CrunchGear, at the movies! Peter’s been talking pretty much non-stop about Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen for the past few days, and it brings me great joy to say that, despite the horrendous reviews—this is the dumbest thing I’ve ever read—it’s well on its way to becoming the worst reviewed $400 million movie ever. The movie has been in theaters for five days now and it’s already halfway to the $400 million mark.
Now, I haven’t seen the movie (despite the fact that we were all invited to see an early screening of it; something came up), but I did listen to Paul O’s review on the Ron and Fez show last week, and it’s safe to say that he didn’t like the movie. Nearly no critics liked it, as a quick trip to Rotten Tomatoes reveals. Yup, a 21 percent rating. Terrible, right?
It seems that, according to Rob Moore, who’s a vice-chairman of Paramount, all those fancy-pants reviewers “forget what the goal of the movie was. The goal of the movie is to entertain and have fun.” (Isn’t that the goal of every movie, though? Name me one movie that’s been well-received but that wasn’t “entertaining.” All good movies “entertain” on some level.)
Even more telling, according to Paramount’s exit polls—movie studios have exit polls?!—is that 91 percent of movie-goers thought the film was as good, if not better, than the first.
In other words, movie critics have no idea what they’re talking about vis-à-vis the average guy, which is sorta like us here at CG. Our reviews are mainly written for the tach-savvy crowd, and we look at things through that tech-savvy prism. While we may pan an item, like the BlackBerry Storm, the average guy thinks it’s the coolest thing ever.