So a film defies the critics.
Tom Hardy’s unhinged superhero tale – based on a Spider-Man villain, but lacking even a passing reference to the now Marvel-owned web-slinger – is being showered in the viscous black goo of negative critical reviews. Chris Hewitt on The Empire Podcast declared it could set comic-book movies back 10 years and this publication’s Peter Bradshaw said it was “riddled with the poison of dullness”.
And yet, people are going to see Venom. Its global box office opening weekend of $205m has doubled its $100m production budget and the mammoth $80.3m domestic bow smashed the $55m record for an October opening previously held by Alfonso Cuarón’s Oscar-winning Gravity. It topped the box office again in its second week and is already within touching distance of the global box office total of Solo: A Star Wars Story.
Colour me surprised. Critics are parasites that feed off the arts. They labour under the impression that their right-on opinions count for anything and they repeatedly underestimate the buying public. People go to see films to be entertained. That’s it. So films that are entertaining will sell well with the public.
Critics on the other hand will write trite articles designed to show off how clever they are. So, as a general rule of thumb, if a film or book is panned by the critics, it’s probably a ripping yarn and well worth the punt.
Numbers aside, Venom and The Greatest Showman have a great deal in common. They’re both defiantly silly movies arriving in the wake of heavier, more serious counterparts.
There you go. Silly is escapism, nothing more. It’s what people want. It’s not intended to be great art to be taken seriously. It is what it is – an hour and a half of mindless entertainment.
If I fancy the look of something, I’ll shell out to see it. What I won’t do is see what the critics think. I’m perfectly capable of making up my own mind.
Well said. Same with the Oscars…as a rule if a film wins an Oscar I will do my best to avoid it as they tend to go for some highly serious but boring as hell films that work better than zopiclone over anything that is remotely exciting.
+1
Same applies to Booker prize nominated books
Ah, yes, literary fiction. Usually self-indulgent wank that is tedious to read and has little discernible plot. The literati will fawn over such claptrap, yet deride an author such as Dan Brown who sells in the millions. Dan Brown may not write literary prose, but he gives his readers what they want – a ripping yarn.
A ripping yarn:
Tom Sharpe and Jeffery Archer: easy to read, good plots, mildy educating, mocking and escapist entertaining – ie Fiction.
As opposed to worthy, turgid prose all about the “feels” designed for the author to indulge in self-congratulatory masturbation and for the critics to fawn in an attempt to show how woke they are.
Imho
will remain on bookshop shelf gathering dust.
I want entertained, not lectured. Good we agree on this.
So very true! I watched ‘Black Panther’ on Sunday, as it was a Sky Movies premiere. I remember the hype, the critics raving over it, how it was the greatest film ever, did so much for ‘the black community’, etc, etc.
Effects were good. But is that not to be expected today? The rest, well, subtext: “Yay, Africa rules! But we need the white US flyboy to stop the cargo of death we unleashed on the world, because we’re too busy fighting amongst ourselves…”
The very fact that this was being promoted by the likes of the Guardian is enough to put me off.
In 1977 I read the review of Star wars (A New Hope) Episode 5 in The Times. It got panned. I went to see it three times at the cinema as I enjoyed it so much. There you go.