Its Not Supposed to Win Oscars: Why does this trope irritate critics?

Why do critics find the 'Its Not Supposed to Win Oscars' argument irritating?

Why do we care if critics find things irritating?

I guess you are right. Still, some critics seem to really hate this trope especially when writers aren't really trying to be Oscar winners. It seems to fascinate that some critics expect nothing but Martin Scorsese perfection from even the cheapest of shows.

A critic's job is to evaluate the quality of a work against either generally accepted standards or their own personal standards. Most mainstream works derive a lot of their viewership from critical reception, as people seek out reviews prior to watching. Ergo, the critics have a lot of power in the relationship. Piss them off and you can lose a lot of your work's vital initial rush of viewers.

A work that is intentionally not designed to pass critical muster is therefore offensive to them. Now, it doesn't matter if the people who created it or the people who are watching it don't care about critical reception, or if the franchise of which the work is a part is so well-established that critical reception is irrelevant to its fan base. But most works don't fall into those two categories and so must walk a tightrope between pleasing the critics so they get good buzz and pleasing fans so they get good word of mouth.

That said, fan reviews are becoming increasingly important in revenue generation for a work, with the vital Rotten Tomatoes and/or Metacritic scores deriving significant weight from them. An established, popular franchise has to avoid pissing off its fans too much even if it doesn't care about critical reception. This applies much more to serial works, especially long-runners, than it does to one-offs. A TV pilot or feature film must pass critical muster unless it's specifically designed for counter-culture appeal. The tenth installment in the Call of Duty franchise or the 64th season of Doctor Who, not so much.

edited 16th May '16 11:47:06 AM by Fighteer

Not all critics find this argument irritating. However, asking a critic to judge a work by a different standard than normal is irrational.

Basically, the purpose of a work will have already been taken into account by the critic. If the critic is still critical of the work, then maybe the author should instead be asking why it did not fill the role the author chose for it.

Many works seek a large audience. Such works will be more interested in general reception instead of critical reception. For such a work to then say the critical reception is wrong is weird.

Let's put it this way: Michael Bay's Transformers franchise doesn't give a flying flip about what critics think, because he has the magic formula for summer blockbusters inscribed in blood on his signed pact with the Devil: give people Stuff Blowing Up, hot teenage girls, badass robots, America-fellatio, and a dash of racism. Coherent plots and believable characters need not apply.

However, Rosewater isn't going to get any audience even for its limited objectives if it can't get some critics to tell people how awesome it is.

edited 16th May '16 11:56:39 AM by Fighteer

But does michael bay go around saying It's Not Supposed to Win Oscars?

According to the page, his crew have said as much, but it was not used as an attack against critics.

Well, that phrase used to retroactively justify bad reviews is just juvenile, in my opinion. There's a difference between a work designed to be So Bad, It's Good, whose value lies in camp and schlock for their own sake; and a work that someone actually thought would be good, but turns out to be garbage. It seems related to Parody Retcon and Poe's Law, wherein someone publishes something, it gets panned, then they come back with, "But I meant it to be bad."

Occam's Razor: Most bad art is bad because of poor writing, acting, or whatever, not because its creator was making some kind of ironic commentary on modern audiences.

However, it's all to taste. I happen to find movies like Anchorman offensively bad — you don't get a pass on trash because you set out to entertain people with how trashy you can make a film — but a lot of people liked them, so what do I know?

The Transformers film franchise is phenomenally successful in terms of revenue, so clearly it's not a case of writing a deliberately bad work to piss off critics; rather, it's about writing to a specific target audience with a formula that you know will bring them to theaters, the critics be damned.

edited 16th May '16 12:16:02 PM by Fighteer

Come to think of it, even Transformers got nominated for some Oscars - those for effects, naturally. Then there's things like fight choreography and action scene setup, for which there may not be an explicit Academy Award, but there is an MTV Award. With that in mind, what irritates mainstream critics may simply be the fact that general audiences and other critics care for different aspects of the film, including aspects that can still be reviewed in terms of quality.

I'd say the issue is that traditional critic standards are inherited from theatrical stage drama, which focuses strictly on plot and character, with all else being considered mere details. To contrast, films offer a much more diverse experience, with things like music, effects and even scenery playing pivotal roles. And that's not even going into the sci fi ghetto, where even plots and characters can be so outside the box that traditional critic standards don't even apply. How does one tell if Transformers presents a complex and realistic portrayal of giant alien robots and public response thereof?

