I'm wonder about certain video game franchise. Does Call of Duty in general qualify for this trope?
I'm curious would the manga/anime series Bleach and Fairy Tail apply to this trope?
Edited by Xteme19 Hide / Show Replies
Seriously does these count for this trope, along with series like Sword Art Online, Akame Ga Kill, and Attack on Titan?
Edited by Xteme19
I want to tell the person who added the Gigguk's reasoning for critical dissonance that it could be flawed. Series that are long running aren't the problem here. People like Bob Samurai explained the real reason why there's a trend of critical dissonance when comes to anime and manga. I suggest you should watch some of his videos: https://youtu.be/1N3Bpqombeg
https://youtu.be/3pm9xMbcO-M
https://youtu.be/dpmfpaoLONs
I think we ought to rework this trope. There's no standard of evidence for critical dissonance other than RT scores and box office numbers both of which tend to be very misleading. For instance, one of the examples is X-Men 3: The Last Stand which is derided by critics and fans and general audiences but because it had a decently big box officer it apparently counts.
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This would be a task for the Trope Repair Shop.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
The Dream Soldier
&)$;@9?@4$/8&;’
Half the examples don't explain what the fans think versus critics, only saying "bad reviews" as an umbrella term...
I got my political views from reddit and that's bad
I'm moving the Liz Phair example to "Critic Proof," since "Critical Dissonance" is for entries that are despised by critics but acclaimed by audiences. Having your first and only top 40 hit on a widely derided album in no way suggests that the album is loved by the general public.
Edited by 99.67.225.30 Hide / Show Replies
Since there are essentially two flavours of this trope (loved by critics and hated by the public, and vice-versa) mightn't it be a good idea to split the page into two sections accordingly?
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Might want to propose that in the Trope Repair Shop - soft splits are frequently a nuisance and it wil need discussion beforehand.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
The Dream Soldier
Why is Yu-Gi-Oh! on here? I thought it was one of the best anime I've ever watched. The sequel spin-offs... not so much.
Edited by 67.186.44.137 Hide / Show Replies
It's about whether one person likes the anime or not. It's about the reception from mass audience in relation to that of the reviewers.
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The Master
I'm having a hard time cleaning up examples because so many are NOT this trope. Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but this trope is about the critical consensus differing from the consensus of the general population. There are genuine examples, like the Transformers movies (especially the later two), but many of the examples given aren't this trope. In particular: it is not dissonance if different groups of fans disagree with each, or if a specific fan group disagrees with the critics when most agree with the critics. It is also not dissonance when critics rate a niche product highly and the general population disagrees so long as the target audience agrees. For example, if critics highly rate a horror film, and horror fans agree, it doesn't matter if people who hate horror films disagree. The movie wasn't made for them, and the critics (good ones at least) compare similar films, such as horror to horror, rather than say comparing a horror movie to a sci fi or action movie. Critics who rate genre films poorly on principle are the bad critics I mentioned who fail to take this into account. Finally, and this one is probably open to interpretation or disagreement, it is not enough for the critics to like/dislike something to a different degree than the general population. For example, an example that used to be on this page but was removed (not by me) compared Star Wars to Annie Hall. Many people feel Star Wars was award snubbed. I might even agree with this. But the example treated Annie Hall like some obscure critical darling. The facts: Star Wars was critically praised and commercially successful. Annie Hall was critically praised and commercially successful. It is true that Star Wars had less critical praise and more general success, and Annie Hall had more critical praise and less general success, but it is to be expected that critics have slightly different tastes than the general public. It doesn't count as critical dissonance, because there was still general agreement about how good the movies are, there is just disagreement about which one is best, and we know how subjective that is.
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I'd like to take it a step further and point out that "huge commercial success", listed as evidence for dissonance in many of these examples, does not mean that the public actually liked it. Bad art is often the best advertised. There's a difference between say "Night of the Living Dead", which has been vindicated by history and is now regarded as not only an excellent, but important film, and the Fantastic Four movies, which some people may have enjoyed, but have been forgotten by the public at large and considered a failed franchise by the studio that owns them. Perhaps a separate trope is necessary to account for "films that are critically despised but still hugely successful". A film's success has little or nothing to do with who likes it, it's all about advertising and what it's competing with at the box office.
I wholeheartedly agree. The sales are usually an effect of marketing, advertisement and hype, not quality (which is especially true for games released before vast popularity of the Internet and net journalism). Tim Schafer games are nice example - they get universally high notes but their advertisement was almost non-existent. Same for 'Beyond Good and Evil' - its commercial failure is generally attributed to lack of advertisement furthered by peculiar graphical design that led many a prospective customer to conclusion that this game is meant for kids. And thus such gems remain virtually obscure. The best case is 'Psychonauts'. When the game was released I was working in gaming magazine (so knowing about upcoming premieres was part of my job) and I got information on this release almost by accident.
Agreed. There is a huge different between a movie selling and people actually thinking "it's good".
hashtagsarestupid
Agreed. There is a huge different between a movie selling and people actually thinking "it's good".
hashtagsarestupid
Since we actually have a page for Acclaimed Flop, I think using examples of works that sold poorly despite critical acclaim here is a bit redundant anyway, but we'd also need a page covering the opposite phenomenon.
