Wonder Woman 1984 | Dec 16 2020 OS | Dec 25 2020 US and on HBO MAX

[Legion Again]

11 minutes ago, lorddemaxus said:

I really don't mind if people critique films with a marxist, idpol, conservative, etc bias and honestly even encourage it. Even if it might be frustrating to understand their point of view a lot of times I find reviews from people from very specific political biases to be great (Armond White for example is a very interesting reviewer imo).  

There's something to be said for critiquing films with a bias. Like I said earlier, that’s basically always happened, and is unavoidable since every human’s got their own personal bundle of background and beliefs informing how they look at stuff. Diversity of frameworks is good.  
 

But if the bias totally dominates the actual material of the film rather than interacting with it, I don’t really see how that’s valuable to anybody. Like conceivably some blogger could have a bit where their review of every single film was either “passes the Bechdel test, positive.” or “doesn’t pass the Bechdel test, negative.” Maybe they think the Bechdel test is super important, but they wouldn’t really be adding any value because those “reviews.” would be discarding essentially all information about the films in question.    
 

Obviously above is a reductio ad absurdum — I haven’t seen anything quite that silly in real life. And this is more of a problem, afaics, from bigots on the right than zealots on the left. But regardless of the direction, I feel like I see more “Bias instead of a review” rather than “bias informing a review.” than I used to, and it’s a bit of a bummer.    
 

But also, averages solve a lot. I’m not bemoaning the review industry as hopelessly flawed or anything.

Edited December 24, 2020 by WandaLegion

[Menor the Destroyer]

To me, it's the difference between a review being about the film, and the review being about the opinions of the individual reviewer. Political/societal opinions should inform the commentary, they should not be the (almost) entirety of the commentary. The Toto review is a good example. You get the sense that he would have used a review of practically any film to try to promote Trump. 

Edited December 24, 2020 by Menor

[WittyUsername]

It’s one thing to have certain biases when determining one’s enjoyment of a piece of media, but to base whether or not something is a good movie primarily around those biases does not make for a good review. That’s why it baffles me that Mediaversity is a Rotten Tomatoes approved publication. That website’s very own mission statement is to judge movies not based on quality, but on inclusiveness. They even dock points off of movies that have problematic people involved in them. 
 

To give an example of how weird that website is, there’s a critic who actually did two reviews for Joker, with one of them being for Mediaversity. The Mediaversity review gave the movie an F, while the other one was actually moderately positive.

Edited December 24, 2020 by WittyUsername

[lorddemaxus]

10 minutes ago, WandaLegion said:

There's something to be said for critiquing films with a bias. Like I said earlier, that’s basically always happened, and is unavoidable since every human’s got their own personal bundle of background and beliefs informing how they look at stuff. Diversity of frameworks is good.  
 

But if the bias totally dominates the actual material of the film rather than interacting with it, I don’t really see how that’s valuable to anybody. Like conceivably some blogger could have a bit where their review of every single film was either “passes the Bechdel test, positive.” or “doesn’t pass the Bechdel test, negative.” Maybe they think the Bechdel test is super important, but they wouldn’t really be adding any value because those “reviews.” would be discarding essentially all information about the films in question.    
 

Obviously above is a reductio ad absurdum — I haven’t seen anything quite that silly in real life. And this is more of a problem, afaics, from bigots on the right than zealots on the left. But regardless of the direction, I feel like I see more “Bias instead of a review” rather than “bias informing a review.” than I used to, and it’s a bit of a bummer.    
 

But also, averages solve a lot. I’m not bemoaning the review industry as hopelessly flawed or anything.

It's muddy stuff and something we could talk about for a long time (I mean I could talk for hours about how recent Eastwood films get mischaracterized as MAGA propaganda because his politics don't align with typical Hollywood lib politics) and I'll probably also be contradicting myself a lot of times. But I personally don't mind reading them as long as they're well written. Armond White (clearly has very conservative beliefs) and Sally Jane Black (a tankie who also has a huge idpol bias) are critics whose reviews I read at times purely because they're really well written. That Hollywood in Toto review on the other hand is not and feels more like a reddit post.

[marveldcfox]

I have said this before and I will say this again, critic is the most nonsense profession ever. I have zero respect for this scumbag group.

[WittyUsername]

Since we’re on the subject of political biases when judging movies, I’m just going to say that I will never understand why some people are so insistent on this idea that Zack Snyder’s movies appeal to far right sensibilities. Since Snyder is the producer for this movie, I thought that was relevant to bring up. 

