3 ms·

Having worked for a short time in the movie industry (at DreamWorks Animation), I thought this was obvious. And it was certainly true for DreamWorks' movies. Ev

Having worked for a short time in the movie industry (at DreamWorks Animation), I thought this was obvious. And it was certainly true for DreamWorks' movies. Even people working directly on the movies were terrible at predicting how they would perform at the box office. The reason for this is simple: movie critics are self-selecting movie aficionados. Their tastes just don't reflect the tastes of the public at large. When you aggregate critical reviews, you're only aggregating the opinions of a tiny sample of the movie-going public, and that sample largely shares the same tastes.

ghaff 11y ago
And specifically, I suspect that a lot of the high box office films are big, loud action films which appeal to the theater-going demographic far more than they do to movie critics.
- jdietrich 11y ago
  The British film critic Mark Kermode wrote about this at length in his book The Good, The Bad and The Multiplex. Spend enough money on a movie and it is almost guaranteed to be profitable, because sheer extravagance turns it into a "motion picture event". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cDmluUKLbYc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cDmluUKLbYc http://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/sep/08/good-bad-mulitplex-mark-kermode-review http://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/sep/08/good-bad-mulitp...
rurban 11y ago
I also collect data, from the very high-brow critics in Cannes, and recently also Sundance for comparison. https://cannes-rurban.rhcloud.com/ https://cannes-rurban.rhcloud.com/ What is evident is that very often critics gather to champion objectively awful movies. Even for professional movie critics standards awful movies. Looks for example at the surprising success of this years "Carol" and "The Assassin" in Cannes and their disappointing acceptance in the real world. Well, "Carol" is one of those special needs cases, which still has some champions left over. And compare it to the exceptional Cannes movies this year: Dheepan, Umimachi Diary and Embrace of the Serpent. The critics didn't appreciate them and didn't see it coming. However the professional festival programmers and jury in the followup festivals saw it. But the same happens almost every year. "ADIEU AU LANGAGE" (Godard) highest rated movie 2014, "HOLY MOTORS" (Leos Carax) 2012, "Le Havre" (Aki Kaurismaki) 2011, "FILM SOCIALISME" (Jean-Luc Godard) 2010. The jury votes are usually much better than the critics votes. Comparing quality to quantity (advertising budget, imdb ratings) makes no sense at all.

ghaff 11y ago

And specifically, I suspect that a lot of the high box office films are big, loud action films which appeal to the theater-going demographic far more than they do to movie critics.

jdietrich 11y ago
The British film critic Mark Kermode wrote about this at length in his book The Good, The Bad and The Multiplex. Spend enough money on a movie and it is almost guaranteed to be profitable, because sheer extravagance turns it into a "motion picture event". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cDmluUKLbYc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cDmluUKLbYc http://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/sep/08/good-bad-mulitplex-mark-kermode-review http://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/sep/08/good-bad-mulitp...

rurban 11y ago

I also collect data, from the very high-brow critics in Cannes, and recently also Sundance for comparison. https://cannes-rurban.rhcloud.com/ https://cannes-rurban.rhcloud.com/ What is evident is that very often critics gather to champion objectively awful movies. Even for professional movie critics standards awful movies. Looks for example at the surprising success of this years "Carol" and "The Assassin" in Cannes and their disappointing acceptance in the real world. Well, "Carol" is one of those special needs cases, which still has some champions left over. And compare it to the exceptional Cannes movies this year: Dheepan, Umimachi Diary and Embrace of the Serpent. The critics didn't appreciate them and didn't see it coming. However the professional festival programmers and jury in the followup festivals saw it. But the same happens almost every year. "ADIEU AU LANGAGE" (Godard) highest rated movie 2014, "HOLY MOTORS" (Leos Carax) 2012, "Le Havre" (Aki Kaurismaki) 2011, "FILM SOCIALISME" (Jean-Luc Godard) 2010. The jury votes are usually much better than the critics votes. Comparing quality to quantity (advertising budget, imdb ratings) makes no sense at all.