So we all know The Avengers is the greatest movie ever made, it’s cured cancer, brought world peace and made three bazillion dollars at the box office.
Of course we’re joking, but we at TG can’t recall the last time a movie’s gotten reviews or buzz this strong. Clearly, there always has to be somebody who doesn’t like it, there’s one in every crowd, and we were surprised to hear there actually was a bad review for it out of all the uniformly positive notices, and it came from the New York Times.
In all likelihood, I doubt we would have even known there was a bad review for it until we learned that Samuel L. Jackson went to war with the lone Avengers hater, film critic A.O. Scott.
As Vibe reports, Sam took to Twitter to vent his spleen: “Say what again? NY Times critic AO Scott needs a new job! Let’s help him find one! One he can actually do!”
A fan tried to calm him down by tweeting, “The critic has a right to his opinion. Just because the movie has made a ton of money does not mean it is a good movie,” to which Jackson tweeted back, “Actually, sometimes IT DOES!” When a fan thought it was a bit irrational for Sam to go off like this, he tweeted, “That is MY Opinion! What’s irrational about it? They aren’t going to fire his jaundiced ass & You & I Know It!”
Indeed, as hard as filmmakers and studios have tried, critics typically don’t get fired for bad reviews, and it usually doesn’t put a dent in how a film’s going to perform. You may recall years ago Kenneth Turan of the L.A. Times didn’t like Titanic, and the paper printed a long, angry rant from James Cameron in response that anyone would dare dislike his masterpiece, but it sure didn’t do anything to hurt the film from becoming the biggest box office hit of its time, or sweeping the Oscars. Yet years later, Turan was blown away by Avatar and gave it a rave review.
As we’ve seen with Michael Bay’s reviews, they never stop anyone from seeing his movies and putting them at the top of the box office, and we’ve also seen tons of movies get great reviews and never make a dime. Everyone knows the Avengers has been on the road to a huge box office take for weeks now, and one mere critic’s opinion isn’t going to change that.
Still, A.O. Scott may want to think twice before he reviews Django Unchained, which features Jackson, when it comes out this December, or Sam’s tweets might just mediaeval on his ass…
