After nearly a year of escalating hype, Godzilla: King of the Monsters dropped in theatres this weekend. It was one of my most anticipated films of 2019. As a fan of nearly two decades, the co-creator of Kaijuvision Radio, and a raging nerd, I went into it excited but cautious. I remembered another American-made Godzilla movie from 20 years ago or so that had just as much, if not more, hype, and it failed to deliver.

I walked out of my local IMAX theatre with a huge smile on my face. Most fans did.

Critics didn’t.

All this week the Godzilla fan community (in America, anyway) has been in a tizzy. As the critics score on Rotten Tomatoes dropped (it sits at 40% currently) and the audience score remained high (it hovers around 90%), the fans got defensive. They became the latest fandom to declare critics “hacks” who didn’t know what they were talking about, who just didn’t understand the genre or Godzilla. While many fans—including myself—said King of the Monsters wasn’t what critics claimed it was, others stamped their feet, crossed their arms, and said, “I like because it’s bad like all the other Godzilla films!”

To be honest, I’m not all that surprised. These fans have spent years defending their enjoyment of giant monsters—or perhaps even hid it—when many people relegated such fare to schlock. That’d put a huge chip on anybody’s shoulders. While other “nerdy” genres like superheroes have gone mainstream, the kaiju genre is still trying to gain wide acceptance. I don’t know if it ever will. Regardless, I think much of this pushback from Godzilla fans stems from their defensiveness. Like many nerds, they’ve made their fandom a huge part of their lives, and when they think it’s being attacked, they see it as an attack upon themselves.

This isn’t to say that the fans don’t have valid points. Rotten Tomatoes has grown from a website that helped moviegoers make an informed decision about what films to see to a cultural force that studios think they must placate. “Tomatometer” scores can make or break a film now. At least, that’s what many movie executives fear. An aggregate of bad reviews could destroy the millions of dollars they invested in a film. That’s why they brag whenever one of their movies has a high RT rating. The problem is people aren’t engaging with the reviews; they’re just looking at the score and not reading what was said. They don’t realize that RT’s system a critic only has to answer a yes or no question—“Is it ‘fresh’?”—before posting a review on the site. A rating of three out of five will count as “fresh,” so even a “B-” or “C+” review will count. In other words, the 90% fresh rating could all be average reviews. As one fan pointed out, it has ruined film criticism by reducing it to mere numbers. But these are numbers given tremendous weight and power by lazy often readers who succumb to some form of groupthink, either in agreement or disagreement. This, in turn, has led to some borderline conspiracy theories about studios bribing critics for good or bad reviews as well as theories that studios are censoring bad reviews from users. I’m not saying any of this is true, but it is certainly possible.

Fans say critics are prejudiced against the kaiju genre and don’t appreciate it. There’s some truth to that as I’ve pointed out. Their scores and criticisms often seem inconsistent, to say the least. Godzilla (2014) was criticized for allegedly not having enough screen time for Godzilla or the monster fights while focusing on human characters. Now the common complaint from critics is there’s too much time given to the monsters (I disagree, but I digress). Who wouldn’t pull their hair out? It doesn’t seem possible to please them.

But do fans know what makes a great kaiju film? I’ve often heard fans say that they want a film that’s nothing but kaiju fights. This has led to an image of the fandom that is, well, less than flattering (one Twitter user said it made the fandom look like “knuckle draggers”). In some ways it seems hypocritical. They fight against non-fans labeling the films “trash” while advocating for movies that are empty spectacle. As one YouTuber put it, fans like the “social commentaries of the Japanese films, but when it comes to American films, they just want Godzilla to eat buildings and punch monsters.” I’ll be the first person to argue that there is substance—often profound substance—in these films. Even the so-called “silly ones.” That’s why it vexes me to hear such talk from fans. It’s especially annoying because they’re basically saying, “This movie is nonstop action with human characters I don’t care about, so I love it for the reasons critics hate it! Boo-yah!” It’s kinda childish, honestly.

Ultimately, whether the reviews come from critics or fans, they are simply opinions, and as a crude old saying reminds us, everyone has opinions. It’s just that, for whatever reason—be it experience, education, position, or whatnot—we have elevated the opinions of critics. They are the dwellers in the ivory towers who know what true art is while fans are the unwashed, ignorant masses. (Insert “sarcasm sign” here). While fans have wanted to drop Oxygen Destroyers in critics’ laps this week, if their reviews had been positive, I have no doubt they would’ve celebrated and shared them as validation of themselves and their fandom. But do these critics invalidate the opinions of fans? No. They are allowed to like things other people don’t. They enjoyed it based on their own criteria. One man’s trash is another man’s masterpiece. Many people watch Godzilla vs. Gigan and see a silly low-budget kaiju film. I watch it and see a meta-commentary on pop culture and globalism. Opinions often change with time. When Citizen Kane was first released, it has rejected by critics as too unusual. Now it’s regaled as the greatest film ever made. The Empire Strikes Back, which is commonly considered the greatest Star Wars film, was dismissed by critics upon release. I say all of this to remind people that while there are objective criteria for what makes a good story, the evaluation of art is still largely subjective.

I’m gonna have a lot more to talk about on the King of the Monsters G-Fest panel than I thought.

What do you think? Is Rotten Tomatoes helping or hindering films, filmgoers, and/or film criticism? How so?

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