Virtue Signalling in Movie Reviews

PlacidCasual

PlacidCasual

PlacidCasual

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13 May 2003
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This seems to be quite a new thing and it is reasonably a response to a widening of demographic in movie watching and production but it seems a bit silly at times and frankly is encouraging me to dismiss reviewers opinions.

Look at the MCU for instance, in rotten tomato order.
97% Black Panther
94% Iron Man
92% Thor Ragnorok
92% Spider Man
92% Avengers Assemble
91% Captain America Civil War
91% Guardians of the Galaxy
90% Doctor Stranger
83% Captain America The Winter Soldier
83% Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2
etc etc

Now Black Panther is a good movie but better than Civil War, Iron Man, GotG or Winter Soldier, you are extracting the urine surely.

DC EU
92% Wonder Woman
55% Man of Steel
40% Justice League
27% Batman vs Superman
26% Suicide Squad

Now Wonder Woman may be the best of these films but really it wasn't that good or that much better (although I haven't seen Justice League which I'm told is a dogs dinner).

Do people think this is a blip and it will calm down once female or ethnic led movies become less unusual or can we expect reviewers to move on to the next thing to fawn over.

Has this happened in the past? I can't immediately think of it being the case. Philadelphia or the The Color Purple maybe?? (deliberate yank spelling).
 
Really? It's bad enough this topic CONSISTENTLY crops up in GD, but here too?

No one forgot about Blade. No one forgot about Catwoman. Marvel and DC choosing to target certain demographics IS a big deal precisely because of the very specific melting pot of culturally relevant ingredients that's made these sorts of movies tremendously popular.

Is it politically motivated? Perhaps. Are certain reviewers overlooking issues within the films because the very fabric of these movies is more culturally robust then any of their component parts? Maybe, but who cares?

A reviewers opinion isn't an aggregate for anything, as viewing figures for all types of movies prove over and over again.
 
Bold claims for Ready Player One: Most astonishing spectical Spielberg has ever produced. Refreshingly there is nothing political about this.
 
Wonder Woman was ok, definitely the best of the DC movies so far but it wasn't as good as that score suggests, maybe 75% or something like that. Black Panther was good, but not as good as a lot of the films, it was even beaten out of the origin films by at least Iron Man and GOTG. It's a shame to see reviewers so afraid to give low scores to a film, probably out of fear of the public backlash against them.
 
It doesn't matter what a movie contains so long as it makes money in the Box Office. People haven't taken critical reviews seriously for a long time.

If I recorded a decomposing banana for 2 hours and it made money in the box office then people would flock to view it. I just have to convince you all that it ACTUALLY did make some money.
 
@DrToffnar my apologies if I'm re-treading old ground.

I watched both of these movies this week and at least in Black Panther's case had seen reference to the glowing reviews subsequently and had looked up the Wonder Woman score whilst watching it because of the glowing comments about it being the best of the DC EU. Neither of these are the first breakthrough films except maybe in the super hero genre and couldn't remember an earlier example of this. Maybe it was because some of the earlier breakthrough movies had genuinely earned there praise?
 
Critical reception doesn't even have much effect on box office results.

See: All the Transformers movies.

The fact that Black Panther has been number 1 in America for 4 weeks straight and has already made a billion dollars Worldwide is because audiences are enjoying it. Not because critics have reviewed it positively.

I doubt Marvel would had released it 10 years ago as their first ever MCU movie and certainly not with a majority black cast and crew.

But they introduced the character of Black Panther in Civil War, which had a huge box office and they have had 17 movies to pave the way for this one, during which time there has been fairly significant social change in America.
 
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I never look at the reviewers score only the Audience one.

Reviewers all to often have a motive or have been "gifted" things/Pressured to give a good/bad score, or they are just so far up there own arse in the first place.

Wonder Woman was a good film but IMO Man of Steel is a better all rounder.
 
J.T said:
Reviewers all to often....have been "gifted" things/Pressured to give a good/bad score, or they are just so far up there own arse in the first place.
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That's frankly just not true of any decent reviewers that I know of.

Some random on Youtube is more likely to be biased than a decent print reviewer IMO.
 
Agreed, there literally isn't any other series like it.

The closest is probably the Harry Potter movies, and that is all very much centred on Harry, not multiple characters.

They've even managed to explore multiple genres within the MCU including: 70's spy thrillers (Winter Soldier), sci-fi (Guardians of the Galaxy), Comedy (Thor: Ragnarok) and Infinity War is supposed to be a 'Heist' style movie.
 
VincentHanna said:
That's frankly just not true of any decent reviewers that I know of.

Some random on Youtube is more likely to be biased than a decent print reviewer IMO.
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At the end of the day its just their personal opinion, weather they give a honest review or not no one should just blindly follow it as gospel, far to many people read reviews and make up their mind on a film before even seeing it themselves.
 
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I agree that sometimes reviews do put me off going to see them at the cinema, but they are generally from reviewers whose tastes broadly align with mine, and you get to know their personalities better from podcasts and videos.

Mark Kermode on Radio 5 Live for instance, or various members of the Empire team who do the podcasts.

The reviews for 'Justice League' meant I didn't bother watching it on release.

However it wasn't just the reviews that put me off, as I had seen all the other DCEU movies up until then (Man of Steel, Batman vs Superman, Suicide Squad, Wonder Woman) and of those 4 movies the only one I had really enjoyed was Wonder Woman - So it wasn't really boding well anyway.

I've since seen it and though it was $300 million of absolute "meh"
 
PlacidCasual said:
Don't you admire the scope of the MCU though they are truly doing something unique in cinema? We've seen greater in TV series but never with a comparable budget.
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Myself, personally, I think it's completely oversaturated now. I've never been a big super hero fan anyway. Apart from Batman and Judge Dredd I never really bothered with comic books as a youngster. Of the recent Batman movies I enjoyed the first 2 of Christian Bale' Batman but after that never bothered.

I watched Batman v Superman and saw that as a couple of hours of my life I could never get back. My daughter enjoyed Wonder Woman and I guess I "enjoyed" it too, although I do think that all of these Super Hero movies are really low on the story telling department.

I think it's because it is targeted for the global audience. Making a movie that can be sold across multiple continents inevitably leads to them resorting in the lowest common denominator storylines.
 
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