Influencers Didn't Hijack Film Criticism, Marketing Did

Are "influencers" devaluing criticism? Of course they are, but the problem isn't new and it goes much deeper than that.

The Guardian recently published a piece by Manuela Lazic asking “Who needs film critics when studios can be sure influencers will praise their films?”

Lazic opens the piece with an anecdote about a “press screening” for Barbie, during which an usher urged the audience, which seemed to be partly made up of influencers, “Feel free to share your positive feelings about the film on Twitter after the screening.”

This even though the review embargo — that publish date that critics all agree to as part of the terms of us attending advanced press screenings — wouldn’t be lifted for two more days. Lazic and her colleagues, she writes, “were left feeling censored: if they won’t allow for our negative reactions, why should they get our positive ones?”

I’ve had this experience myself quite a few times and had similar feelings about it, so in that way I commiserate. I’m nonetheless compelled to note how much deeper the problem goes than what Lazic describes. “Critics vs. influencers” makes for a punchy headline, but it’s way above the root of a problem which if anything she wildly underestimates the depth of.

The fact that the audience at this preview screening consisted mostly of influencers was another blatant marketing strategy, which would not have been as insulting were it not for the fact that it meant many film critics were unable to see the film before its release. […]

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, what can we expect the film landscape to look like? Where will engaging, challenging and, if not completely unbiased then at least impartial conversation about cinema take place, and how is the audience to think critically of what is being sold to it?

Lazic is correct about the hype machine basically swallowing unbiased criticism, but “influencers,” as we understand them, didn’t really have anything to do with that.

A few weeks back, I wrote about the impact aggregators have had on criticism (turning everything into a battle of stans rather than a discussion of entertainment, and so forth). One thing I didn’t get into was how these studio marketing campaigns actually work, and the way critics fit into that. It feels obvious and transparent to me because I’ve done it, but then I read articles like this and realize how much about it the general public doesn’t understand (or choose to care about, which is fair, it’s not exactly the cure for cancer).

As noted, studios and the PR agencies they work with generally schedule press screenings for critics, stipulating when those critics’ reviews will go live (the “embargo”). Critics are, then, a de facto arm of that studio’s marketing, whether they choose to acknowledge that or not. These embargo agreements have long been considered a worthwhile tradeoff to make in exchange for seeing films early enough to have a review published on or in the leadup to the film’s release. It’s mutually beneficial. I’ve made that bargain myself countless times.

That part of the story is pretty old, but the part of the story that’s newer and doesn’t get talked about as much — including by Lazic — is that for at least the last five years or more, there have essentially been two classes of critics. By this I don’t mean that one of them is influencers.

This isn’t something studios and/or your local PR rep tell you, but if you’re halfway clever, you eventually start to figure it out. One funny thing that would happen to me a lot was that I’d get my press screening invitation for some big movie, and then a day before the screening or the day of, I’d get an email blast from a PR firm about how that movie was “certified fresh at 92% on RottenTomatoes!” or whatever. It was pretty rich addressing this email touting an aggregation “score” to me, a Tomatometer critic (I would never use this as a brag or proof of credentials, but it does seem relevant here) who hadn’t had a chance to review the film yet. It’d be like Wolf Blitzer telling you Biden’s Electoral Vote count before you’ve even received your ballot. This happened quite a bit, clearly being snubbed for this first round of reviews, with a marketing campaign clearly built around it.

At first you think, “maybe I’m just not important enough for that.” Eventually you come to realize that a lot of big movies have special advanced screenings for a group of special hand-picked critics (commonly those attending junkets and/or getting interviews with the cast). These are writers from whom the studios know they’ll be getting more favorable reviews — partly by design and partly just by proximity. Part of the goal of the press tour is to make the writers feel like the movie stars and filmmakers are their friends, and people naturally write nicer critiques of their friends. Then there’s round of marketing planned around those early reviews (how many times have you seen “the early reviews are in!” come up as a trending topic?). Then there are the advanced screenings for the larger circle of critics with less access, and that’s generally when the harsher reviews start trickling out, with the volume turned down.

I’ve been to a handful of junkets and there was never a quid pro quo — no one ever said “you can come to this and interview these people as long as you don’t fuck us with a mean review” — but for the entertainment writers who make that their main focus, I imagine there doesn’t have to be. It’s generally understood that if you’re too mean in the review you probably won’t get invited back next time (I went to mine with the understanding that I didn’t really care if I got invited back). And if your job depends on that access… well, you can see what the incentives here are. They certainly aren’t “write a smart review that readers will enjoy” as we once liked to assume.

