Rough reviews come with the territory.
Anyone connected to Hollywood should understand that. Bad reviews still sting, but they’re unavoidable. Even the year’s best films snag a few naysayers.
There’s a reason a 100 percent “fresh” rating at RottenTomatoes.com is so rare.
Another Hollywood truism? Audiences often look past bad reviews to make movies a hit. The “Twilight” saga earned withering reviews, but all five films made serious coin.
Sony CEO Tony Vinciquerra either forgot or ignored that reality.
Vinciquerra addressed the failure of Sony’s new Spider-Man-adjacent film, “Kraven the Hunter,” in a new LA Times interview.
The CEO lamented “Kraven’s” disastrous box office debut, insisting the supervillain origin story “isn’t a bad film.” He has some defenders on this front. The film’s withering 16 precent “rotten” rating is balanced out by a 73 percent “fresh” score from general audiences.
That doesn’t explain why the film has generated just $18 million in two weeks of release, dropping 72 percent from its debut frame.
That’s bad word of mouth in action.
The executive also suggests “Madame Web,” the Sony dud from earlier this year, similar didn’t deserve its fate. That film earned an anemic $43 million stateside along with rough reviews and social media scorn.
“‘Madame Web’ underperformed in the theaters because the press just crucified it. It was not a bad film, and it did great on Netflix.”
Many films, good, bad and awful, do well on streaming services. There’s zero risk behind them in that format. Viewers can sample a film and bail after 10 minutes, and they can do so from the comfort of their couches.
It’s the opposite of the theatrical experience where audiences intentionally plan to see a movie, leave their homes, possibly hire babysitters and expect a first-class feature.
The Rotten Tomatoes score for “Web” stands at a brutal 11 percent “rotten”/55 percent from audiences. Art is subjective, but it’s much harder to argue that “Madame Web’ got robbed in theaters.
Here’s where Vinciquerra loses us.
“For some reason, the press decided that they didn’t want us making these films out of ‘Kraven’ and ‘Madame Web,’ and the critics just destroyed them.”
What?
Critics aren’t perfect. They have their flaws and biases. The industry’s left-leaning nature jumps to mind, offering an imbalanced look at filmmaking.
They don’t set out to destroy films based on the subject matter, especially when the topic in question is men and women wearing tights. Few mainstream critics were dying to see a “Guardians of the Galaxy” adaptation, but the MCU film went on to score strong reviews and spark a popular trilogy.
Vinciquerra is way off base here, and embarrassingly so. He doubles down on his mistake by proving his hypothesis incorrect in the following sentence.
“They also did it with ‘Venom,’ but the audience loved ‘Venom’ and made ‘Venom’ a massive hit. These are not terrible films. They were just destroyed by the critics in the press, for some reason.”
So “Venom” succeeded despite bad reviews but “Kraven the Hunter” and “Madame Web” didn’t?
Vinciquerra’s spin makes little sense. He’d be better off comparing Sony’s super-flops to the best MCU films. That would be far more productive than his sad, ill-advised spin.
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