What is review bombing, and how is it recognized?

[Tyndmyr]

That's because Amazon disabled the reviews . It's their company; apparently they don't want to host a lot of negativity regarding their own product. Still seems an admission of weakness, though. Either that they mistrust the reaction, or that they don't believe they can filter out a reviewbombing campaign.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

Yeah. They wouldn't disable it unless they knew it'd be a problem. Most definitely a negative signal.

This is why Daikatana is my favourite game. I mean, I never played it, but the trailer and promotional material seemed so cool, it easily clinches number 1.

People are probably more likely to not finish something they dislike. That said, I've greatly enjoyed many games I never finished.

And if reviewers didn't want pre-release reviews, it would be very easy for them to not permit any reviews until the release date. Heck, the platform providers could require playing the content before leaving a review.

I propose that they don't take these measures precisely because they are trying to pump the numbers early. It's advertisement, not anything like a scientific sampling. Therefore, negative reactions to the advertising are equally as legitimate.

This is a pretty unpopular opinion among fans of a particular work, unfortunately. I had someone tell me the other day I wasn't allowed to have an opinion on Bleach because I only read about 90% of it before dropping it in disgust.

Indeed. I was told that I hadn't "given it enough of a chance" after watching the first 30ish episodes of Naruto. Like, damn, how much time do I have to invest before I'm allowed to have an opinion?

The longer the work, the more ridiculous the expectation that one consumes it, I think. Do what you like. If that means hating something based on mere minutes? Fair. That's your actual opinion. We are not required to form opinions in the same way. It would certainly be nice to explain why and how you came to your conclusion in your review, as that will be helpful to readers, but it's your actual opinion either way.

If one later consumes more and changes their opinion, they can also change their review.

Well, because the person who watches the whole thing and says they don't like it consumed the whole product before making that decision. You sampled only a portion.

Game of Thrones is a good example. It is widely regarded that the first 7 seasons were top tier television viewing, but that season 8 was poor lowering people's assessment of the series as a whole. A person who watched only 90% (or 87.5% to be more exact) would tend to have a different opinion from those who watched all of it - and a less well informed opinion because they did not view the whole product.

Sure, the person who watched it all knows more. Absolutely.

But that doesn't make earlier reviews invalid. Tons of people reviewed Game of Thrones when only the first couple of seasons had been released, and I believe they rated honestly. They judged the work with the information they had available at the time.

When the work changed, so did their opinions....and then so did reviews and ratings. That is all entirely valid, and exactly how the system should work. Neither the earlier nor the later reviews are bombing or in any other way illegitimate.

[Batcathat]

I propose that they don't take these measures precisely because they are trying to pump the numbers early. It's advertisement, not anything like a scientific sampling. Therefore, negative reactions to the advertising are equally as legitimate.

I agree. Someone giving five stars to a movie they haven't watched is just as useless to me as someone giving one star to a movie they haven't watched.

But that doesn't make earlier reviews invalid. Tons of people reviewed Game of Thrones when only the first couple of seasons had been released, and I believe they rated honestly. They judged the work with the information they had available at the time.

When the work changed, so did their opinions....and then so did reviews and ratings. That is all entirely valid, and exactly how the system should work. Neither the earlier nor the later reviews are bombing or in any other way illegitimate.

Right, obviously neither professional nor amateur reviewers can be expected to hold off on rating something until it's completely published if it's something episodic like a tv show or book series. But wouldn't you say that rating GoT after watching the two seasons that have come out is quite different from rating it because of the trailer or the casting?

[warty goblin]

Well, because the person who watches the whole thing and says they don't like it consumed the whole product before making that decision. You sampled only a portion.

Game of Thrones is a good example. It is widely regarded that the first 7 seasons were top tier television viewing, but that season 8 was poor lowering people's assessment of the series as a whole. A person who watched only 90% (or 87.5% to be more exact) would tend to have a different opinion from those who watched all of it - and a less well informed opinion because they did not view the whole product.

I don't like this approach. Functionally it's just a backdoor method of downweighting or invalidating most negative takes on something. If it takes a long time to finish, most of the people who finish it will have liked at least the majority of the material up to that point. Game of Thrones has 73 episodes, which is about two and a half months at one episode a night; the only people who are going to make that investment are fans or a very small number of actual professional critics. Functionally this criterion is just a way for fans to invalidate all non-fan opinions, which is just another part of the never-ending insistence on treating fan stuff with kiddie gloves.

