Critics Had Nothing To Do With DC Failing

With The Avengers ripping through the theatres, I can't help but think about the people over at Warner Bros.  Ultimately, they know that this is exactly where they should have been back in November.  It was their turn for a gigantic extended universe team up with Justice League.  Not only did Justice League not do as expected, but it ended up being the lowest grossing DC extended universe movie, both domestically and world wide.

While Marvel has had a lot of financial success, their movies have also been critically appreciated.  The lowest ranking film was Thor: The Dark World with 66% on Rotten Tomatoes.  DC, on the other hand, has been plagued with films that fail to connect with critics.  The only movie on the Warner Bros side of things that got a 'fresh' rating is Wonder Woman, with a stunning 92%.

What ended up happening fairly early on in the DC franchise was that fans of the properties began blaming the lack of financial breakthroughs of the films on critics.  I know that the internets had that sort of talk, and I had people talking to me in person how the critics were out to sabotage DC while promoting Marvel. There was an insistence that the DC films were actually really good, it was just that those darned critics had some sort of vendetta against them.

The people who are saying that seem to be forgetting that one of the most acclaimed superhero movie series of all time were Christopher Nolan's Batman films.  Critics have absolutely nothing against DC heroes.  Even Lego Batman got 90% on RT.  Two of the Nolan Batman films even came out after the beginnings of the Marvel universe.  Critics were not setting out to pick one side over the other.  They have shown that they are willing to root for DC, even after Marvel started doing its thing.

Critics are so not the issue here.  The fact, plain and simple. is that the Warner Bros attempts were just not as good.  I understand that there are a lot of people who liked the movies, but ultimately it is not the majority who think so.  If the problem was in fact that critics were setting out against this franchise, then there wouldn't be generally lower audience scores on Rotten Tomatoes, or lower CinemaScores for these films.

The best piece of empirical proof is the financials of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.  If the problem was simply the critics, how is it that the film's opening weekend ended up representing 50.3% of its total domestic take?  That is the sort of opening weekend skewing that happens with insanely horrible horror movies, definitely not blockbusters.  The first weekend to second weekend drop was 69.1%, the type of drop that is pretty much unheard of for a movie of this scale.  Now, Star Wars: The Last Jedi had a dip of 67%, but its not the same thing.  First of all, its second weekend was right before Christmas.  As well, even with an enormous drop into its second weekend, its opening weekend still only represented 35.5% of its domestic tally.  The difference here is that The Last Jedi otherwise held up really well, representing continuing interest from audiences.

We could also look at the fact that while Dawn of Justice had the seventh highest world wide opening ever, it failed to perform past that.  The film currently sits at fifty seventh all time world wide, dropping a total of fifty slots from its opening weekend ranking.

The point that I am making is that these movies, excluding Wonder Woman, do not really hold up that well in terms of consistent performance.  The DC movie that held up the best after opening weekend was 2013's Man of Steel, where the opening represented 40.1% of its domestic total.  Wonder Woman, on the other hand, had its opening weekend ending up as 25% of its total.  That's the kind of first weekend representation that reflects strong audience engagement.

Some might say that the reason why Wonder Woman performed like that is because it was the one DC movie that saw favourable reviews.  We don't have to look far to see that critical response doesn't necessarily have much of an impact on consumer behaviour when it comes to blockbusters.  Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen and Dark of the Moon scored 19% and 35% respectively on Rotten Tomatoes.  Revenge of the Fallen's opening weekend was 27.1% of its domestic take, while Dark of the Moon saw its opening weekend represent 27.8%.

There are some genres where critical opinion can affect the financial success, but those genres are typically those of prestige pictures.  Horror, comedy, and tentpole blockbusters are generally immune to Rotten Tomatoes.  I'm not saying that the critics have no influence on audience behaviour for those types of films, just that success does not hinge on what the critics are saying.  There have been many a film that have done well without the backing of critics.

I get that sometimes the way you view a film makes you want others to 'wake up' and see it as you do.  There are a large number of movies that I quite enjoyed that got railed by critics.  Both myself and my podcast co-host Christopher Spicer gave three stars to The Hangover Part III.  However, just because I liked it doesn't mean that the masses got it wrong or that people were setting out to destroy it.  There was no conspiracy, just the fact that I liked a movie that, in reality, may be considered a bad film.  It happens, and I invite fans of the DC Extended Universe to not blame critics, but just accept the fact that they may just happen to enjoy a movie that actually isn't as good as they view it to be.  And there's absolutely nothing wrong with that.

Some movies that I enjoyed that the critics did not like
The Hangover Part III - 21%
Dead Man Down - 38%
Dark Shadows - 37%
The Kingdom (I didn't just like this, it was one of my favourite movies of 2007) - 51%
Drive Angry - 46%
Olympus Has Fallen - 48%
Bullet to the Head - 47%

The list goes on.  Rotten Tomatoes doesn't seem to be working right now, so this is where I will stop.