Movie Critics

Chapter 4 in a Short Guide talks about the different approaches to writing about film, and the different approaches to analyzing a film. This immediately made me think of the job that a movie critic. A movie takes all of their knowledge about the film industry and creates an educated analysis of the movie. They talk about everything from the plot, the directors techniques, and even the individual performances. Then they take all of that data and they form an opinion on the movie, a personal opinion because there is no right answer as to whether or not a movie was "good" or not.

This brings me to my next point and I will use Rotten Tomatoes as my example because it is the top site used in showing the rating of a movie. All of these critics send in their reviews or post them or whatever they do and Rotten Tomatoes generates a general consensus. If more than 60% of critics enjoyed the movie then the movie is considered "fresh"; and then the opposite is "rotten". Stick with me here because this is where I tie it all in. Even if a movie gets terrible ratings from the critics "opinion" the only way to see how successful a movie was is to look at its gross profit.

So these movie critics use their personal opinion to tell you whether or not to see a movie or not. This brings you to my question to you, Why do we listen to them? Seriously why do we listen to movie critics?

I am the biggest offender of this. I literally go on rotten tomatoes and if I see a 25% for a movie I will not go see it. Which makes me realize that maybe I should become my own movie critic and stop listening to all these writers. If I read too much into the reviews it could prevent me from seeing movies that I could possibly really enjoy.