{"id":291,"date":"2015-11-16T18:28:00","date_gmt":"2015-11-16T23:28:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/2015\/11\/16\/how-big-movie-franchises-are-bypassing-the-critics\/"},"modified":"2015-11-16T18:28:00","modified_gmt":"2015-11-16T23:28:00","slug":"how-big-movie-franchises-are-bypassing-the-critics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/2015\/11\/16\/how-big-movie-franchises-are-bypassing-the-critics\/","title":{"rendered":"How big movie franchises are bypassing the critics"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"clear: both;text-align: center\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.theverge.com\/2015\/11\/16\/9731832\/star-wars-the-force-awakens-secrecy-spoilers-critics-reviews\" style=\"margin-left: 1em;margin-right: 1em\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" border=\"0\" height=\"135\" src=\"http:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/-ZmmUZdh4b-M\/VkpYIBGQ7LI\/AAAAAAAAB_0\/edf78fBixtE\/s400\/weighin.png\" width=\"400\" \/><\/a><\/div>\n<p>Last year, we mentioned <a href=\"http:\/\/aulibmedia.blogspot.com\/2014\/08\/have-we-reached-age-of-post-plot-movie.html\">the idea of a post-plot movie<\/a>, where property-driven movies transcend the need for strong narrative drive. Bryan Bishop at <i>The Verge<\/i> has noticed an odder, more troubling trend: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theverge.com\/2015\/11\/16\/9731832\/star-wars-the-force-awakens-secrecy-spoilers-critics-reviews\">the post-critic movie<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Films have historically depended on advance screenings for critics to generate positive buzz. This is especially true for smaller or less-promoted films, which can capitalize on high marks on Rotten Tomatoes to generate pre-release attention. Now, rumors indicate that the upcoming <i>Star Wars<\/i> film will not screen for critics&#8230; because it doesn&#8217;t need to. Bishop points out that major franchises like <i>Star Wars<\/i> or Marvel have seized on fans and online communities to generate hype, and for movies with stratospheric expectations like <i>The Force Awakens<\/i>, studios have no reason to put more information out early.<\/p>\n<p>There&#8217;s a separate but adjacent phenomenon where studios won&#8217;t screen bad films to hide their quality (see this summer&#8217;s <i>Fantastic Four<\/i>), but this is different. The worry isn&#8217;t bad publicity: it&#8217;s losing control of the publicity. If you already have loyal fans at Comic-Con and pop culture sites sharing every trailer, why let critics change the direction of the conversation?<\/p>\n<p>Bishop makes a convincing argument of why this is happening and what it portends for the future of the film. The short version is that people who will see <i>The Avengers<\/i> in theaters on opening weekend don&#8217;t care about the quality, so expect more direct marketing to those fans instead of indirectly through reviews. The doomsday scenario Bishop predicts in which non-fan cultural media vanishes is a long shot, but we&#8217;re definitely steeping in that direction.\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Last year, we mentioned the idea of a post-plot movie, where property-driven movies transcend the need for strong narrative drive. Bryan Bishop at The Verge has noticed an odder, more troubling trend: the post-critic movie. Films have historically depended on advance screenings for critics to generate positive buzz. This is especially true for smaller or [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[86,127,212,329],"class_list":["post-291","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-controversial","tag-film-critics","tag-links-of-interest","tag-star-wars"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=291"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=291"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=291"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=291"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}