Ghostbusters 2021 weekend Nov 19-21: Afterlife $44M OW | E: $10.8m | RD: $8.1m

[Jamiem]

54 minutes ago, Eternal Legion said:

The real event of the holiday, gonna get more engagement than Encanto Gucci and raccoon combined 

Can two Hawks defeat a group of Beatles though?

 

Either way a glimpse into the future at the Disney office on Monday below 

 

[Eric Duncan]

Moderation

 

Fun fact: you're able to still like a film that isn't critically lauded without citing there's some agenda out against it. Because nine times out of nine, it is flat out untrue and conspiratorial. Please don't start these debates about critics again.

[Legion Again]

12 minutes ago, Eternal Legion said:

It is obvious that critics have agendas sometimes, but that whole conversation is so intertwined with some toxic elements that it’s hard to have a reasonable back and forth about it (and the mods don’t seem inclined to let people try).

Like I said 😛 

[Eric Duncan]

10 minutes ago, Eternal Legion said:

Like I said 😛 

You know what, I'm gonna go into a little rant here, because this stuff is very personal to me and I really want you to understand why I'm so passionate about this stuff. I studied Communications in school. I've been in journalism classes. I've met people who have written about entertainment and the arts. So I'm not a film critic, but I know enough about journalistic integrity and an understanding about how all this works, so let me tell you that this idea that critics have agendas or are specifically out to get movies is a bunch of malarkey and rings to me as more just people bitter about something than any factual evidence.

 

The first big thing is that if somebody specifically went to a major, credible publication like Variety or THR...hell, even geek-centric sites like Collider or IGN specifically to push some sort of "agenda", they would not get hired. These publications take things very seriously and don't just hand out jobs to anybody. You need some sort of clout and insight and understanding and strong education of both writing and film to get a cushy job there...and also connections, but it's still not an easy job as you might think. The only places I can think of that would fit into "agenda-pushing" when it comes to movie reviews would be sites like Mother Jones or Daily Wire, and they don't really focus on film reviews, at least last I checked.

 

"But audiences loved this movie that critics tanked. They don't understand what people want"

 

Well critics shouldn't be viewed as a giant mass of people nor as a vessel of whether people should see something. The issue of aggregate sites like RT and Metacritic is that they take singular voices and mesh them all into one giant percentage, rather than giving interesting individual perspectives on a title. Something you can read and gather insight from and see an interesting viewpoint on. If you're interested in a movie, go and watch it, form your own conclusion, and then see what interesting writers had to say about it, because it can enhance your own understanding of the film even better.

 

"Well they're biased anyways"

 

Cool. That's...the very foundation of criticism. You can't watch a movie and not have a biased take on something, whether it be your own politics, your interest in a franchise, or how you feel about a filmmaker or the overall film climate. Shit, I'm being biased right now. And that's okay. People whine and complain when critics mention a film has shaky or problematic politics or content in them, but that's just how they viewed the movie. A film's politics may not bother you, but it can bother people. After all, not everybody's the same, and we shouldn't throw a hissy fit when people complain about a movie's politics, because that's just how they view things (hint hint to some of you BOT posters).

 

And as much as people like to whine about how stuffy critics and Film Twitter hipsters hate all blockbusters and think popcorn movies are terrible, this goes the other way around. Between sites like Indiewire or The Wrap, we have just as many Colliders or IGNs or YouTubers who have Funko Pops in their background. We have just as many, if not more film bros or people who have "Ahsoka stan" or "Kevin Feige 4 Life" on their Twitter names. If anything, geek sites and fanboys are the ones controlling the narrative way more than bloggers reviewing films on their own time or writers for struggling publications in a print-free society.

 

I'm sure people will still think I'm being harsh here, but my main issue with all this is that a lot of this anti-critic sentiment just reeks of anti-intellectual behavior. That somehow the poor defenseless megablockbusters with major studio backings are under attack by an agenda against the elitist film critics. Ghostbusters: Afterlife is part of a "too big to fail" franchise that will earn countless reboots and revamps in the decades to come. We'll get Ghostbusters movies and shows long after we're dead. If Afterlife bombed, the series would be back in some form and will still make millions off of nostalgic Gen Xers.

