MovieTok and the Cost of Credibility

“Everyone’s a critic,” the saying goes. My friend Eric D. Snider added the rejoinder, “Everyone’s a publicist.”

Last week, The New York Times ran a piece about the rise of MovieTok, and highlighted prominent MovieTok personalities who would prefer to be classified as “movie reviewers” than “film critics.” Cameron Kozak, who has 1.5 million followers, tells reporter Reggie Ugwu, “When you read a critic’s review, it almost sounds like a computer wrote it,” adding, “But when you have someone on TikTok who you watch every day and you know their voice and what they like, there’s something personal that people can connect to.”

This is, of course, nonsense, but also Kozak is 21 and I said more than my fair share of dumb stuff in my 20s, and I’m sure I’ll continue saying the occasional dumb thing for the rest of my life. But even Bryan Lucious, who is 31, told Ugwu, “A lot of us don’t trust critics. They watch movies and are just looking for something to critique. Fans watch movies looking for entertainment.” (see my piece about “Critical Misconceptions” for more on this)

Ugwu wants to frame his piece as simply the rise of a new critical establishment, showcasing pushback from people like me as just sour grapes or negative reactive to change. He writes:

Setting aside that these are incredibly broad generalizations, Ugwu misses an important sea change between the critics of previous generations and MovieTok: editorial independence. Pauline Kael may not have agreed with Bosley Crowther, but neither would have considered movie studios as “clients.”

While the job of critic is oft debated. Even the definition supplied by philosopher Noël Carroll cited by author Mattias Frey—“evaluation grounded in reason”—feels inadequate. If I evaluate that a hot burner will scorch my hand because I know that high temperatures are damaging to skin, I wouldn’t say I critiqued my stove.

Where film criticism is concerned, at a basic level, the writer has to make an argument that’s true to their feelings alone. The skill of their writing lies in how effectively they can make that argument drawing on historical knowledge, analysis, and rhetoric. But most importantly, they have to be true to their own opinion rather than chase what they think others may want them to say. Whether a critic likes the same things I like is irrelevant to me. What matters is if they’re being honest. When an honest critic gives a glowing review, I know it means something because they were just as willing to be honest with a pan.

MovieTok, as described in Ugwu’s article, is fundamentally dishonest—because so many of these earnest-seeming reviews are, in reality, tiny bits of marketing paid for by the studios themselves. Once you accept direct payment from a studio, how can you be trusted to speak honestly about any of their movies? I appreciate that Megan Cruz tries to be transparent. She says, “We do exist in this in-between space and I think it’s important to clarify whenever you’re getting any kind of advantage.”

But the following paragraph also shows that MovieTok seems to believe that they’re not supposed to be too harsh:

If someone tells me what they think of a movie, my first thought should be to engage with their argument, not wonder if they’re only saying it because they’re hoping to foster positive relationships with a studio that will pay them on a contract basis. While publications may have fallen away, it’s contingent on us now more than ever to hold onto our integrity rather than selling it for a few thousand bucks and a walk on a red carpet.

My Share of the Blame

The Internet was a game changer for whose opinions mattered. Up until the late 90s, studios only had to worry about critics at print outlets and an assortment of critics on TV. However, these critics typically worked with strict boundaries between advertising and editorial so that writers didn’t have to consider the studio at large.

With the rise of movie websites outside the critical establishment, studios worked to reset their relationships with writers. While at first studios were hostile to these websites, they soon realized they could have a willing marketing partner with just a little bit of finesse. These publications typically had no policies in place to govern the relationship between studios and reporters, so the studios could set the terms. While they wouldn’t pay these websites’ writers directly, they would schmooze them with lots of perks—travel, swag, and access. It wasn’t a quid pro quo, but it did create incentives to play nice.

I’m as guilty as anyone in this generation for playing along. I could make excuses, but the truth is that the perks were nice, I couldn’t afford to fly myself to London or stay in a fancy hotel, and if Universal wanted to foot the bill, I would take that. I never tweaked a review or pulled a punch in my writing, but I completely understand if readers may’ve doubted my allegiances. Was I trying to support the studio or was I trying to be honest with people reading my work? A friend of mine once argued that no one who had ever visited a Marvel set ended up panning that Marvel movie. I directed him to my Ant-Man set visit and my Ant-Man review, but I completely understood where he was coming from.

Is it any wonder that people on social media believe that critics were getting paid under the table to give movies good reviews? In all my years, I’ve never heard of that happening, but there are other forms of payment, and one of those payments is in relationships. Publicists told me to my face that they thought my reviews could be too harsh, and while I never worried that they would pull access, you could always see that the publications willing to “play ball” had an easier time scoring interviews or getting access to screenings.

And that’s fine. I don’t control studio prerogatives. I can only control what I do, but I feel like MovieTok is crossing a line that I flirted with. If I had to do it all over again, I would think twice about taking those trips or accepting swag or anything that would blur my independence as a film critic. What unnerves me about these MovieTok personalities is how they’re so eager to sell away that independence and claim it as populism.

All You Have Is Your Word

Juju Green tells Ugwu he’s, “on a mission to combat film snobbery.” I don’t even know what this means other than trying to argue that critics are the snobs but the guy who has worked for Disney, Universal, Warner Bros., and Paramount is the man of the people? Get paid however you want, but I don’t see how trying to remain editorial independent is snobbish.

Perhaps this is just the kind of personalities who have flocked to MovieTok—affable and unwilling to go negative. But if all you have is your word, then how can you be trusted if A) you’re being paid by studios; and B) you’re reluctant to say you thought a movie was bad?

Where Ugwu’s story went horribly astray is in failing to understand what film criticism is, and that there may be serious ethical qualms with what MovieTok is doing that are an outgrowth of missteps made by the previous generation (e.g. folks like me). This isn’t a story about evolution or what’s next but how tech has destroyed a profession and mutated its remains into salespeople. Whether the people on MovieTok prefer to be called “critics” or “movie reviewers” is semantics. We need to look at their actions.

TikTok fosters the notion that these people are being authentic, but that’s the illusion. It’s a big smile, good lighting, and behind closed doors they’re trying to close a deal. Did they really like Fast X, or were they trying to secure access to the red carpet of Universal’s other big summer movie, Oppenheimer? Did they not post a negative review of The Flash because they didn’t want to harm their relationship with Warner Bros?

Perhaps the counterargument is that these people just love movies and they’re trying to make a living off that love. Perhaps I’m a relic yelling about his encroaching obsolescence. But I also know that I never went into a movie with an agenda and never worried whether or not my words would affect my standing with a studio. I’ve made plenty of mistakes as a film critic, but trying to bend my reviews into a shape that would be most pleasing to a movie studio isn’t one of them.