Joey Magidson
Sigh. Earlier this week, the social media embargo for Superman lifted, allowing me to talk about the film that I’d seen last month. As you likely now know, either from my post or my review here on the site, I’m over the moon for the movie. That’s not what this piece is about, however. No, I’m instead talking about how some folks on the internet react to critics. Spoiler alert: people need to behave better.
For reference, this is the post I put up, on Facebook, X, and Bluesky:
What did I wake up to the next morning? Someone accusing me of being a paid shill for Warner Bros. This happens anytime a blockbuster embargo lifts. So, I’m used to it by now. The thing is, as you’ll hear me talk about with Myles today on the Awards Radar Podcast, this accusation is among the dumbest things on social media.
Let me put this here, simple and clear: film critics are not paid by studios to put out positive reactions, whether after a screening or in their reviews. Here’s the thing…we’re largely not well compensated for doing what we do, so we’re clearly not in it for the money. Studios would just as soon not have critics in the first place, so paying us off? That’s the last thing that they’re interested in.
Now, influencers being invited more and more to press screenings is a way to have studios generate easy positive buzz for a film, but that’s still a far cry from payola. Of course, the people making these accusations are not operating in good faith. They don’t like the movie without having seen it, or support some other product, and are attacking your reaction out of hand. It’s pointless to debunk every single one, but it’s an exhausting thing to witness, since it just makes everyone involved seem dumb.
Hopefully, we can get beyond this one day. I doubt it, but one can dream, right? One last time…critics are not paid by studios. They’re either working for free, freelance operators who make money via ad revenue on their sites, or are on a staff where their employer pays them. None of them are a studio paying them off. Likewise, no one loses access for a negative review. Break the embargo? That’s another story. Otherwise? It just doesn’t happen. So, can we leave this dumb accusation in the past? Probably not, I know. And yet, I hope for a day when we can be done with this stupidity…
This has been a public service announcement from Awards Radar
It’s also worth noting that, in this current media environment, where even big-budget tentpole releases have to work to maintain any attention from the general public, it makes no sense at all for a studio to “pay off” critics for positive reviews anymore. This is also true for the television/streaming, book publishing, and music industries. Unless we’re talking about across-the-board pans (which is categorically not happening here), the existence of a Superman review on this site at all is 95% of what Warner Bros. Discovery actually cares about.
They certainly preferred to see a positive review from Joey, but the second-best thing Joey could have done was publish a negative take on Superman and linked that review on all his social media accounts because that still gets a wider conversation going and keeps the movie from falling off people’s radars (no pun intended) this weekend. The only thing he could have done to actively harm Superman‘s box office prospects would be to publish nothing about it at all.
So not only is this accusation unfounded, it’s hopelessly outdated.
Exactly. Literally nothing about the accusation makes any sense. It’s a true example of “that’s not how this works, that’s not how any of this works”
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