Critic reviews are prescriptive: what they think the masses
should watch.
User reviews are retrospective: how much did they actually enjoy watching the movie.
I think there has always been a fundamental disconnect, in that critics think the masses should be watching 'smarter', 'more artistic' or, less flatteringly, more pretentious movies.
The world has become a lot more political over the past couple decades. I wouldn't be surprised if critics are trying to be increasingly prescriptive, using their review to try to change the modern zeitgeist.
I think a very interesting graph would be so see to what extent critics prescriptions are accurately forward-looking to viewer attitudes.
More interesting further research could be:
For movies that came out before 2010 where the user rating diverged from critic rating by more than 10%, are user ratings which were rated after 2015 in the same direction as the critic's divergence? There are certainly movies that I enjoyed as a teenager, but cringe watching today: were critics at the time cringing in the same way, ahead of the masses? Or are critics just in a pretentious bubble that is not predictive of societal evolution?
User reviews are retrospective: how much did they actually enjoy watching the movie.
I think there has always been a fundamental disconnect, in that critics think the masses should be watching 'smarter', 'more artistic' or, less flatteringly, more pretentious movies.
The world has become a lot more political over the past couple decades. I wouldn't be surprised if critics are trying to be increasingly prescriptive, using their review to try to change the modern zeitgeist.
I think a very interesting graph would be so see to what extent critics prescriptions are accurately forward-looking to viewer attitudes.
More interesting further research could be:
For movies that came out before 2010 where the user rating diverged from critic rating by more than 10%, are user ratings which were rated after 2015 in the same direction as the critic's divergence? There are certainly movies that I enjoyed as a teenager, but cringe watching today: were critics at the time cringing in the same way, ahead of the masses? Or are critics just in a pretentious bubble that is not predictive of societal evolution?