3. The Anti-Critic Thing
Anytime a high-profile movie comes out and gets RAVAGED by film critics, you will see someone pop up with this: producers, actors, directors, everyone will come out of the woodwork to decry critics and insist that what they do is pointless and doesnt affect the movies or the box-office. And theyre right: if you treat movies as naked product, empty calories to fill up space and take up time, then critics dont matter., and theres nothing they can say that will dissuade a film-goer from seeing what they want to. But if you think films are art, if you think that these creations of ours matter in a real, important manner, then yes, we need critics. We need critics because to criticize is to THINK and to think about something, to really dig into it and find the true value, is the greatest act of love you can bestow on a work of art. No masterpiece was ever ruined because people thought too much about it; thinking something over, picking over it, and then expressing what you found, is an almost holy act of devotion to an art form. But that doesnt sit too well with the hucksters who shill out razor-bladed apples and tell you its good for your digestion; they dont WANT you to think, they want you to consume, because maybe if you took a second to think about a film, youll realize how same-y the story is, how slap-dash the production is, how ugly the underlying thematics are. So instead, these multi-millionaires manufacture a BS narrative that insists that they, the multi-millionaires are populist men-of-the-people, just trying to give everyone a good time at the movies, if only those hateful elitists in their ivory tower would give them a break. AND PEOPLE BUY THAT. If you disparage critics and criticisms, that doesnt show how anti-establishment you are, or how independent your thoughts are. You are only betraying deep, deep insecurity about your own opinions and beliefs, and allowing your voice to be a cog in an anti-thought propaganda machine. So maybe dont do that.