Movie critics.

Seriously now, I'm starting to get a little annoyed with them. I understand that they are paid for their reviews and therefore are expected to give a good one. I know that comparative analysis is inevitable when reviewing movies, and having read the book that spawned most of the movies, most reviewers use their prior experience reading the book and compare it with the movie.

Almost always, the movie ends up taking a beating. I have two examples. The Golden Compass was written based on the book Northern Lights, and the one review I have read has slammed the director for 'destroying one of the best pieces of child fiction ever written'. I know how he feels. I believe him when he said that the movie had been dumbed down by Hollywood. The generally happy, cheery feel to the movie doesn't quite capture a sense of epicness the way a dark tale spun around a properly scary Magisterium would. And not having happy endings is never an option with Hollywood, but it is in the world of books. So I guess for a sense of realism and immersability, book audiences will always be expecting something more than the usual children's fare.

I am Legend suffers from the same fate. The context of the title has been completely turned around, and now I actually find myself wanting to read the book, even if it is 50 year old science fiction. The movie is so much simpler than the book, but the idea in the book is just so bloody brilliant, I am actually a little upset that the producers didn't try to make it work on screen.

This is where my rant comes in. These movie reviewers are so used to a fare of intelligent story telling that everything else seems to suck in comparison. Most people I know found the Golden Compass to be a good movie. I didn't like it for the way the director made the movie or for the way the special effects were done. I loved it for the concept. I loved the idea of a nation of warrior polar bears and of a world that operates using a completely different set of rules of the universe. I'm sure the book did all that better, but it doesn't change the fact that the unacquainted will still be rightly impressed.

What I'm trying to say is very simple. If movie reviewers were wine tasters, they are only catering to the connoisseurs, the elitist bastards that uncork a bottle and sniff at the wine before pouring it in a glass and swirling it gently to oxygenate the bloody alcohol. Very few of their readers are that kind of people. We are social drinkers, happy we're even drinking wine at all. So fuck the flavour of the bloody thing, as long as it hasn't turned to bloody vinegar (which means very bad movie, like anything with Britney Spears or Madonna in it) then we would happily wolf it down and ask for a refill.