The opinion of the audience only matters (and is all that matters) when determining commercial success, not artistic merit.
Wonder Woman had an excellent CinemaScore and enjoyed a pretty long-legged release as a result. It cuts both ways.
-
Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.
'mother!' earns rare F CinemaScore
- Thread starter LordOfLore
- Start date
The opinion of the audience only matters (and is all that matters) when determining commercial success, not artistic merit.
Wonder Woman had an excellent CinemaScore and enjoyed a pretty long-legged release as a result. It cuts both ways.
Hysterical
Member
I came out of the movie not really sure how I felt about it. Ive never felt that way after watching a movie. It takes a while to actually process what you just watched. 24 hours later, I can say that I do infact like the movie. It is certainly not for everyone, though.
Mr. Giggles
Member
It has cult classic written all over it
djplaeskool
Member
It's a marketing backfire.
If you go into a theater expecting a rote horror film, and get a heavily allegorical psychedelic fever dream about Judeo-Christianity like mother!, I'd expect some bad reactions.
If you go into it knowledgeable of Aronofsky's entire body of work, you'll have a much better time. Emphasis on entire body, since the only other movie they really reference in marketing is Black Swan.
The more I reflect on mother! the more I love it.
If you go into a theater expecting a rote horror film, and get a heavily allegorical psychedelic fever dream about Judeo-Christianity like mother!, I'd expect some bad reactions.
If you go into it knowledgeable of Aronofsky's entire body of work, you'll have a much better time. Emphasis on entire body, since the only other movie they really reference in marketing is Black Swan.
The more I reflect on mother! the more I love it.
ElBoxyBrown
Banned
Sure, but advertise your movie to the audience you want to get instead of duping a different audience into expecting a movie they're not gonna get.
The problem is more about misrepresenting the genre of the movie.
Mother isn't really horror.
old manatee
Banned
I never watch trailers if I can help it, so I'll take your word for it that they misrepresented the movie, but it's definitely not not a horror movie.
I think you should read what cinemascore is before commenting.
Sucks for you bro. Movie is one of the fastest evolving medium in the last 50 years.
BlackGhost
Banned
I thought the trailers looked pretty good.
The "it's not a horror film" and "it's hard to describe" comments have me intrigued 🤔🤔
The "it's not a horror film" and "it's hard to describe" comments have me intrigued 🤔🤔
IceDoesntHelp
Banned
Wrongly advertised as a horror.
Incredibly well done.
Don't want to delve into spoilers, but the story and premise is done exceptionally well. There were a ton of teenagers in the theater I was in, and the premise went right over their heads.
I really liked it.
Incredibly well done.
Don't want to delve into spoilers, but the story and premise is done exceptionally well. There were a ton of teenagers in the theater I was in, and the premise went right over their heads.
I really liked it.
RipperGrim
Member
All the reviews I've seen have said the marketing was terrible for it because it's been set up as a horror when it's not at all. No idea why producers think that's a good idea.
The violence was very controversial. Ebert gave it zero stars for that reason. In general I think the reputation of that film was very much enhanced post-release (as will probably happen to mother!)
ElBoxyBrown
Banned
One is a safe action movie that's made to appeal to the masses, the other is an art movie made to appeal to a select group of people. The masses will always outweigh the opinions of a niche crowd on this site.
This movie is impossible to market. Word of mouth isn't even reliable here because I couldn't even begin to fathom how to sell someone into seeing this without them A) being someone who is very into film and pushes themselves into movies they could potentially hate but watch because they feel some sort of duty to appreciate art no matter the cost, B) taking in their history with Aronofsky and his past work. I do think a lot of his past work figures into this movie quite a bit, this is his ouevre, a culmination of a lot of things he's expressed in past films and if you only ever saw his films one way and not another that really could paint a clear picture of what you'll walk away with from this movie. I don't blame the marketing team for trying to sell the movie the way they did. After seeing the movie, it was an impossible task.
Escape Goat
Member
clearly the initial audience didn't know what they were paying to see or they were confused by the marketing. Even if the movie beats you over the head with its allegory and contains shocking violence, you can't say it's not well made film by many talented people. Certainly more entertaining than a Lindsay Lohan film.
You'd get the same reaction from audiences from people who saw Birdman thinking it was a superhero movie.
You'd get the same reaction from audiences from people who saw Birdman thinking it was a superhero movie.
1) Cinemascores are mostly useless (an A or a C doesn't really reflect box office take in any meaningful way)
2) They are not a reflection on the quality of a film, they are a predictor of box office
3) This thread is kind of useless unless it explains that Cinemascore is largely useless
4) No but seriously fuck Cinemascore
2) They are not a reflection on the quality of a film, they are a predictor of box office
3) This thread is kind of useless unless it explains that Cinemascore is largely useless
4) No but seriously fuck Cinemascore
old manatee
Banned
It's Rosemary's Baby, but crossed with Requiem For a Dream, Children of Men and the Bible.
shnurgleton
Member
Is it because people just wanted to see JLaw and then got way more movie than they expected?
old manatee
Banned
I feel like I had the same experience seeing Passengers that most moviegoers had seeing Mother!.
