Movie critics of the world unite! The Man is out to silence you. But hear this — we will not be muzzled. The people will have their say! And make no mistake: G.I. Joe, the motion picture, will pay the price.
Earlier this week, Paramount Pictures confirmed that there would be no advance screenings of G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, their big, noisy, deluxe late-summer action-adventure-toy commercial. The infamy of it! The outrage! How dare a major movie studio decide not to screen a film for reviewers? Between this and the current embattled state of the Obama health-care initiative, this country is truly headed for trouble.
I kid, of course; I also beg your indulgence as I rattle on about this inside-media-baseball topic. The truth is that the marketing executives at Paramount have every right, if they so choose, not to screen one of their movies. It may be a boneheaded move, but it’s their prerogative to make it. Yet listening to movie critics, such as Peter Travers of Rolling Stone, work themselves up into a fulminating froth of indignation over this particular corporate decision, you’d think that something truly important was at stake.
Look, we critics do depend on screenings — it’s the only way we can review movies in a timely fashion. And it’s no secret that when a studio decides not to screen a picture in advance (as happens all the time these days, especially with horror films), it means, almost by definition, that the studio is not expecting the movie to get good reviews. But I have to wonder if we in the entertainment press have begun to react to this situation in a way that basically turns us into enablers.
What goes on now is that the movies that don’t get screened are, in effect, pre-judged. The thinking goes: The studio didn’t show it, so it has to be bad. And while the vast majority of these movies, I can say from experience, are bad, where that prejudice tends to reveal itself is in the tone of the reviews: that extra helping of contempt that gets heaped onto a movie – like, maybe, G.I. Joe — because its studio committed the unpardonable crime of not screening it. It’s become a vicious cycle: The non-screening leads to a presumption of junkiness, which leads to extra-nasty reviews, which leads to studios becoming ever-more-sheepish about screening certain films. In an odd way, the critics, by pulling out the long knives for movies that don’t get shown in advance, end up playing into the very role the studio has chosen for us. We’re the nasty, sneering highbrows, beating up on mass-market popcorn that “regular folks” may still show up for and enjoy.
The truth is, the whole no-screening ploy has become more and more toothless and irrelevant in the Internet era anyway. Critics can now catch a movie as soon as it opens on Friday morning and have a review filed on-line by later that afternoon. We can still get the word out — good, bad, or indifferent. But the prospect that it will, in fact, be bad has never seemed more like a self-fulfilling, virtually preordained judgment.
So did Paramount make the smart play? Will the studio, by avoiding lousy reviews for G.I. Joe — at least, in the print versions of newspapers and magazines — on opening day, lure that many more people into the theater than might have gone otherwise? Or is a decision like this one now destined to backfire, because the studio is basically inviting reviewers to take potshots at a movie as a way of punishing it? Is it shrewder for the Man to muzzle the people, or to let them speak?
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It’s weird- b/c the reviews over at Rotten Tomatoes have been surprisingly great thus far!
I noticed that earlier. I was surprised too!
True, the score over at RT is good, but that is because of the critics that they’ve allowed to see the film so far. Take a look, no review from a “reputable” critic is listed. Not to say that the reviews they do feature are not valid, but they are from largely niche publications.
As someone who tends to not listen to critics, I really don’t care if a movie studio screens it for the critics early or not. I usually disagree wit the critics anyway. I like to form my own opinion. After all, I am fully capable of deciding what I like and don’t like. Critics tend to love the artsy movies (and there is nothing wrong with that) and I like action movies that help me escape from reality. So, whether the critics love the movie or not, I’m still gonna go watch it and probably enjoy the crap out of it.
agreed. Make up your own mind. It is a bit pathetic that reviewers “potshot” a film simply due to the lack of a pre-screening. only shows just how useless a review can be when it’s all subjective – and often biased.
I scan reviews. Especially if I’m not sure whether or not I want to see a particular film. I’m not going to waste $10 on something like Transformers 2 when I can spend $3 later on for a rental. 70% savings is worth a quick RottenTomatoes scan on a movie that I’ll probably be “meh” about anyways.
I saw the G.I. movie yesterday. Yes, it is really bad, idiotic, full of stupid one-liners, five penny philosophies, D-, AVOID!
I’m so glad Jared Padalecki was filming Supernatural and couldn’t be in this movie!!!! It looks awful!
Owen – someone probably has a list of movies where the critics did not get an advance screening (because as you say – some in your community feel that this practice is some type of afront to their livelihood).
Just wondering from that list – how the different films ended up grading – from a review standpoint and from a box office standpoint.
