Archive for March 23rd, 2010

Would critics like Rolling Stone's Peter Travers be as influential if his reviews weren't published before the release dates?

In thinking of what kind of strange changes could be made to drastically alter the movie industry, I tried to think about how different things would be if we simply changed the time at which movie reviews were allowed to be published. Obviously most of them are written and published before the movies they judge are released into theaters, but some studios decide every so often to not hold critic screenings for some of their films. When this happens it is usually taken to be an indicator that the studio is not confident in its product and therefore wants to spare the film in question any bad publicity for as long as it can, which is up until the end of its first weekend.

What if, though, there were no preview screenings for critics period? Some might say this would completely change what most people take to be the function of a movie critic, which is to act as a sort of consumer reporter that evaluates the quality of a product and relays its findings and opinions to the public. No one wants to go to a “bad” movie for obvious reasons – it’s a waste of time and money. Right? So if there were no advanced critic screenings then how would people know which movies are worth their time and money, and which ones aren’t? Moviegoers would be forced to rely more on their friends, family, and general word of mouth. This may seem hugely inconvenient, but some studies show that people already put more stock into word of mouth than in movie reviews (this Variety article proves very enlightening on this topic). Read the rest of this entry »