I had a friend at school who did this. At the cinema, after the movie was over, he would be one of the loudest voices in the group, talking about how awesome the movie was, how it's going to do so well at the box office and how he couldn't wait for the next one to come out.
The very next day, he'd come in armed with research on all the plot holes and ways the movie failed from other critics, and then just lay into the movie as if it was the worst movie he'd seen and how it was a waste of his money.
We would point out how annoying he was for convincing himself that he hated it. The only opinion that counted was the one right after the movie ended; that's the best and most honest review one could give. He kept on doing it. It wasn't cool, Chris.
One of my biggest pet peeves is when critics judge a movie on what they think it should be, instead of what it’s actually trying to achieve. Sometimes it’s perfectly fine for a film to be big, loud, and nonsensical. Sometimes, a movie needs to be “complex” (although what critics call “complex” makes me think that a lot of them consider filmgoers to be idiots with the attention spans of goldfish).
Are there plenty of problems with any given popular film? Yes, but if it satisfies the audience it’s for, shut up.
My wife and I went into The Northman blind, and we honestly loved the experience. I don't give a shit whether or not it's realistic or historical accurate on any front. It was like John Wick with Norse mythology. Just an intense and barbaric ride from start to finish. I was genuinely surprised to learn how universally disliked it was. But people are out there buying tickets to 9 Fast 9 Furious 9, so I don't exactly value the reviews of opinions of strangers.
Who cares, as long as you liked it?
I have just learned to accept that if I enjoy the movie watching experience and feel it was worth my time, it doesn't really matter what others think. That doesn't detract from my enjoyment of the film in the slightest. I may be curious why people disagree though, at the very least.
Movies don't always have to be a slam dunk or a masterpiece. I watched the detective pikachu movie on edibles and had no clue what any of the plot was but I loved every minute because the visuals were stellar and something I'd wanted to see as a kid. The Ryan Reynolds shit had me mega confused lol
Even if I didn't like a movie, at least I have an experience to share (more applies to watching with someone else) and something to discuss and keep my mind occupied for a bit on something that is low-stakes at the end of the day.
Even if I absolutely do not like a movie at all, at least all I'm out on is a little time and maybe money; and maybe I can bitch to a friend if they've seen it.
Ratings in general are heavily biased. For example, critics have a very different point of view from most viewers. And even the typical non-critic who goes on sites to rate movies isn't the average viewer either. People like that tend to over-analyze every detail and try to look for a deeper meaning in the works. But that doesn't correlate with your enjoyment of something.
I think there are some movies where your first impression when you walk out of the theater is going to be very different than your impression once you've had a couple of days to think.
Speaking of divisive movies, for the people here who watched it, what's your honest assessment of "Babylon"? Just curious.
not a movie, but a video game.
call of duty black ops 3. (no spoilers, in case anyone is still to play it.)during my playthrough i was like:
- start the game
- the flashing text before the mission is way too fast to read. let's record it and play it slowly. huh...intersting.
- this is weird... why is this exactly THAT way that it has never been done before and doesn't make sense to do that way in general?
- this is weird... why do they mention THIS exactly? is that a mcguffin/chekhov's gun?
- this is weird... funny that they display this character how they handle their specific, unusual situation...
- this is weird... the story starts to become awkwardly surrealistic...
- reach the finale... i know there's more to it but i took so long to finish the game that i forgot all the clues, so i don't QUITE understand the meaning
- insert some hours of googling/yt explanations, and there's the big "OOOOOOOH! that's a brilliant display of what's happening to the main character and how it's described in real life!"-moment.
- realization that everyone hates it either because they didnt understand what happened and think it's the most random thing ever or because they understood what happened and think it's lame. sadge.
I long ago swore off taking overall consensus as a good measure of anything. People are, in general, dumb, and that goes doubly so for anything that requires an iota of attention.
Also, letting other people decide for me what's good and what's not is just ridiculous. We can like what we like and that's fine.
fully agree, ratings don't seem to be jack to the actual movie content.
Sometimes hearing what other people think about a movie will give me a different perspective. Either better or worse.
I actually enjoy reviews more when they disagree with me, sometimes I can even see where they are coming from (sometimes they kinda sound silly), but whatever they didn't like / did like is just not important for me.
but it kinda improves my movie experience, same feeling as when I go with friends to see a movie and we exchange opinions but when I watch them alone.
Very rarely a review has changed my opinion, but sometimes it showed me cool stuff, like the movie avatar tlab was "okay", but the bad reviews actually showed me how awesome the show was in comparison.
I have the opposite effect, popular movies seem bad to me, for the most part.
Last Days on Mars was such a fun horror movie
I dont really watch movies because my attention span cannot focus on them, but all the books, all the video games, music, everything I'm into is everything that's considered bad. I try not to talk about pop culture because I'm completely ignorant about main stream stuff and I don't want to argue about why I like what I like. I hate being asked about myself because I spend most of my time with work and school and my very little free time reading, gaming and listening to music, but I don't want to talk about what I've been doing because I just don't want to defend myself or talk about why I like something. And even with some of the more popular stuff I like, I just want to enjoy it, I don't want to analyze it.
This happens to me a lot. I'll watch something and really enjoy it only to find out it got terrible reviews. It's really annoying because it usually means the series I like all get cancelled after a couple of seasons.
I watched Keanu on Netflix and I came away thinking yeah that was a cool light hearted silly movie. I went and checked and the reviews and left being like yeah that movie was pretty shit.
Not a movie, but for me this is Final Fantasy XIII and XIII-2. The music, locations, voice acting and UI (visual and audio) are fantastic, while the gameplay and story were okay enough to not drag it all down. I still listen to the soundtrack and think about how smooth the menus were.
Meanwhile to the FF fandom these games are Satan shitting down your neck
I was so relieved when I found out that everyone else hated Mute too.
As a whole product, Its hard to tell how good media is in a contemporary sense. The more time passes, the more we know if it had that special existence.
Its also why I like internet reviews of older movies.
Then so many people loved the leftovers.
That's how I felt about Reptile. I thought it was an incredibly innovative iteration on the crime thriller, one of the best movies I've seen this year, and I go on the Internet and the critical consensus is "bleh."