Besides the interesting premise of this article (that withholding a movie from critics out of fear of bad reviews ends up becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy) I never got this strategy from studios.
It just doesn’t seem like G.I. Joe (or the many horror films that are also withheld from critics) rely on good reviews to get people in the theatre. You’re either going to see them or you’re not and bad reviews won’t keep these fans away…I’d actually argue that surprisingly-good advance reviews might draw people in.
Paramount can’t help it that “real American heroes” don’t pander to the critics. The executives are at General Hawk’s mercy.
People don’t care what critics think.They totally ripped Transformers ROTF and that movie is on its way to 400 million dollars.The critics just like to hear themself talk and use big words to make themselves sound smarter than what they really are.
Actually, Bobby, some people do care what critics think. I count myself as one of those people. (I’m not sure, however, why you’re even reading or posting on a movie critic’s blog if you don’t care what they have to say.) The truth is that there are, of course, critic-proof movies. As you mentioned, Transformers is one of them. G.I. Joe may very well be another. There are movies that I will see as well despite what the critics say – usually because I have a strong enough desire to see them or I am interested in a particular actor, director, or screenwriter.
When I am on the fence about a particular film, however, it helps to have the opinions of someone with a wealth of knowledge on film and whose tastes in the past have been similar to my own.
Most of all, though, I rely on film critics to let me know about the smaller films with less marketing behind them. Great film critics are champions of great film and can help shine a light on a movie that would otherwise be ignored. Artists and lovers of film alike should be grateful that we have critics to provide us with this service.
In essence what Bobby was saying, and you confirmed, is that critics REALLY need to split into to subdivisions: big films and small films.
When you have a majority of people disregarding the critics to see the top movie of the summer (Transformers) instead of the one they picked (b/c Harry Potter was an arthouse film with no action) it is time for studios to recognize how irrelevant critics truly have become. It isn’t that these films are critic proof it is that the critics seem to be interested in demolishing big films and only accept big films when they are BORING.
People saw Transformers and GI Joe (which was awful, by the way) because of name recognition and love for the source material. (Oh, and because of ubiquitous advertising, names we recognize, and pretty actresses.)
Just because the films do well financially doesn’t mean those same people who went actually thought they were good movies when the lights come up.
This is the same problem studios can’t seem to grasp: “GI Joe made $ X million this weekend, so it must be a good movie! Lots of people showed up; that’s the same thing as them liking it! Let’s make another, and get started on that Jem and the Holograms film.”
Well, after the way most critics treated Michael Bay and “Transformers:Revenge of the Fallen”, who can blame Paramount for being a little protective? I agree with Bobby (above). To me critics really do not know more than the average moviegoer – the difference is that they are paid for their opinions.
Give me a break Alex. Saying critics don’t know any more than the average moviegoer is like saying a wine sommelier doesn’t know anymore about wine then the average weekend drinker. Yes, ultimately you have to form your own opinion, but in my book, if the majority of critics tell me to save my money and skip the movie, I’ll probably wait for the DVD rental.
I don’t see why it matters either way. I get the impression that most professional movie critics would have gone into a screening of a late summer action movie based on a line of action figures with a less-than-optimistic outlook anyway. Owen, are you really saying that simply seeing the movie at a studio-hosted screening would have made you all that much more open-minded?
As for moviegoers, I think the expected audience for these films is fairly set beforehand. People are either going to go see it because they played with the toys or have nothing better to do– or they do have something better to do and G.I. Joe won’t be in their weekend plans.
I think that the movies for which reviews make the biggest difference are dramas and independent films– i.e. the types of moves that people expect to be intelligent and to give them more than a couple of hours of popcorn munching. People look to the reviews of these movies to get an idea of their worth. And since these are the types of movies most critics seem to prefer, the reviews usually seem to be much more accurate, fair-minded, and useful anyway.
Sounds like you want to see it Lisa!
Daily Variety has already reviewed it. They didn’t tear it shreds, although it was a mixed review.
Perhaps it has something with the way the critics ripped Transformers 2 a new orifice. Hmmmm?
Given that this “no screening” policy has been goin on for years, no, it doesn’t have anything to do with the way critics ripped “Transformers 2″ a new orifice. Except to the degree that it’s to some degree an example of just what the blog author here was writing about.
And no offense, but it seems like the best defense of “Transformers 2″ anyone can come up with is how much money it made. I trust that all the people saying that agree that “Titanic” was the best movie ever, that “The Phantom Menace” was better than any of the “Lord of the Rings” movies, and so on. Right?
The curse of Sienna Miller strikes again.