Why Critics and Fans Disagree About Morbius, Venom and Godzilla

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Fans were excited about the 2019 release of Godzilla: King of the Monsters. That is until the critical response said that it was the worst Monstervese film yet. Likewise, Venom’s much-maligned marketing campaign and lackluster reception by critics resulted in fans with quenched hopes for a franchise. Most recently, Morbius is a hopeful return to the Sony Spider-verse that landed flat with critics, who call it nigh-unwatchable due to its plot and heavily criticize its post-credits scene.

Fans entered the theaters with low expectations but left with their minds blown. All three pictures quickly became the source of the newest round of jeers from fans: critics don’t know what they’re talking about; go watch the movies. Though the right and wrong of it can be debated, the numbers don’t lie: Godzilla: King of the Monsters has a 42 percent critic score and an 83 percent audience score, nearly double. Morbius currently sits at a decent 70 percent audience score and a horrid 17 percent critic score. Even Venom, which spawned a franchise and an appearance in the MCU, clocked in at 30 percent with critics compared to 81 percent with audiences. This massive difference is not entirely inexplicable. In fact, the answer to why there is such a large discrepancy between audience and critic scores boils down to one particularly long word: structuralism.

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Morbius Is Awful Depending on How Much One Likes Structure

Perspective is, naturally, a large part of the difference in perception. The import of it here goes well beyond a simple case of chocolate and vanilla, though. To begin with, critics operate not within the realm of good and bad so much as deconstruction. The job of a critic, in the classical sense, is to describe the good and bad aspects of a narrative. One of the most famous literary critics of all time, Sigmund Freud, described narratives in terms of the mental motivations of the characters, a practice now called psychoanalysis. A group taking inspiration from Karl Marx’s writings began a wave of literary analysis looking at power structures, which eventually led to Marxist Theory, Feminist Theory, Critical Race Theory, Disability Theory, and so on. Among the many emergent schools of thought of the 19th and 20th centuries was a school of criticism that separates critics from audiences now: structuralism.

Structuralism is the idea that a literary work is determined by the sum of its parts. The world in which a work was written matters, as do the biases of the writers, political ideas at the time, and authorial intent both before and after writing the piece. Most movie critics operate based on these principles. What goes into making a movie should come out to show. A 2 billion dollar movie should have that budget appear not only in special effects, but in writing, editing, lighting, and, yes, even the special effects. The aspects of a movie should be balanced and whole, and the intent of its makers should always be taken into account. If it’s just a cash grab, critics have to care by the nature of their perspectives.

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Godzilla and Venom Are Brilliant For Audiences… And Post-Structuralists

On the other hand, general audiences don’t usually care about structuralism, nor should they. Most moviegoers are, often unconsciously, post-structuralists. Audiences don’t necessarily care about whether Michael Bay made Transformers in order to convey the joy of childhood and the pain of adulthood in conflict. Most Transformers fans go to the cinema to see giant robots fight amidst explosions, which is a perfectly laudable entertainment goal.

Likewise, fans of Godzilla: King of the Monsters didn’t generally care about whether the monster was an allegory for nuclear war, climate change, or capitalism. The movie was billed as being filled with monster fights and fan service, and it delivered. This point of view is called Post-structuralism. Abiding by the saying “The Author is dead,” post-structuralists look at the work as it is and value it for what it is in the hands of its new owners: the people who consume the media.

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To fans, it doesn’t matter whether JK Rowling confirmed in Harry Potter that Sirius Black and Remus Lupin are a couple; the text reads that way, so it is. Likewise, those who watch Morbius want a spooky action flick, those who watch Godzilla: King of the Monsters want monster fights and those who watch Venom want a violent antihero mess. The movies deliver on these fronts, and for that reason, the post-structuralist perspective of the fans can state that they are objectively good.

This is not a matter of which perspective is right. Technically, they both are. Critics are right to say that a movie doesn’t live up to its potential. Fans are right to say that a movie lives up to its promise. The groups are ultimately in opposition because their perspectives look for vastly different things in movies, and action blockbusters tend to be bloated, feature-length action sequences, which have entertainment value all their own. Regardless, the perspective of critics and their traditional role in the evaluation of entertainment, as well as that of the general populace, put their views on movies like Morbius in distinct, though legitimate, opposition.

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About The Author

Ben Bishop

Benjamin Bishop is a freelance writer for CBR and a linguist. He worked in literary criticism and focuses on the intersections of linguistics and popular culture. He strongly identifies with Pokémon, the Muppets, and any book he manages to get his hands on.

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