Comment by indubitable | Hacker News Reader

Comment by indubitable | Hacker News Reader

Interesting point the article indirectly hits on:

- "Chummy logrollers—a perception heightened in the social media age. In a 2012 Slate piece called “Against Enthusiasm,” Jacob Silverman wrote, “if you spend time in the literary Twitter- or blogospheres, you’ll be positively besieged by amiability, by a relentless enthusiasm that might have you believing that all new books are wonderful and that every writer is every other writer’s biggest fan.”"

I've always assumed studios had simply managed to, through some means or another, 'corrupt' most reviewers in a process similar that happened to video games. I wonder how much of the problem might be that people are now just too close to the things, and in particular the people behind the things, that they're reviewing? It's far easier to be "critical" (read: truthful) about things and people you have no connection to. But in today's world of social media, reviewers and the creators of the products they're reviewing are going to be in near direct, if not indeed direct, communication. Knowing full well that speaking honestly about a product could hurt people you've formed relationships with is not something easy to do.

For megafilms like "The Last Jedi" (currently at 90% on rotten tomatoes contrasted against 49% for viewers), how many of the reviewers have at least one direct relationship to somebody involved with the project? It doesn't need to be corruption. Plain old reluctance to be honest to those close to us or do them soft favors with no expectation of direct personal benefit -- that basic aspect of human nature would go a long ways towards explaining the deterioration of honesty in reviews. Or taking it to another level, we often wear rose colored glasses towards those close to us. This entire process might be entirely subconscious.

megafilms like "The Last Jedi" (currently at 90% on rotten tomatoes contrasted against 49% for viewers)

Be careful, The Last Jedi is definitely part of the "culture wars" effect somebody mentioned elsewhere. I don't think it's a very useful example for the effect this article is talking about (although it's very useful if you're interested in the culture wars).

If you actually read the Rotten Tomatoes reviews, many of the "viewers" are people complaining about gender representation. It's not a representative sample, it's just been flooded by "men's rights" activists.

Personally, I think the 90% is too high (I didn't like it very much) but the 49% is way low (most people I know liked it just fine, no quibbling).

I looked at the reviews for The Last Jedi and I'm not seeing a ton of men's rights reviews (but they might be there just buried lower down). In my experience most people either fall into the the categories of thinking the movie was "fine" or "awful" and I think that because people with strong opinions review much more frequently it pulls the ratings down a lot.

There are some, but you're right, it could be a pretty small minority. I haven't gone through them exhaustively to check.

Be careful, The Last Jedi is definitely part of the "culture wars" effect somebody mentioned elsewhere.

I don't buy it. The Force Awakens is at 88% and culture warriors fought over that one, too. Both films have severe problems from a storytelling perspective, but the problems with The Last Jedi are much deeper, are of the sort more likely to turn off fans of the franchise as well as fans of The Force Awakens. There are plenty of culture-war-neutral analyses of The Last Jedi that absolutely eviscerate the film. For just one example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vw7pcCj0ORk

While I can't speak to the 49% rating, where I'm seeing the major divide is between Star Wars fans who care about world building, character development, and a coherent story (historically important aspects of Star Wars); and fans who are content just to enjoy the emotional ride from one scene to the next while enjoying the nostalgia.

As from the culture wars perspective, it seems hard to deny that The Last Jedi takes an unnecessarily overt stance on the culture war, daring that sort of criticism. TLJ includes: a postmodern deconstruction of Luke Skywalker and the Jedi mythos, a purple-haired female admiral dominating the only talented white male on their side for displays of what they probably imagine to be toxic masculinity, and all the bad guys are white males with overt Nazi references. I mean, seriously, why can't they just make it Star Wars?

Take another Disney movie as a contrast: Moana. Moana is a hero's journey, just like the original Star Wars. Moana is about a girl character, her mentor is her grandmother, the story is set in the South Pacific and features non-European cultures and sources their mythology for the story. The twist at the end might be considered feminist. But nobody but serious cranks are complaining about it, because none of it gets in the way of the story and for the most part actually enhances it. Moana isn't made some kind of wunderkind. There's no artificially forced interaction between an SJW stand-in and a white male stand-in. There's no postmodern deconstruction of the myths or themes. Disney is just doing their usual thing of mining ancient myths and fairy tales and adapting them for entertaining mass consumption by modern audiences.

I think you went on a little too long there.

I had 3 points to make. Was it too much for you? Frankly I could have written a great deal more.

1. There's excellent non-culture war criticism of the movie.

2. TLJ made its own bed with regards to the culture war.

3. Disney has demonstrated they can make progressive movies that don't piss off culture warriors.

The critics may genuinely have had a different view.

I loved TLJ. IMO it was a clever, challenging film - much more so than the usual generic superhero movie.

It had some flaws, but I didn't find it disappointing. But I can completely understand why it might infuriate and disappoint long-time fans.

Which view is correct?

The problem for critics and for creators is that there's no such thing as "the audience.' There are overlapping demographics with different expectations and different abilities to handle challenge and complexity.

If you make something too clever or challenging it slides off the bell curve and "the audience" - the median consumer - hates it. If you give the median consumer what they want and never challenge them, you get bubble gum and potboilers.

I used to know someone who made a nice living writing romantic fiction. It sold very well, because he was clever enough to hit the right tropes and write very consistently to the correct formulas - none of which is easy.

His fiction was well reviewed, but he hated it so much he had to give it up because he couldn't bear to do it any more.

Bottom line is there's a difference between product and art. Product is purely about sales to the middle of the bell curve. Art is about being original, challenging, and creative, and maybe even about having some fun while making it.

If product gets better consumer reviews - and it reliably does - does that make it "better", or not?

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