The Official Suicide Squad Rotten Tomatoes Thread - Part 1

I mentioned it. That's exactly right. It goes both ways. Panned movies can make a mint, acclaimed movies can bomb. Really showing just how little influence critical consensus has.

I have never heard of a movie that was the most anticipated one of the year not drawing in the crowds when it was finally released. A movie doesn't reach those hype levels only for significant numbers of people to decide not to go and see it when it finally arrives. Just does not happen.

I agree that competition and date of release can be contributing factors. These are documented fact by the experts as things that can affect box office. For example its one of the things that makes BvS under performance look so shameful. Released in March, no competition in theaters to take a bite out of its earnings, but it struggled and never made it to the billion the whole world and its mother were expecting it would make. On the other side of the spectrum you have SS, which at least has an excuse besides poor quality for having a big drop in the 2nd week. There's competition. That Sausage Fest movie dipped into its profits for example. So we know that's a significant factor that is irrelevant to reviews.

I'm just going to leave your dorm story point. You know my view on personal experience tales. Not that I think you're fibbing or anything.

 

Kinda hilarious and petty, keep going.

 

Agreed. Some of those movies so good it not fair they bombed. I love Shawhank Redemption and Fight club.

 

You know, I realize the big argument is over other things, but I feel the need to ask again:

Why *should* people go to see a terrible movie? If a movie gets reviews in the 20% range, and people stay home. . . is that not what *should* happen?

 

I guess one of the excuses is, that there is a bias against the DCEU and more people would have seen it if it got more of a fair shake from the reviewers.

Although, personally, I don't see how much higher it would have been even if the reviewers were gracious.

 

Thinking there is a bias sufficient to matter, when the RT rating is *27%*, is pure conspiracy mongering. No plausible amount of "bias" would make for a "real" score that is anything less than terrible.

 

+1.

"Itz a conspirasee" nonsense needs to stop. It was a bad film. If it was a good film (particularly among the GA) then people would have still gone to see it.

 

What I was saying was regardless of what should happen,the scenario does happen in some cases and shouldnt be dismissed.I mean I do it to for certain movies.Like I certainly wouldnt have seen Conjuring if it wasnt for good reviews.But for movies for which Im hyped about I go see anyway.I'm 95% sure I will go see Doctor Strange regardless of its reviews.

Regarding the conspiracy/bias thing I dont think most smart DC fans feel that way.But I wont speak for everyone.My feelings close align to this :

http://www.forbes.com/sites/markhug...despite-medias-gloom-and-doom/2/#1aa4859e7a1f

A quote :

"I will strenuously defend the press and film reviewers against hyperbolic accusations and false, uninformed claims of widespread payoffs and bribery, and I consistently tell my readers and fans on social media to stop silly claims of conspiracies against their favorite films. And I will forever defend the right of film critics to express their opinions whether or not readers happen to aggree with the writer’s personal subjective assessment of art.

But I will just as strongly disagree with any members of the press who try to pretend ulterior motives or bad behavior sway some people’s writing sometimes, or who deny that there isn’t a demonstrable tendency of established narratives about a production or project or star to be perpetuated by outlets and reporters. This isn’t to say it can’t change, that people don’t resist it, or that it is the dominant truth of entertainment journalism, but it’s there and it’s not just a few “bad apples” or rare occurrences. And let’s face it, everybody knows it and can see it, so when the media tries too hard to deny it or make excuses for it, it merely enhances the perception that the press can’t be trusted to be honest about itself."

Its a very well written article,I suggest you give it a read.

 

I'm not necessarily agreeing or disagreeing with the article however, isn't it a little bit of a conflict of interest if the one who's trying to defend SS and WB from the negative reviews is the one who also gets insider exclusives?

 

I am not getting what you are trying to imply.What I believe is him and many other journalist have good rapport with WB,as do other journalists with other studios and thats why they gets exclusives.

I judge his work and his opinion completely seperately.I find his articles measured,insightful,well written,well researched and very balanced.Even when I disagree with him.

