The process of reviewing movies is broken. The
system we expect to serve as a barometer for the quality of a film is not working the way we
want. But while it's not working the way we want, It is working the way they want. You
see, the review process may be broken, but the powerful people who broke
it want it to stay that way. Hello Internet! Welcome to Film Theory, the
show that hides power ups inside of bricks. Go ahead. Hit that one and see what comes
out. Ooh, you got the subscribe button. That one gives you big brain abilities!
Well, you know what they say. Knowledge is power…ups. So at this point, do we need
to ask if you've seen the Mario movie? It's been shaking loose so much coin that
you'd think you were suddenly in Wario land. This thing is a mega mushroom sized hit at the
global box office, sitting at nearly $1 billion in worldwide gross as I write this with no signs
of slowing down. This thing has put up such huge numbers that industry experts are even bumping
up their projections for the entire year of cinema earnings just because of this one film.
Everyone is calling out the fact that this one movie has such a shocking overperformance.
Which can we just be real here? Mario is more recognizable to children than Mickey Mouse, and
people are surprised that a feature film from the marketing masterminds behind the minions
is doing well? Whoa. Color me shocked, loyal theorists who could have seen this one coming?
I feel like a surprised Pikachu up in here. But something that was a legitimate surprise
to me and to the internet at large was the response from movie critics, especially
when compared to how different it was from all the normal people walking out of it.
As of the writing of the script, just 59% of critics on Rotten Tomatoes scored this one
positively, planting it in the rotten category. And I just got to say that does not track with the
movie that I saw. Was the Mario movie perfect by any means? No, clearly not. I was pretty upfront
in my last theory acknowledging the weak pacing, the poor character motivation, and the fact that
the soundtrack is just like the director forgot to turn off his Spotify playlist. But just listen to
some of these reviews, quote: “The whole package is a deranged mishmash, an assault on the senses
with a subpar animation style.” “The Super Mario Brothers movie is the Illumination style done at
its absolute worst.” Okay, the absolute worst? Meanwhile, the audience reception sits comfortably
at 96% positive, much closer to what seems to be the consensus from all those lowly normies
and other armchair reviewers on YouTube. And it's that division that really interests me
with a 59% critic score and a 96% audience rating, that means that the Mario movie has a
gigantic 37 point difference. Why? And why does it feel like this sort of gap between
critic and audience has been increasing over the years? Over the past decade there are a ton
of movies that were hits with the audience that just wound up as complete whiffs to critics.
Some notable examples here: Nintendo's console war rival Sony has a lot of trouble in this
category. Venom has a 30% with critics but an 80% from audiences, a 50 point swing. Uncharted sits
at 41% with critics and 90% audience approval. A massive 49 point difference. The Greatest Showman,
29% divide. Netflix originals like The Gray Man, Red Notice and Bright are 44, 56
and 57 point swings, respectively. In every single one of these cases, fewer
than half the critics recommend the movie, but more than 80% of the audience does. And it
works both ways, too. There are plenty of movies that critics loved, but audiences didn't.
The Last Jedi, Ralph Breaks the Internet, US, Hail Caesar, Uncut Gems. How does this
keep happening? Why does this keep happening? And it's not like critics and audiences don't
agree most of the time: Top Gun Maverick, Avengers Endgame, Spider-Man No Way Home, John
Wick Chapter 4. All recent examples that have critics and audience scores in the nineties.
Similarly high scores can also be found with classics like Lord of the Rings, Gladiator, The
Matrix. So is there any common feature here that we can find across the films that have this
extreme division between critic and audience? loyal theorists, this has been a subject
that's been on my mind for literal years, and the fact that it's happened again with
something as innocuous as the Mario movie, it's finally got me to look into it. After
all, it kind of feels like critics and audiences watched two completely different
Mario movies here. So what's going on? Well, after looking into the history of reviews, I
found evidence to suggest that there are some pretty powerful players in this game banking on
the fact that there's a war between audience and critic. Munch down those mushrooms loyal
theorists, we're entering the warp pipe. First, let's set up the parameters of
what we're actually talking about here. Rotten Tomatoes actually has very specific
rules and formulas for what makes a piece of media good or bad in their eyes. For both
critic and audience scores, a good review is anything with three and a half stars or higher.
