Are film critics losing sync with audiences?
Critic reviews are prescriptive: what they think the masses <i>should</i> watch.<p>User reviews are retrospective: how much did they actually enjoy watching the movie.<p>I think there has always been a fundamental disconnect, in that critics think the masses <i>should</i> be watching &#x27;smarter&#x27;, &#x27;more artistic&#x27; or, less flatteringly, more pretentious movies.<p>The world has become a lot more political over the past couple decades.  I wouldn&#x27;t be surprised if critics are trying to be increasingly prescriptive, using their review to try to change the modern zeitgeist.<p>I think a very interesting graph would be so see to what extent critics prescriptions are accurately forward-looking to viewer attitudes.<p>More interesting further research could be:<p>For movies that came out before 2010 where the user rating diverged from critic rating by more than 10%, are user ratings which were rated after 2015 in the same direction as the critic&#x27;s divergence?  There are certainly movies that I enjoyed as a teenager, but cringe watching today: were critics at the time cringing in the same way, ahead of the masses?  Or are critics just in a pretentious bubble that is not predictive of societal evolution?