Film critics have long been held as the great be all end all voices of the entertainment space. Their words were sacred within the entertainment world and so powerful that they were able to make or break a product.  But things have changed drastically ever since the golden age of Hollywood.  The growing ability to instantly communicate with others quickly and effectively have left many critics on edge.  People are going to Twitter rather than reading a film review in the New York Times.  The rise of the "word of mouth" factor is a growing determinant for people, but is also undermining the power film critics once had.  

"Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen" was considered by many critics as "utterly incomprehensible" and "a great grinding garbage disposal of a movie".  The negative reception was ubiquitous from it's Tomatometer score and the peculiar loss of glowing sound byte reviews from it's subsequent TV spots.  But even with the negative reception "Transformers" has still been able to rake in a massive take at the box office.  Granted the film had the backing of it's predecessor and a strong marketing push, it still doesn't take away the fact that film critics were largely neglected.

A film where critics were unable to lift a film's box office cume, was the release of "Bruno".  The film gathered rather favorable reviews from critics and had a big 14.4 million dollar opening.  The box office gross the following day fell below expectations.  Many box office observers saw the 40% decrease (8.8 million) as the first film to be hit by the 'Twitter Effect'.  The negative reception from audiences being channeled through social networking spaces allowed the word of mouth to travel quickly.  Additionally the love affair we have with sound bytes allows sites like Twitter to flourish as a destination to find a quick film critique.  

The biggest dagger in the heart for film critics is the popularity of aggregate sites such as Metacritic.com and Rottentomatoes.com.  The popularity is greatly attributed to the sites ability to aggregate reviews and quantify them into a consensus.  The issue here is the user focuses on the short qoutes that reviewers are required to submit when logging in their review.  The qoute can undermine the reviewers work because it is seen as a encapsulating line rather than a preview.   Additionally, many film reviews dont have an attached numerical score, and therefore it is up to the aggregate editors to quantify the review.  What kind of sentence justifies a 90% or a 32%?

 

In the end it can be seen that the trend is becoming that the mass is more prone to seeking out the general consnsus rather than individual reviews.  Within our hedonistic society the time for refelction and indepth analysis is shortening every second.  Now, the dignitarian status of film critics is slowly being stripped and their 500 word review will be just as relevant as an audience's tweet.  Is this a good thing? 

[Additional Photos: "Rotten Tomatoes", rottentomatoes.com, 2009]