…that I won’t name.
Because let’s face it – No one who already likes said thing will be convinced by the following comments, nor do I care to try to convince them. Everyone who likes this thing are well within their rights to that opinion. I’m happy they liked it. But I have a bone to pick with our pop culture landscape, and this is my grounds to poke and prod at it until it’s out of my head for a while. This is also a place where I don’t edit my thoughts, and can just prattle on to my hearts content.
So…let’s talk about film criticism.
I do not, as a rule, have a problem with Rotten Tomatoes. At it’s best, it is a platform to reach a large collection of individual movie reviews across a great number of websites. When I actually want to read up on how film critics are talking about a movie, I will usually click my way up to a few reviews, both positive and negative, and see what the consensus might be. I don’t do this very often, however, as I tend to find film critics whose writing I enjoy and follow them on Twitter so I can see their work when it comes out. There aren’t many, because I don’t dedicate as much time and attention to film writing as I really should. Still, it’s a craft that I appreciate. Likewise, having another lens from which to view a movie is incredibly worthwhile.
However, it seems like there is a vocal portion of the internet that wields Rotten Tomatoes as a weapon. Either a positive critical response is an endorsement of the thing they like, or they break out the audience score as proof that critics are “out of touch” or something similar. Unfortunately it’s far simpler than that: not everyone likes the same stuff, and film critics aren’t writing specifically to please.
Also, this usually happens with tentpole genre films adapted from massive pop culture properties.
There are a wealth of websites and YouTube channels dedicated to mining material from these films, dissecting every frame of a trailer and piece of marketing from the first reveal of the movie until it hits the big screen. The conversation becomes centered around these micro-analyses of references to source material, connections to larger cinematic universes, proposals for cinematic universes, or theorization about what the movie will do or expand for the inevitable sequels. It’s a marketplace of hype too out of control to contain, but easily ignored if you are, like me, exhausted by the general state of fandoms and how some people in those fandoms explore their love of the properties they love. I enjoyed the Guardians of the Galaxy movies quite a bit, but I don’t need to watch the trailer fifty times to count the threads in Cosmo’s uniform for comic accuracy or even determine which artist interpretation was the primary influence on the production design.
At the end of the day, a film has to be judged on its own qualities. No volume of “respect for the source material” can fix a movie’s other problems.
I’ve written at length about fan service on this blog, and I still feel like our collective love for stories and characters is utilized not to give us new reasons enjoy the art we cherish, but to repackage it, to market those existing ideas anew. This is why the hundreds of tweets I’ve read about the number of easter eggs packed into a movie did little more than turn my stomach.
References do not make characters. They do not improve a narrative. They are window dressing for IGN to make videos about, for Screen Rant to compile listicles over. They are, in this specific context, about marketing first and foremost, designed to cater to rabid fans.
When fans rave over these references, these images that flicker around the protagonists of a film and fill visual space on their journey, I can’t help but wonder if they noticed how the narrative is devoid of meaning, or how the characters don’t grow and change by the end. I wonder if the spectacle alone was enough for them rather than needing to care the people at the center of the fray. And spectacle isn’t a problem in itself, as numerous movies can do both with aplomb.
Adaptation of any medium requires a great deal of effort. What works for one doesn’t necessarily work for another. Transplanting the bits and pieces is rarely enough in the best of cases, and changes to the source material are necessary. In regards to the movie I’m talking around, the recognizable aspects of the source material were brought over to a fault, and that fault is the characters. There was no emotional hook for the people on screen, no internal struggles to truly overcome. So while I can appreciate the production design, I wonder why the writing just completely skipped over the heart of the story, and left me completely cold. It’s not because of the target audience – I watched Puss in Boots: The Last Wish back in January and thought it was incredible (which still astonishes me considering it’s the sequel to a spinoff from a series that had already grown stale.)
I’m pretty sure I’ve given myself away with the last paragraph, but no matter. At the end of the day, I’m thankful that 2022 brought films like Nope and Everything, Everywhere, All at Once to the screen with wild success. I smile knowing that I can go see the new Mokoto Shinkai film at my local theater rather than waiting for the Blu-ray to come out. It’s not a bad time to be into film. While too many studios still play it safe, there are some who are producing genuinely incredible movies that I am excited to see, and to be able to say that after the last decade of pop culture junk food crowding the cinemas is so damned special. Maybe I’ll even find the time to go see Flowers of the Killing Moon when it comes to theaters!
But the very people who want to count references will discount the critical success of those films, and will focus on how the critics are just wrong about the thing they liked, and the cycle will continue on when the next Big Thing comes to theaters.
And that just makes me tired.
Addendum
Comic books adapt easily to film. They are already works of fiction that attempt to tell long stories in both serialized and contained forms. They have a legacy for great storytelling dating back decades as the medium grew into maturity.
Video games, however, resist adaptation. While some stories in games are cinematically presented and adapt easily because of that presentation, the big names in the medium are not. The story in many games will not have enough material with which to draw a complete story onto the screen. The real story in those games are between the player and the game itself. And that is fine. Each medium has its merits, and are capable of beautiful works of art. But this does not mean that Disco Elysium or What Remains of Edith Finch? would make for great cinema. The medium they are told in is part of why those stories are as bold and wonderful as they are.
WordsThing 