If fewer than 60% of those reviews are good, a film is considered rotten. 60% or higher
gets you a fresh rating. So with that mind let's talk about our two groups. The
audience is exactly what it sounds like. Anyone who wants to voice their opinion
about the film, that means it's a big group with a lot of different types of people in it.
Shocking. I know. Meanwhile, there's some pretty strict criteria involved with Rotten Tomatoes
approving critics for their site. Basically, it boils down to “frequent quality criticism”
across written video or audio reviews, the regular person hopping on to Twitter or TikTok to share
their hot takes as the credits roll, ain’t getting added to that side of the tomato meter. And that
matters. According to Career Analysis website Zippia, film criticism in the United States has a
pretty clear demographic. More than 80% are men, more than 67% are white. 90% of them completed
some sort of college degree and they have a median age of 40 to 44. A lot of them also live
in larger cities, especially ones heavily involved in filmmaking like Los Angeles and New York.
Obviously, these traits don't define a person. Lived experiences are going to be far more
important to a human being than what boxes they check for statistics. But this is useful
information setting a tone for the majority of the reviews that are affecting the score.
Rotten Tomatoes must have agreed since in 2018 they tried to open up their roster of critics to
a greater variety of sources, but were ultimately met with a very limited degree of success.
So with all of this in mind, it starts to become clear why there's a division here.
Think about the people in the audience review section. They’re anyone from a single
NASA employed rocket scientist with five kids to a C average high school student wanting to
gentle minion with the boys, and all of those voices are treated equally. Meanwhile, I
think everyone can come up with a rough idea of the stereotypical critic, Ratatouille
hit this one on the head in the food world. But why would that impact the split we see here
between those critics and audiences on the Mario movie? Well, I suspect that a lot of it comes
down to expectation. When you have a specialized group of people that are so similar, like critics,
they're likely going to have specific expectations about what they want out of something.
And in the case of the Mario movie and other divisive films like it, seems like the reviews
kind of miss the point. The Mario movie is a kids movie aimed unapologetically at a kids audience,
Universal and Nintendo want kids to be the people who want to see this film most. It wants to be
the first movie that you saw in theaters for an entire generation of kids, while also being
good enough for the adults that take them. It is not trying to be a masterpiece. It is
trying to introduce kindergartners to the idea of movies. And in that role it works great.
But that’s also not what a lot of other modern animated films are trying to do. Look at The
Lego Movie, Puss in Boots, Into the Spider-Verse. Those are animated films too, to be sure, but
they're action comedies with grown up ideas that have the coat of kids movie paint slapped
on top. Stuff that would likely appeal more to that college educated, middle aged critic.
But the Mario movie? It’s not pretending to be a kids movie, it IS a kid's movie. Mario's
biggest problem as a character is pretty basic hero's journey stuff, learning that he needs
to believe in himself and his abilities. Oh, he also needs to eat his vegetables like Ma said,
so he can grow big and strong. Mushrooms aren't vegetables, obviously, but you get the idea.
The long and short of it is that Mario was a lot closer to something like the Paw Patrol movie,
and it seems like critics went in expecting it to be Pixar levels of story. Or at least that
was my initial hypothesis. But when I looked for evidence to confirm that suspicion, it didn't
quite pan out. Because when you look at other kids fodder like Despicable Me, Sing, Kung Fu Panda,
the Paw Patrol movie like it just called out. All of their scores match critic to audience.
Even on things considered rotten like Minions, audiences and critics agree it was trash, but they
still are going to show it to the kids anyway. So what was it about the Mario movie specifically
that caused this divide? Well, to see if I could actually spot any trends here, I pulled a bunch
of movies that had a 20 percentage point or more difference in either direction. Those where
the audience scores were higher included The Mario movie, obviously, that's why we're here.
Also, the ones that I mentioned at the top: Venom, Uncharted, Greatest Showman,
Gray Man, Red Notice, Bright. But also a lot of things that I haven't mentioned yet.