It also serves anybody new to the media in question very badly. If 90% of people drop a thing after an hour because they hate it, the media has a bad first hour this is a 100% relevant piece of information to give others. The "legit" fan take might be it gets good after 50 hours, which it very well might. That doesn't justify 50 crap hours up front, or invalidate warning people away from trying to wade through that crap, even if the person doing the warning bailed out after like 2 hours.

On the other hand, there are absolutely nuanced critiques of a piece of media that cannot be made without finishing it. I bailed on GoT after Season 4, because they ran out of book and everything not in the books so far had sucked. I cannot talk about the themes and meaning of the last season because I haven't watched it. I don't need to have watched it to know that the show was headed into Suck Swamp full speed ahead, and not having seem S8 doesn't really have any bearing on S4 starting to stink.

[Bohandas]

I don't like this approach. Functionally it's just a backdoor method of downweighting or invalidating most negative takes on something. If it takes a long time to finish, most of the people who finish it will have liked at least the majority of the material up to that point. Game of Thrones has 73 episodes, which is about two and a half months at one episode a night; the only people who are going to make that investment are fans or a very small number of actual professional critics. Functionally this criterion is just a way for fans to invalidate all non-fan opinions, which is just another part of the never-ending insistence on treating fan stuff with kiddie gloves.

Completely agree with this.

Also, though I've been dismissive of professional critics in this thread, I will say that this is one of their valid uses. They have to sit and watch it all and so can give an idea of how entertaining the piece as a whole (provided they remember to rate the piece on how entertaining it is and don't get distracted by irrelevant technical details of the production)

[Aedilred]

Note that one of the things about Rotten Tomatoes is that it's essentially binary. A review is determined to be positive or negative and the percentage displayed is the number of positive reviews versus negative ones. (At least on the professional side, I'm not sure about audience scores because I basically ignore them). So it'll tell you how many critics liked something but not how much they liked it. Or to put it in context, a movie that all the critics thought was basically fine will get a better score than one which 99 critics thought was the greatest film of all time but one guy took against because he forgot his glasses and couldn't read the subtitles.

It's therefore useful for establishing whether or not something is actively bad, but not so useful for establishing whether something is worthy of five stars rather than three.

With the Rings of Power, most reviews I have seen have been something along the lines of "sumptuous visuals, writing and acting basically fine, exposition in first episode handled well, serious Tolkien fans will doubtless take issue with some of the decisions" and overall given it a positive stamp if not necessarily an enthusiastic one. And honestly, I think that's fair.

Regarding representativeness, I think it depends what you're after from your critics. Most critics are writing for an audience. Often that audience is extremely general. Sometimes that audience is specifically "film enthusiasts". But you have to trust that critic's taste in order for their review to be valuable. If you are the sort of person who is a huge fan of a given world and the slightest divergence from it gives you the heebie-jeebies, and you want to know whether a given film is going to annoy you on that basis, then the lead reviewer in a national newspaper is probably not going to give you the answers you need, whereas a specialist blog in the dark recesses of the internet might be able to tell you that in one scene Curufin blows his nose where in Unfinished Tales it was actually Caranthir and the whole enterprise is therefore morally and artistically bankrupt as a result*. For the majority of potential viewers, though, they couldn't care two hoots about any of that and what they want to know is "does it look good, will I engage with the characters, will I be gripped by the plot? etc." which is what the majority of film critics are seeking to answer.

I think meanwhile the people who will flood onto the review pages of a new tie-in-media release and publish reviews in the first couple of days after release are more likely to be of the "angry blogger" ilk and therefore for the majority of the potential audience less representative. For the specific niche for which they cater, they may be more representative, but that niche is almost always going to be a minority.

In either case, I think it's usually important to actually read the reviews, or at least some of the reviews, to establish whether the reviewer is looking for the same things you are. There are some reviewers whose taste I have essentially come to trust except in certain genres or subgenres, and others for whom I have little respect and tend to ignore - but this is only because I've actually read (or listened to) what they have to say on previous films and determined whether I agree with their criteria and whether our tastes tend to align. A generalised percentage-based figure (be that a black/white one like RT or an attempt at a more nuanced one like Metacritic) is only helpful at a very superficial level.

(For related reasons, I dislike star systems, although I understand why they're used. On the occasions when I have been called on to review things, I have refused to give numerical scores - which would doubtless disqualify me from employment as a professional critic*.)