[cax16]

8 minutes ago, marveldcfox said:

I have said this before and I will say this again, critic is the most nonsense profession ever. I have zero respect for this scumbag group.

I wouldn’t go as far as you lol but I don’t read reviews and think rotten tomatoes is a terrible site with an awful system for who gets verified on there. But I’m in the minority so I don’t care to discuss it. 

[Menor the Destroyer]

52 minutes ago, lorddemaxus said:

It's muddy stuff and something we could talk about for a long time (I mean I could talk for hours about how recent Eastwood films get mischaracterized as MAGA propaganda because his politics don't align with typical Hollywood lib politics) and I'll probably also be contradicting myself a lot of times. But I personally don't mind reading them as long as they're well written. Armond White (clearly has very conservative beliefs) and Sally Jane Black (a tankie who also has a huge idpol bias) are critics whose reviews I read at times purely because they're really well written. That Hollywood in Toto review on the other hand is not and feels more like a reddit post.

Not familiar with Sally Jane Black but I can't say I agree on Armond White. His reviews seem to be an exercise in trying to feel superior and act smarter than everyone else. 

Edited December 24, 2020 by Menor

[AJG]

Do we know if anything else will be made 4K HDR on HBO Max or will it just be Wonder Woman?

Edited December 24, 2020 by AJG

[WittyUsername]

This thing might just lose its certified fresh rating after all. Good lord...

[lorddemaxus]

6 minutes ago, Menor said:

Not familiar with Sally Jane Black but I can't say I agree on Armond White. His reviews seem to be an exercise in trying to feel superior and act smarter than everyone else. 

White's certainly abrasive and a lot of his criticisms can be mind-boggling but I also find those reviews quite insightful and even agree with some points (not his bigoted nonsense of course). His reviews are usually more useful for older films than newer ones tbh.

[Firepower]

Rotten Tomatoes killed film criticism and has a massive negative influence on both audience and industry. It's very misleading and many people care too much about that percentage and are too lazy to check reviewers or their reviews which contribute to that percentage, I'm sure those average folks would be shocked to find out that all those wonderful reviews like "triumph of a white man" or "maga maga" create that percentage. And the worst thing is that studios care too much about RT too and it affects their output to please those few hundred people and alienate all other people who actually pay their money to see those movies because studios still have this delusion that it's the same audience.

Edited December 24, 2020 by Firepower

[Knights of Ren]

Audience score can be just as flawed as well.  Making a decision whether to watch a film based on RT is a big LOL

[EarlyDeadlinePredictions]

48 minutes ago, WittyUsername said:

This thing might just lose its certified fresh rating after all. Good lord...

I was about to make a Wonder Woman 1974 joke but now its at 72% already.

 

Absolutely horrifying. 

[Eric Atreides]

Moderation

 

Im sorry, I thought this was the Wonder Woman 1984 thread, not the “woke critics ruin everything” thread. Please stay on topic 

[Liiviig 1998]

Well MC just dropped to 59. It's just a matter of time when this drops below 70 on RT.

 

[Legion Again]

I wish we had enough presales going on for the (useful, largely quantitative) presales discussions to dominate the (largely useless and opinion-based) review discussion. Still mourning Pulse and akvalley.     
 

But in like 24 hours it should all get washed away by the “I saw it and here's what I think” stuff and the “wow, Deadline’s (super reliable) midday OD projection would be [great/Terrible].”

[Menor the Destroyer]

Have to say I didn't see the RT score dropping this quickly after 150 reviews. Losing certified fresh seems likely at this point. 

[grey ghost]

4 hours ago, WittyUsername said:

Since we’re on the subject of political biases when judging movies, I’m just going to say that I will never understand why some people are so insistent on this idea that Zack Snyder’s movies appeal to far right sensibilities. Since Snyder is the producer for this movie, I thought that was relevant to bring up. 

Have you watched "300"?

[WittyUsername]

5 minutes ago, grey ghost said:

Have you watched "300"?

That’s based on a Frank Miller comic book, but besides that, Zack Snyder’s critics have a tendency to try and paint him as a far right bigot, which is pretty absurd. Not liking his movies is all well and good. I’m not much of a fan of his movies either, but Breadtubers keep trying to paint him as a “fascist”, while constantly taking things from his movies out of context, or distorting things to fit their argument.

 

My favorite is when Maggie Mae Fish cited Steve Mnuchin being the executive producer of BvS as “proof” of how politically rightwing the movie is, even though Mnuchin was the executive producer for every WB movie around that time, including The Lego Movie.