I think time vindicates the film critic

There is an idea amongst some screenwriters working in the industry that critics are fast becoming outdated in the face of the internet peer review.

I think a certain group's feelings are hurt, personally.

Professional critics have both the greatest and least enviable job in a lot of ways. They get to go see movies, they get to write about movies, and they accept many bribes from studios with no promise of a moral payout. That is just really damn cool. But they're also usually a lot more insightful than the average consumer, and can have a hard time balancing the form's potential for art against the commercial reality of the public's tastes. I'm not sure which one should weigh more heavily on them, and how much the personal slant needs to be submerged when reviewing a film, but this is something that quite often earns them the ire of studios, writers, and also a portion of the public that is now given greater strength of voice by technology.

Though in the last case, let's be clear; people who call out critics on Rotten Tomatoes are usually just Buffalo Bill levels of insane and take offense at anything not resembling their own opinion. A good critic will voice sound reasoning in why a film falls short of the mark for them (and brother, I know many of them aren't that good). The average respondent's reasoning is usually roughly "fuck u".

Now here's the thing, and this is by no means a scientific observation yet; I think, over time, the public's tastes begin to conform to what the critic has previously said. I'd have to spend some time with the Wayback Machine to really prove it and have all intentions of creating graphs, which means

THIS WILL NEVER HAPPEN

but here are some observations.

The 90s, which according to one of the five patron saints of the screen William Goldman, was a horrible time for film, saw a lot of real flash in the pan movies. I remember 54 and Cruel Intentions being a couple of must-see films that kind of got panned but were popular with audiences. Over a decade latter, you can look at imdb.com scores and the like to see that audiences are now closer to critics in their esteem of these titles. Pretty middle of the road, really.

Look, I'm a supposed screenwriter myself, so what I say next isn't the easiest bit, but we have pros who need to step back and think about their stance on this. I saw a working writer on a forum, great guy and I cherish the fact that he walks among us, who had a movie produced recently that utterly bombed. This is one of the guys who thinks that the professional critic is an artefact of a previous era, but it kind of dropped a Tetris block into place when he thanked a user for their kind review. That review? The user had just lost a parent and needed a laugh.

Hey, it's a compliment and you should take it, that you brought a bit of light into this person's temporarily miserable life. But that's not a review, it's an emotional reaction. No less valid, but one is not the other.

My roundabout point is this; the technology of communication has not invalidated an old profession so much as it has allowed us to insulate ourselves from dissenting opinion by allowing us to wrap ourselves in the warm, selective afterglow of those who agree with us. The ego is a reflexive muscle like any other and if you don't allow it it's wounds, it won't strengthen.

And it's not like most critics want to see bad movies and tear people down. I've worked on a few films, all of them pretty horrible, but I think most people orbiting the industry see that the worst film still has a lot of people bleeding over its creation. A good critic is going to give you the tools you need to do better the next time out. Ignore them at your own peril.

Wherever did you get to, Paul Tatara? This one was for you.