 

I may and could be wrong. But what I was implying is that he may have ulterior motives in writing his piece especially if he's one of the journalists who consistently get exclusives from WB.

 

So you are implying journalists may have ulterior motives and arent always truthful about what they write?

 

I don't think I ever said that a critic or two may have it in for a movie or even a genre. Actually, I've said it about a movie or two.

But a massive conspiracy that critics sway other critics? We'd be talking about what over 200 at least who'd be in on it? And it'd be IMPOSSIBLE to keep something like that under wraps.

 

Neither does the author of the article I shared believe there is a massive conspiracy.Neither do I.

"I will strenuously defend the press and film reviewers against hyperbolic accusations and false, uninformed claims of widespread payoffs and bribery, and I consistently tell my readers and fans on social media to stop silly claims of conspiracies against their favorite films."

What he did say was :

"But I will just as strongly disagree with any members of the press who try to pretend ulterior motives or bad behavior sway some people’s writing sometimes, or who deny that there isn’t a demonstrable tendency of established narratives about a production or project or star to be perpetuated by outlets and reporters. This isn’t to say it can’t change, that people don’t resist it, or that it is the dominant truth of entertainment journalism, but it’s there and it’s not just a few “bad apples” or rare occurrences. And let’s face it, everybody knows it and can see it, so when the media tries too hard to deny it or make excuses for it, it merely enhances the perception that the press can’t be trusted to be honest about itself."

So even if we assume that he is one of them "bad apples",we are just strengthening his point.

 

So not a massive conspiracy. Just a little bit of a conspiracy?

 

Not a conspiracy at all. Please I urge you to read the article :

"Suicide Squad is falling victim to this typical press scenario not only because of the all the usual factors coming into play against it, but also because of a sort of inertia that overtakes the press once a line of thought has been established. “Gore the exaggerator,” the first U.S.-Iraq war when the media acted largely as cheerleaders for the White House, the McMartin Preschool abuse story and surrounding media hysteria, and many other examples exist of the press jumping onto hyperbolic or outright false bandwagon sentiments and hyping them for attention in order to attract viewers and increase revenue. It’s not just common, it’s a consistent aspect of modern mass media. There are entire press outlets dedicated to the pursuit of tabloid journalism, rumormongering, gossip, and muckraking.


Nobody informed about the press (note: I’ve worked as a political journalist, op-ed writer, news reporter, news program producer, and entertainment writer in print, radio, and online for many different outlets — including national and worldwide — on and off since the early 1990s) would seriously argue this isn’t generally true, even if they might debate how widespread it tends to be. The point being, it not only happens but happens frequently enough we can point to multiple occurrences of major historic import within any several-year period. And it happens in less historic, more mundane ways on a far more frequent basis.

So it would be absurd and dishonest for anyone to pretend it doesn’t happen in entertainment journalism. If news correspondents in a war zone can allow relationships, trade-offs, personal gain, bias against individuals or organizations, laziness, and various other factors to heavily influence their coverage, then yes certain movie reviewers or film bloggers or comic book fan sites can sometimes have less than 100% pure motivations when they put words to page."

 

he's basically saying "our police department is clean but we got fair share of corrupt cops."

 

Please refrain from making ad hominem attacks against the author,and lets just discuss the matter at hand shall we?

 

Going to share more bits from the article which I definetly think is worth a read :

"Flipping this coin over, though, we can find plenty of cases of bandwagon pile-ons, with reviews growing increasingly negative and accusatory toward a film, a filmmaker, a studio, or even the fanbase of a given franchise. There was a time when entertainment writers at major outlets were literally publicly calling for reviewers to write negative reviews of Christopher Nolan’s movies to teach his fans a lesson, based purely on supposed principle of preventing too much praise for the director and thus too much validation of his fans. There are film critics who posted bad Rotten Tomato ratings before they even saw a movie, publicly admitting they did it just to troll fans whom the reviewer felt were out of line (one such critic was booted from Rotten Tomatoes after his actions were publicized and many other writers — myself included — alerted the site to the abuse of the Tomatometer).

