There is a schism when it comes to movie reviews these days, and if you’re not careful it can lead to a roller coaster of emotions for fans.

For the past decade, we have been subject to two embargo releases every time a new big budget blockbuster is released. First the social media reactions and then the actual critic reviews a day or so later.

In the past, the timing of these releases used to indicate how confident a studio was in its new release, but lately they’ve all been happening just days before the release date in an effort to avoid spoilers for the fans and the general audience as a whole.

The roller coaster of these embargos is how different social media reactions can be compared to critics. This has seemingly happened on multiple occasions with DC Comics films where the social media reactions for DCEU movies were much more positive than the eventual critic reviews that would sink the movie’s Tomatometer straight into rotten territory out of the gate.

Fans then predictably freak out. After sitting on pins and needles for weeks wondering how their anticipated movie is going to be received, they get a boost of adrenaline from the positive social media reactions, only to get thrown back down to earth by the critics that are less than kind about the same movie. Why do they play with our emotions so badly?

The answer of course is because you’re dealing with two very different groups of reviewers between the influencers and YouTubers that post the social media reactions and the paid critics that get aggregated into the hellsite Rotten Tomatoes’ unscientific and wholly arbitrary algorithm. While both are subjectively reviewing the same movies, they consistently give very different reactions, especially when it comes to comic book movies, it seems.

Influencers and YouTubers tend to act more like energetic fans and are seemingly more down to earth in their assessment of these movies. Since they aren’t considered “professionals,” they aren’t held to the same standards that paid critics are seemingly held to when it comes to what they say, how they say it, and who it is designed for. For many of them, the only writing they’ll do with a review will literally be in posts on X, Threads, Instagram, Bluesky or whatever social media platform they’re using, and their actual full review will be video or audio hits for their audience.

Critics on the other hand have a stodgy pretentiousness that most of them seem to protect dearly, since they are considered the professional writers with a voice and outlet that seemingly carries more weight than random untrained reviewers that start a YouTube channel. Over the years, this has led to paid critics putting a degree of distance between their perspective and that of the audience, especially in how they write, using more evocative language and high brow terms that much of the general audience couldn’t care less about, let alone process. This is partly why the hellsite, Rotten Tomatoes, has emerged as the ultimate critical aggregator, sparing the audience from having to read critics reviews in depth to figure out exactly how they feel about a film.

So which one should you listen to? The influencers or the critics? Well ideally, you should listen to yourself first and foremost if not only, since it’s your choice to watch these movies or not and you control your own emotions as to whether or not you enjoy them. Giving that power over your emotions and decision-making to another person is just silly, whether they are a paid professional or not.

If you must be curious about another opinion outside of your own however, I would recommend the influencers and YouTubers. Why? Because they are closer to your station than critics are. Don’t get me wrong, YouTubers can be just as if not more toxic about movies and TV than the most pretentious critic on the planet and it’s all for the same reason, to get your attention, but at least with the YouTuber you’re not dealing with quite as over-inflated an ego.

The truth is that movie critics are not even close to what they used to be before the Internet grew into what it is now, and writers like Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert are not the ones penning these scathing retorts about comic book movies that have one too many references or jokes about an actor or director’s personal life in them. Somewhere along the line, it became acceptable for paid critics to be toxic and elitist by trade, and that more than anything has led to the gulf between how they feel and how the general audience feels. This is why despite all of their whining and caterwauling about franchises like Fast and the Furious or Jurassic World, those movies continue to make money, because the general audience couldn’t care less how much the critics hate them, they want to see dinosaurs and crazy stupid car chases.

So when your next highly anticipated movie releases and you see the whiplash again between social media reactions and critic reviews, don’t let it twist you. Figure out which one you personally deem the most important and then realize that the only opinion that is truly important is your own. You know whether or not you want to see the movie and you don’t need strangers telling you otherwise.