It’s one of the greatest struggles of our age; the clash between partially monitored professionalism and the commoner’s equally examined desires for entertainment, the louder few versus the overwhelming many, the Ebert against the Doe. Indeed, for as long as film reviews have been around, the comparisons and contrasts between the opinions of critics and audiences have been a topic of hot debate with many a different winner.
And with Black Adam being the latest to polarize opinions between these two sides, one Redditor took full advantage of this point in history to take to r/movies and consult the masses to see which side commands more trust in the realm of film reception.
Unsurprisingly, the crowd in favor of the critics garnered a lot of presence, and their proponents were armed to the teeth with examples, citing particularly questionable Rotten Tomatoes audience scores for The Rise of Skywalker (86 percent), Morbius (71 percent), and Uncharted (90 percent). This, of course, doesn’t account for bot reviews, familiarity with source material, or the possibility that the ratings were insincere.
And the crowd just kept rolling on in, with one user noting how audiences never seem interested in the “why” behind their opinion.
That being said, the critic crowd admitted to losing a few members after the departure of their greatest benefactor.
It seems as though Reddit is firmly on the side of the critics, with the value of audience scores only ever seeming to break even with those of critics at best.
It hasn’t been a total loss for audiences this year, though; they did manage to see through the false merits of See How They Run better than their professional counterparts; even for someone who trusts critics more, that deserves some applause.