GODS OF EGYPT Director Alex Proyas Blasts Film Critics

Another filmmaker has come out of the woodwork to put film critics on blast. Gods of Egypt director Alex Proyas, who has also helmed movies like The Crow, Dark City, Knowing, and I, Robot, went on a Facebook rampage when critics trashed his latest film in their reviews:

NOTHING CONFIRMS RAMPANT STUPIDITY FASTER...Than reading reviews of my own movies. I usually try to avoid the...

Posted by Alex Proyas on Sunday, February 28, 2016

Notice how he slipped in that little "failed film-maker" dig? It's the latest in a long line of directors who are operating under the false assumption that you have to make films in order to critique them. Far better writers than I have tackled this topic, but it boils down to the fact that film criticism is an art unto itself, and while it certainly makes for better writing if a writer has knowledge of every process of filmmaking, it's not a requirement that you have to direct a movie before you can critique one.

Also, while Proyas definitely has a point that a lot of critics seem to just stick to a herd mentality, any worthwhile writer isn't afraid to go against the consensus in order to give their honest opinion about a film. And the whole thing about locking a critic in a room with a movie no one has seen before and them not knowing what to say about it? That's what film festivals are — they happen multiple times a year. Are there critics who scour the internet to see what everyone else thinks about a movie before writing their reviews? Probably. But there are just as many (GT writers included) who attend film festivals and see movies at their world premieres, when no one else has seen them, and then we immediately go back to our hotel rooms, write our reviews, and publish them without reading a damn thing about what anyone else thinks. When you're the one being trashed, I can see how it'd be easy to vilify critics for conspiring against you, but in reality, chances are you probably just made a bad movie.

(I haven't seen Gods of Egypt yet, and I still plan to see it before I write with any authority about the film itself. But in the meantime, take this article simply as a reaction to Proyas's comments and not as a comment on the quality of his latest movie.)