*I am poking fun, obviously. But please consider it a gentle poke: I have been this person in the past myself, and doubtless will be again.
**Along with my total lack of actual qualifications for the role.

[Tyndmyr]

Right, obviously neither professional nor amateur reviewers can be expected to hold off on rating something until it's completely published if it's something episodic like a tv show or book series. But wouldn't you say that rating GoT after watching the two seasons that have come out is quite different from rating it because of the trailer or the casting?

It depends. I often decide not to watch a show without watching even a single episode. Usually it needs to sound interesting for me to give it a chance. And then, of course, if the pilot is awful, I'm probably not going to continue. That's a pretty normal pattern.

Again, this seems mostly a problem with elevating the number above the review itself. Are all the numbers of equal validity? No. They cannot possibly be. They were never designed to be.

If the review only talks about the casting, well, sure, there's a controversy over the casting. I can decide if I care or not and judge the work accordingly. If all I knew of the next Batman film was that they'd cast Adam Sandler as Batman, I would absolutely have opinions about that. If someone else loved him for some unknowable unholy reason, they are free to read my review and dismiss it or even take the exact opposite opinion as myself.

That doesn't make the review invalid or dishonest. If that's your actual reaction, cheers, write about it. Casting is absolutely part of a film or show, and people will have opinions about the quality of it.

[Batcathat]

It depends. I often decide not to watch a show without watching even a single episode. Usually it needs to sound interesting for me to give it a chance. And then, of course, if the pilot is awful, I'm probably not going to continue. That's a pretty normal pattern.

It is. There are a lot of movies and shows I never watch because the trailer was bad or the concept doesn't interest me or one of the actors have an annoying face or one of a thousand other reasons. But I wouldn't rate and review it when I hadn't actually seen it.

If the review only talks about the casting, well, sure, there's a controversy over the casting. I can decide if I care or not and judge the work accordingly. If all I knew of the next Batman film was that they'd cast Adam Sandler as Batman, I would absolutely have opinions about that. If someone else loved him for some unknowable unholy reason, they are free to read my review and dismiss it or even take the exact opposite opinion as myself.

That doesn't make the review invalid or dishonest. If that's your actual reaction, cheers, write about it. Casting is absolutely part of a film or show, and people will have opinions about the quality of it.

Sure, if the reviewer is honest about their reasoning, I can probably guess whether or not I'll agree with them. But the point of a site like Rotten Tomatoes or IMDB or some similar site isn't to read every single review. It's a good idea to read some of them (and probably to pick from both the ones that praise it and ones that hate it), but the idea behind a movie getting 84 percent fresh or 3.2 stars or whatever is to get a general idea of what people think of it. It's certainly not perfect, I've loved my share of badly reviewed movies and hated my share of highly rated ones, but it can be helpful.

But what I'm interested in is "Is this movie good?", not "Did you like the trailer?" or "Do you hate the main actor?", so the opinions of the people who haven't actually seen the movie (or whatever it is) isn't interesting to me. I realize I can't actually get rid of them, but that doesn't mean I have to like it.

[Tyndmyr]

It is. There are a lot of movies and shows I never watch because the trailer was bad or the concept doesn't interest me or one of the actors have an annoying face or one of a thousand other reasons. But I wouldn't rate and review it when I hadn't actually seen it.

Most of us don't. I don't go on IMDB or RT to rate *anything* regardless of if I've seen it or not. For whatever reason, the people who are into reviewing do it. It's always going to be an activity of interest to only a few.

But what's the problem if they do?

If something is
1. Honest in their overall assessment.
2. Useful for others in determining if they want to watch it.

then hey, that's legitimate. That's all a review is for, in the end.

Sure, if the reviewer is honest about their reasoning, I can probably guess whether or not I'll agree with them. But the point of a site like Rotten Tomatoes or IMDB or some similar site isn't to read every single review. It's a good idea to read some of them (and probably to pick from both the ones that praise it and ones that hate it), but the idea behind a movie getting 84 percent fresh or 3.2 stars or whatever is to get a general idea of what people think of it. It's certainly not perfect, I've loved my share of badly reviewed movies and hated my share of highly rated ones, but it can be helpful.

