I wonder how critics feel knowing that their opinions on movies mean absolutely nothing.
meaning nothing in the short financial term doesn't mean they can't be right in the long term of meaning. A critic's primary job is to simply be honest and consider any product both in terms where it stand compared to the others as well as on its own terms as if it could be the first movie someone ever watched. The rest is just a matter of experience and pretense. Good critics know the difference, and what those products do financially is entirely besides the point. Hell, most movies critics love are indie movies that never even get a wide release, but that doesn't detract in any way or form from its quality. Neither would a big expensive wide release detract from any quality that movie might possess. It's just that the current studio system doesn't favor the emergence of quality from the craft, but forcing it down by marketing. Which doesn't work, and this system is basically blowing up right now. And when it's gone there will still be movies and critics that weren't paid shills will survive it too, as they have the previous rounds as well.
It's not that different from the stock investor cycle. People who survive in that system don't ride the fame train of lucky fools, they make sure they won't blow up too when the system does, which it always will at some point.
I'm going to speculate that Scott Rudin might be one of the latter, giving his pleas in the leaked emails to not have to make a movie that can't be sold anymore, which happened to be Cleopatra. Which btw, fits in with the 'too well-known myth' movie that I discussed earlier in this thread as no longer being sell-able (spell check claims 'sellable' is wrong, is that correct?) to a larger audience.
Making movies that make money is kind of, you know, hard and very random. Ask GitS.
I actually learned that from the NDP threads on gaming side that had the exact same discussions because people wrongly assume there is a causation between the quantity of quality and the number of money made. There is not even so much as a strong correlation, just a mild one at best, with no causation to be found. It's just random.
Which is the long way round of saying critics and gross are completely unrelated by default.
edit: also I think I made this post before and now sound like a broken record. Sorry if that's the case.