Ahh, Hollywood. Why do they keep employing all those creative, qualified people with years/decades of storytelling savvy and industry experience when they could easily produce better results by taking their pick from the countless thousands of bedroom warriors papering the internet with hyperbolic rants detailing why their movies suck? Could it be that its simply not as simple as it looks? Film is, by definition, a collaborative medium that necessitates input from a myriad of vested parties, and every step of each production is a potential pothole or banana skin. No one sets out to make a bad movie, and its only fair that we occasionally express our recognition of just how hard it is to make a great one. However, even when the end results are pretty decent, tentpole films tend to be subjected to endless snarking and nth-degree nitpicking about alleged failures and shortcomings. The Amazing Spider-Man 2 is a perfect example: it made over $700 million in cinemas, yet it was a financial failure; the film was rightly praised for having some of the best Spider-Man action sequences yet seen on screen, but criticised for its tangled web of a story; and unlike many a Marvel movie, it dared to kill off one of the main characters (yes, spoiler, but if you havent seen it theres really no reason for you to be here) and was castigated for this relatively brave decision. In truth, TASM2 was far from a bad film critics were divided, as evidenced by the 53% Rotten Tomatoes rating, yet the audience score is a considerably higher 68% (figures replicated almost exactly on Metacritic), and it has settled on a solid 7 on IMDB. Now that the dust has also settled, we can use the superpower of hindsight to explore some simple fixes that could have circumvented big problems.
I watch movies and I watch sport. I also watch movies about sport, and if there were a sport about movies I'd watch that too. The internet was the closest thing I could find.
