Would you support setting movie ticket prices according to critic scores?

Although I like the thinking, it would encourage low budget lousy movies, because people will see it because it is cheap. Having “Suicide Squad” be so expensive means people won’t waste their money, and DC will finally have to figure out how to make a decent movie.

No. Because who are the critics? Who appointed them god? I disagree with most of them anyway.

I’d rather see other pricing schemes. I can think of several:

1) length of film. Long movies cost more than short movies. A 150 minute film costs 20% more than a 95 minute film.

2) number of nude scenes. Lots of T&A costs more than a PG-rated film

3) Number of words in the title. “Its a Mad Mad Mad Mad World” would cost more than “Tombstone”

4) Number of people who die in the film. “Dirty Dozen” would cost more than “Finding Nemo”

I love low-budget lousy movies. Works for me.

No.

No, because there will always be overrated movies that are liked by critics but hated by movie goers.

Would a high ticket price for a “good” movie discourage some people from seeing it? That would be counter-productive. A “bad” movie with a low ticket price would encourage more people to see it – also counter-productive.

Paying viewership is already a good filter.

Nope.

No. Although, it would probably benefit me, because some of the movies I like don’t wind up being blockbuster smashes.

I wonder what the profit margins are like on movie theatres? The prices seem so high in some places. Where I live now it isn’t too bad, $8.50 (USD) with my guest pass. I’m not sure how much it is without my discount. I’m sure it’s more like 11€ in many places around the US though, especially larger cities.

There is nothing to prevent movie theaters from doing this on their own. Obviously, since you have such an excellent idea here, you should start a chain of movie theaters, institute this policy on your own hook, and reap the rewards.

(The tilde is implied.)

Definitely not. In addition to all the other very good reasons given, it would open up the possibility of corruption by having the the studios in cahoots with critics.

There will always be a niche market for low cost art films.

Base the price on the actual cost of the print that is delivered to cinemas.

While it is an interesting idea, it wouldn’t work.
The box office of a film is a better reflection of consumer interest, that artistic success.
Critics may bash a movie like “Snakes On A Plane”, but people who want to see it will.
by the way, when they make “Fluther: The Movie!”, I want to be played by Edward Norton

For fun I checked imdb to see how Suicide Squad was doing. Quite well.
It had a budget of $175 million and as of August 8 has taken in $280 million world-wide.

I wonder what % of viewers are there to see the blonde in action.

@LuckyGuy
Audiences are stupid.

Ah, no @ragingloli, audiences are not stupid. Audiences make up their own minds to enjoy entertainment for whatever reason. Anyone who thinks that “audiences are stupid” simply because they don’t behave as the person who thinks that thinks they should is stupid.

Audiences will go pay money to see a movie that they know they are not going to enjoy.

That is pretty stupid.

@canidmajor
Yes, audiences ARE stupid. There are objective factors by which to judge the quality of a movie. Audiences are blind and deaf to those. That is why objectively bad movies like the transformers movies or the recent DC debacles still rake in hundreds of millions.

^ Agreed.

That’s right, I forget that you are one who prefers to be told what opinions to have by the critics. my bad. Sorry. ~

Hmmm. Interesting idea. I’ll go for it if I can pick the critics – and I’ll pick the critics that don’t like what I like so my movies will be cheap.

Wait. That won’t work. They’‘ll stop making what I like.

^ And that is exactly why it would work.

I’d pay way more to see Bruce Campbell make bad puns about zombies in a low-budget horror film than I would to watch someone ruin a perfectly entertaining comic book by throwing half a billion dollars worth of CGI in the way of the story.

Nope.
The gaming industry have tried this linking metacritic scores to bonus payments. Have we seen a reduction in crap games? No. Have we seen decent studios go under because their game got an average of 89% instead of 90% on metacritic? Yes.

The problem with suicide squad is the trailers had very little to do with the film. True trailers were super successful so the studio forced reshhoots to make the film more like the trailers. That’s never gonna work out. The only people to blame there are the internet fan bois who can’t except that something isn’t what they imagined it to be.

I don’t think that system would work out so well. It would tend to cause more people to see low-rated films.

I’d be more for a system that just does a bit of reallocation of rewards. Also I’d like to see the opposite effect of your suggestion, where non-crap media becomes more accessible. I’d also like to see the abolition of “intellectual property” laws. And more rewards going to the people who create the stuff, and not giant corporations and their stockholders.

I’m not sure what the best system details would be. However I think that once people develop a system that allows free distribution of media, then there will be much more consumption. That could be combined with users rating their enjoyment of the stuff they watch, and having that result in payments to the people who created the media. i.e. an entirely different economic model that has benevolent goals and methods instead of a vicious backwards megacorporate model.

No absolutely not. A critic’s evaluation of any movie is only their opinion. As it happens I disagree with a lot of critic’s opinions on movies. Many critics actually don’t understand particular genres such as science fiction and comic book movies. They do not necessarily always know what they are talking about and they are not necessarily “the experts”. They are just people with an opinion. And some of these critics are not very well versed with products that go outside of the main scope of mainstream movies.

If cinema ticket prices go down, this must apply for all movies.

No. I have seen movies that were hideously panned but that I enjoyed immensely.

Why this won’t work:

The Lobster earned a Rotten Tomatoes score of 90%, although only 68% of responding audiences liked it. And @janbb (whose taste I respect) couldn’t stand it. While i thought it was great, quite a few people in the theater where I saw it were quite vocal in their distaste as they left early.

So I would have paid 90% of the going rate, but people would have been very angry to pay so much for a controversial movie.

^^ I would have asked for my money back if I could have.

Here’s a thought: You watch the movie first and then pay what you thought it was worth at the end!

Just a tip. If a movie is so bad that you walk out early. Ask for your money back or a pass to see another that movie that isn’t shit. It happens a lot and management is cool with it. We made 90% of the money off candy, popcorn, and soda. We handed out passes like candy since you would probably buy some popcorn and pepsi for the movie you are watching with that pass. We kept 100% of that money.

GOOD TIP @johnpowell. The other thing about such a scheme involves the enormous incentive for bribery and corruption involving critics.

No.
Never.

Let’s take Ghostbusters metacritc user scores before the film was released from about 12000 people. Average 4. Average from men 3.5. Average from women 7.5. Does that score tell us anything about how good the film is? Or does it say more about male internet users? Or does it just tell us matacritic is broken as fuck.

@Lightlyseared :: Yeah, the misogyny was out in full force on that one. Twitter actually banned a shithead over it.