But what I'm interested in is "Is this movie good?", not "Did you like the trailer?" or "Do you hate the main actor?", so the opinions of the people who haven't actually seen the movie (or whatever it is) isn't interesting to me. I realize I can't actually get rid of them, but that doesn't mean I have to like it.

You *can* read reviews, or you can just read the number. How you use the site is up to you. If you read more, you probably get more info out of it. If you don't feel like it, well, that's the tradeoff.

What makes a movie good is many faceted, and the casting and advertising campaigns absolutely are things that affect enjoyment. If they're not your top factors, that's fine, but they appear popular for many, and all of us likely use these elements in some respect. The star power of certain actors is not only predictable, the industry literally banks on it. Sure, there's exceptions to every rule, but most of us can think of actors we are vastly more or less likely to enjoy a movie as a result of.

So, what, exactly, is wrong with criticizing casting?

[Batcathat]

Most of us don't. I don't go on IMDB or RT to rate *anything* regardless of if I've seen it or not. For whatever reason, the people who are into reviewing do it. It's always going to be an activity of interest to only a few.

But what's the problem if they do?

If something is
1. Honest in their overall assessment.
2. Useful for others in determining if they want to watch it.

then hey, that's legitimate. That's all a review is for, in the end.

I suppose we'll just have to agree to disagree. I think you can't legitimately review something that you haven't actually experienced.

You *can* read reviews, or you can just read the number. How you use the site is up to you. If you read more, you probably get more info out of it. If you don't feel like it, well, that's the tradeoff.

Yes, obviously reading every single review would give more information but since that's not really reasonable in a lot of cases, it helps getting a general idea of what people (and when I say "people", I mean "people who actually watched what they are reviewing") think of it.

So, what, exactly, is wrong with criticizing casting?

It depends. If the criticism is someone who's seen the movie saying "I think Brad Pitt was wrong for this role", that's fine and potentially helpful. If the criticism is is someone who haven't seen the movie saying "I hate Brad Pitt" that's less helpful. Obviously an irrational hatred of Brad Pitt is likely to influence the review even from someone who's seen the movie, but at least it's less likely to be the only reason behind the rating.

[Tyndmyr]

It depends. If the criticism is someone who's seen the movie saying "I think Brad Pitt was wrong for this role", that's fine and potentially helpful. If the criticism is is someone who haven't seen the movie saying "I hate Brad Pitt" that's less helpful. Obviously an irrational hatred of Brad Pitt is likely to influence the review even from someone who's seen the movie, but at least it's less likely to be the only reason behind the rating.

I would agree that "I hate Brad Pitt" is not really a review, just a statement, but someone could not watch the movie, but be familiar with the general world it is set in, and believe that Brad Pitt is a bad choice to portray a character. Watching the film doesn't really add validity to that.

The entire point of trailers and...quite a lot of reviews is that the company is paying millions of dollars to convince you to see the movie thanks to casting choices, etc.

The idea that this is legitimate, and someone typing in a response online for free is not, sounds like pure corporate propaganda.

[Batcathat]

I would agree that "I hate Brad Pitt" is not really a review, just a statement, but someone could not watch the movie, but be familiar with the general world it is set in, and believe that Brad Pitt is a bad choice to portray a character. Watching the film doesn't really add validity to that.

The entire point of trailers and...quite a lot of reviews is that the company is paying millions of dollars to convince you to see the movie thanks to casting choices, etc.

The idea that this is legitimate, and someone typing in a response online for free is not, sounds like pure corporate propaganda.

Again, I'm not saying giving something specifically a bad review without having seen it is illegitimate, a positive review just because someone absolutely loves Brad Pitt is equally unhelpful.

[pendell]

I suppose we'll just have to agree to disagree. I think you can't legitimately review something that you haven't actually experienced.

Although I agree with you more than with Tyndmyr, I think at least part of the stumbling block is what you mean by "experienced".

I think we can all agree that someone who's watched every minute of every episode qualifies, while someone who's writing a review based on a meme they saw on social media doesn't.

But as some in this thread have pointed out , people gatekeep someone's opinion if they've only seen 90% of Bleach, rather than all of it. So if I review Macross Saga, a 35 episode show, how many episodes before I'm "experienced"? one episode? Ten? Twenty?

I would argue that a person has to have a significant percentage invested in the show before they are qualified to review it. For my own personal guidelines, if a person is reviewing a movie or tv special that can be done in a sitting, they need to sit through 90%+ of it.

