Critical Failure: Why Audiences Might Not Like What Film Critics Say
Looking at the trend of treating critics as outsiders
March 17 saw the release of Netflix and Marvel’s Iron Fist.
It also saw the trending Twitter hashtag #IronFist, with the subject: “Were the critics wrong about Iron Fist?”
If you check critics aggregators RottenTomatoes and Metacritic, Iron Fist shows a stark disparity between critic and non-critic opinions. Metacritic give a critic Metascore of 37 (generally unfavorable) but an audience score of 6.0 (mixed or average reviews). But that’s based on 21 critics and 831 users. On RottenTomatoes, it’s much worse. It sits at 17% among 52 critics, an average rating of only 4.2 out of 10. Yet, with 7,456 audience members tallying in at the time of writing, it’s got an 81% and an average rating of 4.1 out of 5. Nearly double the average rating critics give.
And this isn’t the only film or television show with severe disparities. Especially in the comic book world, you’ll find several gaps between “critics” and “audiences.” Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice and Man of Steel being particularly panned by critics have caused many DC fans to claim critics have a Marvel bias. But even outside of comics and nerddom, you get films like Spy Kids: 93% and 7.2/10 from critics, 46% and 2.6/5 from audiences. Or another kids movie in Antz: 96% and 7.7 from critics, 52% and 3/5 from audiences.
So you can see it goes both ways, with audiences loving something that critics hate and critics loving something audiences didn’t click with. But why? Is it just because, as a friend of mine put it, “most ‘critics’ are just losers with blogs”? That they are implied as different from the rest of us regular Joes and Janes who see movies and don’t write about them? Do critics just have different tastes than the rest of us?
Before I jump fully into this, I want to point something out: I’m writing this column for a website that discusses film. (Surprise!) I do not actively consider myself a critic the way those on RottenTomatoes are for reasons I’ll get into later, but I will say I definitely exist straddling the fence of “average Joe” and critic. And the more I write and watch, the more I leave the realm of “average Joe” and begin to cross over.
Whenever a big, tentpole media event like Iron Fist comes out and gets slammed by critics, the press gets ready for a potential story: “Are critics out of touch?” Granted, by press, I mostly mean bloggers and people writing for fansites and niche sites and the like. Because there’s a chance that “it appeals to the fans” and “you’d like it if you were a fan.” Probably the best example of this phenomenon I can remember is when a friend of mine, a movie critic for Arts Bham, wrote a review for my university’s student newspaper about a Twilight movie. He had not read the books, admitted such in the column, and proceeded to talk about how he didn’t like the movie and did not understand some of the things that were happening in the film.
I worked at the paper as well, and I was there when we received a response from someone who read the paper. The letter stated my friend should have read the books before he saw the movie because, clearly, he just didn’t get it. Clearly, he is not a “true fan”. And this piece of art was made for “the fans”. He, as a critic, was clearly an outsider not intended to be part of the general viewing audience this movie was targeting.
Setting aside any feelings you may personally have on the Twilight film series, I have always found this argument to be patently absurd. Art made for the fans? While there will never be a piece of artistic output in any media that is approved of by everyone, commercial films with huge releases and budgets are rarely, if never, made for “just the fans.” The fans are the money the studio thinks is guaranteed, at least with the first film or two in a franchise, but existing fans won’t generally sustain a franchise, or even a single film. More must be made and that requires mass appeal. So movies, perhaps more than any other media due to the sheer cost of making them, are intended for everyone.
So how is it that film critics, who are in fact human beings and therefore part of everyone, can have such different opinions from the general non-critic masses?
It’s necessary at this point to state: They really don’t, most of the time. The overwhelming majority of the time, while numbers may not be exactly the same, audiences and critics tend to agree on things they enjoy and don’t like. Because critics are audience members. But where the differences come is in what defines what a critic is, and why I don’t consider myself a true film critic yet.
Most people I know go to a movie theater maybe… 4 or 5 times a year. Depends on whether there are big franchise releases they’re interested in or not coming out that year. I think at max you’ve got 10 times a year seeming like a reasonable number for the average non-critic film-goer.
