Pop Culture Commentator Says Moviegoers Are To Blame For Box Office Failures Because Of Their Intelligence Level
Pop culture commentator John Rocha says its time to start blaming moviegoers for the mediocre box office hauls of films like Superman and Fantastic Four: First Steps.
In a post to X, Rocha reacted to Jurassic World Rebirth grossing higher than both Fantastic Four: First Steps and Superman, “Some people won't want to hear this, but it might be time to stop putting ALL the blame on studios or creatives for underperforming movies. It might be time to start looking at the intelligence level of moviegoers.”
He added, “If a phenomenally STUPID film like Jurassic World Rebirth can crush films like Superman and Fantastic Four at the box office, then something might be wrong with all of us and NOT the studios or the creatives.”
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To be clear, it appears that Jurassic World Rebirth will outperform both Superman and Fantastic Four: First Steps when it’s all said and done. Jurassic World Rebirth has currently grossed $317.6 million domestically and $449.2 million internationally for a global gross of $766.8 million.
In comparison, Superman has grossed $317.9 million domestically, but only $234.9 million internationally for a global gross of $552.9 million. Meanwhile, Fantastic Four: First Steps has grossed just $197.1 million domestically and only $170.2 million internationally for a global gross of just $367.4 million.
To extrapolate what these grosses say about the intelligence level of the people watching them is bizarre given there are a myriad of factors that likely go into purchasing a ticket.
Nevertheless, Rocha doubled down on it in a reply to X user Verbal Riot. He wrote, “You're judging the intelligence of the audience cause your mediocre films didn't do as well as the mediocre film you don't have studio access to? Way to expose yourself man. Hope those gift bags and early screenings are worth your integrity.”
Rocha responded, “LOL! Ah yes, the default whining of the brain dead, Anti-Woke b***h: ‘You get paid with gift bags and early screenings!’”
He then cited Rotten Tomatoes and CinemaScore, “Superman and F4 scored over 82% with critics and over 90% with Audiences and got an A- Cinemascore yet you think they’re ‘mediocre’. Meanwhile JWB scored barely 50% with critics and barely 71% with audiences yet you think it’s great. Tell me again why I shouldn’t question the judgment of moviegoers???”
As a point of order, Rotten Tomatoes and Cinemascore are forms of social proof, which Gartner Digital Markets defines as “the idea that people make decisions based on the actions and opinions of others. In other words, if someone sees a group of people doing something, they are more likely to follow.” In fact, the outlet makes clear that “online reviews are a powerful form of social proof, with 86% of businesses considering verified reviews critical in their purchase decisions.”
Movie studios are on record in attempting to manipulate social proof in order to get more eyes on their shows and tickets sold. A report from Vulture from 2023 claimed that PR firm Bunker 15 paid Rotten Tomatoes approved critics to boost reviews of certain films. They noted, “Bunker 15 pays them $50 or more for each review.” Furthermore, they claimed that the PR firm even attempted to lobby critics to get negative reviews changed.”
HBO and MAX CEO Casey Bloys admitted to using a troll army to target critics in an attempt to protect his shows from criticism. Bloys admitted to the acts and apologized saying, “For those of you who know me, you know that I am a programming executive very, very passionate about the shows that we decide to do. And the people who do them and the people who work on them.”
He continued, “I want the shows to be great. I want people to love them. I want you all to love them. It’s very important to me what you all think of the shows. When you think about that, and then think of 2020 and 2021, I’m working from home and doing an unhealthy amount of scrolling through Twitter. And I come up with a very, very dumb idea to vent my frustration.”
“Obviously, six tweets over a year and a half is not very effective,” he said. “But I do apologize to the people who were mentioned in the leaked emails, texts. Obviously, nobody wants to be part of a story that they have nothing to do with.”
“But also, as many of you know, I have progressed over the past couple of years to using DMs. So now, when I take issue with something in a review, or take issue with something I see, many of you are gracious enough to engage with me in a back and forth and I think that is a probably a much healthier way to go about this. But we’ll talk more about that, and you guys can ask me anything you want in the Q&A. I just wanted to put that out there,” he concluded.
On top of all of this, a report from cyber security firm Imperva estimates that 37% of all internet traffic is made up of malicious bots. Given Bloys has admitted to deploying a troll army, it’s not out of the question that these companies would be attempting manipulate scores through bots.
Regardless, one assumes a review is done after seeing a movie whereas the purchase of a ticket is done before seeing a movie so using both of those to try to determine the level of their intelligence is specious.
What do you make of Rocha’s comments?
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He's a dick, but he's also half-right. There's no scenario where intelligent people with good taste put a soulless, garbage fire of a Jurassic Park movie in the hundreds of millions of dollars.
That doesn't mean the other films were good by comparison, though. Unfortunately it's possible for everything to be bad at the same time.
Superman and Jurassic World have the same domestic take, so is he calling foreigners stupid? And I like how that low IQ, soy-beard consoomer seems to think that movies about magic people in tights punching monsters is somehow so much more intelligent and high brow than the Dino-slop. Bro needs to take a break from the internet and read a book.