Star Wars Episode VIII The Last Jedi has been screened for critics and the reviews are in. But, the critics are so afraid of spoilers that they don’t really say anything. It’s a bunch of critics saying, “I liked it,” and then filling the column out with another 500-1000 words of nothingness. It’s frustrating. Critics are supposed to engage in criticism, but that’s impossible if they won’t talk about the movie.
My partner, Jamil, recently wrote a piece complaining about the spoiler culture we live in. He basically says that a good story can’t be spoiled, so we should all stop worrying about it. I agree with him whole heartedly. But even if most people disagree, that’s still no reason for critics to be so vague in their reviews.
If someone is worried about spoilers, that person simply shouldn’t be reading reviews before seeing the movie that they’re interested in. And critics should do their jobs and assume that people who care about spoilers are smart enough to avoid them. If someone reads a review and learns something they didn’t want to know, it is their own fault.
Critics only have one job, to critique. In order to do that, they need to provide detail and context from the movie to make their points. If they can’t do that, they might as well stop calling themselves critics and start calling themselves marketers. Disney already pays more than enough marketers to do the job. So called critics should stop providing the service for free.
