I also regard the idea of shutting down Rotten Tomatoes as rather stupid. I don't see why many people seemed to regard that site as the last word on every film ever made. If I had adhered to the opinions of the film critics on that site, along with God knows how many other critics, I would have missed out on a lot of movies that proved to be favorites of mine.
It's even stupider than that, because RT is simply an aggregator. None of the critics whose reviews it posts actually
work for Rotten Tomatoes, any more than actors and filmmakers work for IMDb. RT just collects reviews from elsewhere and presents a statistical summary thereof. Blaming RT for bad reviews is like blaming the TV meteorologist for bad weather.
You're not accepting this as fact, are you? Without having seen the film?
What part of "the reviews seem to agree" and "apparently" would lead you to think I was blindly accepting anything as fact? I chose that phrasing specifically to make it clear that I'm merely describing what others are saying without endorsing it or suggesting that it can't be questioned. It is, of course, a given that any source can and should be interrogated rather than blindly trusted. Describing what a source reports is merely describing what it reports, nothing more.
However, since the specific point in question here is not the quality of the film but merely its structure (i.e. what character it "revolves around"), I don't see any particular reason to mistrust the reviewers' reporting on this point. Describing who is the central character of a movie is not a particularly subjective or controversial assessment in most cases. And various reviewers seem to be in agreement that Deadshot is the primary character, Harley secondary, and the Joker a far more minor presence than we were led to believe. A claim from a single, isolated source should naturally be viewed with skepticism, but if multiple independent sources corroborate one another, particularly on such an objective and uncontroversial question as which character in a movie is central, then that would tend to increase the reliability of their conclusion.
And really, is it any surprise that Will Smith, rather than Margot Robbie, is the actual lead of the film? Not only is he billed first, not only is he a far bigger celebrity, but he's male. I think if SS had actually been a female-led film, achieving that landmark before
Wonder Woman did, then the fact would've garnered some publicity.
Why allow film critics dictate what you do or don't see in the theaters?
One should not, of course. But that doesn't mean one is required to ignore them altogether. Describing someone's opinion is not intended to say "You must blindly and slavishly believe every word they say." It is merely providing some information to be weighed in the course of making a decision. Listening to others' points of view doesn't mean surrendering one's free will.