 

But now we have people complaining about how Ghostbusters: Afterlife, a reboot of a lucrative franchise, greenlit by greedy capitalist studio executives, who are part of a giant megacorp with a strong entertainment market share, and directed by and starring folks who are richer than we will ever be in our lifetimes, is under attack by "elitist" critics, many of whom are struggling to make ends meet...yeah, this shit feels super wrong and gross to me. It's not necessarily one to one, but a lot of this feels like the equivalent of defending Bobby Kotick or Elon or Bezos or any of those jokers, at least to me.

 

And frankly, I don't think this kind of stuff is too toxic and reeks too much like anti-intellectualism for my comfort. I know this sounds harsh, I know some will definitely disagree with me here, and it's certainly not the biggest issue in the world, but still something I just don't like. It's infuriating to me people are just leaping towards a dumb corporate ghost movie as if having anything bad to say about it is some specific targeted attack towards some defenseless motion picture.

[Legion Again]

Man that is long. On the one hand thanks for engaging, on the other hand it is a bit overwhelming 😅

 

I will try to have some more detailed constructive thoughts later, but to be very brief:  

 

A lot of this sounds more like reasons (understandable reasons!) for your personal stance in the discussion rather than reasons why the discussion needs to be officially disallowed — especially before any real bad behavior has occurred.

Edited November 23, 2021 by Eternal Legion

[Legion Again]

I also feel like there’s a lot of strawmanning and assuming the worst in there, but I won’t continue this publicly if I’m not supposed to be 👍

[Eric Duncan]

2 minutes ago, Eternal Legion said:

Man that is long. On the one hand thanks for engaging, on the other hand it is a bit overwhelming 😅

 

I will try to have some more detailed constructive thoughts later, but to be very brief:  

 

A lot of this sounds more like reasons (understandable reasons!) for your personal stance in the discussion rather than reasons why the discussion needs to be officially disallowed — especially before any real bad behavior has occurred.

Well yes, this is just more me being on my soapbox, but from a modding perspective, the big issue is that it almost always leads to toxic infighting. There's often a contingent of people arguing about whether critics "get it right" regardless of reviews, you have people trying to troll certain fans when a hyped film earns bad reviews by saying it's gonna be a megabomb, when nine times out of nine the film ends up doing okay financially, or edgelords complaining that a film only got those reviews because it's "woke". This usually leads to endless pages of arguments that largely go nowhere and just lead to everybody miserable and nothing constructive in the end. I've been on the block here long enough to know these patterns are destined to happen. Might as well nip it in the bud it blooms.

[Legion Again]

2 minutes ago, Eric Madrigal said:

Well yes, this is just more me being on my soapbox, but from a modding perspective, the big issue is that it almost always leads to toxic infighting. There's often a contingent of people arguing about whether critics "get it right" regardless of reviews, you have people trying to troll certain fans when a hyped film earns bad reviews by saying it's gonna be a megabomb, when nine times out of nine the film ends up doing okay financially, or edgelords complaining that a film only got those reviews because it's "woke". This usually leads to endless pages of arguments that largely go nowhere and just lead to everybody miserable and nothing constructive in the end. I've been on the block here long enough to know these patterns are destined to happen. Might as well nip it in the bud it blooms.

Yeah, I mean there is a lot of truth here, which is why I haven’t been complaining that hard about the aggressive modding on the topic. My personal preference would be to warn/ban the people getting toxic about it when they do rather than banning the entire topic before it’s devolved but I won’t get too heated about it.

[Legion Again]

I think “agenda” is too loaded and not quite the right word anyway. But in the period between critic and audience scores, it is legit useful (for BO purposes) to assess how much the critic aggregates — which come from a bunch of real humans who are of course entitled to their own opinions and proclivities yadda yadda — might be influenced by kind of niche culture war factors which won’t extend to the GA vs more direct movie quality factors.   
 

Once audience scores come out the critic reception is basically useless for BO and I don’t see much reason to care either way (which is another reason why I don’t want to give the whole topic more weight than it really needs).

