Is it easier to hate things than it is to enjoy them?

I have noticed a growing trend amongst internet reviewers. It seems people love to hate on every single new movie that comes out. Whether this is to attempt to buck the trend of good reviews a film might be getting, or just a way to troll fans of certain films, the internet movie reviewing community is becoming a generic mess of people that wallow in hate and disappointment at every single movie release.

Now let me clear something up first of all. I am all for people being honest. In fact, that is a key point in all my reviews. But when every single sentence these people write consists of four letter expletives and them describing why they hit the fast forward button on their remote control, it really does become a little infuriating. How can anyone who skips forward on a movie give a constructive review. It certainly gives many reasons why these people include so many discrepancies if they can't even be bothered to sit through a film. Of course things aren't going to make sense if you are forwarding through parts of a movie.
 

At first, this hatred was restricted to remakes. When a remake was released, the internet would be set alight with reviews tearing the films apart. Sometimes, these reviews would even appear before the movie was released. But then these vitriolic reviews began appearing for new releases of every single film out there. Reviews so full of hate, you would think that the writer was making a rival film and wanted to destroy the reputation of the movie they were writing about. It happened to Evil Dead, World War Z and many more. Their reviews would be littered with obscene language, feature little to no constructive criticism and not even go into explaining why the writer thought the movie was so bad.

I feel this growing trend is down to our basic need to be a part of something. If something gets a lot of hate, more people are going to agree with the hater rather than stand up and disagree with the majority. Who wants to be the odd one out in a majority? If someone attacks something you love, the first thing anyone wants to do is to jump to it's defense. These reviewers then have a blast replying to the comments some brave people decide to post, at least until all of the haters join forces and make every little thing personal.

I also feel these people get some sort of satisfaction from placing themselves "above" the fans of certain movies. Far be it for me to tell people how to think, but a movie is about entertainment. If it doesn't entertain you, so be it. Find something that does. Just because you hold the opinion something is bad, doesn't mean that the majority (or at least those that aren't mindless sheep) agree with you. Nor does it mean your opinions are fact. Differences in opinion make us who we are.

It seems the majority of reviewers out there dismiss anyone whose views conflict with their own, which begs the question "Are our opinions really our own"? Does everyone agree with someone because of popularity? I am more than happy to read reviews which do not agree with my own feelings. All that I ask is they are constructive and intelligent. I don't want to read a review where everything is labelled as an expletive, where the actors are torn down because they are fresh faced, or the directors and cinematographers are blasted because they are not working with a big budget.

It is becoming more and more apparent that it is much easier to hate something than it is to enjoy it, and whether this is down to the state of cinema today, or just down to a new generation of movie reviewers who don't like anything they see, has yet to be explored. Nevertheless, it is sad that reviewing movies has become such a pessimistic pursuit. Something that should be subjective has become a competition to see just how much venom someone has towards a particular movie, and then others jump on the bandwagon and try to out-hate the previous review by using more venomous wording  or increasingly brutal ways of putting something down.

One thing I do know is that I myself, and a few other fellow bloggers/writers out there do give out valid opinions, and don't feel the need to belittle films, or fans of films because we feel they aren't up to scratch, or because they are independent, or a certain genre. The internet has given voice to anyone out there who wants to write about anything, and maybe that's why reviews have become saturated with people who like nothing better than to attempt to tear down every single thing they see. I really can't see any other explanation for it.

One last thing for all those people out there who spread continuous hatred.




Darkest regards......Dani.