For we shall slay evil with logic...
Walking the Earth
I'm not sure it's a good idea to rely too much on user ratings from sites like IMDB and Metacritic as the fan/hatedoms there really skewer the scores. Especially on Metacritic, where the userbase is notorious for giving extremely low scores to games that piss them off in some way or the other, even if it doesn't really deserve a score that low (and in a lot of cases, the user scores come out way earlier than it would have taken them to actually complete the game).
For we shall slay evil with logic...
Weeaboo extraordinare
Doesn't Abbey Road count? It recieved mixed reviews by critics when it was first released despite becoming the best selling Beatles album of all time and often hailed as their greatest album.
pee pee poo poo Hide / Show Replies
That seems kind of an edge case - this is for polarized opinion differences between critics and audiences.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
The Dream Soldier
Should Pay It Forward count? Critics and audiences seem to hate it, but it's rated HIGHER than movies such as Little Shop of Horrors, one of my favorite movies, and I don't think that's fair.
What exactly is the reason for how this trope keeps happening in particular to most of the good Kids movies coming out now, like them flopping despite being excellent while the worst kids films make the best box office for the most part? Is it just audiences/kids being dumb, or is there something deeper at work?
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It's super effective.
Is it really true that few people, as in casual audiencegoers, liked Revenge of the Fallen?
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No casual fans loved that movie. Core TF fans might be a little more hostile. The critics despised it though.
Flawless Victree
Let's change the page image to Rotten Tomatoes review of "Courageous" because it's a more extreme example of this trope:
Rotten Tomatoes says: 30% Viewers/Users: 94%
"Okay, yeah, I guess Ollie fits the goofy sidekick role, but being a princess doesn't mean I spontaneously sing about everything, 'kay?" Hide / Show Replies
Sure why not? I added the page image and think its fine but whatever.
Edited by Cider Modified Ura-nage, Torture Rack
'M not Crazy, just Raven
Temporary removal of this example:
- Is it possible for a single episode to be this? How I Met Your Mother's "The Rough Patch" is infamous for having Barney and Robin broke up for no reason. To add insult to injury, it was Played for Laughs by having Barney's actor wear a fat-suit and Robin's actor look like a decrepit old woman. Critics rated it quite highly, but a number of fans hated it because 1) it completely undid both of the characters' growth, and 2) broke up one of the show's best-received couples—again, for no logical reason.
It seems to be a valid example, but is there anybody with more familiarity with this show who can phrase it in a more wiki-like manner?
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Any better?
- How I Met Your Mother's fifth season episode, "The Rough Patch", exemplifies this on a single-episode scale. It was the culmination of the writer's attempts to break up Robin and Barney throughout the entire season after the entire fourth season had been spent getting them together. The episode was highly rated by critics for the exaggeration by Future!Ted's narration in the form of Barney's fat suit and Robin's haggard appearance. This had the effect of undoing over a season's worth of [1] for Barney and broke up what is the [2] for a large portion of the fanbase because the writer's wanted to prove that the relationship wouldn't work, despite the chemistry the two actors displayed.
The Master
"The Star Wars prequels. All three were big financial successes, popular among younger audiences and casual moviegoers for their flashy special effects and big fight scenes, and hated with a huge, violent passion by most older or less casual Star Wars fans. For critics, all three are Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes (62%, 66%, 80%), but when you get to the professional reviewers only Revenge of the Sith is liked by the majority (40%, 40%, 67%)." I don't think this is a valid example. True the critical reception was not as great for the prequels as the original trilogy, but neither was audience reception; the original trilogy was far more popular and made far more money (adjusted for inflation) than the prequels. Given that the critics in general didn't hate the prequels, and that audience opinion was also mixed, I'd say this doesn't count.
I can't be bothered to login right now (I can't remember my password), but could someone please remove the Atlas Shrugged example? $3,947,827 at the Box Office on a $20.000.000 budget is a pretty dire result for a movie and shows that the movie was both critically panned <and> 'rejected' by the audiences.
This is Subjective? I really don't think this meets that description. Critical reaction can be compared to box office returns. That would seem to be objective.
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Box office performance does not equal the general public views the film as "good". Spider-Man 3 would be a decent example, as both critical and audience reactions to the movie are too mixed to give a definite answer (unless you only count comic fans, then it's general dislike) despite the fact that Spider-Man 3 is one of the top grossing movie of all time.
Possibly the only *slightly* objective method of seeing if a work is an example of critical dissonance is to look at the general reaction from the critics (through Metacritic, Rotten Tomatoes, and other sites) with the user scores. If there's a major diference between the critics' scores and user scores, then it's very likely that the work is an example of this trope. Keep in mind that works with huge hatedoms may end up butchering some of the user scores >.>
Edited by ImmortalAlien Fritata
I moved the political note up higher and edited it to reflect that it affects more media than just video games, with some media displaying a very wide gap between critic and audience scores, particularly when a piece of media is overtly political(e.g. Knock Down the House, a political documentary, which critics have rated 100% Fresh, but audiences have rated it at 19%, rotten).
Vercalos al'Corlin The Wanderer