Lucas

lmao, trying to keep it real. There's definitely an air of CoG being looked at in a much more negative light now in hindsight than a lot of critics actually did when it was released. Generally when you're pretty middling on a movie to begin with, the pop culture consensus can sway you in that direction after more time has passed. Pretty sure she's going for a 3.5-4/5 star review for SoD though, she definitely liked it.

For some context, here's her CoG review on RT: Of course it's also completely possible the film can have gone down in her estimations since she wrote this review.

Well, I've seen half say April 5 and half say April 6, so I'm not sure lol.

Hence why I don't just pick any random person lol. It's very easy to tell, and often it's names I already recognise. A lot of them now though are legit, you can tell if there's an influx of entries logged around the same point you already know a screening had just taken place.

This is letterboxd.

An RT critic we missed, but another very easy mark, and the odds that he will be reviewing the film are extremely low judging by his output. He also seems to approach his ratings in a rather top-heavy way because he lists 3.5/5 as the equivalent of a C+. I wouldn't consider this a win.

17 of them are available, though most were not on RT so it's just what they thought of the movie. Rendy Jones - Fresh "blown away" 7/10 (lmao) Rick Marshall - Fresh "lives up to the promise of its title." Sean Chandler - Rotten "huge disappointment" Douglas Laman - Rotten "lackluster return" Grace Randolph - Fresh David Gonzalez - Fresh 3/4 Rachel Wagner - Rotten 4/10 Tessa Smith - Fresh Preston Barta - Fresh "bit of a mess but I liked it" John Rocha - Fresh "I absolutely LOVED it!" Carson Timar - Rotten Eric Goldman - Fresh Griffin Schiller - Fresh "This is how you do a prequel" Perri Nemiroff - Fresh "LOVED everything with the 4 main characters & beasts. Some of the other characters/storylines not as much." Ian Sandwell - Fresh "A magic amount of fun" Dave Lee - Fresh "Great adventure. Don't understand the mixed reception upon release." 7th best of the series (CoG included) Ben Rolph - Fresh Rendy Jones and Preston Barta went from a fresh to a rotten, Rachel Wagner and Sean Chandler went from rotten to fresh. The rest are the same, equaling to 13 positives and 4 negatives for both films out of this batch of 17 critics. The individual reviews however leaned a lot more positive about the first.

He also has an incredibly solid track record, with poorly received films being very few and far between.

If anything, what this film seems to be able to walk away with is that it, against the odds, actually managed to win a decent chunk of people back.

Oh out of these critics, like 19 negatives lol. Ben Rolph being the only positive with a 5/5 (as I said before, he'll like anything lol). It's possible David Gonzalez is also fresh but he hasn't really said. The publication he's at gave it a positive review but it wasn't from him, though he did share it on twitter. Tessa Smith is also an easy mark so she may have liked it but there's no info on that, but at the very least 17 negatives out of these 20 lol.

It would be 14, but I'm not sure I'd write "this story isn't necessary enough" if I was intending to give it a positive review. Or "It doesn't know what it is" and "The magic is only fleeting". Something can be an improvement while still being too mediocre for a fresh rating.

Sandwell really depends how lenient he wants to be. His positivity only comes in comparison to the last film, which doesn't automatically mean this one is good. "Fleetingly recaptures the magic, overstuffed and unsure if it's a Beasts film or a Harry Potter film." doesn't sound nice. Same with Anderton's "however, these stories still don’t feel necessary enough.". I guess Anderton *could* be a bit lenient too, but I'm dubious. Both could be 3/5, but as we already know, they can still decide it's rotten.

Here's how I see it so far, with the caveat that not all of these critics will have a review on RT (Rocha and Schiller have not had one for years): Ethan Anderton - Rotten Rendy Jones - Rotten Rick Marshall - Fresh Sean Chandler - Fresh John Nguyen - Rotten Douglas Laman - Rotten Grace Randolph - Fresh David Gonzalez - Fresh Rachel's Reviews - Fresh Kaitlyn Booth - Rotten Tessa Smith - Fresh Preston Barta - Rotten John Rocha - Fresh Carson Timar - Rotten Eric Goldman - Fresh Griffin Schiller - Fresh Perri Nemiroff - Fresh Ian Sandwell - Fresh/Rotten (big questionmark this one, for me) Dave Lee - Fresh Ben Rolph - Fresh

Perri Nemiroff is a top critic, but we need to hear from way more of the bigger publications.

If we wanna take a trip down memory lane, these were the main twitter reactions from critics for CoG: Overall a stronger mix of highs and lows, while SoD seems to have landed somewhere in the middle - which can overall equal a closer RT aggregate than expected. As I said, RT trends downwards from the initial twitter reactions. That would be the main concern right now for this film.

Well, it would be lukewarm if the critics could pick a lukewarm tomato, but they can only pick rotten or fresh, so it's either all or nothing. Most of the ones I assume will go for a fresh are already pretty lukewarm on it, not a great start. It could very well end up fresh, though barely, but something like Death on the Nile had far less to prove for critics. If SoD is fresh, then yeah no more than like 65%, but I still lean lower. RT history shows you just gotta have more clearly defined positives among the early reactions than this. EDIT: Gotta say though, the best sign so far is probably Perri Nemiroff enjoying it quite a bit. She was very hard on CoG at the time (3/10), and she's rarely far off from the general consensus (give or take the horror movies).

lol yeah, approximately 7-9 out of the 20 so far.

Lukewarm isn't gonna translate to a bunch of positive reviews, it very rarely does. Jacob being good and a few fun moments with Newt isn't gonna turn this into a fresh tomato.

It wasn't at the time, but I'd be curious to hear how many who really liked it at the time speak fondly about it now. I will bet money on there being critics who gave Crimes a pass at the time will now give Secrets a negative review while still saying it's an improvement. Rendy Jones describes Crimes as an OOF, but he still rated it "44%" at the time. We know about circa 20 RT approved critics so far, and about 7-9 of them are for sure to be negative, and very few of the positives seem overly enthused. That's not a great sign for a film that's gonna end up fresh when the rest of them pile on, RT trends downwards 90% of the time.

Everyone is saying it's better than 2, but that doesn't automatically mean they liked it. It can very well go from 1/5 to 2/5, considering just how dreadful they find Crimes. Not as negative, but their rotten review would have just as much of an impact as a rotten Crimes review.

It's sounding like a 45-55 percenter.