On the other hand, if you're reviewing a multi-episode TV show or a 100+ hour video game, I would say a statistically significant sample will be enough; Say 10 hours of game play or 10% of a TV series episodes. Although, even there, we should be up front about how much of it we've seen and recognize people who've put more into it may have seen a twist we missed. But I think it's still valid. If you kill off one of the story's protagonists for real at time mark X (as original FF7 did), obviously people who stopped watching at X-10 will miss it. But then, it's still valuable to know. Because if a large number of viewers turn out before reaching that mark, and you'll likely tune out for the same reason, then it's important to know even if the review isn't comprehensive. "60% of viewers give up 5 hours in" is important for me as a potential buyer to know, even if it means I might miss out on something cool later.

So I agree with you that reviewing a show on the basis of a trailer isn't valuable. Nonetheless, there's enough gatekeeping in the review community we shouldn't discount someone's opinions even if they haven't seen all of it, provided they've made a good-faith effort to see enough of it to have a pretty good idea of the product's value.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[Batcathat]

So I agree with you that reviewing a show on the basis of a trailer isn't valuable. Nonetheless, there's enough gatekeeping in the review community we shouldn't discount someone's opinions even if they haven't seen all of it, provided they've made a good-faith effort to see enough of it to have a pretty good idea of the product's value.

Sure, I agree. Putting a number of how much is enough is hard, but it certainly doesn't have to be 100 percent.

[veti]

I would agree that "I hate Brad Pitt" is not really a review, just a statement, but someone could not watch the movie, but be familiar with the general world it is set in, and believe that Brad Pitt is a bad choice to portray a character. Watching the film doesn't really add validity to that.

Sure it does. You might be surprised. You might have to admit that you were wrong in your prejudgment.

Or you might not. Either way, validity is definitely added.

But as some in this thread have pointed out , people gatekeep someone's opinion if they've only seen 90% of Bleach, rather than all of it. So if I review Macross Saga, a 35 episode show, how many episodes before I'm "experienced"? one episode? Ten? Twenty?

I would argue that a person has to have a significant percentage invested in the show before they are qualified to review it. For my own personal guidelines, if a person is reviewing a movie or tv special that can be done in a sitting, they need to sit through 90%+ of it.

If you watched one episode of a series, or half an hour of a movie, then you are that much ahead of me. So long as you're open about how much you watched, I can use your experience to help me decide whether I want to make a similar investment of time. If I can read your review in two minutes, and skip 30 minutes of unenjoyable viewing, that's a benefit to me.

It's completely valid to review single episodes, or segments of films, so long as you're honest and clear about what you're reviewing.

[Rynjin]

Indeed. I was told that I hadn't "given it enough of a chance" after watching the first 30ish episodes of Naruto. Like, damn, how much time do I have to invest before I'm allowed to have an opinion?

As someone who really, actually LOVES Naruto warts and all...yeah if you're not feeling it 30 episodes in, you're probably not going to. The Chuunin Exams are really where the series picks up, and while the Forest of Death is not the best content in the series (or even the arc overall), it's an exciting and well-paced watch that is relatively indicative of what the rest of the series will be like.

The series does definitely get better from there, but there's no steep increase in quality or (more relevant) huge change in the type of content until MUCH later in.

If you're not vibing with Nardo and Sauce and all of the adventures they have by episode 30, watching to episode 50...or 100...or 250 is not gonna change your opinion most likely.

I'd say actually the big "jumping off point" for Naruto is the final battle(s) with Haku and Zabuza in the previous arc. The Land of Waves arc is overall short, well-constructed, and a microcosm of the kinds of conflicts you'll see. Villains who are ultimately human rather than caricatures, Naruto learns a life lesson (even if it's "don't make the same mistakes this person did") from them, and there's a big fight involving equal mixes of strategy and overwhelming force.

So if you don't like Naruto by episode 19, you should probably stop. Much less 30.

[Vahnavoi]

When it comes to really long series like multi-season TV shows, there's no problem giving ratings to individual episodes. Just like, when rating a music album, there isn't a problem rating individual songs. The only real problem with partial reviews happens when people don't specify which part they're reviewing. Aggregated reviews worsen this problem precisely because they average scores while hiding what was being scored. Lesson of the day: don't pay attention to aggregated reviews. A single reviewer you know probably gives you more useful information in one full review than any aggregated score could.