And, of course, there's the question of whether films should always strive to be works of art, rather than forms of entertainment... because there's no better way to rile up self-described artistes than to call them entertainers, and I guess the same applies to critics who claim to review art, when they're actually complaining about entertainment.

edited 16th May '16 12:31:28 PM by indiana404

Buh. Transformers had some of the most confusing fight choreography and action scene storyboarding of any series I've ever watched. Not sure how anyone could win awards for that, unless True Art Is Incomprehensible applies.

You are basically correct, though: professional critics tend to be trained to think of films as art first and entertainment second, and reflexively dismiss works that aim for the latter.

edited 16th May '16 12:47:34 PM by Fighteer

Personally, I didn't really like the robot designs - too many details and sharp edges. The Pacific Rim jaegers looked more like Autobots than this. Otherwise yeah, what I'm saying is, there are aspects of a film that can be reviewed for merit that don't fit traditional critic standards.

There's also this aspect - in dramatic terms, your average nature and science documentary may simply feature pretty vistas, animal daily routines and, for all intents and purposes, technology porn, with the script being nothing but expospeak. And yet nobody complains about that, because these things are interesting by themselves, without needing any dramaturgical furnishings. Meanwhile, the eight deadly words were coined to complain about science fiction stories built the same way, even when it's clear the point of the story is precisely to showcase a particular idea, rather than fit into any preset narrative, or serve as social commentary. Fittingly, the latter happens to be the type of sci-fi that gets the most praise and attention, to the point that I've seen open statements that science fiction is explicitly about social commentary, and not, y'know, anything relating to science.

Basically, I feel the problem with professional critics is that they've grown accustomed to not taking stories literally - because, really, a story about giant robots slugging it out downtown would draw anyone's attention - and instead view them only through the lens of daily social interaction. But with such limitations, even a literature milestone like The Lord of the Rings becomes a mere woodland road trip.

edited 16th May '16 10:43:29 PM by indiana404

Is Critical Dissonance related?

I'd just like to note here that the Oscars aren't actually chosen by critics; they're chosen by an exclusive clique of people in the film industry.

Is that so? I never realized that but it does make sense.

@hellomoto

That trope page does explain a lot of things. I guess it is true that art interpretation is subjective and that different people look for different things. Even professional critics look for something in media.

edited 17th May '16 9:16:30 AM by GAP

It's bad when it's a director/actor/whatever saying "yeah? I don't care if you think it sucks, it earned me money, not awards." because that kind of smacks of not actually bothering to produce quality content.

If it wasn't quality content, it wouldn't sell. The idea here is that not everyone's measure of quality is the same. A nice action-packed explosion fest doesn't have to be viewed through the lens commonly reserved for low-key character dramas.

More to the point, one can observe that it is the studio's primary job to make money, not placate critics. So a property that sells well has accomplished its goal no matter what anyone thinks of the quality of the product in some abstract sense.

Something worth noting, though, is that movies (the big blockbuster kind, anyway) tend to make a rather large percentage of their revenue during their opening weekend. And whether people go see a movie during its opening weekend has a lot more to do with the film's marketing than with the film itself, since no one outside a few critics will have actually seen it at that point.

So there is some merit to the argument that certain movies have moments that look really awesome when put in a trailer and will suck people in, even if the movie, taken as a whole, isn't that hot.

edited 18th May '16 9:46:40 AM by RavenWilder

It's already been said, but most awards shows are not run by critics but by the committee organizing the awards show. We have Oscar Bait as a trope because you can literally play towards the preferences of that committee.

People like Michael Bay know this, and their movies play towards those with different preferences. For what it's worth, listening to Bay's audio commentaries on his films and watching the behind-the-scenes footage I learned more about how a film is actually made than most other films (short of all the stuff for The Lord of the Rings). There is an amazing level of artistry even in what you would consider to be a bad film.

Bay does films into what I would call the stupid fun category. They're fun spectacles to watch (if done well, naturally), but not what you'd call high class. That's what I assume when someone says it's not supposed to win Oscars. There are different market segments than where the taste of the Oscar committee falls into, and most critics, and that's where these films aim.

There is a concern associated with commercialization. It is fine if some movies are profit driven, but if all movies are profit driven, certain movies will never get made. Commercial movies must hit the largest possible audience. Audiences with non-standard taste won't get their films. Commercial films are more concerned with selling tickets than entertaining the audience. This will negatively impact their quality in favour of profit boosting tricks.

That's about an overall pattern, not individual films.

No, people who like non-standard movies will still get the films they want. They'll just have to be made on a very small budget.