[WorkingonaName]

6 hours ago, Eric Madrigal said:

You know what, I'm gonna go into a little rant here, because this stuff is very personal to me and I really want you to understand why I'm so passionate about this stuff. I studied Communications in school. I've been in journalism classes. I've met people who have written about entertainment and the arts. So I'm not a film critic, but I know enough about journalistic integrity and an understanding about how all this works, so let me tell you that this idea that critics have agendas or are specifically out to get movies is a bunch of malarkey and rings to me as more just people bitter about something than any factual evidence.

 

The first big thing is that if somebody specifically went to a major, credible publication like Variety or THR...hell, even geek-centric sites like Collider or IGN specifically to push some sort of "agenda", they would not get hired. These publications take things very seriously and don't just hand out jobs to anybody. You need some sort of clout and insight and understanding and strong education of both writing and film to get a cushy job there...and also connections, but it's still not an easy job as you might think. The only places I can think of that would fit into "agenda-pushing" when it comes to movie reviews would be sites like Mother Jones or Daily Wire, and they don't really focus on film reviews, at least last I checked.

 

"But audiences loved this movie that critics tanked. They don't understand what people want"

 

Well critics shouldn't be viewed as a giant mass of people nor as a vessel of whether people should see something. The issue of aggregate sites like RT and Metacritic is that they take singular voices and mesh them all into one giant percentage, rather than giving interesting individual perspectives on a title. Something you can read and gather insight from and see an interesting viewpoint on. If you're interested in a movie, go and watch it, form your own conclusion, and then see what interesting writers had to say about it, because it can enhance your own understanding of the film even better.

 

"Well they're biased anyways"

 

Cool. That's...the very foundation of criticism. You can't watch a movie and not have a biased take on something, whether it be your own politics, your interest in a franchise, or how you feel about a filmmaker or the overall film climate. Shit, I'm being biased right now. And that's okay. People whine and complain when critics mention a film has shaky or problematic politics or content in them, but that's just how they viewed the movie. A film's politics may not bother you, but it can bother people. After all, not everybody's the same, and we shouldn't throw a hissy fit when people complain about a movie's politics, because that's just how they view things (hint hint to some of you BOT posters).

 

And as much as people like to whine about how stuffy critics and Film Twitter hipsters hate all blockbusters and think popcorn movies are terrible, this goes the other way around. Between sites like Indiewire or The Wrap, we have just as many Colliders or IGNs or YouTubers who have Funko Pops in their background. We have just as many, if not more film bros or people who have "Ahsoka stan" or "Kevin Feige 4 Life" on their Twitter names. If anything, geek sites and fanboys are the ones controlling the narrative way more than bloggers reviewing films on their own time or writers for struggling publications in a print-free society.

 

I'm sure people will still think I'm being harsh here, but my main issue with all this is that a lot of this anti-critic sentiment just reeks of anti-intellectual behavior. That somehow the poor defenseless megablockbusters with major studio backings are under attack by an agenda against the elitist film critics. Ghostbusters: Afterlife is part of a "too big to fail" franchise that will earn countless reboots and revamps in the decades to come. We'll get Ghostbusters movies and shows long after we're dead. If Afterlife bombed, the series would be back in some form and will still make millions off of nostalgic Gen Xers.

 

But now we have people complaining about how Ghostbusters: Afterlife, a reboot of a lucrative franchise, greenlit by greedy capitalist studio executives, who are part of a giant megacorp with a strong entertainment market share, and directed by and starring folks who are richer than we will ever be in our lifetimes, is under attack by "elitist" critics, many of whom are struggling to make ends meet...yeah, this shit feels super wrong and gross to me. It's not necessarily one to one, but a lot of this feels like the equivalent of defending Bobby Kotick or Elon or Bezos or any of those jokers, at least to me.

 

And frankly, I don't think this kind of stuff is too toxic and reeks too much like anti-intellectualism for my comfort. I know this sounds harsh, I know some will definitely disagree with me here, and it's certainly not the biggest issue in the world, but still something I just don't like. It's infuriating to me people are just leaping towards a dumb corporate ghost movie as if having anything bad to say about it is some specific targeted attack towards some defenseless motion picture.

sir this is a Wendy’s

[Hatebox]

Ghostbusters 2016 remains one of the worst big-budget films I've ever seen. It was pure anti-comedy, improv run amok.

