'There is no such thing as Bad Publicity'

An argument that Kermode discussed was that of whether or not bad reviews actually generate bad box office takings and the strange tangent between badly reviewed movies grossing a lot at the box office. There are many examples of these types of movies. An example that comes to mind would be Spiderman 3 directed by Sam Raimi which brought home a staggering 890,871,626 million dollars at the box office. This followed poor reviews which called the movie 'out of sorts' as well as having a 'lack of humour.' Another example would be Grown Ups which realed in over 270 million dollars in the box office despite woeful reviews that claimed the movie had 'poor direction as well as a stunted script.' Grown Ups received a 10% rating on Rotten Tomato and a 5.9/10 IMDb rating. So why is that these movies seem to do well? It seems that people read these reviews and want to find out if the movies were actually as bad as the critics made them out to be. It seems that bad reviews actually create a buzz about movies as they are conversed more and therefore and marketed more heavily than perhaps even movies that have received very good reviews.

On Monday 2nd of December my class and I went to the Phoenix Theatre in order to view a talk from Mark Kermode on his new book 'Hatchet Job.' This was especially exciting to me as I've been listening to the Mark Kermode show for over four years. Kermode spoke about the content of his book explaining it was about his opposition to modern critics and the need for more professional more knowledgable critics. Kermode claimed that due to increasing amateur critics and bloggers his profession was being undermined and that critics no longer have the same influence that they used to have.