About 15 years ago, I was lucky enough to finally see the greatest film ever (in my opinion), Jaws, on the big screen. The one thing that will stay with me was one of the viewers, who was very drunk, (It was a midnight screening) got up and shouted loudly, this is that stupid shark film and walked out, I can only assume he thought the Jaws of the title might be for an adult film or something?
It was odd to think that someone could bad mouth the film, in front of a full audience who were most likely, like me, there to see a classic on the big screen.
Yet, now we live in a world of Social Media, where films are easy targets. The reboot of Ghostbusters is the worst it has ever been, campaigns to bad mouth the film, stars twitter accounts hacked, director given death threats, frankly for a film, it was a little embarrassing.
It was great to know after all that, the film was a really entertaining spectacle (You can read our review here: https://barkingmadaboutfilms.com/ghostbusters-2/ )
Yet even now, if a film site or magazine puts a positive review up, you can guarantee a post will follow along the lines of ‘How much did Sony pay you to say this’
I myself am very much looking forward to seeing The Shallows, so I liked the Facebook page, for which you can guarantee that on every post, someone will type this film was awful, shark was fake or if page is not well managed, links to where you can download the film for free, with every other film out or those coming soon, we would probably recommend you don’t click on those links!
The hate for a film can escalate even more on the studio’s own page, Sony promoting The Shallows and Ghostbusters have all sorts of abuse on their promotional posts for these films.
Yet, we can’t figure out why, everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but if it doesn’t match someone else, I wouldn’t get into an argument over it. We really did not like Sisters, yet a look at its IMDB page and you will see people who absolutely loved it. It had a great cast, so we are sure some certainly would have done!
We, like many other film blog posts, shared our top films of the year, we did get questioned choosing X-Men Apocalypse over Captain America: Civil War, yet simply we found the former more original, as it had a less extensive trailer campaign and as regular readers will know, we may have been swayed by Jennifer Lawrence starring in it too =)
However, where we see posts suggesting their worst of the year, The Forest was nearly on every list, yet we found it spooky and a good if forgettable film.
You can even take a blockbuster like Star Wars: The Force Awakens and amongst all the love for it, there were many posts suggesting it was a rip off of Star Wars: A new Hope, absolutely it had a lot of connections, but it entertained and that is a film’s main job in our opinion.
Take Speed, a great film, yet it is diminished to Die Hard on a Bus or Under Seige, which became Die Hard on a Battleship and many others have been given the same description.
However, if the concept is good and makes for a great film who cares? I have seen reboots of Robocop; Poltergeist; The Fog and Fright Night to name a few, and whilst none really impressed me, I don’t worry because guess what, the originals still exist!
It appears that with early reviews coming in and suggesting Suicide Squad is not the masterpiece fans had been expecting, time appears to have been wasted trying to get the site Rotten Tomatoes taken down, as the film has not been certified fresh!
In fact at the time of writing, if you measured the film in material, it would make an even smaller pair of shorts than those Margot Robbie wears in the film =)
There really is no need for it, we may dislike a film but we always welcome comments, we accept our review is not the same for everyone.
If we ourselves listened to critics, we would not have seen The Secret Life of Pets, which has been called nothing more than an inferior Toy Story. What we did is saw the film and made up our own mind and it was to be one of our favourite films of the year.
We are always mindful that one person’s most hated film could be loved by another. After all, we own and kinda love Jaws The Revenge, which is regularly described as the worst film ever made!
Fans are what makes a film, not critics, how else would we be living in a world where we now have 4 Sharknado films.
We suggest if you don’t agree with someone’s opinion, be like Pepper, stick your tongue out at the comment and move on. There really is enough hate in the world to want to attack someone for liking a film you didn’t!
Have you a favourite film that is hated? Do you think a critically acclaimed film is awful? We would love to hear from you here at Barking Mad About Films
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