 

How critics felt about it, for whatever reason, doesn't strike me as mattering now because a much dimmer consensus on the movie seems to have prevailed beyond theirs.

[von Kenni]

6 hours ago, Eternal Legion said:

I think “agenda” is too loaded and not quite the right word anyway. But in the period between critic and audience scores, it is legit useful (for BO purposes) to assess how much the critic aggregates — which come from a bunch of real humans who are of course entitled to their own opinions and proclivities yadda yadda — might be influenced by kind of niche culture war factors which won’t extend to the GA vs more direct movie quality factors.   
 

Once audience scores come out the critic reception is basically useless for BO and I don’t see much reason to care either way (which is another reason why I don’t want to give the whole topic more weight than it really needs).

When reviews of critics affect the BO and especially the OW, it should be okay to talk about them and evaluate if they considerably deviate from some normalcy or not IMHO, and ask why?

 

That discussion is and will always be messy since we have a global audience here, non-native English speakers (like myself), and even though we can refer to the same data/evidence/knowledge, we all bring our personal interpretation, cultural backgrounds, and societal experiences to the table. I understand the need for moderation and many of @Eric Madrigal's points. As a newbie for the forum I can only imagine how messy it has been at times.

 

I think often we get lost in generalizations but we also need some of it to have discussions. It all depends on the context and maybe avoid loaded words like toxic, agendas, woke, even the anti-intellectual might have too pointy ring to it IMHO. We all probably agree that it would be good to aim for argumentation that has some sort of base in reason, logic, and evidence/data/common knowledge especially when talking about potentially loaded/sensitive subjects, without loosing humour and satire. And if someone says something loaded, maybe ask first some arguments for it than right away shout back.

 

IMHO we had a great discussion in the Ghostbusters Afterlife thread about nostalgia in movies that sprang from the Ghostbusters Afterlife critics reviews. It was insightful and I learned new things from it.

 

Here's my few cents about the human dynamics behind the reviews:

 

There isn't of course any cabals or organized groups deciding how critics will respond to a certain movie. The little that I've been dealing with presidents, ministers, big CEOs & producers, prominent journalists, and even Musk & Bezos themselves, I either smile or frown when people think how elaborately they are planning & scheming things behind the scenes. In reality, most often they are totally clueless and reacting to things day-to-day basis, especially when it comes to public perceptions. They are trying to surf and stay afloat on the same rivers of narratives, cultural and societal waves as we all.

 

All critics are affected by the same biases than us and probably the most of the films don't deviate much from a normalcy where the film's storytelling merits are prominent factors. However, there are external and internal (industry wise) narratives that sometimes can pull the impact of reviews to either way from that normalcy. They can often be hard to pinpoint and easily lost in obscurity, but these narratives are a real thing. I know because I've being doing those. Not with movies but at the intersection of business, culture, and entertainment. The dynamics are same but the tools might differ a bit.

 

When you put something out there, you want to pro-actively take initiative with the narrative, to define the playfield and then kicking the ball or passing the first puck. I can see the studio and producers planning the messaging and trying to fit it to the external narratives (zeitgeist, cultural, trends, ...), then actively creating marketing content to fit their narrative, and delivering it through different means like early exclusive stories and previews where they can also repeat their messaging and it's talking points. After this the narrative and public perception will more or less take a life of its own. This isn't intrinsically bad, just the way humans in groups work.

 

Critics write to their specific audiences and more or less represent their organization's values. There are those journalistic principles that enable at least some journalistic integrity. I've given a hundred or so interviews in the US, LatAm, Europe, India, and China, and generally I've had good experiences across the board. However, critics as journalists are people the same as we all, and even if they don't create friendships with the stars and producers they create friendly (or unfriendly) relationships that matter. I would imagine critics needing access too, and them wanting it, whether for set visits, interviews, or previews. Exclusive pre-content, scoops, etc. is also highly valued. It's a 2 way street always and a game. That doesn't make all this corrupt but we should be aware of these things too.

