Everyone’s a Critic: The Devaluation of Film Criticism

Photo by Claudio Schwarz.

Film criticism is undergoing a major change right now. Over the last couple of years, studios have prioritized social media influencers and entertainment journalists over film critics, giving them more access to talent and promotional events tied to a film’s release while placing less emphasis on screenings for the reviewing press. And it’s easy to guess why. People in these roles often approach films with a level of hype that amounts to free advertising for studios, whereas a critical evaluation is an unknown; it could lead to an enthusiastic recommendation or an outright pan. I suspect this shift allows studios to control the narrative around their films and minimize any fallout that could affect a project’s box-office performance. That studios are more concerned with follower counts and publicity than cultural conversation is symptomatic of an increasingly corporatized industry, motivated more by revenue and fidelity to stockholders than by creating good art. And given that I’ve devoted the last two decades to written online film criticism, the devaluation of reviewers in favor of engineered buzz is discouraging.

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