7 Misconceptions and Falsehoods About Film Criticism
By: Max Borg
Tags: Film Criticism, Film, Film Reviews

An overview of popular, yet erroneous beliefs about the world of film critics.

Credit: Warner Bros.

Among the many reactions to WarnerMedia’s recent announcement regarding its 2021 film slate (all 17 movies will be available in US theaters and on HBO Max at the same time), one made a modicum of rounds on social media: the idea that this was another figurative death knell against film critics, who would become even more “irrelevant”.

It’s a hilariously misguided line of thinking, since online streaming does not prevent critics from seeing movies in a timely fashion and review them. Case in point: Wonder Woman 1984, which is a few days away from opening in the United States, has already — at the time of writing — amassed 127 reviews on the popular aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, with more to come.

It is also misguided in that it fundamentally misunderstands what films critics actually do, and perpetuates myths that have gained certain popularity on parts of the Internet (most notably Twitter). As such, I decided to go through seven of the most enduring misconceptions, if not outright lies or conspiracy theories, about my line of work. Starting with the obvious one.

1) Film criticism is a consumer guide

Twitter and Facebook, particularly the former, are filled with comments accusing film critics of attempting to wield some kind of power over moviegoing audiences by telling them what to watch. Such power is pretty much non-existent, as film criticism, star ratings notwithstanding, is not a consumer guide (in fact, critics generally do not care for star ratings, and only apply them due to editorial guidelines in most cases).

So what do film critics do? They engage with a work from an analytical point of view, offering an assessment of its strengths and weaknesses: what it sets out to do, whether it succeeds or not, its place in the context of its country of origin, director’s filmography, genre, release period, et cetera. It is, at its best, a starting point in a larger conversation, something that is very much possible in this day and age, between user comments on the critic or outlet’s website and interactions on social media.

Granted, some reviews do include phrasing that is along the lines of a recommendation (or lack thereof), but those are usually in the minority, and more often than not due to exceptional circumstances: a memorable example is A Serbian Film, a 2010 movie that is so relentlessly, gleefully brutal it had to be edited just to get an already restrictive NC-17 rating in the United States (for context: a scene where a woman dies by choking on an erect male organ was left intact).

Even its more ardent supporters find it hard to actually recommend it to others. Of course, most readers are unlikely to be swayed in any case, which brings me to the next myth…

2) Film critics influence box office

This is one that resurfaces on a regular basis, and is occasionally used by studios to justify a specific film’s disappointing grosses. And yet it is perhaps the most easily disprovable myth about the critical profession, as one needs only take a look at the box office charts themselves. Put simply: if critics really had that kind of influence, the top-grossing films would be small-scale dramas, and most major franchises would not exist in their current form.

In this scenario, Adam Sandler and Michael Bay would be out of work, and there would not be five Pirates of the Caribbean movies, or a Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy, or, going further back, seven Police Academy films. The X-Men film series would have ended in 2009, and the Fast & Furious universe would consist of a single film.

And this is not just a US thing: France has a long history of critically panned comedies making huge amounts of money, as does Italy. In fact, in the latter’s case, these are often the only domestic films to generate any significant revenue alongside the usual American blockbusters.

Now, it must be said that critics have had some influence in the past, but we’re talking four or five decades ago, when the Hollywood business model was to release all films in the major domestic markets first and then gradually in the rest of the country. A notable example is Halloween, whose box office improved significantly once the movie hit the Chicago area and earned a four-star review from Roger Ebert.

But those days are long gone, and critics are fairly irrelevant when it comes to the fortunes of big studio releases, even though Hollywood occasionally likes to pretend otherwise: the second season of Entourage features a web critic, played by Rainn Wilson and supposedly based on Harry Knowles, who is described as being able to “sink a movie faster than Stephen Dorff” (a joke at the expense of the actor’s not-so-stellar career at the time).

3) Film critics think their opinions are fact

A common argument against the profession is that critics supposedly think their word is the ultimate truth. This is, once again, bogus: a simple glance at any critic’s Twitter feed will show that we enjoy nothing more than to discuss our opinions with other people, be it our peers or readers, provided the conversation is civil and respectful. This is especially true if said opinions diverge: as British critic Mark Kermode notes in his book Hatchet Job, what he misses most about the late Alexander Walker is no longer being able to read well-written thoughts he would 100% disagree with.

Additionally, critics’ opinions do change over time: Kermode, who used to curate a video blog for the BBC, devoted one segment to how he reassessed Steven Spielberg’s A.I. some ten years after it first came out, while Roger Ebert, who famously described Vincent Gallo’s The Brown Bunny as the worst film to ever play at the Cannes Film Festival, gave the same film three stars out of four after seeing a re-edited version a year later.

That said, there are some critics who do have “my word is the truth” mindset. For the most part, though, these are more along the lines of amateur critics, who operate on the fringes and generally treat the endeavor as a hobby, rather than a serious profession. They usually run smaller websites or YouTube channels, and tout their “honesty” as a counterpoint to the “biases” of professional critics. The ones with a similar mindset in more professional circles are generally not held in high regard by their peers.

