I haven’t seen #WW84 yet but I think the discourse & “controversy” is a symptom of the immediacy in watching a film of this scale day 1 at home. The amount of stills, baiting of out of context clips, and superhero “logic” takes I’ve seen has dwarfed legit gripes with the movie.

And these are absolutely not exclusive to a big SVOD release - particularly the first MCU/DCEU film to do so - but I think there’s still something to say about how we engage with the lifecycle of word of mouth, aggregate scores, and a sea of hyperbole on either side.

Nor do I think the theater experience ultimately shields or delays any “bad” movies from these distortions. People much smarter than me have pointed out the difference expectations in streaming vs. going to the theater as an event and I do think that’s relevant.

There’s no buffer with the immediacy and convenience of streaming. I’ve seen people live-tweeting/reacting to the movie in real-time and that, I think, is fundamentally changes engagement in criticism. It’s almost like a race to outpace the runtime in having a take at every turn.

There hasn’t been a big superhero movie since Birds of Prey or maybe even Joker, so I think there’s also a lot of pent up frenzy regarding what these movies are attempting to convey. I don’t know, I’m going to see the movie on Monday.