Dear Gossips,   

I WANTED to waste this opening making dumb jokes about Chick-fil-A’s streaming service—a few name suggestions: Chick-Film-A, Hatchling, Nugget—but then a conversation started amongst film critics that deserves a little attention. 

 

One year ago, I wrote about the New York Times’ bonkers article about “MovieTok”, or the TikTok influencers who devote their space to movies. The NYT asserted this is the “new film criticism”, even though MovieTokkers explicitly do not want to be considered critics. Back then, I said the problem isn’t the influencers, it’s a broken studio system that increasingly uses them to fill the marketing void left by the slow death of linear TV.

 

That is all still true, but now it’s getting worse because it increasingly feels like there is a concerted effort coming from the studios to not just promote influencers alongside critics, but to actively shut out critics and substantive film criticism. Maybe I’m just in a bad mood, but it’s starting to feel very “the call is coming from inside the house”. 

It started with the announcement that Rotten Tomatoes has created the “Popcornmeter”, a fan equivalent of their long-standing “Tomatometer” that, for better or worse, aggregates critics’ reviews into a percentage rating for a film. A good rating is a badge of honor touted in film trailers, but now I FULLY expect to see dogsh-t movies have trailers boasting “90% on the Popcornmeter!”, relying on uncaring and/or undiscerning viewers to not know the difference between tomatoes and popcorn and only see “Rotten Tomatoes said…”. On Rotten Tomato’s website, the Popcornmeter sits right beside the Tomatometer, as if to say, “these are the same”. It’s the same on the Fandango app, the Tomatometer and the Popcornmeter appear side-by-side. Totally the same. No difference at all.

 

Here's where it gets conspiratorial. Rotten Tomatoes and Fandango are both owned by Flixster, which is in turn owned by Comcast…which owns NBCUniversal. Warner Bros. Discovery also has a minority stake in Rotten Tomatoes. The website that compiles movie reviews is owned by the studios that make movies. 

Up until recently, there was never a real cause for concern. Fandango started including the Tomatometer rating once there was quantitative data that shows positive RT scores can influence box office, but that was it. (That was the same time studios started adding Tomatometer scores, too.) But now, Rotten Tomatoes has been redesigned in such a way that de-emphasizes film reviews, the very thing the site exists to aggregate. And now with the Popcornmeter, the undermining of the actual reviews written by actual critics with actual expertise are even further devalued. 

Then came the next kick, which is not only the increase of influencers at film screenings, but the fact that they get WILDLY more lenient embargoes—often NO embargo—after seeing a film that has not come out yet. 

 

This comes from critic and writer Liz Shannon Miller’s Letterboxd:

Liz Shannon Miller’s post

 

 

Embargoes can vary, but it’s not unusual that I see a movie a week or more in advance and can’t post about it online until a few days before it opens, and I can’t post my review along the same lines. But the influencers can walk out typing away on their phones or stop in the theater lobby to film and post their reactions right then. Again, the problem isn’t that influencers exist, and I still don’t have a problem with them basically doing marketing for movie studios. But it’s like the New York Times said that influencers are the new critics, and movie studios said, “Yes, that. Make that happen.” And the problem with that is the further erosion of this thing I love, which is thinking, writing, and talking about films in engaging and thoughtful ways.

 

 

John Squires is right, this is exactly what is happening. Studios don’t want to risk bad word of mouth, which negative reviews contribute to, and it definitely feels like there is a concerted effort happening to undermine proper film criticism. Like I’m starting to wonder how long the advanced screenings even continue. I bet they’re cut off eventually. They’ll just make it impossible to write a review before a movie comes out, effectively ending the word-of-mouth problem, at least for opening weekend. Which is bonkers because if people are determined to see a movie, bad reviews don’t stop them. The reviews for It Ends With Us are mediocre at best and it’s made over $200 million.

The relationship between studios and critics has always been fraught, but now it feels outright hostile. And I’m not complaining because ensh-ttifying Rotten Tomatoes hurts me financially. No one has ever found my work through RT, and it doesn’t drive traffic to this site. The only thing it does for me is make it easy to find all my reviews in one place. But I genuinely love film and film criticism, and it just sucks to feel like the people who make movies actively want to make your job, which already doesn’t support an independent living, that much harder. I’m just waiting for the day studios use AI to generate their own reviews to really tip the scales on Rotten Tomatoes. It’s the inevitable conclusion of all this. 

Live long and gossip,

Sarah