Altered Geek

AGU – 132 – No April Fools Here

AGU-PODThis week Steve Megatron is joined by TFG1 Mike to discuss many topics. April Fools Day, Batman v Superman (Spoilers),  Film Critics, Transformers and a few other topics sprinkled in there. Also we bring up the Top 50 Video Game Franchise Countdown. All this and more on this week’s AGU! We hope you continue to enjoy the episodes and please feel free to respond to any and all feedback methods. We will read and reply on the show. Topic suggestions also welcome. So get Altered, Get Geeky with the Altered Geeks.

 

QOTW

(NEW) Question of the Night:

  • Send us any comments you’d like! We plan to do a comment Q&A episode in the future. Is there anything you’d like us to cover? Let us know!
  • Your Geek Question for the Week
    • What are some geek projects you’ve been working on?
    • What do you think of click bait or April Fools Click bait?

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Geeks:

Steve “Megatron” Phillips

Mike “TFG1” Blanchard

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Steve "Megatron"

Co-Creator @GeekCastRadio | Creator @AlteredGeek | Voice Actor | Podcaster, Husband | Father | Web/Graphic Design | A/V Editor | Geek of Games, Tech, Film, TV.

23 Comments

  1. Thanks for the info. Yeah I don’t pay much attention to RT or Metacritic at all. As I’ve said over the years I have three settings in my opinions of stuff I watch, listen to, or play as far as film tv music and gaming… I either really love it, I’m in different to it or I can’t stand it. So I don’t put a lot of stock in RT at all.

    1. Like I mentioned above I get what you are saying but I don’t see RT’s purpose to shape people’s opinion. It’s just a tool to gauge fan and critical response. Personally I enjoy reading or listening to reviews than differ than mine cause I’d like to know why someone thought they way they did. I don’t do it with the idea my opinion will change mind you, and I may end up responding with why I think they were wrong. Which is the purpose in my ends. Critics shouldn’t been seen as scoreboards that tell us what the winners and losers are. They should be looked at as people that can start a conversation or education us on aspects of movies we didn’t know.

      1. that’s what they USED to be like as far as critics, because “back in my day” the 80s-90s I only saw stuff like ebert and siskel or leonard maltin etc…. with the advent of th internet everyone’s a critic nowadays.

        1. That’s true but that’s why its good to actually listen and read reviews to see how good someone is as a critic. Just because their review is on RT doesn’t mean its any good. We may not have a name like Ebert but there are a lot of great critics out there still. Leonard Maltin still does reviews although I never found his writing all that great to be honest. Personally I enjoy the stuff done by /Film, Filmspotting, and pretty much any writer that was on The Dissolve before it went away like Scott Tobias or Keith Phillips.

          1. I may not have agreed with Ebert a lot of the time but I did respect his thoughts on a film and watched the movie show he hosted. Same with Leonard Maltin.

  2. That’s a really good insight into the how and why those sites work. I myself base films on my own opinion and tend to sidestep those sites. While I see their merit and do try to look at the films as a whole and break them down it’s still based on my own thoughts of whether I’d watch them again or not. I find those sites to be akin to critics themselves except some of them are actually fans. Thanks for breaking it down!

    1. Yeah the critic has a tough job and as geeks we tend to forget that there is another aspect besides nostalgia involved. I am learning quite a bit of this as well which is making it difficult for me to enjoy some movies anymore due to the flaws I see now. But I do try to separate the logical and good film making from the entertaining as it keeps them fun which is what they’re meant to do…besides creating a paycheck.