Fudgepuppy
Banned
I'm pretty sure most of my favorite movies have terrible CinemaScores.
Really looking forward to this, but it won't be released here until December
Really looking forward to this, but it won't be released here until December
Alcotholic
Banned
I'm so stoked so see this film, I only saw a trailer, but with all these extreme reactions I don't know what to expect anymore.
Escape Goat
Member
Probably for a lot of people. When you see JLaw you think you're getting Katniss or Rosalyn Rosenfield. Not a character from a dark carnival of the soul.
plagiarize
Banned
Thought it was amazing. Bad (misleading) marketing gets people in the door opening weekend but will kill a movie dead after that. Cabin in the Woods is another example.
It's totally a horror movie though people, just one with art house sensibilities.
It's totally a horror movie though people, just one with art house sensibilities.
I am not surprised by that rating. I saw Solaris in theaters, and it is one of the few times I can remember where almost the entire audience was heckling the movie after it was over.
Go watch the two trailers for this movie on IMDB. One is cut to make the movie look like a high-tension sci-fi thriller. The other one makes it look like a romance-heavy drama. The actual movie is neither of those things. This is one of those examples of the studio attracting the wrong audience via misleading marketing.
snausagesUK
Member
I don't really think ratings like this are useless if you just want to get the measure of how an audience feels about a thing in general. It's not like anyone believes this is a quality watermark if a film gets an A on this thing or whatever. It's a weird inaccessible film that will not click with a broad audience and there's nothing wrong with that.
ElBoxyBrown
Banned
It's a good measure on how terrible the marketing was for the movie. Art movies don't get F's. Something happened here.
plagiarize
Banned
You should. Everyone in here should. I'm sure many would love it.
It'll find it's audience down the road either way, for sure.
Messofanego
Banned
Dishonest? What did they lie about? It takes from Polanski and other arthouse horror. The trailer didn't hint at things that weren't expected. One of the best film trailers this year, actually.
DontBeThatGuy
Member
Killing Them Softly has an F?
That's dumb.
That's dumb.
Ordinaryundone
Member
To be fair, "horror" is about the best way I can think to describe it without getting way to into specifics. "Psychological Horror", I guess. Problem is that it isn't REALLY meant to be scary most of the time, just disturbing and unpleasant (like a David Lynch movie) which is an experience a lot of people tend to conflate with horror anyway. Plus it definitely has a least a foot firmly in the "Gothic Horror" genre which has always had issues with resolving the difference between its imagery and it's actual themes when translating it to a visual medium.
It's like trying to show someone a clip from Eraserhead and then telling them it's not a horror movie. That's a hard sell.
ElBoxyBrown
Banned
The teaser trailer was fine. It's vague but mysterious. Your for the most part intrigued. All the other trailers after that is a little confusing.
The Albatross
Member
My wife saw it and was excited to see it, and then said it was really lame and cheesy. She said it was like 40minutes of people walking between rooms.
I agree that it is newsworthy, but the thread lacks context for what Cinemascore is. Like I said an A or a C doesn't impact the box office take, but an F is noteworthy.
More_Badass
Member
It's unease, tense, oppressive, has disturbing and horrific imagery, and uses horror movie elements, but it isn't a horror movie
I think it's one of my favorite movies of the year. I'm still thinking about it days later
So we have to resort to scams to sell tickets?
sixteen-bit
Member
lmao
Dragon1893
Member
Yeah, seems like a lot of people didn't know what they were getting into.
old manatee
Banned
More_Badass
Member
The most misleading thing about the marketing is editing it as horror movie or thriller. The story presented in the trailer does happen in the movie, it's that movie takes the story presented in the trailer and recontextualizes it when you have the context of the film
But it's definitely not as bad as It Comes At Night, where the title, poster, and trailer gave the expectation that the story itself was something that the movie isn't
ResidentWeevil13
Member
One of the things that's really disheartening to learn from this thread is that audiences didn't like The Witch. I had no idea there was a bad reaction to that film. I thought it was one of the best horror movies I'd ever seen. I don't pay too much attention to marketing, but I don't remember it being misleading. What a shame.
I got in the thread expecting F to be like an age rating, as I never heard about CinemaScores and that it was considered rare.
Now I feel like I know a little too much about the movie due to the mention of violence. Only having heard a bit about it second hand I thought it would only be tense in the atmosphere without resorting to something like that.
Guess I'll not see it in the cinemas then as gore/exaggerated violence combined with horror/thriller is not my cup of tea. Just having heard that it was a thriller it seemed great and I looked forward to seeing it, oh well.
Now I feel like I know a little too much about the movie due to the mention of violence. Only having heard a bit about it second hand I thought it would only be tense in the atmosphere without resorting to something like that.
Guess I'll not see it in the cinemas then as gore/exaggerated violence combined with horror/thriller is not my cup of tea. Just having heard that it was a thriller it seemed great and I looked forward to seeing it, oh well.
benicillin
Banned
lol today I learned CinemaScore gave The Dark Tower a B.
Shame mother! is getting marketed unfortunately, the same thing happened to Crimson Peak (a criminally underrated movie.)
Shame mother! is getting marketed unfortunately, the same thing happened to Crimson Peak (a criminally underrated movie.)