If I am getting your point, you are basically positing that critics are inherently disconnected for different reasons and we should see them as some fringe freaks more than anything ?
PS: to put it out there, there’s people working at beer makers tasting beer samples every single day to check it is exactly the right taste. Ideally every day it has the same taste, if it differs they’ll do what’s needed to bring it back in line. That for decades in some companies. These people exist in spaces.
> If I am getting your point, you are basically positing that critics are inherently disconnected for different reasons and we should see them as some fringe freaks more than anything ?
They are writing for different audiences. That does not make them "freaks".
And their audience is more biased toward a.) those more deeply interested in movies b.) those seeking out of mainstream weirder things. People only casually interested in movies wont regularly read reviews. They read review once in a while if curious, but have no reason to read on regular. And people not seeking can find new movies by looking at local cinema program.
And also, if critics and mass were "connected" in the sense of "producing exact same score and commentary", there would be zero reason to pay critics. You would just go to aggregated mass score for that for free.
I agree with your take on platform where there is near 0 barrier to entry. Netflix for instance, or TV programming. Casual people will be less willing to go through reviews to device on a piece, and they'll also probably have had other customer reviews or view count guide them in their choice.
It is albeit different if to watch the movie you need to carve 3 hours of your time-off, go to a theater and pay 15€. Instead of randomly choosing a movie currently airing in your local theater, you might want to know if it's something you have any interest for (Imagine watching Edge Of Tomorrow thinking it will be some Star Trooper like spectacle). In that setting I think people expect critics adjust their assessment to the target public of the movie and give an accessible review of the piece. Which is super hard, but that's what they are expected to do.
I had both casual and "serious" periods. And in casual period I just check IMDB score, genre and few top mini-reviews there. That is it, I definitely wont read full length article to figure out whether I want to see the movie. Half casual movie watching experience is about social anyway, you go because friends go and selection of movie is less important.
In periods when I am more interested, I don't read what movie critics write to determine whether I will see the next action movie. I read that to learn more about movies, to find movies that are different or because reading it is fun.
My point here is that movie critics nowdays are not all that much serving the function of "make average person know whether they will like the movie". Average person has easier lower effort ways to find that.
Historically, aggregated mass scores weren’t really possible until social media, so one could argue that being a movie critic was something that had a pre-Twitter value that may have since changed.
Box-office receipts kind of correlate with this, but take a while to shake out, and sometimes what does and does not succeed at the box office is a matter of timing and chance.
PS: to put it out there, there’s people working at beer makers tasting beer samples every single day to check it is exactly the right taste. Ideally every day it has the same taste, if it differs they’ll do what’s needed to bring it back in line. That for decades in some companies. These people exist in spaces.