stuff because there’s no point responding to someone who either cannot read or who lives in a different reality. Ta.

First post on page six of this thread. And nobody has disagreed that studios do shady things, or that sites like Rotten Tomatoes are full of sketchy people. The disagreement is about legitimate film critics being bribed, and the complete lack of evidence of this ever happening. That is all. Nobody has said critics are uncompromisable saints. When someone says “X happens all the time” but can’t produce one example, that’s a belief. I’m not questioning anyone’s belief system, but I’m also not going to take it at face value.

That is not what we are talking about. We are talking specifically about movie studios paying for positive reviews. At no point was this about the general concept of “posting false information”. I don’t understand why it’s easier to shift the goal posts than just say, “well I don’t have any evidence other than what I’ve already posted, you’ll just have to take my word for it”.

See this is the issue, maybe: you think asking for one example is the same thing as denying that it's possible. Someone wrote, "movie studios pay critics for positive reviews all the time". I wrote, "do you have any examples of this occurring with reputable critics/outlets?" Then you came in with, "oh, so critics NEVER LIE?". It's not even the same conversation. Peace be with ya, Ghost. I'm not super interested in continuing a conversation with someone who values beliefs over evidence and who can't figure out what the actual conversation is.

lol, not one person has written, "no critic has ever lied". Good lord. The world of absolutes some of y'all live in would make a Sith blush.

...uh, yes, exactly. The question isn't "do movie studios do shady stuff". It is specifically, "is there evidence of movie studios paying reputable critics for positive reviews". That is the conversation we are having.

Cool stories! What outlets were his reviews published in? ...oh, none? They were just blurbs in local newspapers? And as soon as someone at an actual publication (Newsweek) smelled a rat, the whole thing came apart? Crazy. So right now we're looking at: two incidents, one in 2000, the other in 2018, neither of which involve a reputable film critic or outlet. As for the ostrich: ask them if while they've got their head down there, they might look for a single scrap of evidence that a real (not fake) movie critic working for a publication got paid money by a studio to write a review. If you guys want to move the goalposts to "movie studios do shady stuff to promote their movies", then go for it. No disagreement there. If you want to stick to trying to prove that studios pay legitimate critics for fake reviews, you're gonna have to...what was it..."try again, try harder".

So demonstrate it! I am legitimately interested in this topic, which is why I keep referring to searching for stories. All I've found is a bunch of references to the one Vulture article about one PR firm paying for reviews for one movie. People repeating, "no, but it's really happening" isn't very convincing.

Not appearing in this post: one shred of evidence Anyway, back on topic: maybe an ace reporter from a fictional world has uncovered this kind of widespread yet completely undocumented corruption!

Burden of proof is on the people making accusations. If y'all can point to a single instance of someone working at an outlet, and not out of their second bedroom, being directly paid for positive reviews, then spill that tea. Every google search I've done so far points to the same article about paying absolute nobodies about $50 a piece to elevate the profile (not the box office; not that that's the larger point, but it's still a point) of one--literally one--independent movie. One movie.

Credibility and trust *in whom*? You won't find the kinds of things you're talking about in reviews at Collider, The Onion, NYT, Empire, Entertainment Weekly, whatever your actual organization of choice is. Even ScreenRant wouldn't stoop that low. You're talking about nobodies. Does it undermine credibility and trust in something like Rotten Tomatoes? Yeah probably. But again: trust junk sources, get junk info.

Yep. And other people, myself included, are free to point out that your opinions exhibit signs of ComicsGatey/alt-righty/DOGEy rhetoric. Freedom is fun!

Sean Gunn (I think it’s just a kaiju, none of the marketing—toys included, usually the biggest spoiler culprit—lists a name)

How will you know if it has dialogue you don't like until you buy a ticket and watch the movie? It's hilarious to me that people who claim to never be offended about anything are the *first* to come into any and every comic book movie thread with, "this better not be about the feminist agenda", or whatever is up your butt that day. Call if offended, triggered, whatever you want; you don't like the product and you don't have to watch it. But damn, you sure do like to complain about things that may or may not be in it.

Being constantly offended doesn't mean you're right, it means you're too narcissistic to tolerate opinions different than your own.

How many comments like "blue-haired patriarchy hater", "DEI trash pile", and "woke garbage" need to be posted before it's considered "into politics"?