What is the Metric of Success?
Academy Awards, Rotten Tomatoes, and Box Office Receipts. Which One?
A friend recently asked me, “What is your definition of success, and has it changed over time?” I thought this was a fantastic question and it sparked a lively discussion about goals, intentions, and purpose (meaning). That same day, the Oscar nominations were announced. Many of the nominations were celebrated by film fans all across the internet, but many more were calling foul and throwing around the word “snub” because their favorite movie or actor did not receive the nomination they thought they deserved. We all want our favorite film of the year to win an award. The awards are always hotly discussed the day the nominations are announced and the day after the ceremony but for 363 days of the year, the Academy Awards go unnoticed. We go back to declaring that they do not matter, while film nerds file away the winners and losers for future trivia, and Blu-rays start populating the shelves with horrible stickers announcing “Nine Time Academy Award Nominee!” as if that will motivate any rationable person to blind-buy a film. If the Academy Awards are meaningless, what metric can we use to judge the success of a film?
Ignoring the Academy Awards for a few moments (we will come back to them), there are two other metrics often used to cite the success of a film: box office returns and critical scores (Rotten Tomatoes, Metacritic, etc.). The box office is primarily a metric of how the general audience feels about a film. More money means more people saw the film. More people means more popular right? Critical scores are a metric of how, well, critics, feel about a film (we will talk about critics in another post someday). These tools are not completely without their uses. Studios rely on box office returns to fund their next projects and greenlight sequels. But how many films with large box office returns have bad critical scores? A Certified Fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes adds a sense of prestige to a film. How can a film loved by critics be bad? Studios are so reliant on Rotten Tomatoes they are even willing to pay for good reviews. But some of the greatest films ever made were major box office disappointments. Even if we take the Academy Awards out of the equation, should these two metrics not go hand in hand?
A beautiful thing about films and filmmaking is that no matter how hard studios try to crack the formula for making films that are both critically acclaimed and receive large box office returns there will always be failures. The filmmaking process is already messy. On top of that, studios have to try and predict what audiences want to see at a specific time and place in history. This is something perfectly portrayed in Damien Chazelle’s Babylon (2022), one of my favorite films of the last few years. Not only did Babylon fail to make its budget back at the box office, but the critical reviews were bad-to-mixed at best. There were a select few who praised the film upon its release and since then it has gained a small cult following. I predict the film will be considered a masterpiece within the next decade. I saw Babylon at the right time in my life and because of that, I connected with it on an emotional level that might not have happened at any other time. Does that sort of relationship with a film provide any additional value or success to a film?
Something I find interesting, but is often rarely talked about, unless it is used as another tool to argue for our favorite film, is the Rotten Tomatoes audience score. There are only a handful of people I trust film recommendations from, and I hardly trust audiences to give me a fair rating for any film. No matter how objective I try to be, even I am not above conflating enjoyment of a film with the quality of a film on Letterboxd. What should we do when there is a divide between the critic scores and the audience scores on Rotten Tomatoes? Which score is the right one? Do we really think that critics are above the same enjoyment bias as casual filmgoers? Star Wars: Episode VIII - The Last Jedi (2017) has a 91% critic score with a 42% audience score. Meanwhile, Star Wars: Episode IX - The Rise of Skywalker (2019) has a 51% critic score and an 86% audience score. If you start to take into consideration other audience review sites like IMDB or Letterboxd or critic review aggregate sites like Metacritic, the less clear everything becomes. Especially when you factor in studios buying Rotten Tomato reviews.
One of the most hotly debated films (at least on Twitter) is Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice. Eight years later fans and detractors are still discussing this film. Some people call it a masterpiece while others say it is the worst film ever made and is the reason DC films have failed at the box office ever since. Despite a 29% Rotten Tomatoes Critic Score (63% audience score), the film earned $874,360,194 at the box office on a budget of $250 million. Despite earning more than its budget back, the film is still considered a failure by many of its detractors because the first film with Batman and Superman together on screen ought to have earned over a billion dollars. Therein lies the problem with many of these metrics: an assumption that films have to do anything at all.
There is an underlying assumption that films need affirmation to be considered “good.” We tell ourselves if a film we like wins an award, makes back its box office, or receives stellar reviews it somehow affirms how we feel about said film. I remember walking into work the day after The Shape of Water (2017) won Best Picture at the Academy Awards. I made a dumb comment about it to my coworkers about how they thought I was crazy for enjoying the film and now it was “Best Picture” of the year. None of my coworkers had heard of it. I remember being so excited to rub their faces in it and in the end it was not worth it. What good does the award mean if no one has heard of the film? I had assumed that by winning Best Picture, suddenly it would change the way people viewed the film. Others would be forced to know it was good. I failed to acknowledge that not everyone likes the same films.
Different people involved with the filmmaking process will give different answers when asked what the purpose of a film is. Studio executives will tell you the purpose is to make money. Without money, how can a studio pay the crew to make more films? Most films are not shot on the weekends with a group of friends. The writer, director, and actors might say the purpose of a film is for entertainment. They might also say the film is a work of art meant to make you think. Filmmaking is the culmination of several different art forms after all. Those on the creative end of the spectrum might want to the critical acclaim or the awards. The filmmakers have their own intentions when making films. It would not surprise me if many of the people behind the scenes care more about telling stories than they do the prestige of an award, box office returns, or critical scores.
So what metric should we use for success? Each of these metrics has its usefulness, but that use only goes so far and hardly has any worth outside of the filmmaking community. Box office returns give studios more money to make more films. Critical scores and reviews seek to tell audiences what is good and what is not so good, while audience scores tell critics to “shove it.” Awards allow Hollywood to pat themselves on the back. Each of these metrics tells people, “Watch this! It is a good one!” But they inevitably turn into ammunition for people to pick and choose data points to prove why a film is “bad” because it failed in any one of the three metrics. The echo chamber of the internet allows fandoms to rally around a film they like while endlessly using Cinema Sins criticisms to claim a film is bad. The truth is an award does not change a person’s enjoyment of certain films, no more than an overwhelming box office return, or a critical score telling them it is the best film ever made.
The metric I believe we should use for success is enjoyment. It is not something that can be quantified or calculated. It is something that looks different for everyone. When compared with the alternatives, it is the only one that matters. Most of my favorite films haven’t won awards. Some of them failed to earn back their box office. Some of them are critically praised, but some are not. I do not care. I feel lucky I got to experience every single one of them. Maybe that is the attitude we should all have.
There are plenty of films that become box office flops, actors who do not win awards, and films that do not even get nominated. Most of these films are not going anywhere but others are not as lucky. Join me next week as I continue my series on film preservation and genre with The Sex Serum of Dr. Blake (1973, AKA Voodoo Heartbeat).