For a brief window, the Borderlands movie wasn’t the worst-reviewed film to release this month, but it’s now reclaimed that un-enviable title.
Earlier this month, Borderlands debuted to a 0% critics score on Rotten Tomatoes, with none of the 23 reviewers who offered their early impressions returning a positive verdict. Since then, that figure has increased to 10% - which, for a brief time, was enough to ensure that Borderlands wasn’t the worst-reviewed movie of the month.
When The Crow, a reboot of 1995’s gothic superhero franchise, first appeared on Rotten Tomatoes last night, it did so to a score of just 6%. That was enough to see it swoop in underneath Borderlands as this month’s worst film. Cue much celebration at Gearbox and movie distributor Lionsgate, presumably.
Unfortunately, any of those celebrations were to be short-lived, as The Crow saw its own gradual improvement, with its overall score rising from that initial 6% to the dizzying highs of 24% critical approval. That’s hardly a glowing reception, but it’s enough to see The Crow clamber back over Borderlands and avoid the bottom spot.
Director makes a great film because they want to make a great film. It does so well, Hollywood sees this as a “working formula” and spend millions and millions on market research trying to ensure that they can repeat that working formula again and again. They pass these scripts around to ensure it hits the metrics set out by market research, no one is reading it to see if it is good. Good is subjective, market research is concrete and on paper, connected to profitability.
But movies are art, not fast food. They don’t work like Hollywood tries to make them work. Good movies are made by good movie makers. The Golden Age of TV started by the Sopranos ended when they started telling people like Aaron Sorkin and David Simon to change their scripts to meet market research.
High Budget movies are not art, but an industrial product.
As I wrote before, there’s a ton of money in these movies. If nobody is reading these scripts before making them, then someone isn’t doing their job.