I know I know, Matt Patt. Cringe aside, I was very surprised he would make a video on this subject, so I gave it a watch and thought his take was interesting.
tl,dw: movie critics like movies that take risks and attempt to push the boundaries, while audiences like movies that are fun and nostalgic. The movie industry profits from this dynamic because it creates an us-versus-them dichotomy between audiences and critics, making audiences easier to market to.
"Push boundaries", "subvert," and "take risks" are just code-words for woke bullshit
Case in point: TLJ
Or “THE MESSAGE”.
I'm going to file this one under "posts I can hear"
It won't be the last time you hear it, BUHLIEVE THAT!
doont knoo...
Go away now!
it's just Jewish subversion. Tale as old as time.
woke shit is certainly one way to push boundaries, but I would argue it's not the only way to do so. One can also push boundaries by going against narrative conventions, utilizing newer technologies, using unorthodox camera angles, etc.
hell, simply having a movie where the main character is a white male who carries the day would be pushing the batteries by Hollywood standards.
I'm not talking about generalities, but rather the meaning of critics' words and phrases.
in their minds they're always pushing the boundaries because they're always the weaker side despite the fact 95% of the media and pop culture already agreed with their narratives
If it's indie films, it's long takes, and slow dialog.
Motte and bailey. Classic postmodernism, classic Critical Theory. They pull the same bullshit with “muh adaptation”. These are just plausibility exercises. It all cuts exactly one way. Everything is merely an excuse to inject leftist politics and culture into entertainment.
Postmodernism/Critical Theory should challenge every grand narrative and question every idea. In reality, these are just Marxist weapons targeting western civilization. No Critical Theorist or postmodernist is challenging leftist political dogma. No, those challenges are reserved exclusively for any institution or idea that stands in the way of Marxism.
Adaptation and translation are two more examples. These people claim that they must make changes to media in order to adapt it to a different medium or translate it to a new language. On paper, these assertions make sense. In reality, they are just thinly veiled pretext for leftists to seize control of popular media so that it can be retrofitted to promote leftism.
If critics legitimately wanted to be challenged, they would venture outside of their political and cultural bubbles to experience media that disagrees with their worldview. Instead, they reliably fawn over any product that ticks their ideological boxes while trashing every “problematic” property regardless of how creative it may or may not be.
A movie is not good because it takes risks, if it did then it wouldn't be a risk. As a critique you need to give an appropriate mark of level of quality of the product regardless of anything else.
indeed that's what critics should do. but by the numbers it's not what they actually do
This isn't exactly new news. The old Simpsons episode where Homer got hired on as a food critic is a loosely decent example of this. Critics care little of substance and quality in the work so much as they want to see "newness" that goes outside the box.
This used to at least hold some meaning in the past, but it's been quickly displaced by political pushing intrigue. And anything that's fun and not pushing the woke agenda is immediately shot down as "Fascist, racist propaganda".
The part about critics liking newness is pretty obvious, but it's the rest that intrigued me. specifically how the reviewers actually want critics in audiences to not get along, so as to create a tribalist rivalry and thus make marketing easier, because all you need to do to appeal to the audience is appeal to their opposition to the critics.
That's part of my list post, and I have a few articles on the subject with it. I like how he pointed out the owners of Rotten Tomatoes are partially universal, who made the film. Even Miyamoto has said the negative reviews promoted the film.
It creates a situation where the bad reviews are paid for to create publicity.
This is in comparison to the Sony film about Gran Turismo, where it's a lackluster plot and that's it. The game is about a love of cars and driving, and none of that shows in the film.