And again, that’s all before we get to the phenomenon of the “influencer screening,” around which the Guardian frames their entire story about the decline of film criticism.

I remember taking my podcast partner, Matt, to a press screening for Avengers: End Game on the Disney lot, and it ended up being full of influencers. There’s certainly something palpable in the atmosphere that changes with that much needy, overenthusiastic energy in the room, and so on that level I can understand looking around during those screenings and thinking that something fundamental had changed. And something did, but it happened long before influencers started getting invited.

As I quoted in my last piece on the nature of film criticism, Quentin Tarantino recently told Libération, “Today, I don't know anyone. Is it my fault? Theirs? What remains are website names: CinemaBlend, Deadline. I am told: ‘There are still good critics.’ And I always answer: who? I say this without sarcasm.”

In today’s environment, no one wants to risk access over a negative review. And so criticism has become a game of say something positive or nothing at all, or wait until it feels like everyone is already saying something negative and pile on.

Hosting reviews in the first place is a tough economic model for a publication. a review isn’t likely to “go viral,” at least not in the way that a random pull quote (usually taken out of context for maximum effect) in an interview can (which probably doesn’t happen enough to justify this practice, but it’s what they’re hoping for). And every review puts you at risk of losing those interviews. Even people I know who read my reviews religiously don’t always read them the day they drop. Lots of times they see the movie and check back (which is fine, that’s how I read them too). Sometimes they’re re-reading them five, ten years after the fact — which feels like a success as a writer, being definitive in that way, but when your employers are checking your traffic by the day, by the hour, by the minute, it doesn’t always feel like it. Real criticism is playing a weird long game. And it’s increasingly true of basically all business that no one wants to play the long game anymore. Movie studios and streamers sure aren’t.

Lazic quotes Taxi Driver writer Paul Schrader in her piece (noting that he’s a former critc himself): “There was a period when film criticism blossomed, but that was because audiences wanted better films.”

Schrader puts the onus on audiences, as if audiences just one day decided that they didn’t care about movie quality anymore. Look around as ask yourself if that’s really true. Do you think people your parents’ age have higher movie IQs than your peers?

Film criticism mattered more when film quality mattered more, and quality mattered more when audiences still had a chance to choose. These days they don’t, at least not in the way they used to. Read Matt Stoller on what happened to the movie distribution since the period Schrader talks about. He uses Back to the Future as an example:

The roll-out of the film was gradual. The movie sold tickets at roughly the same level as its opening weekend for roughly a month. And in fact, theater owners kept demanding Back to the Future from distributors, so much so that two months after it came out in theaters, the movie was shown in more theaters than it was shown in on opening weekend.

In other words, Back to the Future was put into a *market,* where information circulated among buyers and sellers before buyers bought. Critics played a role in supplying this information, as did word of mouth from viewers, who told one another about how exciting and fun the movie really was. Theater owners also exchanged information about what was selling and what wasn’t. […]

In 1985, theater owners had more choices about what content to sell, and could decide to distribute content that was well-liked and popular without assuming a massive barrage of marketing would force them to stock the most popular stuff immediately. So they could afford to show different movies, experiment, and then bring in the popular ones over time. The video industry in general was more decentralized. Stars, directors and writers with good track records, studios, distributors, movie theaters, critics, and moviegoers shared power.

So what changed? Stoller goes into all that in the piece, but basically some policy decisions that led to lots of consolidation (where I live, there are basically two brands of multiplex from which to choose, mostly all playing the same movies). Fast forward to now, and the numbers are as front-loaded as ever, which makes marketing more important than ever, and with all the money going towards that, it’s no wonder marketing has basically sucked criticism into its gravitational pull.

Some ad-supported publications still like the idea of having reviews, but basically only for the sake of seeming authoritative, in the broader sense. Critics write more anodyne reviews because it’s less risky. Or publications farm out wild outrage-bait to freelancers to avoid risking access.

Anyway, I think I’ll be fine (thanks for asking!) without having “FILM CRITIC!” as a chosen identity mentally engraved across my chest. I always just wanted to write things that people read, and movie reviews were a means to an end. When I go on about “the integrity of film criticism!” or whatever, it’s not because I think that’s the most important thing. It’s because I think it’s emblematic of the gradual enshittification affecting everything else. Whenever people try to figure out why something sucks now, just know that the answer usually isn’t “because the kids are dumb and vain now!”

I mean they are, but that’s just because we’re old. Kids are supposed to be dumb and vain.