But, just as well, it's a trivial truth that a reviewer who hasn't experienced everything of a thing might've missed something, including something that would've changed their opinion of what they'd experienced up to that point. Human memory is not linear, we recontextualize old information based on new information. This becomes extremely important when dealing with something like Game of Thrones, where vast majority of it is good, but people hate it because the final stretch sucked (having watched the entire show twice, I'm not sure what is supposed to suck about it so much). You need to pay attention to who is rating what based on what information, which is exactly what aggregated reviews usually hide from you.

[Bohandas]

Human memory is not linear, we recontextualize old information based on new information. This becomes extremely important when dealing with something like Game of Thrones, where vast majority of it is good, but people hate it because the final stretch sucked (having watched the entire show twice, I'm not sure what is supposed to suck about it so much).

I've experienced this with the Shrek movies. The sequels were so bad they somehow made the first movie also bad retroactively.

[zlefin]

In my personal experience with trailers; I find that estimating quality based on trailers is most effective for comedies. Many comedies are a whole bunch of jokes, many of which do not require a strong connection to each other to function. If I'm not laughing at the stuff in the trailer, I probably won't laugh much during the movie either. For many other genres it's far less useful; in particular it's not so useful for complex dramas where there simply isn't the time to get into the details that make it work in a trailer.

[veti]

I've experienced this with the Shrek movies. The sequels were so bad they somehow made the first movie also bad retroactively.

It's a truism that sequels rarely live up to the promise of their original, and there are a few that retroactively drag it down with them.

Like, aren't we all glad they never made sequels to Highlander or The Matrix? Just imagine how bad those could've been.

[Liquor Box]

Sure, the person who watched it all knows more. Absolutely.

But that doesn't make earlier reviews invalid. Tons of people reviewed Game of Thrones when only the first couple of seasons had been released, and I believe they rated honestly. They judged the work with the information they had available at the time.

When the work changed, so did their opinions....and then so did reviews and ratings. That is all entirely valid, and exactly how the system should work. Neither the earlier nor the later reviews are bombing or in any other way illegitimate.

I agree. If a person reviews a series after having watched most but not all of what has been released, it is not invalid. But the review of someone who has watched all of it will be more valid, because they know more.

[tomandtish]

It's a truism that sequels rarely live up to the promise of their original, and there are a few that retroactively drag it down with them.

Like, aren't we all glad they never made sequels to Highlander or The Matrix? Just imagine how bad those could've been.

Groan. I actually paid full price for Highlander 2 when it came out.

[Batcathat]

Groan. I actually paid full price for Highlander 2 when it came out.

I remember seeing it on TV (before I had seen the original) and thinking it was kind of cool. In my defense, I was maybe eight or ten years old (and even then I thought the plot didn't really make sense).

[InvisibleBison]

I agree. If a person reviews a series after having watched most but not all of what has been released, it is not invalid. But the review of someone who has watched all of it will be more valid, because they know more.

No, someone who's watched the whole of the show doesn't necessarily know more than someone who's only watched part of it, or at least not in any sense that's meaningful for reviews. A show's theme or tone or whatnot can be established quite early on, and if someone decides they don't like that aspect of the show making a review stating as much is just as valid as any other review.

[Manga Shoggoth]

I remember seeing it on TV (before I had seen the original) and thinking it was kind of cool. In my defense, I was maybe eight or ten years old (and even then I thought the plot didn't really make sense).

That's not unreasonable. As an action/fantasy in its own right, it isn't bad.

Unfortunately, as a sequel it's rubbish. It rode roughshod over the original film, tried to explain the immortals (which, like the Force, really didn't need explaining) as aliens and as a whole really didn't make sense in the context of the original film.

[Bohandas]

I think the user reviews basically corroborate this. You're not allowed to racist stuff (AFAIK) in RP, but you are allowed to allude to the belief (erroneous) that black people didn't exist in medieval europe, and by extension- did not exist in the Tolkien's world which was inspired by european folklore.

There was even a mixed race knight in the Arthurian legends, Sir Feirefiz.

(On the other hand however, the author of Parzival was so wholly unfamiliar with actual mixed race people that he made Feirefiz look like the alien from Let That Be Your Last Battlefield)

[tomandtish]

That's not unreasonable. As an action/fantasy in its own right, it isn't bad.

Unfortunately, as a sequel it's rubbish. It rode roughshod over the original film, tried to explain the immortals (which, like the Force, really didn't need explaining) as aliens and as a whole really didn't make sense in the context of the original film.

