Why does Hollywood keep ignoring audience backlash?

r/

It honestly blows my mind how Hollywood keeps messing up over the smallest, most random stuff, and even after people give clear feedback, they still don’t seem to care. We’ve seen it over and over again. The backlash from The Flash, Pirates of the Caribbean, Percy Jackson, Witcher etc…

And it’s usually not even about something huge. It’s little things that could be fixed easily. Things that the fans tells them about beforehand. Yet, they push forward anyway, even if it makes people mad or tanks the whole project.

At some point, I feel like there’s gotta be something we’re not seeing. because it can’t just randomlykeeps happening again and again for no reason, right?

Anyone else think there’s more going on behind the scenes? Or are they really just that out of touch?

Comments

  1. zelcor Avatar

    Because the backlash is often heavily and obviously astroturfed

  2. ThingCalledLight Avatar

    How many times do you see an actor interviewed and they talk about how the studio gives horrible notes about things to change? Dozens, right?

    And the studio has a vested interest in a project doing well. They’re in the industry, too, so you’d think they’d know what they’re talking about, at least somewhat, when it comes to the content of a film.

    But according to many actors, they don’t.

    And you expect those corporate types, that apparently don’t know what they’re talking about creatively but think they do, to think the mouth-breathing public (their thoughts) would have anything valuable to say?

    Well, they do. But only in bursts. Test screenings exist for a reason.

    But honestly? People don’t know what they want. I see people scream, “NOBODY ASKED FOR THIS” like it’s a valuable critique when there’s literally so much innovation and so many multi-billion dollar ideas that “nobody asked for.”

    And ultimately, if the backlash doesn’t supersede the money they’re making overall, it doesn’t matter.

  3. flyingdics Avatar

    It may actually work the other way, where the backlash among a handful of extremely online people is irrelevant for a huge company managing projects with 9-figure budgets, and they’re reacting appropriately given that perspective. Producers know that it would be impossible to please all of the people all of the time, and setting the expectations that they’ll change based on the whims of fans can wreak havoc on expensive projects is a recipe for disaster.

  4. Princess_Mononope Avatar

    Because it’s largely propaganda. It’s not about your entertainment, it’s about your indoctrination.

  5. OffendedDefender Avatar

    Where do you expect them to be seeing this feedback? Both celebrities and the folks who work on a production side have largely been chased off of social media by people being pieces of shit and literal death threats over nonsense. User reviews have been utterly poisoned by constant bad faith review bombing, so there’s not much of a point in even looking at them any more.

    There’s basically one metric remaining for the studios; does it make money? However, streaming has broken the historic monetary chains, streaming services care more about new viewers than actual viewership, and it’s becoming increasingly more difficult to predict what will hit at theaters, as even pretty middling movies can still make a billion dollars.

  6. noplaceinmind Avatar

    When mixing art, entertainment,  and business,  i can very easily imagine getting it wrong multiple times. 

  7. SublightMonster Avatar

    Because the vast majority of this “backlash” is spoiled whining over irrelevant nonsense that will only get louder if it gets catered to.

  8. wwaxwork Avatar

    Because they’ve market researched it within an inch of its life and it’s less of an issue than you think. Oh no a niche group that make up 1% of the audience don’t like what we’ve done. They realize something that people perpetually online don’t seem to, not every thing that is made is made with them as the target audience. If they calculate they can make x amount of profit anyway, why make a change that will cost them time and money and mean redoing their whole market campaign planning and promotional tour and not make them enough extra to be worth it. Also the other thing people forget, failure in the entertainment industry can still be profitable.

  9. letmewriteyouup Avatar

    Most of the writing and production is already more than half-way done by the time the audience chimes in with their judgements.

    Also, cinema is traditionally not an industry where customer feedback is taken seriously. Nothing new would get made if they all just stuck to whatever the vocal consumer class’s advice.

  10. Its_noon_somewhere Avatar

    Considering the fact that I’m a fan of several of those movies listed, and am completely unaware of ‘any’ backlash at all, it must not be very severe

  11. Norgler Avatar

    Beforehand? like when they are already in post production lol.

    Also no matter what you never are going to be able to please everyone.. there will always be a very loud vocal minority online about ever piece of media. Lot of these complainers are bitching about movies that arent even being made for their demographic..