2013′s The Lone Ranger suffered a prolonged negative narrative that began when the film was still in production, and that bad buzz turned into outright hostility in the press. Reviews didn’t just disapprove of the film, they acted offended at its very existence. Online reviewers in particular engaged in a game of one-upsmanship to see who could write a snarkier headline or pull-quote bashing the film. Similar such things have happened before, when the first many reviews set the tone and the rest of the press are afraid to deviate too far from the established “official artistic sensibilities” of that narrative.

It’s hard to just point to this or that frenzied media reaction and declare one is legitimate and another isn’t. However, we draw lines in the world every day of our lives. The words “hyperbole” and “bandwagon” exist for a reason, they have definitions and we apply them when the conditions appear to justify it. To use an earlier example, we all recognize that yes, of course the “Gore the exaggerator” narrative during the 2000 presidential election was disingenuous and lazy, and is a clear example of the press grasping a cheap, simple idea and piling on with it. And while assessing art is of course about subjective taste, there are also operating truths and realities about technique and skill and craftsmanship — and about the role of observers who have enough history and varied experience to offer more informed critiques and analysis — that can be reasonable guides in allowing us to take certain claims of subjective opinion less seriously than others. If someone tells me The Godfather is a bad film but Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2 is a masterpiece of cinematic art, then I’m not going to take their opinions seriously at all, and I’d argue they are as close to “objectively” wrong as artistic opinion can get.

That’s an extreme example to make the point that there are lines we would all surely admit exist, and the question then becomes how much hyperbole or outrageous claims cross a line. You may not agree with me about every instance, and I may not agree with your examples every single time, but I bet we’d find at least some common ground regarding certain more overt examples.

Suicide Squad wasn’t liked by everyone, and that’s okay. It clearly wasn’t even liked by a majority or plurality of viewers, and that’s okay, too. The film — like most films — has flaws, and things that appeal to me might not appeal to you. If every single other review besides my own had been negative, that alone wouldn’t even prompt me to view the media coverage with skepticism. What does give me pause, however, is when I see headlines of increasing extreme assertions, claiming the film is one of the worst movies of all time, that it is possibly the most disappointing film ever made, that it is an insult to the concept of art and cinema, that it’s not even an actual movie, and so on.

Really? More disappointing than, just for one example that instantly jumps to mind as a reasonable counter-example, The Godfather Part III? Or The Color of Money (a sequel to The Hustler… written by Richard Price… with Paul Newman reprising his iconic role… staring new up-and-coming movie star Tom Cruise… directed by Martin Scorsese)? Anticipation and expectation were so high for a super-villain comic book movie that it trumps those and other examples? Not “most disappointing this year,” mind you — most disappointing ever, in the history of cinema. Likewise, the claim that it’s not even a real movie, and that doesn’t have an actual story at all, is ridiculous to the point of seeming like mere satirization of precisely the sort of exaggeration it actually is. And anyone who honestly thinks it’s the worst film of all time or even on the shortlist of contenders needs to see more films, apparently.

So intense has the bashing become, the press was caught up in the grip of flop fever. Despite Suicide Squad opening to record-breaking numbers, media reports focused on the Friday-Saturday drop as the most important part of the weekend performance. When it set a record for the biggest first Monday in August, the reports noted it was a larger percentage Sunday-Monday decline than a host of other films, ignoring the fact most of the comparisons were to movies opening in earlier summer months when weekday box office tends to be much higher or on holiday weekends where Mondays enjoyed an added boost from vacationers.

So it is that we went from bad reviews to articles seeming to try to one-up each other in how badly they could malign the film and how extreme could be their claims about its lack of any artistic merit, and that led right into coverage that paid more attention to rumors and negative “what if the bottom falls out?” scenarios than the actual numbers coming in day after day. Negativity snowballed, and meanwhile the increasing exaggerated claims plus the contradiction between financial data and press focus on gloom-and-doom prognosticating created a snowballing perception among fans that their worst fears of an “anti-DCU bias” were legit after all. This latter development in fan perceptions arises partially from the fact fans seem to latch onto negative news or bad rumors faster and with more intensity these days than positive news, so they often don’t notice the many positive articles and neutral press coverage since those reports are overshadowed by doomsaying headlines elsewhere that attract more attention. The negativity is real and frequent, but the margin between negative and positive coverage is really more narrow than it appears to fans.

