Are critics out of touch with audiences? This was in response to Batman V Superman's success at the Box Office in it's opening weekend despite the bad reviews it received. Kermode pointed out that after the opening weekend, ticket sales for the film dropped dramatically, which indicated that movie-goers, like the critics, had not been fond of the film. In light of this, another question on this topic could be: given that so many people went to see Batman V Superman anyway, despite the poor reviews, what is the role of a movie critic? I enjoy reading reviews and have written some myself so I would argue that the thumbs up from a critic is particularly key for the success of lesser known films that do not generate anticipatory followings. However, for films such as Batman V Superman, which already have an established fan-base, the contribution of the film critic could be considered as slightly different. In my case, as a comic book movie fan, I wanted to see if Zack Snyder's superhero adaptation had got it as wrong as the critics had suggested. This movie-going experience ended up becoming something quite different: it was actually quite fun spotting the problems that I had read about in the reviews.
Why have movie running times increased? Does this allow for more artistic freedom or has it started a trend for films to be longer than they need to be? Kermode's answer to this was yes and yes. He stated that he had initially campaigned for longer running times so that filmmakers would have more artistic freedom but instantly regretted this as he felt that it was often used as a way for filmmakers to justify their importance without considering whether the story really needed the extra running time. He referred to Quentin Tarantino as a culprit for unnecessarily long running times. The question now is whether running times will continue to increase?