 

As this is far too long writing already, in short about Ghostbusters Afterlife:

 

I haven't seen the movie yet, but based on the reception here and elsewhere, it's safe to say that it's not a perfect movie, although a crowd pleaser. The little that I've read the reviews much of it says so. IMHO a vast minority of the negative reviews is G2016 storm residue but it's hard to say that they don't exist since some of them says it out and open. A bigger issue was the nostalgia play that many saw as cheap manipulation where as some as okay addition while otherwise being a good movie for those who don't know about Ghostbusters. The nostalgia aspects IMHO seems to deviate it out of the normalcy, which we've discussed in the other thread in good spirit, and I can understand some of the underlying dynamics/narratives there.

 

Final thoughts:

 

From my personal experience dealing with people from slums to the world's richest, and much in between, in different countries, cultures, and industries, people are people. They are inherently good and at least deep down want the same things. They all have their own past experiences, how they were raised, cultural, and societal backgrounds through which they interpret things, words, and other people.

 

I guess here it means that we just need to avoid the assumptions and presumptions about each other, ask to clarify rather than judge, and maybe the only assumptions being that we all, me included, make misinterpretations and fall into misunderstandings all the time. Listening and having a dialogue in good faith might be a good way forward, even if it's tiresome sometimes.

[Eastwood47]

9 hours ago, Eric Madrigal said:

You know what, I'm gonna go into a little rant here, because this stuff is very personal to me and I really want you to understand why I'm so passionate about this stuff. I studied Communications in school. I've been in journalism classes. I've met people who have written about entertainment and the arts. So I'm not a film critic, but I know enough about journalistic integrity and an understanding about how all this works, so let me tell you that this idea that critics have agendas or are specifically out to get movies is a bunch of malarkey and rings to me as more just people bitter about something than any factual evidence.

 

The first big thing is that if somebody specifically went to a major, credible publication like Variety or THR...hell, even geek-centric sites like Collider or IGN specifically to push some sort of "agenda", they would not get hired. These publications take things very seriously and don't just hand out jobs to anybody. You need some sort of clout and insight and understanding and strong education of both writing and film to get a cushy job there...and also connections, but it's still not an easy job as you might think. The only places I can think of that would fit into "agenda-pushing" when it comes to movie reviews would be sites like Mother Jones or Daily Wire, and they don't really focus on film reviews, at least last I checked.

 

"But audiences loved this movie that critics tanked. They don't understand what people want"

 

Well critics shouldn't be viewed as a giant mass of people nor as a vessel of whether people should see something. The issue of aggregate sites like RT and Metacritic is that they take singular voices and mesh them all into one giant percentage, rather than giving interesting individual perspectives on a title. Something you can read and gather insight from and see an interesting viewpoint on. If you're interested in a movie, go and watch it, form your own conclusion, and then see what interesting writers had to say about it, because it can enhance your own understanding of the film even better.

 

"Well they're biased anyways"

 

Cool. That's...the very foundation of criticism. You can't watch a movie and not have a biased take on something, whether it be your own politics, your interest in a franchise, or how you feel about a filmmaker or the overall film climate. Shit, I'm being biased right now. And that's okay. People whine and complain when critics mention a film has shaky or problematic politics or content in them, but that's just how they viewed the movie. A film's politics may not bother you, but it can bother people. After all, not everybody's the same, and we shouldn't throw a hissy fit when people complain about a movie's politics, because that's just how they view things (hint hint to some of you BOT posters).

 

And as much as people like to whine about how stuffy critics and Film Twitter hipsters hate all blockbusters and think popcorn movies are terrible, this goes the other way around. Between sites like Indiewire or The Wrap, we have just as many Colliders or IGNs or YouTubers who have Funko Pops in their background. We have just as many, if not more film bros or people who have "Ahsoka stan" or "Kevin Feige 4 Life" on their Twitter names. If anything, geek sites and fanboys are the ones controlling the narrative way more than bloggers reviewing films on their own time or writers for struggling publications in a print-free society.

 

I'm sure people will still think I'm being harsh here, but my main issue with all this is that a lot of this anti-critic sentiment just reeks of anti-intellectual behavior. That somehow the poor defenseless megablockbusters with major studio backings are under attack by an agenda against the elitist film critics. Ghostbusters: Afterlife is part of a "too big to fail" franchise that will earn countless reboots and revamps in the decades to come. We'll get Ghostbusters movies and shows long after we're dead. If Afterlife bombed, the series would be back in some form and will still make millions off of nostalgic Gen Xers.

