Paramount wins

Whew. Houses, y'all. This shit is complicated.

Anyhow, as you all know, GI Joe: Rise of the Silly Explosion was number one at the old box office this weekend.

Le Sigh.

Now, I'm not saying the reviews did this because Transformers 2 had some shit reviews and they still took in a hell of a lot of money. But still. You've got to hand it to the studio. They did a fantastic job hiding the turd from the public.

At first Paramount said they wouldn't screen GI Joe because they felt that negative reviews hurt Transformers' take. I agree. Imagine how much money that movie could have made if it had been GOOD.

Anyhow, yeah. So they refused to let anybody see it because it's totally not fair that people won't go see a movie if it sucks ass. If they don't know it sucks ass, they'll give us their money before they figure out we sold them a shitty product.

Except that people have started figuring this out. My students were talking about seeing GI Joe and I told them "But it opens next week and no critics have seen it." All my students nodded. Oh yes, they said. It will suck.

So people are getting wise to the old "If critics haven't seen it, it's because it blows" routine. So Paramount found a way around that too.

If you checked Rotten Tomatoes within the week of GI Joe's opening, you would have seen a 90% rating. NINETY PERCENT. I said to myself, this can't be. Surely this movie is not that good. I saw that preview. There's no fucking way this movie is that good.

I think we all know now, it's not. Here it is, only a few days after opening, and Rotten Tomatoes has it at 42%. So of course Paramount did indeed screen the movie, but only for critics they knew would love it.

I usually check reviews before I fork over $12 for a movie, so I'm sure there were people who went to see that film on the basis of fake reviews. And the only reason it's at 42% now is the false average created by those bought reviews.

I just wanted to point out the brilliance in that.

And also that they didn't get my money because you can just tell that movie sucks ass, no matter what the early reviews said.