Are movie critics journalists? Reviews for “Wonder Woman 1984” suggest many are not.

[Headline photo: Gal Gadot speaking at the 2016 San Diego Comic Con International, in San Diego, California (Photo by Gage Skidmore; used under CCA-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.]

By Kent R. Kroeger (Source: NuQum.com; December 31, 2020)

A friend of mine from graduate school — whose opinions I trusted, particularly when it came to movies and popular culture (for example, he introduced me to South Park)— shocked me one day when he told me he hated The Godfather.

How can someone who loves movies hate The Godfather?! How could someone so well-informed — he is today a recognized expert in the role and social importance of myth-making —be so utterly wrong?

The answer is quite simple: Danny prided himself on being a critic and he had a genuine problem with The Godfather, particularly the acting and dramatic pacing. [A similarly harsh critique of The Godfather was written in 1972 by Stanley Kauffmann of The New Republic.]

The reality is, thoughtful people can have dramatic differences in opinion, especially when it comes to things as subjective as movies and entertainment. [I love Monty Python and my Stanford PhD wife thinks they are moronic. Both opinions can be correct.]

Still, I’m convinced if you put 100 well-educated movie critics in a room to discuss The Godfather, 95 of them would say the movie is an American classic, and most would probably put one or both of the first two Godfather movies in the Top 20 of all time. The ‘wisdom of the crowd’ represents something real and cannot be ignored.

At the same time, those five Godfather-dismissing critics are no less real and their opinions are no less meritorious — assuming they aren’t pursuing an agenda unrelated to judging the quality of The Godfather.

But that is the problem I fear contaminates too many movie reviews today. Movie critics, by training and platform, are ‘opinion journalists.’ As such, they filter their opinions through a desire to please (impress) an immediate social circle (and bosses), as well as an influence from the mood of the times. We all do that, as it is only human.

But good journalists, including movie critics, fight that tendency — or, at least, I believe they should make the attempt.

In the case of movie criticism, to not do so risks compromising the value of the critiques. At best, it renders the criticism worthless, and at worst, malevolent.

It is fair to ask at this point, what the hell am I talking about?

I am not going to review Wonder Woman 1984 (WW84) here. I enjoy reading movie criticisms, but I don’t enjoy writing them. However, if I did review WW84, it might sound something like this review by Alteori:

As much as I thought Gal Gadot raised her game in WW84, I didn’t think anybody else did. But my overall reaction to WW84 was driven, in part, by what I did before I even saw the movie.

My first mistake (besides grudgingly subscribing to HBOMax — whose horrible, wretched parent company I once worked at for a short time) was to read one of the embargo-period reviews. Those are reviews from movie critics pre-selected by Warner Bros. to see the film prior to a wider release.

Normally, for movies I am excited to see, I avoid the corporate hype and eschew the early reviews. I want my opinion to be uncorrupted by other opinions. WW84 was one of those movies because, as this blog can attest, I am a huge fan of the first Wonder Woman movie (2017), particularly Gal Gadot’s portrayal of the superhero and the way director Patty Jenkins and screenwriter Allan Heinberg avoided turning the film into a platform for some watered-down, partisan political agenda. Wonder Woman (2017) was a film made for everyone.

[By the way, as a complete digression, I don’t care when people mispronounce names, especially when it is a name outside the someone’s native language. But I don’t understand why still 9-out-of-10 movie reviewers pronounce Gal Gadot’s name wrong. It couldn’t be simpler. It is Gal (as in guys and gals) and Guh-dote (as in, ‘my grandmother dotes on me’). Here is Gal to help you with the pronunciation.]

But, for reasons unknown, I decided to read one “Top Critic” review of WW84 before seeing the film myself. I will not reveal the reviewer’s name; yet, after seeing WW84, I have no idea what movie that person saw because it wasn’t the WW84 I saw.

This is the gist of that early review (for which I paraphrase in order to protect the identity and reputation of that clearly conflicted reviewer):

Wonder Woman 1984 is the movie we’ve all been waiting for!

If I had only read the review more closely, I would have seen the red flags. Words and phrases like “largely empty spectacle,” “narratively unwieldy,” “overwrought,” “overdrawn,” and “self-indulgent” were sprinkled throughout, if only I had been open to those hints.

In fact, after reading nearly one hundred WW84 reviews in the last two weeks, I see now that movie critics will often leave a series of breadcrumb clues indicating what they really thought of the movie. At the office they may be shills for the powerful movie industry, but similar to Galen Erso’s design of the Death Star, they will plant the seed of destruction for even the most hyped Hollywood movie. In other words, they may sell their souls to keep their jobs, but they still know a crappy movie when they see one.

Maybe ‘crappy’ is too strong, but WW84 was not a good movie — not by any objective measure that I can imagine. Don’t take my word for it. Read just a few of the reviews on RottenTomatoes.com by movie critics that still put their professional integrity ahead of their party schedule: Hannah WoodheadFionnuala HalliganAngelica Jade Bastién, and Stephanie Zacharek,

It’s not a coincidence that these movie critics are all women. It is clear to me that they have been gifted a special superpower which allows them to see through Hollywood’s faux-wokeness sh*t factory. That male movie critics are too afraid to see it, much less call it out, is further proof that one of the byproducts of the #MeToo movement is that liberal men are increasingly useless in our society. They can’t even review a goddamn movie with any credibility. Why are we keeping them around? What role do they serve?

Alright. Now I’ve gone too far. The vodka martinis are kicking in. I’m going to stop before I type something that generates the FBI’s attention.

I’ll end with this: I still love Gal Gadot and if WW84 had more of her and less of everyone else in the movie, I would have enjoyed the movie more. Hell, if they filmed Gal Gadot eating a Cobb salad for two-and-a-half-hours I would have given the movie two stars out of four.

To conclude, if you get one thing from this essay, it is this: Gal Guh-dote. Gal Guh-dote. Gal Guh-dote. Gal Guh-dote. Gal Guh-dote. Gal Guh-dote. Gal Guh-dote. Gal Guh-dote. Gal Guh-dote…

  • K.R.K.

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