Film is an amazing experience. As someone who has been studying and learning about this field for over four years by this point, it is both a useful tool to create and express ideas from someone as well as a way to communicate stories to a larger audience. However, in my years on the internet and watching films, I have come to notice two types of people who have this form of discourse. One group who accepts films for what they are and share their opinions to others. And then there is the other group who criticize and ridicule movies for the smallest minute details. At first this latter group have been mocked themselves and labeled their complaints as “nitpicks”, but now, this group have become the forefront of movie criticism and gaining a large sum of followers by calling out the former group to be incompetent at understanding storytelling. And for some people who rely on internet discovered, this could be a large loss in motivation or comfort because of the praise of negativity that the internet has sided with.
The biggest example to my knowledge of where this glorification of hatred began was in the mid 2010s with movie franchises getting new instalments that seemed to focus on appealing to a new audience. Some of these reboots as they are called being more successful than others. However, original fans began to hate these new films by believing that the older characters from the original instalments were getting sidelined by the new cast, as well as stating how out of character they acted. And to my fault, I too was in this group, I felt betrayed and hated Hollywood for ruining iconic characters I grew up with and forcing in identity politics to cater to everyone. Not only that, but movie studios were continuing to make more installments, either movies or streaming service shows, to fuel more of the hate and content that point out all the flaws in their films. That’s when I noticed a change for my perception of how fandoms can be toxic and destructive to the human mind.
When I watched the shows on streaming services, I gave them the benefit of the doubt they would be good, not star stunningly amazing, but good for their own merit as a tv show. However, because of the fuming hate on the previous movies and the success content creators made off of it, they went after these shows, using the same complaints as before. This began to bother me since all of their excuses and complaints felt forced and only made to stir their hate filled fanbase, even distracting me from forming my own opinion on the shows. By then, I just left that toxic space and began to follow the first group of people who watch films. Now, I’m not saying movies are safe from any criticism, but if people keep using the same complaints that are racist and sexist to the actors only portraying the characters, then it is fully eligible to go over the hate filled mob. For my advice, enjoy what you want to enjoy, but make sure the criticism, when needed, is entirely worth it. As well as understanding that if you do not like something, that does not mean everyone else hates the same thing as you do.
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