Stuff like most Fast and Furious movies, Hillbilly Elegy, Boondock Saints, Hotel Transylvania, The
Live Action Lion King remake, Maleficents one and two, Ghostbusters Afterlife. The Live Action
Cats data didn't specify if it was the one with or without the buttholes, and basically every
Transformers and Pirates of the Caribbean movie ever. Oh and I can't forget Morbius 2, return to
morbin’ time. On the other end of the spectrum, the movies that critics liked that audiences
didn't included Ralph Breaks the Internet, Uncut Gems, Turning Red, The Last Jedi, US
and Hail Caesar. Notice any trends here? Because I certainly do. Let's pull them out by
group because I can actually see a handful of things all at work here. First, very clearly,
the critics don't appreciate mindless action. That's why all the Pirates, Transformers and
Fast and Furious films are in these buckets. The Netflix action movies, even comic book
movies like Venom, they're not very deep. They're largely formulaic, but they're also fun.
They do action. And to be fair, many of them do the action well. And sometimes as an audience, you
just want to turn your brain off and let a movie wash over you. You want to be entertained.
Critics appear to be the exact opposite. They're bringing notepads, they're scouring
every frame, their brain is running over time because it's in work mode. They just can't let
a movie wash over them and enjoy it for what it is. They're trying to find something constructive
to say about every single movie that they watch, every single week, and when all the movie
does is just tick a bunch of boxes instead of offering something different, well, that's
going to lose points for the critic who watched a similar movie last week, and the week
before that and the week before that. Treating movies as just an amusement park ride is
just not as effective for the critic. Secondly, looking at this list, critics don't seem to
understand the humor and sensibilities of the Internet. Cats? Morbius? I mean, we all know
why you're here. You are the “so bad it's fun to watch” crowd. I saw Cats in a rowdy Friday
night theater with a group of kids in front of me who kept meowing at the screen and let me tell
you, it was the best cinema experience of my life. Yep, you're right Nicole Kidman. I do come
for the magic. The magic of the Taylor Swift fan girl sitting next to me during that Cats
showing shouting at the screen 40 minutes in “Where's Taylor?” It was awesome. The entire
audience erupted in laughter. But to a critic, they're not appreciating movies ironically,
they're not dressing up like a gentle minion like the rest of us. They're not waiting for Jared Leto
to Morb all over that screen. And as a result, those movies get lower scores. On the flip
side of that, though, look no further than Ralph Breaks the Internet, a movie that got
higher critical scores than audience scores, because despite trying its best to rip off the
humor and sensibilities of online meme content, it did it in the most normie way possible. Online communities can see through
that thin attempt to cater to them, which results in lower overall scores.
Lastly, and this is perhaps the biggest disagreement between the two camps, critics
don't respond to nostalgia and familiarity. While audiences clearly eat it up. Ghostbusters
Afterlife: It's fun, it's enjoyable. But it's also not a 94% positive movie. But audiences
loved the fact that it felt just new enough. You got old favorites, you got
recreations of classic moments, but with new enough faces and plotlines.
Maleficent and Maleficent 2: movies that began as a familiar and beloved fairy tale except
told with a new twist. It's safe, it's nostalgic, but also just a little bit new. That Lion King
remake: Despite its quality, it's the movie equivalent of a one way trip to nostalgia town.
Pirates of the Caribbean Dead Men Tell No Tales: It's not great, but audiences were clearly happy
to revisit a fictional world that they hadn't seen in a while. And now just take a look at the
flip side. What do critics like that audiences don't? Things that feel too new, do things too
differently, are a bit too far of a departure, or that may be good unique ideas that maybe don't
fully come together in the end. To the critic who sees the movie at least once a week, they're
placing premiums on things that are interesting. The Last Jedi is a perfect example of this, where
audience reviews on Rotten Tomatoes focus on it “not feeling like Star Wars” or the characters
not behaving in ways that they would expect. The critics praise the movie for shaking
things up, trying to do new things, taking the franchise in new directions.
