Brad Brevert at RopeofSIlicon has a very interesting post up that says volumes with respect to critics and some of the 47 Ronin reviews that we have been seeing. From reading his article it sounds like critics were pissed that Universal didn’t give them a free screening of 47 Ronin. With respect to the lack of a free screening, Brevert says the following:
I was never invited to a screening of 47 Ronin prior to its Christmas Day release and, to my knowledge, the majority of critics around the US were similarly ignored. This is, and isn’t, a surprise considering the majority of the press surrounding the feature has focused on its troubled production and ballooning budget, which is being reported as $175 million while everything suggests it was nothing short of at least $225 million or so. No matter, a film isn’t defined by the amount of money spent to make it, but instead the end product.However, when a studio is unwilling to even screen a film for critics it says something about its quality and Universal isn’t exactly a studio known for hiding its films, no matter how bad they may be. (emphasis mine)
I had a lot to say about this but didn’t think anyone would be interested. It is addressed in nauseating detail in the forum.
…I am interested in hearing some thoughts on the film. I can’t really trust the 13% rating at RottenTomatoes seeing how I assume it is largely made up of reviews written by critics that paid to see it and most likely paid to see it just so they could talk bad about it. I’m more interested in hearing the thoughts of the audience that paid to see it, hoping to see something fun and entertaining and whether or not it lived up to those expectations.
Did you get that? A critic has said his colleagues most likely paid to see the film to trash it. Congratulations to them for putting their smallness, pettiness and lack of professionalism on display – not much else to say about it! Well let’s add they stuck their fingers in their ears and blew the film a big raspberry like any good five yr. old
When I was sitting in the theater, I was wondering what film the critics were reviewing because it didn’t sound anything like what I watching. I have also seen similar by audience members on rotten tomatoes, on twitter and other movie site.
Over on rottentomatoes, it currently has a rating of 12% with an average rating of 4/10 from 42 critics and 63% from audiences for an average of 3.5/5 for 31,395 users. Over at IMDb it has a rating of 6.8/10 from 5,164 users. I think the paying audience has just thumbed their nose at a large portion of the critics.
Note: Many thanks to the reviewers who did their jobs in a professional manner and actually provided thoughtful reviews of the film. Many of them are linked to in various review threads here and it was greatly appreciated. We didn’t necessarily agree with everything that was said, but the fact that you provided comments on what was actually on the screen and backed it up was appreciated.