Critics, on the other hand, can easily see 50+ films a year. No problem.
If you’re a film critic, you tend to watch a LOT of movies and have a pretty heavy catalogue of past films you’ve seen. You’ve seen many if not most of the major classics that influence modern films and filmmakers. Your job, particularly if you’re a paid film critic, is to go watch as many new movies as possible and judge them (even more if you are a television critic). And while the person who sees 4, 5, or 10 new movies a year may find many of these movies exciting and fresh and interesting, the film critic starts to see things in patterns, and it can become a bit of a drag.
Personally, my friends know I am absolutely AWFUL when it comes to my classic film catalogue. I see more new films each year than many among your average folks, but I can’t compare them to those “must watch” movies that some of these films are “clearly referencing/ripping off.” But take my ongoing critique of Disney animated films through a lens of feminism. (Read, share, like, comment, send hate mail! I like it all!) In the span of about nine months, I have watched 29 Disney animated films. That’s not terribly far off from a movie a week (about .8 per week). Each of these films I’ve watched, I’ve been specifically keeping my brain on. Taking notes. What’s the story, who’s doing what, how are people interacting, etc. And it’s gotten to the point where I am getting absolutely sick of the whole “Fell in love in two nights!” trope. I just watched Aladdin this past week for the series, and I caught myself literally counting the days from Aladdin and Jasmine’s brief meeting to them deciding to be wed and thinking of the film in a worse light because of it.
Don’t get me wrong: I love Aladdin. Like most my age, I grew up on the Disney Renaissance. But with so many of these stories with a similar trope running through my brain in a brief time, I start to get exhausted by it. It works for cartoons, sure, but when Man of Steel has Superman make out with Lois Lane on their third meeting when he saves her life again… what am I supposed to do but laugh and find this moment, an attempted “realistic” take on Superman, anything but ridiculous? And while I had that thought way back in 2013, before my baptism by Disney, it’s still a repeat pattern I just have grown to not only utterly dislike, but notice at every turn, too. I’ve become attuned to certain flaws. The more I write, for example, the more I get critical of a film’s writing. And if that’s true for me, imagine what it’s like for someone whose job is to watch movie after movie after movie. Eventually, things that fail to stand out just won’t cut it.
And that happens to audiences, too. While they’re still making money hand-over-fist, I bet you know at least 5 people who refuse to see superhero films because “there’s just so many” and they’re sick of them. Genre fatigue happens a lot over time (the heyday of the movie musical and the Western, for example, is behind us). It just happens more slowly for audiences as a whole because they aren’t throwing themselves into as many films as possible. While the genre can still exist and individual films can have popularity, usually through an innovative and exciting new addition (say Unforgiven for Westerns, La La Land or Hamilton for musicals/theatre), eventually, fatigue settles in. Too much sameness. Too many similar patterns.
Does this necessarily mean critics “know better” than audiences? Not necessarily. That’s not really a factor. What it means is they have developed tastes, a palate like a gourmet chef who has tasted thousands of dishes from around the world, one that forces them to instinctually discern more clearly the things they personally do not like and the things they personally love. Spy Kids: A refreshing, innovative twist on the kids’ film genre. Iron Fist: A slow slog with inconsistent characters that fails to stand up to the Netflix/Marvel standard. Meanwhile, the audience doesn’t necessarily mind that a dish has a bit too much salt or was maybe cooked a bit too far past al dente. We don’t eat out often, so a tasty meal is a tasty meal, and it doesn’t need to get more complicated than that.
Critics are not “the others” who don’t know what they’re talking about. Critics also do not inherently have better tastes than everyone. Tastes are still an individual thing. But the great divide that shows up every so often tends to simply be a matter of just how much media is consumed. And I don’t think we should vilify critics for that (particularly as I am an amateur pseudo-critic myself). Instead, I think audiences would be better served reading critiques and finding what they agree and disagree with to better understand their own tastes. Maybe that way, we’ll see better content made in general… and there will be fewer “Critics are wrong, here’s why” posts in existence. That can never be a bad thing.
