MovieTok is the mob response to film criticism

A recent article in the New York Times (NYT) has brought the phenomenon of “MovieTok”, and the TikTok users who populate it, to the attention of older, out-of-touch film critics and cultural observers who may have had little reason to know of its existence or make use of it.

MovieTokkers are, according to the NYT, 20-somethings or 30-somethings who love movies and make videos of up to 90 seconds in which they give followers their opinions on “what to watch if you like Succession”; share thoughts like “I’ve watched 2,000 movies, here are the 70 I gave 5/5”; and point out the technical flaws in Disney live action remakes of animated classics while still assuring you that these flaws don’t mean the films are that bad.

These videos, often taking the form of the MovieTokker speaking to camera while stills from the films under discussion flash by in the background, rack up millions of views, earn millions of followers and provide a steady flow of income from studios that pay them to promote their films. What MovieTok is not, according to many of its stars interviewed for the article, is a place for what might traditionally or “outdatedly” — depending on your age — be thought of as film criticism. Content producers treat the term “critic” with the same kind of distaste and scorn one might reserve for “Nazi” or “Trump”.

For traditional film critics who are a dying breed in a media environment in which arts pages in print publications are shrinking and arts writers are top of the list of costs to be cut, the rise of MovieTok is another nail in their coffin. It’s just more proof that movies are dying as an art and being battered into cookie-cutter conformity that has no place for anything other than superheroes, remakes and adaptations of best-sellers with the literary merit of greeting cards.

Preview screenings around the world have been filled not with critics but rather influencers who furiously take selfies and tweet while having to be reminded of basic cinema etiquette by stodgy older critics who don’t even like to give their opinions on a film after the lights come on and would rather studio publicists and executives wait until their reviews are published in print.

The battle between critics and TikTokkers and influencers represents a broader battle in the cultural sphere between people who think you should read, think and consider before offering an opinion and those who believe that it’s more important to put your opinion online as fast as possible, no matter the quality of its expression or its lack of consideration of broader context and history.

It’s a battle being lost by those who cling to the idea that informed opinion means something. The MovieTokkers have not only won in terms of numbers of people who listen to them but also financially.

The list of MovieTok reviewers accompanying the NYT piece includes information on each of their follower numbers, previous or other jobs and “clients” — studios that have hired them and paid them handsomely to praise their films and enabled many to quit their day jobs, live comfortably on payouts and travel the world to red-carpet premieres where they appear in 30-second clips offering promotional platitudes.

MovieTok is not for negativity about or criticism of films but a place where all movies are potentially great and wonderful entertainment that can be used in recommendation listicles delivered with golly-gosh enthusiasm for young people.

Cynicism and fearmongering about MovieTok from traditional critics is unsurprising. It represents a traditional response to challenges to the authority of critics that’s existed throughout the history of criticism, which has developed with the evolution of film since the late 19th century. In the 1950s and 1960s young, impassioned French fans of American genre cinema such as Francois Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard used the pages of Cahiers du Cinema to attack the dull orthodoxies of mainstream French critics and directors before executing their vision of what a new cinema should be in their own films as part of the influential French New Wave.

In the 1960s Pauline Kael changed the face of American film criticism by revolting against the conservatism of the mainstream press critics and championing the directors of the American New Wave in the 1970s. In the 2000s, movie-lovers with laptops, infuriated by the disdain of print journalism for superhero films and summer blockbusters, blogged their way to creating profitable, widely read and shared promotions of the pleasures of fandom that has gone on to define the shape of the mainstream movie universe.

Now, in the face of a younger audience that is still the most coveted section of the moviegoing public but which doesn’t necessarily have the attention span or interest in reading long analyses of films to decide what to watch, MovieTok has stepped in with easily digestible sound bites that studios have realised have the potential to affect box office performance.

Traditional film critics have come under pressure to follow the trend, producing quickly written lists of recommendations, hastily tweeted takes on films they’ve just walked out of and stories that use one-line fatuous quotes from stars to generate clickbait articles that are widely read but don’t say anything really.

The rise of MovieTok is at least an indication that the movies still matter to people, even if it’s also a depressing extension of fandom, which, as NYT film critic AO Scott said earlier this year, is “Often rooted in conformity, group identity and mob behaviour, and its rise mirrors and models the spread of intolerant, authoritarian, aggressive tendencies in our politics and communal life.”