 

But now we have people complaining about how Ghostbusters: Afterlife, a reboot of a lucrative franchise, greenlit by greedy capitalist studio executives, who are part of a giant megacorp with a strong entertainment market share, and directed by and starring folks who are richer than we will ever be in our lifetimes, is under attack by "elitist" critics, many of whom are struggling to make ends meet...yeah, this shit feels super wrong and gross to me. It's not necessarily one to one, but a lot of this feels like the equivalent of defending Bobby Kotick or Elon or Bezos or any of those jokers, at least to me.

 

And frankly, I don't think this kind of stuff is too toxic and reeks too much like anti-intellectualism for my comfort. I know this sounds harsh, I know some will definitely disagree with me here, and it's certainly not the biggest issue in the world, but still something I just don't like. It's infuriating to me people are just leaping towards a dumb corporate ghost movie as if having anything bad to say about it is some specific targeted attack towards some defenseless motion picture.

I have two college degrees, but my best teacher has always been time on the field and the experience that brings to my perspective. If you're objective is to persuade, its best not to insult the intended audience by suggesting they are stupid. That requires minimal education and perhaps a bit more humility, context to the topic, and a better understanding that movies will always be subjective at best. You brought as much emotional baggage and targeted attacks to your argument as those you chose to label with similar issues. At the end of the day, this is product and we are consumers. Buy what you like and understand the reasons why others choose differently will not always be available to you. College professors and a structured course on most disciplines are ultimately just another opinion that serves as a starting point, but absolutely not the final say on any given subject. 

[Deep Wang]

 

The "good" reviews for Ghostbusters didn't help it do well and the "bad" reviews of Afterlife didn't kill it.  

 

The End.

[wintersoldier2021]

So your going to say eternals performance was not affected by the reviews at all 

[CenterMeOnSam]

I mean, I guess I didn't think this was really disputed, but: critics have biases. 

 

Of course they do. That's what makes them good at their jobs. 

 

I think the biggest concern with film critics as of late is... who is their audience? 

 

There is a serious issue with the fact that critics are a bit homogenous. There's not a LOT of diversity of thought with critics because they are primarily looking at films from a different lens. Yeah, sure, there are some that are probably more in line with your average moviegoer in America, but not the majority. To become a film critics, you likely have a much higher bar for the product you see, which is great! But, as that becomes more and more the case... you will continue to see critical/audience divides. 

 

The majority of audiences out there want to connect emotionally with what they are watching and while critics can call nostalgia "manipulative" all they want (and may even be correct in doing so), the fact remains that nostalgia works for the average moviegoer and they LIKE how it makes them feel. If critics don't want to address that in a respectful way, that's their choice, but I think it loses the narrative of what's actually happening out there.

[titanic2187]

Ghostbuster wasn't much affected by review because Sony marketing did a good job in distracting people focus from critical review by highlighting audience reaction.   Sony's films generally don't have super high RT score to back them up so they seem more experience  in not relying on critics reaction for buzz.  

 

The same didn't happened to Eternals where Disney was unable to deflect the attention away from critics' review. Eternals was the first MCU film to get rotten and no way people or film circle are not going to make a noise from that. Not to mention the film was directed by latest Oscar wining director.

[Flopped]

King Richard feels a bit misguided and I wonder if that affected its bo performance. I get that the Williams sisters signed off and all, but they could still be wrong about the best way into the movie. When you watch the real-life footage of the girls, and suddenly it cuts to the title KING RICHARD!, it certainly feels misguided. 

[Last Man Standing]

I don't see the point of the critics discourse: NO-ONE blindly trusts critics, everyone knows they're a weird little clique with their own biases, and that the quality of the movie is one in MANY factors that influence its critical reception, so what? Critics didn't stop Joker from crossing a billion and getting prestigious awards, or Venom 2 from raking in the bucks, they just don't actually matter all that much, compared to the number of discussions they elicit.

Edited November 23, 2021 by Last Man Standing