How Not To Respond To Film Criticism

The director of Kong: Skull Island, Jordan Vogt-Roberts, has been going apeshit on the internet.  Some reviewers were not happy with the movie and this set the director off, in a series of Twitter tirades.  Here is how you shouldn’t respond to criticism of your film.

Begin like this:

“I just wanted to point out why these videos are infuriating. They’re often just wrong or think they’re smarter than you. I love film criticism and I love reading negative reviews if the author makes compelling and well-written arguments… I make movies because I love film. These guys are just trolling the art form we love and profiting from it while dumbing the conversation.”

Well dummy, if they’re trolling (they’re not), you’ve lost the minute you acknowledge them.  Continuing:

Things like this drive me crazy. This is meant to be absurd. Cinema Sins would ding pulp fiction for Jules and Vincent not getting shot… pic.twitter.com/Zzer9HpRM4

— Jordan Vogt-Roberts (@VogtRoberts) August 15, 2017

Because it's inaccessible by boat and thus only discovered when we launched satellites in the 70's with cameras looking down at the earth. pic.twitter.com/VY54NIeO7F

— Jordan Vogt-Roberts (@VogtRoberts) August 15, 2017

To anyone who thinks this video makes me mad or hurts me. It doesn't. I just wanted to point out a few obvious examples that are just wrong.

— Jordan Vogt-Roberts (@VogtRoberts) August 15, 2017

It clearly both hurt him and made him mad.  Also, among the tons more of these Tweets (check out his stream for more), we can’t forget the obligatory virtue signal;

It's like when trump lies on camera just because he can. It's infuriating and there are people out there who listen to him & cinema sins.

— Jordan Vogt-Roberts (@VogtRoberts) August 15, 2017

Oh, hahaha.  That’s funny, I’m not even being sarcastic, it’s funny that the ‘T’ word is just thrown up randomly.  What’s also funny is that the man is not exactly defending a masterpiece.  It would be different if, say, this movie was Shot Caller, and some dickheads were unfairly ripping up a nice piece of work.

But this Kong movie looks like a fucking video game.  Personally, I felt like I was sitting through a prolonged PS4 Pro cutscene.  Totally vacuous bling.  There’s something about CGI that the more easy it is to produce and paradoxically the better it looks, the worse the immersion is.  Kong looked stunning, but was extremely repellent.

And that problem was not bailed out with substance!