More to the point, I don’t feel the overall bad press coverage and exaggerated behavior is due to some sort of anti-DCU conspiracy or even any general dislike for DC among the critics. It’s simply the way the press works when a negative story gets traction early on and the rest of the press join in. The process favors piling on, so that’s what happens, and when the press smell blood they are likely to pounce, so after the negative reactions to Batman v Superman proved so successful at generating more readership, inertia kicked in and the first set of negative reviews for Suicide Squad linked up with the prior negativity and it spoke to a larger narrative the press could latch onto. If this had been a couple of Marvel films, or some other set of franchises, the same concepts would apply and the same outcomes could have happened. So fans should move past accusations of “pro-Marvel bias” or whatever conspiracy theories they suspect exist, because I assure you that you need look no further than simple typical media trends and reactions to explain what’s going on here some of the time — although not all of the time, or even most of the time, since I really want to drive home the point that both sides of this equation go too far in their pronouncements of (a) existence of unreasonable bias or (b) total lack of any possible ulterior press motives or bad media trends.


Most reviewers do a good job of articulating why they like or dislike a film, and most do so with honesty and integrity. Likewise, most fans are not rushing to start petitions to silence everyone who dislikes things the fans like, nor do most fans resent the very existence of opinions that differ from their own. But lazy journalistic tendencies do exist, bandwagons and negative narratives are a very real part of press coverage, and denying it merely makes the press seem untrustworthy or incapable of recognizing their internal problems. Fans meanwhile have to recognize the bad actors in their own midst, be less reactionary about bad reviews and less accusatory of the media, and be willing to admit that people can love characters and comics while also criticizing the cinematic adaptations.

Some of the writers giving Suicide Squad the worst coverage might simply be suffering from burnout from having to chase after the blockbuster superhero genre month after month just to stay current and relevant and so might have less enthusiasm for these films late in the year than most other folks. I’m lucky, I love this genre — imagine, though, if you were a film reviewer who didn’t like a genre much, but whose editors insisted you spend a great deal of your time watching that genre and finding ways to attract more readers to more articles about that genre. Everyone, even professional filmmakers and film reviewers, have preferences and dislikes, and there is a tipping point where you feel overwhelmed or just flat-out tired of something after a while. Fair or not, it happens, and it doesn’t mean someone is a bad person or mean or has an ulterior motive to try to intentionally harm a film you or I love."

 

Good save. I just got a new respect for you today with your level headedness towards this whole critic review issue. To think you bought into this whole DC bias conspiracy nonsense would be disappointing.

My 2 cents, you get bias anywhere in any large collective of people who judge something and rate it. But in no way is there some sort of mass conspiracy against DC. Apart from the idea that we'd have to believe over 200 professionals are naturally biased, or someone is paying them to be, we'd also have to ignore how well the TDK trilogy did critically.

 

Yep,and the author of the article completely agrees with you.He is just commenting on how the press works and how SS was victim of it.There is no bias against DC/Marvel as a whole.

 

So, Joker, 34%. That's a big number. Bigger than i expected. Are you convinced now that a lot of people do, indeed, pay attention to critics, or you think the number will magically fall to 1% in the next couple of days?

 

Not even remotely. The thread isn't even a day old and not even scraped at least 70-80 votes yet. I know you are a fan of small numbers, but I'm not. Give this a few days, at least a week to garner up some big numbers.

I know how important this is to you, but relax and have some patience. Let the numbers build.

 

So, you think that in the beginning it will be mixed, but after a few days the number will start to dramatically fall, because of...? It goes from 33% to 1%? Lol. That would be highly strange and suspicious.

 

Now don't you worry your little head, I made sure the poll was public so you can see all the people who are voting. Wouldn't want you to be unsatisfied in any way over this important issue in the raging battle