Yeah. Starship Troopers is defined as the movie based loosely on the back jacket of a novel by Robert Heinlein. Whomever did Highlander 2 didn't even read the blurb on the back of the Highlander video box.

[MetroAlien]

I think there's some misunderstanding going on here.
Nobody is denying that dropping a series is a valid thing to do.
What's being questioned here, is whether that warrants a review or not.

If somebody writes a review that says nothing more than
"it's bad. I stopped watching"
That's not useful to anyone. Nobody knows why this person stopped watching, and therefore can't extrapolate whether or not the same reasons will apply to them.

Even if such a reviewer includes more nuanced reasons (which they rarely do), the question still lingers why they don't consider the material in its entirety? It just makes the review feel half-hearted. Maybe they were only watching half-heartedly in the first place?
I can't base my decision on half-hearted opinions. In that regard, a full review of the entire material adds some sincerity, which is otherwise hard to convey through anonymous text alone.

Naturally, there are exceptions to every rule.
If the reviewer wrote a multi-page essay outlining the many literary and technical faults of a movie/series, then I might not care whether they saw the whole thing or not.
The fact remains that by far the most online anon's who preface their comment with "I didn't actually watch [all of] it" fail to inspire trust in their analysis.

But I think online anonymity is the key here.
There are some professional/YouTube reviewers whose personal opinions I respect due to their own history. These people earn their daily bread by building trust with their audience.

[Rynjin]

I think there's some misunderstanding going on here.
Nobody is denying that dropping a series is a valid thing to do.
What's being questioned here, is whether that warrants a review or not.

If somebody writes a review that says nothing more than
"it's bad. I stopped watching"
That's not useful to anyone. Nobody knows why this person stopped watching, and therefore can't extrapolate whether or not the same reasons will apply to them.

Even if such a reviewer includes more nuanced reasons (which they rarely do), the question still lingers why they don't consider the material in its entirety? It just makes the review feel half-hearted. Maybe they were only watching half-heartedly in the first place?
I can't base my decision on half-hearted opinions. In that regard, a full review of the entire material adds some sincerity, which is otherwise hard to convey through anonymous text alone.

Naturally, there are exceptions to every rule.
If the reviewer wrote a multi-page essay outlining the many literary and technical faults of a movie/series, then I might not care whether they saw the whole thing or not.
The fact remains that by far the most online anon's who preface their comment with "I didn't actually watch [all of] it" fail to inspire trust in their analysis.

But I think online anonymity is the key here.
There are some professional/YouTube reviewers whose personal opinions I respect due to their own history. These people earn their daily bread by building trust with their audience.

Except what this leads to is you only get reviews from two kinds of people: professional critics (notoriously unreliable when it comes to mirroring the views of the average person) and people who like the show. Most people are not going to hatewatch every single episode of a show just for the clout required to write a review on it.

[MetroAlien]

Except what this leads to is you only get reviews from two kinds of people: professional critics (notoriously unreliable when it comes to mirroring the views of the average person) and people who like the show. Most people are not going to hatewatch every single episode of a show just for the clout required to write a review on it.

For one, I think you underestimate the tenacity of people who are really into writing reviews, especially for high-profile media.
If at least one negative review describes an aspect of the movie/series that is a dealbreaker for me and I find it convincing, then that review did its job over the 1000 other reviews.
And if the movie/series is so obscure that nobody bothered to review it negatively...
well, then there's no other choice but to dive in head-first. Who knows, maybe I'll end up joining the fringe group of fans

For long running series especially, there's another metric besides reviews: per-episode view counts.
You can easily notice when public interest in something suddenly drops off.

[Rynjin]

For one, I think you underestimate the tenacity of people who are really into writing reviews, especially for high-profile media.
If at least one negative review describes an aspect of the movie/series that is a dealbreaker for me and I find it convincing, then that review did its job over the 1000 other reviews.
And if the movie/series is so obscure that nobody bothered to review it negatively...
well, then there's no other choice but to dive in head-first. Who knows, maybe I'll end up joining the fringe group of fans

For long running series especially, there's another metric besides reviews: per-episode view counts.
You can easily notice when public interest in something suddenly drops off.

I'm talking about the theoretical circumstance where only people who'd seen 100% of the show were allowed to write reviews. There are few people with that much dedication to watching bad TV just to write a bad review for it.