I've had thoughts on this for awhile now - every time I hear some loud mouth talk about the "elitism" of critics:

Box office (whether opening week or 6 months into a film's theatre run) is no longer the sole source of revenue for the movie studios. We all know the miracle growth of the DVD industry. How does that compare? I don't know actual numbers, but I'd be curious to see what revenue has been generated from the dvd's of the Indiana Jones films.

And when you bring that into the equation, which films have the longer shelf life (quite literally)?: The Pearl Harbors or the Private Ryans? Nobody watched Firefly when it first aired on Fox, even though critics lavished praise, but enough sets of its one and only season sold enough that they decided to go back and make a movie (which in turn had a floppish reception, but has sold plenty of discs). In the end, a lot of people made a lot of money.

Owning a DVD is for the long haul (for now) - and when you're talking long haul, the good stuff sticks around. We are still buying Lawrence of Arabia dvd's. 30 years from now, will many people be purchasing Oliver Stone's Alexander? (in whatever direct-download-to-brain-forma­t is available in 2038)

I would suggest that - in the main- it's not that the critics drive the box office, it's that they (in the aggregate, such as on Rotten Tomatoes) reflect quality in films, and in the long run - whether people admit it to themselves or not - people will return again and again to quality. And that means buying it again, in whatever format it's being sold. So in the new movie econonmy that's only developed in the last 10 years (i'm not counting VHS sales), studios would be wise to aim for a little more timelessness and a little less pap.

And I know that this wasn't the thrust of the article. It was speaking to the perceived value of critics to their publications.

I'm just saying that the people who make the movies might pay a little more attention to them (in the abscence of any real objective measure of a movie's "quality") rather than always dismissing them every time they produce steaming crap.

Or, at the least, make movies that they themselves like (even if it is crap), and not what some market research committee liked.

Studios are being logical in focusing on initial box office returns rather than aggregate total sales from overseas and DVD's. Return on equity calculations take into account some discount rate by which returns in later years are lowered to reflect their net present value. In other words what I would as a studio be willing to accept now in order to forego getting that dvd money later. So DVD sales are actually worth less than ticket sales. Secondly it is famously impossible to predict what is going to become a dvd sensation. So the studios are unlikely to take that risk.

Inquisitor, that's good info about the discounted rate, of which I wasn't aware. The question of the DVD seemed obvious to me, a John Q. Citizen, so I'm sure I'm not the only to have thought of it. I kind of figured I was missing a part of the equation.

However, as to your second point, about the predictability of what will endure, I disagree - at least to the extent that I think studios could get it right a hell of a lot more than they do now.

There doesn't seem to be any way to get real data on this, which means I'm speculating here. It's mainly a sense one gets when you look at the dvd library of the movie buff next door (which these days seems to be just about everybody) - and the kinds of movies that make up that portion of the library that is over...say... 10 years old. The majority of these movies were critically praised upon their release. Not all of them, surely. People are bound to pick up a copy of Barbarella from time to time, or even The Complete Brady Bunch. And, conversely, an actual good movie like The Matrix can go on to become a genuine classic even though Entertainment Weekly panned it at first. But - and again this thought stems from nothing more than my own 2 eyes - the majority of films that endure past a few years - and are thus still generating revenue (however marginal, as you state) - received real critical praise upon their release.

And I want to stress that my real concern is not the critics per se, but the film's quality itself, of which an averaged critical rating is only the best option to assess something as ephemeral as "quality."

Maybe I'm just enamored of this idea that quality wins out in the end, even in a business sense. But I realize that I'm repeating myself, maybe ad nauseum.

In response to your last paragraph, I don't think these particular critics represent quality in films... they represent a reasonable sample of the moviegoing public. I think the data shows correlation between the tastes of this large, democratic sample of critics and the moviegoing public--not causation.

Investing in hiring good critics, as the article mentions, is therefore probably a waste of time. Investing in quality product, as you and the article said, is what really matters. But the short-term myopia towards opening weekend numbers by mismanaged studios creates a ridiculous approach to moviemaking and film investment, one that results in formulaic drivel because of the formula's easier financial predictability.

Which is why we get subjected to sequels of ripoffs.

I think there are too many examples of non-quality films making significant profits to really support the arguement that quality matters. A couple quick examples from the last year; Jumper, Shrek 3, Hostel 2. All these movies made profit, enough so that each has sequals in the works. Each of these movies also have poor aggregated reviews scores on rotten tomatoes.

These are 3 quick examples from just the last year, there are plenty more. Studios are able to market their movies and sell to a global audience in a way that quality may not matter as much as we think. Studios continue to profit off of less than stellar films, if quality was really a key factor it shouldn't be so easy to find numerous counter examples.