Film critics are up in arms after an embargo was imposed on their reviews of “Dune: Part 2” while social media influencers were encouraged to share their thoughts on it immediately.
As reviews of films on TikTok – “MovieTok” as it has become known – and other platforms become ever more influential, studios are increasingly prioritising “social sentiment” over newspaper write-ups.
This is a trend that has been “evolving over the past few years”, wrote Manuela Lazic in The Guardian, and it “concerns not only the film criticism profession, but culture at large”.
‘Steaming from all orifices’
Richard Morrison, in The Times, said he looked on in horror as dozens of “influencers, industry hangers-on and general celebrity freeloaders” were allowed to share their verdicts of “Dune: Part 2” straight away, while press writers were muzzled for a week.
“My film critic colleagues are steaming from all orifices,” he wrote, adding that he shares “their indignation” at the policy. Critics should “fight back” against the “deplorable tactic” of putting TikTok reviewers first, he said.
Newspapers and websites publish “millions of (mostly favourable) words each year about new movies”, Morrison added, and “in return the film industry should treat knowledgeable film reviewers with respect, not try to boot them into irrelevance”.
A similar approach was taken at the London press preview screening of “Barbie” last year, where mainstream media critics “were left feeling censored”, said Lazic.
“If all discussion of a film’s merits before release is left to influencers, whose driving ambition is to receive free merchandise by speaking well of the studio’s products”, then where will “engaging, challenging” and “at least impartial conversation” about cinema take place, and “how is the audience to think critically of what is being sold to it?”
The trend is “aggravating to see”, wrote Patrick Sproull for GQ, because while critics have “editorial and ethical standards to adhere by”, MovieTok is a “comparative Wild West”.
Some TikTok reviewers are paid by movie studios, he said, accepting “large burlap sacks with dollar signs on them”, meaning “they’re simply the useful pawns of publicity departments”.
‘Democratisation of opinion’
But many on MovieTok think that traditional critics have “false or unearned authority”, said The New York Times.
“A lot of us don’t trust critics,” Bryan Lucious, who has 387,000 followers, told the paper. Pointing to disparities between the scores of casual users of review aggregation site Rotten Tomatoes and the “top critics”, he said this showed the “critical establishment” is “out of touch”.
MovieTok influencers regard what they do as “distinct from film criticism” and “even position themselves as more legitimate than supposedly stale establishment writers”, ushering in a “democratisation of opinion”, said Sproull.
UK entertainment publicist Amber Muotto told ScreenDaily that influencers are not replacing journalists as such; rather they are allowing greater coverage of films potentially overlooked by the mainstream media. “I’ve been in situations where it’s like drawing blood from a stone to get journalists to cover [a smaller title],” said Muotto, who specialises in independent films. “When we’re not going to get those reviews we were hoping for, we have to pivot to influencers to fill those gaps.”
But traditional media critics are unconvinced. “Giving social media sycophants a head-start to influence public debate” does “nothing to nurture film as a grown-up art form”, wrote Morrison.