Uh-oh, folks…we’ve got some serious problems here. Seems that virtually all the early buzz around the trailers and such for G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra has been almost universally negative. And worse yet, Paramount will be running critics’ screenings for the sci-fi actioner, but they’ll only be running them about a week before the movie opens, leaving in some cases precious little time to release reviews ahead of deadline.
For those of you out there who don’t follow the industry, or aren’t film critics like myself, if a studio won’t put up a movie for critics’ screenings, that generally means they’re not counting on it to do very well. They want to get one big weekend out of it to try and get its shooting budget back, but then word of mouth–not to mention the delayed critics’ reaction–will kick in and pretty much sink repeat business.
The excuses are already flying hot and fast around this one’s nigh-inevitable financial castigation, including my personal favorite: “We wuz trying to beat the writer’s strike!”
Way to pass the buck, fellas…anyway, we won’t have too much longer to wait to see just how this one turns out–you know I’ll be hitting this one opening day for you.
Geo said
August 4 2009 @ 12:42 pm
There’s another eason studios don’t release movies to critics.
Critics like different movies than the general public. Yet the word of critics is often enough to tank a movie the public would otherwise love.
Movies critics love typucally fit stereotypes of certain subject matter or actors they believe are more worthy than others.
Often the majority of the public simply wants to pay for entertainment on that weekeend in classisc heroic role forms with attractive people and good special effects.
To critcs those movies are simply beneth them.
I am not sure what is worse – criticizing a movie because you think you are above it after you have seen a preview or criticising a movie because you think your judgement is above the publics and that is why you haven’t been shown a preview.
Remember the critcs loved ishtar and hated star wars.
Steve Anderson said
August 6 2009 @ 7:39 pm
Oh come ON, Geo–not all film critics are overbred, overbearing film snobs. Surely you’ve read enough of my own work here to disabuse you of THAT tired old cliche.
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