I’m so glad you and your niece have found my comments helpful!

Lyle, nice analysis. I agree with you that it’s entirely possible for critics to have an effect in only one direction, too.

Anciliary markets seem to play a key role in franchise films, too, with DVDs and TV airings being used to get people excited about the sequel (or to give new audience members a chance to catch up).

IMO, a sucessful franchise plays upon goodwill towards the property. Pirates II’s marketing smartly relied on a message of how much people enjoyed the first one and the first one dodged the initial “cash grab” expectation by including Johnny Depp and Gore Verbinski, who have just enough of an “edgy” and “quality” rep to make the film look like it would be more substantive than one would expect out of a movie based on a theme park ride.

The big dangers for franchise films is if the property looks a bit stale (Terminator), if the film plays upon a stale aspect of the franchise (Superman Returns, which seemed to look backwards despite two other popular adaptations on TV), if the adaptation looks too different, losing any goodwill audiences have for the franchise (Catwoman) or if the most recent outing was unsatisfying (Alien, Matrix).

For the most part, critcs can’t negatively affect these factors, though I think they can make a positive difference (most movie goers expect the critics to dislike a franchise film, so a good review becomes notable).

Popular opinion carries little weight with me. Some comics/movies/records will get my money regardless of critical reviews (I enjoyed Pirates II and Supes Returns [but if you want to see a REAALY good movie, so see Little Miss Sunshine]). But the word of a trusted critic or friend (not my friend who loves 98% of all horror movies) can make the difference.

Keep on plugging, Johanna!

I believe, though, that critics and word of mouth can prevent even the most powerful franchise sequals from reaching their maximum audience. Its on these margins where some ‘quality’ (as defined by critics) matters.

I think you are attacking strawmen.

I take your point, and I even agree with part of it, but I can’t agree with judging qualities like funny or good by mass vote.

Thanks, everyone, for lots of good points I have nothing to add to.

I don’t know how anybody could have seen Pirates II and believed that the script couldn’t have been ‘better’, i.e. been more satisfying on the summer escapist grounds that it was working on. The first movie is evidence that it could have been done better.

Of course, it was a success, and I attribute that to the fact that it was a sequal and hit on all the fanboy references for those who had seen the first movie. But it could have been better. And it would have probably done even better in the market if the faults critics found it its script weren’t there.

And thus critics serve a purpose by emphasizing lost oppurtunities and are not simply projecting their genre preferences in the review. To the degree that the reviews hurt Pirates sales at all (and they probably did to a (very) small degree), it will hopefully encourage a bit more scrutiny on the story end for the coming sequal.

Its about efficiency.

However, to judge the importance of critics by their effect on the box office of PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN is rather missing the point. Films like PIRATES are truly review-proof because they appeal to audiences who basically just want a well-hyped shiny thing that delivers on the promise of an evening’s mindless entertainment. Second tier films, and especially those with some actual intellectual or dramatic content, rely much more on word of mouth, and on the critics to kickstart it.

Besides, the function of a good critic is not simply to dole out star ratings, but to write in an interesting way about what a film is trying to do, and why it works (or doesn’t). The whole notion that criticism exists to determine what films succeed is utterly wrongheaded. It exists for the primary purpose of having an interesting conversation.

And therein lies the problem. Most of the public doesn’t ask for craft, at least not in any conscious, articulated fashion. They have a binary worldview of “Good” and “Bad”, and they really don’t care about “Why?” As long as the soundtrack is jazzy enough, they aren’t going to be concerned with the long-term socio-political ramifications of the lead being a dog.

“Thumbs up” or “Thumbs down”. The rest is for students of the craft, not consumers. (That is should be is a totally different argument, and one that simply creates a heirarchy of more and more involvement. I also detect a sense of sour grapes, when on the one hand he claims that the critic is not an agent of mass tastes, and yet using the royal We and “en masse” to describe a good movie.)