While I wasn’t very much impressed by The Last Jedi and I don’t imagine I will be by Bright, given the track record of its contemptible author, I’m pleased by the sharp disparity of opinion between critics and audiences. The Last Jedi is receiving critical acclaim, in addition to a handsome deluge of cheap film school compliments like “game changer” and “subversive.” A great deal of movie goers disagree, quite vocally, with this assessment. In fact Star Wars: The Last Jedi has received the lowest audience score of all the films in the franchise. Conversely, Bright has been cited by some professional sources to be the worst film of 2017 -the year Baywatch and Justice League came out. Yet the audience score currently stands at an 88 percent, bountiful anecdotal evidence that suggests it to be, at the very least, not nearly as bad as its critical lampooning might imply.
This seems to be a growing trend despite the efforts of major studios. There were a lot of bad signs for a while. I remember when I began seeing Tomatometer scores slathered on posters and trailers. An embarrassing and deceptive gesture; these scores aren’t grades, they’re aggregates. 36.5 millions Americans smoke cigarettes in this country.That’s a lot of people. But something tells me I ought not give it a try just because it polls well. Moreover, Rotten Tomatoes itself eventually got wise to their influence, and began using it.
First came the launch of a dog shit program called See It/Skip It , where two polished cornballs laugh at each other’s awful impressions and exclaim things like “Fellini!” into a close up shot. “Skip it? Skip it hard like stones across a pond!” That’s a fucking quote. I digress.
Then came the abuse of See It/Skip It as a platform. On the heels of the release of Justice League, a film that had a lot riding on its critical and commercial success, Rotten Tomatoes made the decision to withhold its score until it was revealed on See It/Skip It . That’s right. If you wanted to know what the average was of critics who liked and disliked a shlock superhero movie, you had to subject yourself to an entire episode of the worst thing on the internet not filmed in Yemen.
Thankfully this was met with considerable backlash and I can’t imagine RT will attempt something like that again. More importantly, the movie going public, you know the ones that pay $20 to see half baked drivel , are becoming less malleable. Your ruby red tomato be damned. They want cops and orcs bustin’ fairies for selling loosies or whatever the fuck Bright is about. Point is, there’s resentment festering. They’re tired of being told what movies they must see and which ones are juvenile nonsense. It’s all political. It has to be. I could go on about the shady under goings over at Rotten Tomatoes, but I don’t need to. Audiences already seem to know it.