Turning Red is another one that falls into this bucket. It's a Pixar movie that
most parents would take their kids to, thinking it's going to be a good time
killer for the family. But then you have scenes about periods and pads, and suddenly
the room with your kids turns a bit awkward. To a critic that's brave and necessary
storytelling about topics that don't get screen time. to the parent who is
looking to kill some hours with their kid, that's an uncomfortable conversation on the way
home from the movies. I’m not saying it's good, I'm not saying it's bad, I'm saying it's the
truth and it's going to affect your score. Now, take all of that information and look
at the Mario movie. It is all of these things rolled up into one. It's mostly pretty
colors and fun action with a pretty thin plot. It caters to online communities and gaming
scenes that critics don't typically engage with. And it's speed-running its way through
tons of Easter eggs and nostalgia bait. This movie is basically everything that critics don't
like all in one convenient package. So I think that's a pretty good explanation for what's
going on with this divide between audiences and critics as it relates to movies like Mario.
But I'm still not entirely satisfied with the answer. Like, Sure, maybe that's how it's
happening, but why is it happening? And more importantly, why does it keep happening? This
disparity between critics and audiences is a big enough issue, and it happens often enough
that it's been on people's radars for at least a decade now. You would think at this point we
would have figured some way to sort this out. I mean, shouldn't we all be on the same
side here? Audiences ideally get valuable information about movies before spending time
and money on them, and critics need someone to be reading or watching their reviews for their
jobs to exist. So why would critics versus audiences even be a thing? Unless someone was
benefiting from sustaining this conflict. Stick with me here, this is relevant, promise.
The whole idea of review aggregators like Rotten Tomatoes can trace their way
back to basically a single place, a show called At The Movies presented by a
pair of critics named Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert. Their whole shtick was that in lieu of
scores, they’d both issue movies a thumbs up or a thumbs down. Not only was it an entertaining
show presented by a pair of knowledgeable guys talking about their capital O movie opinions.
But over the years, audiences got to know Siskel and Ebert’s personal taste, to the point that they
could even tell from a glance what sort of movie they were getting into depending on the direction
the thumbs pointed. This was great for consumers, allowing them to get a clear and concise way of
getting the broad strokes on a film's quality. But for the studios, it was even better. The
marketing value of this cannot be overstated. If a movie managed to get these two to agree
that it was good, that was huge. Overall, this system was a win win for everyone
during a time when information didn't travel at the speed of the Internet. And it
kind of sounds like what Rotten Tomatoes is supposed to be in the modern day, right?
Let me just see how good or bad a movie is at a glance. But there's a problem with
how Rotten Tomatoes handles things. Back when it was just two guys on TV, it was
easy to keep up with their opinions and figure out how they thought. But now there are
thousands of critics with followings across a lot of different platforms. And in scaling up
so much, adding so many people to the process, literally hundreds of critics in most cases.
Well, you start to lose the nuance of the individual opinion. No longer do you think,
Oh, Roger Ebert, like this thing. I like the other things he recommended so I'm going to like
this one, too. Now the individual thoughts are basically stripped out of the process, flattened
down and combined with everyone else's until all you see is a number. Sometimes it's going
to be a big number with a tomato next to it, sometimes it's a small number with a green little
slime next to it. Throw in audience reviews, now you've got yourself to numbers. And would
you look at that? If they're both big, you have the new version of two thumbs up. Everyone
loves the film and you as a moviegoer should go see it immediately. And if they don't line up,
well, now you've got yourself some conflict, and the suits at all the ad agencies have really
been able to twist this one to their advantage. Marketing loves the good conflict narrative:
Coke versus Pepsi, Apple versus Android, Xbox versus PlayStation. But what they love even
more is how these conflicts get consumers to self sort into neat and tidy boxes so they're even
easier to market to. It's been happening forever. So if you end up with a film that critics aren't
feeling, but audiences are, the studio can then turn around and say “the critics don't like
our movie, but so what? our movie is for you, the average Joe.” And that can do wonders to
create a passionate fan base, an us versus them narrative. You know how ads will sometimes just
pull quotes from all sorts of different reviews? Well when Batman v Superman bombed with critics
and at the box office, the film's official account started tweeting out what look to be press quotes
attributed to random Twitter users with the text: “See it for yourself”. And wouldn’t you
know it, but the Mario movie is now doing the exact same thing. They're leaning in hard
on the audience score, tweeting a web spot, saying just “the audience has spoken.” And
it's getting the intended effect. Literally, the number one reply to this thing is “Exactly, we
don't care about critics’ opinions.” Either way, pretty much everyone with actual money
invested in this thing comes out a winner. Nintendo and Universal have a movie that fans
start defending in a surprisingly long-legged discourse, critics and content creators can write
articles and make videos like this one, actually, discussing why critics are or aren't wrong.
