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Director Alex Proyas has hit out at film critics after his latest film Gods of Egypt met with negative reviews.
The Australian film-maker, who was also behind I, Robot and The Crow, released a long Facebook post, calling critics “deranged idiots” and “diseased vultures”. It followed his latest film receiving a string of bad reviews and failing to perform at the box office.
The director criticized what he sees as groupthink among critics. He said it wasn’t the negative reviews, but the uniformity of the reviews. He wanted critics to “stick to their guns” and voice their “true opinion,” which he seemed to feel would be more varied.
“The first professional reviews of a movie,” he said, “can poison the well so that people are afraid to drink from it. I have seen that happen to many of my friends’ films recently and particularly to many original fantasy movies released in the past few years. So studios will probably stop making big budget original fantasy movies altogether.”
Many of those other movies he alludes to have been generally considered stinkers, as well, with both critical consensus and box office proceeds bearing that out. Proyas makes reference to the late Roger Ebert, citing the critic’s experience attempting to make a film as giving him unique insight into the process of making movies that somehow made his critique more valid, something creators often seem to bring up in rants like these, forgetting that critics are writing for movie-going audiences, most of which don’t have any experience making movies, either.
Gods of Egypt Official Trailer
Agencies/Canadajournal