4) Film critics should be objective

This one is most frequently trotted out when a new blockbuster or franchise movie is released, with fans/detractors (delete as applicable) claiming that critics are wrong about films that are “objectively” good or bad. Another oft-repeated comment is that critics should get rid of their biases and be as objective as possible, a nonsensical statement since “objective criticism” is an oxymoron.

All critics, just like all human beings, have their own biases and experiences that shape their opinions, and set their voice apart from others’. Pauline Kael, for example, was a staunch opponent of the auteur theory, which led to her harsh assessment of Orson Welles; Roger Ebert’s Catholic upbringing popped up in his views on films with religious themes; Alexander Walker, who was born in Northern Ireland, hated Ken Loach’s Hidden Agenda for what he perceived as an inaccurate, IRA-leaning depiction of the Troubles.

By definition, an “objective” review would consist only of the plot synopsis and cast and crew list. There are, of course, certain empirical aspects when assessing a film, such as camera angles and movements or editing, but those are merely raw data. The review consists of the critic’s own interpretation of the data. Dealing with only the empirical aspects would be film theory, rather than criticism, and produce the opposite effect of what many franchise fans think: if we were to judge a movie based strictly on its objective adherence to established cinematic grammar, any movie that thinks outside the box would be looked upon unfavorably.

5) Film critics are failed filmmakers

Another enduring slice of nonsense is that most critics are failed filmmakers and therefore bitter towards directors who have succeeded. Leaving aside the fact that, based on such logic, there would be no positive reviews at all, there is historical evidence that critics can turn into very good filmmakers: the French New Wave comes to mind, as do Peter Bogdanovich, Paul Schrader, Olivier Assayas, Dario Argento, and others.

Furthermore, analyzing a film and making one are two very different things, with very different learning methods (contrary to popular belief, film criticism classes are a thing, at universities and the like). Last year, I was fortunate enough to sit down for a chat with Park Chan-wook, who worked as a film critic for a while when his filmmaking career was initially failing to take off. He explicitly said he did that to earn a living, while waiting to get back behind the camera, and yet he doesn’t view one as superior to the other, because “they are very different disciplines”.

6) Film critics actually hate movies

This one is definitely the most baffling myth about critics, and not just because on the whole the positive reviews tend to outnumber the negative ones (in fact, unless the film in question inspires particularly creative dismissals, reviews that skew negative are generally much less fun to write).

Yes, we’ve all heard of people who take jobs they don’t particularly enjoy in order to make a living, but film criticism, or entertainment journalism in general (heck, any kind of journalism), really ain’t it. The vast majority of gigs in that field are freelance, meaning there’s no steady paychecks or real job security.

In other words, we choose to do this because we actually love movies, and watching them, and thinking about them. So much, in fact, that we’re willing to watch a few hundred new releases per year (even more if we also work as programmers/curators for film festivals). Does that sound like something people would do if they hated movies?

7) Studios bribe film critics

Last but not least, a myth that kind of goes hand in hand with the “objectivity” bunkum. Whenever a big studio film (usually, but not always, a Disney release) receives generally positive reviews, comments about payoffs to critics pop up like clockwork. And if you point out that films from the same studio that could actually have used a critical boost (say, John Carter, which was very poorly marketed) didn’t receive a whole lot of raves, the answer is “Those films were sacrificed so the studio could cover up the bribes”.

Now, first things first: it makes no sense for any studio to do something like that, because when it comes to big releases they don’t really give a damn about reviews, since, as discussed elsewhere in this piece, reviews don’t really affect the box office of summer blockbusters (in fact, a publicist friend of mine once told me that press screenings for these films are essentially done as a professional courtesy, since most viewers don’t bother checking what we think of Transformers 6 or Batman 19).

And no, not a single critic has ever been blacklisted for a negative review, unless it contained personal attacks against the filmmakers.

If and when a ban is implemented against a reviewer or a publication, it’s usually because they violated an embargo (as David Denby did with The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, and that review was positive, by the way) or said something defamatory about the production company or distributor (as recounted in Hatchet Job, Mark Kermode was briefly blacklisted by a major UK distributor because he had inadvertently published a falsehood about their release strategies).

Secondly, any critic willing to actually accept kickbacks from a studio would be exposed and shunned instantly, since reviewers also adhere to journalistic standards of ethics and integrity. Similarly, and studio willing to attempt bribery would never be able to get away with it, as Warner Bros. found out when they incurred sanctions for passing off sponsored videos as legitimate reviews of one of their Middle Earth videogames.

As for a film-specific incident, one needs only to think of David Manning, the fictitious critic used by Sony’s marketing department in 2000 and 2001 to give positive reviews to some of their movies. Newsweek uncovered the scam while looking into other dubious practices, and this was before social media. How would any studio get away with something even remotely similar in this day and age?