Quote Originally Posted by FallenAngel411
Quote Originally Posted by Meta-Knight
I usually decide to completely ignore critics, as most of their opinions suck, in my opinion.
They're feedback can be useful sometimes, but for the most part, they are indeed an insufferably stuck-up group of judges who tend to believe they are above "ordinary" thinking. I never understood why their average ratings of a given movie are always 20-30% lower than the average ratings of us everyday folk. Its like they're all members of some humanoid subspecies with lowered endorphin production levels and lack of a soul. Hmmm.
I agree with both of you. Whenever I read a review of a movie, then check it out myself, it turns out to be exactly the opposite. Usually reviewers will create undue hype about a film (maybe they're getting a little "greenery" to help them with their ratings) and because of that everyone thinks it'll be great... even the Oscars have become little else than a marketing machine. It's gotten to the point where I never read or trust reviews, and rarely watch new films. I read books, they're far better entertainment. Books don't sell out, because writers are there to tell a story, not sell a product. Yes, there are exceptions to that rule, but books have a much better track record than films for authenticity. I also rate films or games much lower than most reviewers, but my average lowering percentage is more like 30%-60%.

And then, of course, we have films that are based on books, and they always manage to lose the atmosphere of the book, edit out parts of the storyline, have poor screenplays, hype up the violence and sex to a great degree... the list goes on. E.g. Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter. (And don't even get me started on the Harry Potter books. J.K. Rowling's now beloved series has become dry, boring, overly dark, unecessarily long...)

On the other hand, the thing I like about Metacritic is that they compound all the reviews of the movie, book, CD or game in a list, and then average it out into one final mark on 100. They also include "underground" reviewers in that list, which will usually tend to be more critical (no pun intended) of the material.