An Analysis Of The Modern Day Film Audience
The second trend then develops in response to this critical reception. In the first fortnight of the films release and after the critical collection of opinions, one of two things may happen within the general public. One; there will be a major agreement with the critical ratings of the film or two; there will be a major disagreement with it. The first is naturally far more rational and the second rarer, but I have observed both with recent releases. Of the films last year, one can see that The Avengers, Skyfall and Django Unchained were just some of many films where there was at least an initial major agreement with what the critics had already believed. Now, it is my belief that much of our response to films is decided before we even see it; we are far more likely to agree with a critic than disagree, in some cases because they are right, but in others because we feel obliged to. I hope to explore this idea of the power of critics in a later article, but for now, we can also see the second response of disagreement; both The Hobbit and The Dark Knight Rises could be used as examples. This major agreement or disagreement has become far more dominant in recent years because of the minor new invention which you may have heard of, the Internet. A small group of the audience may initially agree with critics and this will then spread like a virus across the internet until one main idea is ahead about the film, whether positive or negative. This period of a fortnight is make or break for the film makers. A positive critical and audience reception will no doubt equal in a successful film, whilst a negative critical and audience reception will be an irredeemable failure. A mix of these will obviously also produce mixed results. 
The third trend is where things become undoubtedly more complex. You see, some people are contrarians, or in a more detailed form of language, dicks. Once a general opinion of the film is formed amongst the public, they look to completely oppose what most people think in an attempt to seem more intelligent. This may mean they love a film which most belittle because they understand a hidden meaning or hating a film everyone loves because its mindless or dull. These people are fair to have their own opinions and shouldn't be forced to follow the second trend, yet contrarians only harbour these opinions once everyone else has their opinions, and look to be different. We all know contrarians. A film forum board contains hundreds. There are far more than one would expect and this is why a third new whole trend of perception is created just by their own actions. You see, at this point, we have the first trend; that of the critics, then the second, that of the public which may or may not be cohesive with the first, and now the third, the contrarians, which will never be cohesive with the second. I feel like I am over-complicating this, and yet its so simple and happens all the time. I shall now attempt to explain it using a few different films to illustrate it in real life situations. Firstly, the Hobbit. The first trend, critical reception, was positive, and yet seemed poor in comparison to the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Upon release, the second trend emerged and it seemed as if the general public consensus was in somewhat a disagreement with that of the critics. In fact, from what I've personally seen, The Hobbit, at least at first, seemed to be received incredibly well by audiences, completely opposing what many critics said. However, then our third trend of response emerged. Our contrarians saw that the public was generally enjoying The Hobbit and so the critics were suddenly right in the first place. It was overly long and dreary, naturally. This made the public opinion of the Hobbit seem far more split than it was at first, and can make analysing its success, at least in terms of reception, far more difficult. This shows how, only a few months ago, The Hobbit was exhibited in stages to the audience and how trends in reception emerged over the first month or so of release. 
Another example would be The Avengers. Trend One; brilliant critical reception. Trend Two; brilliant audience reception. Trend Three; claims of the Avengers being mindless rubbish and, one of a contrarians two favourite words, Overrated. Three trends of reception from the audience. Finally, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. A (somehow) Oscar nominated cliché-crap-fest starring Tom Hanks. The critics hated it, the public then hated it. Then, eventually, there were calls of it being complex and misunderstood. Of course. The scariest thing about this situation was the fact that this third trend consisted of many from inside the Oscar academy. How encouraging. With all of these ideas and examples explored, I hope I've properly expressed my beliefs about how the reactions to films evolve and take place. I also hope you have become interested in more of these articles, focusing on how the audience respond to films and how this can be influenced. With this first idea, we can see three clear primary trends which take place to form and overall opinion of a film which will be recorded for years to come. I believe there are other trends too, but these take place years after the films release. Even Star Wars was initially panned, yet today is lauded as a fantastic film. Trends of opinion do change beyond these first three, but they take years to do so. Who knows, in 40 years, The Dark Knight may be seen as convoluted rubbish or Argo may be a distant memory of an insignificant and generally pretty dreary film. Similarly, Michael Bay films could, just could, be thought of as incredible masterpieces of film-making and dialogue. And on that nightmarish, horrid, horrid note, Ill grant you a goodbye!