  3. Metacritic and RT use the same information they just present it differently. The issue with Rotten Tomatoes isn’t Rotten Tomatoes it is how people don’t understand how it works. It’s just a percentage of positive reviews which makes it hard to judge because of how low some of those negative reviews are or how high the positive reviews are. You can’t compare movies to movies because each movie has a different number of reviews and different people reviewing them. Batman V Superman has nearly 100 more reviews than Daredevil for example. Also the user score for BVS has dropped to like 79% which will probably drop even lower when more people see it. RT does give you an average score and BVS is like 5/10 which is about right if you ask me. Deadpool is like 6.5/10 which isn’t much better but its RT score is like 50 percentage points higher so it gives the false impression that critics loved Deadpool so much more than BVS when it wasn’t that big of a difference. If you don’t just look at the RT score on face value and actually look more into it you’ll get a much better picture of what the overall opinion of the movie was. Personally I wasn’t and would rank it like a 4 or 5 out of ten.

    1. Thanks for the info. Yeah I don’t pay much attention to RT or Metacritic at all. As I’ve said over the years I have three settings in my opinions of stuff I watch, listen to, or play as far as film tv music and gaming… I either really love it, I’m in different to it or I can’t stand it. So I don’t put a lot of stock in RT at all.

      1. Like I mentioned above I get what you are saying but I don’t see RT’s purpose to shape people’s opinion. It’s just a tool to gauge fan and critical response. Personally I enjoy reading or listening to reviews than differ than mine cause I’d like to know why someone thought they way they did. I don’t do it with the idea my opinion will change mind you, and I may end up responding with why I think they were wrong. Which is the purpose in my ends. Critics shouldn’t been seen as scoreboards that tell us what the winners and losers are. They should be looked at as people that can start a conversation or education us on aspects of movies we didn’t know.

        1. that’s what they USED to be like as far as critics, because “back in my day” the 80s-90s I only saw stuff like ebert and siskel or leonard maltin etc…. with the advent of th internet everyone’s a critic nowadays.

          1. That’s true but that’s why its good to actually listen and read reviews to see how good someone is as a critic. Just because their review is on RT doesn’t mean its any good. We may not have a name like Ebert but there are a lot of great critics out there still. Leonard Maltin still does reviews although I never found his writing all that great to be honest. Personally I enjoy the stuff done by /Film, Filmspotting, and pretty much any writer that was on The Dissolve before it went away like Scott Tobias or Keith Phillips.

          2. I may not have agreed with Ebert a lot of the time but I did respect his thoughts on a film and watched the movie show he hosted. Same with Leonard Maltin.

    2. That’s a really good insight into the how and why those sites work. I myself base films on my own opinion and tend to sidestep those sites. While I see their merit and do try to look at the films as a whole and break them down it’s still based on my own thoughts of whether I’d watch them again or not. I find those sites to be akin to critics themselves except some of them are actually fans. Thanks for breaking it down!

      1. No problem. I think people misunderstand the purpose of movie criticism to be honest. Movie critics are by all means experts in film for the most part and use their review to delve into things most general fans won’t. Critics know people will go see Batman v Superman, Transformers, or The Avengers no matter what they say. For me critics are translators. They take the art of film and break down its meaning and purpose. Critics can explain “where the camera goes” and crucially “why it goes there”, hinting at a more analytical, interpretive understanding of a film. Yes that can also be done on an individually standpoint but there is a benefit for someone who has a degree in film or long studied to art form to provide insight that would be unseen by the novice. That is the downside of star ratings and RT scores. Geeks and fans will scream from the high heavens that critics are wrong which is missing the point because rarely is that person actually reading the review they are complaining about. When I hear people say things like fans know more than critics I find it a tad laughable. Fans are more forgiving to critics as is the nature. A critic should review a film for what it is and not incorporate fandom when it comes to rating a film like we may. They should judge it based on its own merits so a movie like BVS will get slammed because they are major story telling problems that hold it back from being a good movie. That’s not saying a bad movie can’t still be entertaining.

        1. Yeah the critic has a tough job and as geeks we tend to forget that there is another aspect besides nostalgia involved. I am learning quite a bit of this as well which is making it difficult for me to enjoy some movies anymore due to the flaws I see now. But I do try to separate the logical and good film making from the entertaining as it keeps them fun which is what they’re meant to do…besides creating a paycheck.

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