And Rotten Tomatoes gets clicks and traffic as people go to look up the scores, defend their
opinions on the title, review it themselves, and the whole website brand becomes part of the
conversation, all without getting dragged through the mud. Because they're the middleman.
Or are they really the neutral middleman? If you really want to start getting
into the conspiracy theory of it all, do you know who actually owns Rotten Tomatoes?
Like the actual company that runs the website? It's Fandango Media, a movie ticket retailer,
and that makes a lot of sense. You go to see how a film's been reviewed and if it catches your
fancy, hey, here's a link to buy the ticket right there at the bottom of the Rotten Tomatoes page.
Not a big deal, right? But if you go one step further up that corporate ladder, Fandango
Media is jointly owned by Warner Brothers Discovery and NBC Universal, who between them,
own all of this. I'm not saying anything, but isn't it interesting that one of those
companies just released an animated kid's film based on a popular video game that has wildly
different reception from critics and audiences, thereby driving this very conversation.
And the Mario movie is literally just one point on the rotten side for the critics, not
so bad that it looks terrible, but just enough to fuel discourse in the community and episodes
like this. Like I said, that's taking it to an extreme, but I'm just putting that little nugget
of information out there for consideration. So what do we do here loyal theorists? How do we do
better? Well, I don't think the answer is to never pay attention to reviews, nor do I think it's
to take the audience's word as gospel. Instead I think it's to take both of these things into
account. As I've shown here today numbers can tell you a lot, data is a great way to visualize
a story, but rarely is it the whole story. For me, I'm a firm believer in finding and
then following film reviewers whose personal tastes largely align with your own. Personally,
I love the more casual reviews of Jeremy Jahns, the cinematic sensibilities of Chris Stuckmann,
and the overall industry coverage of Dan Murrell, all right here on YouTube.com. Is Chris
Stuckmann sometimes a bit too artsy for my taste? Yeah. Is Jeremy sometimes a bit of an
apologetic fanboy for franchises? Absolutely. Does Den Murell… Well, actually, to be honest,
they don't have a lot of complaints with Dan, I usually really agree with his perspective.
If anything, he sometimes hedges his opinion a bit too much. Anyway, between these three,
I feel confident knowing that I'm in good hands. Getting a solid, well-rounded review
from three professionals looking at a movie all through their own unique lenses.
And from there, I'm then empowered to draw my own conclusions. There are dozens of
incredible reviewers just like them here on YouTube. If you have some of your favorites
that deserve attention, please, please, please call them out down in the comments below
so I and everyone else can go and check them out. And as always, my friends remember, it's all
just a theory. A FILM THEORY! aaaaaaaaand cut. By the way, if you want four theories
right now about the Super Mario movie, why not check out our video talking
about how Mario is literally immortal in the mushroom kingdom or how peach
is actually a human star? That link is onscreen right now. And hey, if you want
more non reviews of some incredible films, hit that subscribe button. Will you have the
honor of becoming our 12,000,000th subscriber? Hit the button to see if you hit the jackpot.
As always, my friends, I'll see you next week.
I love this video! Sums everything up in a nice little bow. I wasn't aware how lacking in diversity (in more ways than just skin color) the critics board was. If only the consensus was comprised of people from all walks of life, maybe the divide wouldn't be as wide. We need more nerds and geeks! More younger people!
Matpat W