The world of cinema has always been marked by eternal rivalries. Ben-Hur and Mesala, John McClane and Hans Gruber, Rocky and Ivan Drago, Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader… But of all the duels, enmities and visceral confrontations that have emerged from the seventh art, the fiercest remains, without any hint of doubt, which puts the public and critics face to face.
Although this is something, with few and celebrated exceptions, historical, it gives the feeling that the passage of time has exacerbated it even more if possible. The contrast between the box office and the specialized opinion, the successes defenestrated in the media and the commercial hits praised to the point of exhaustion continue to be the order of the day, turning the consensus into little less than a miracle.
The clearest and most recent sample we have of all this leads us directly to the latest DC Studios movie, ‘Black Adam’. A production that has polarized both “sides” almost to the extreme —if they can be labeled as such—, suggesting that we critics are becoming more and more irrelevant. Although, thinking about it, the truth is that we always have been.
The nonsense of the aggregator
Despite how useful it may seem at first glance to type in a URL, search for the title of a feature film and be able to view its rating through a numerical score awarded by anonymous users, those known as aggregators are not at all reliable; especially if we take into account external motivations —let’s not forget the cases of review bombing or alteration of scores— and fanaticism that can artificially tip the balance in one direction or another.
But, in the case at hand, this type of platform has been very useful for illustrate the unbridgeable gap between critics and audiences. The illuminating ‘Black Adam’ tab on Rotten Tomatoes reveals 40% positive professional reviews out of a total of 248 versus a resounding 90% drawn from more than 5,000 verified votes. What the hell has happened?
Ignoring the dangers and peculiarities of finding ourselves before a franchised blockbuster with a popular brand behind it and the indiscriminate voting —for or against— that this can entail, the difference is notable enough to reveal a problem that goes beyond tastes, likes and dislikesand that could be underlining the decline of film criticism… or what remains of it.
Of course, despite the bombast of this last sentence, I will not be tempted to surrender to the many pleasures of catastrophism. After all, the figure of the critic has never had the relevance that neither one nor the other wanted to give it… At least, not in the way we think.
Demystify the demystified
If we focus on current film criticism, leaving at all times on the pedestal that totems like André Bazin and company deserve, it is necessary to observe the reality that surrounds us and carry out an exercise to demystify the film critic; condition carried with absurd pride by some and used as a throwing weapon by others.
In essence —and, I repeat, limiting ourselves to the contemporary framework—, a film critic he is still a person who sees audiovisual works and expresses an opinion about them using their communication skills —whether oral or written— and their knowledge of the medium —something that, unfortunately, is not true in all cases—; shaping pieces that value a production based on its perception personal and subjective. Because, yes, film criticism can only be subjective, in debatable contrast to film analysis.
A film critic differs from a “usual” viewer —note the inverted commas— in the two aforementioned aspects: communicative ability and specialization. However, in the era of social networks converted into loudspeakers, of minimal attention retention and sentences condensed in little more than 200 characters, this figure, almost anachronistic, does not seem to make much sense.
Now, more diluted than ever, the future of the profession is heading more towards the functions of “curator”, “recommender” or “guidance”, leaving behind the image of enlightened opinion unwavering. A kind of living algorithm that opens paths discovering tapes that could go unnoticed and that, in parallel, and as I myself make an effort to do from time to time, commitment to analysis to make visible the technical, logistical and narrative ins and outs on which they are built.
Be that as it may, the world is constantly evolving, and there will always be room to renew languages, means of expression and links between specialists and the public, although there are battles lost beforehand, as ‘Black Adam’ has shown. And hey, if there are still people who go to their reference critics to get an idea of whether or not they should give a particular film a chance, it must be for a reason.