Reports that Star Wars: The Force Awakens will kill film criticism have been greatly exaggerated

The news out of Hollywood this week is that J.J. Abrams's next Star Wars installment, The Force Awakens, will not be entered into awards races nor screened for press in an apparent effort to prevent spoilers from leaking into the Twittersphere. That has led some like Verge writer Bryan Bishop to speculate on the future of film criticism, at least when it comes to the mega-financed blockbuster. "If Captain America: Civil War, Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice, or Rogue One were to arrive without advanced screenings next year," Bishop writes, "it wouldn’t simply be about preserving that initial experience; it would be about creating a streamlined blockbuster pipeline straight to the consumer, with the studio controlling the message every step of the way."

Of course, Bishop forgets that studios do a bang-up job controlling the message, whether their films are reviewed or not. Good reviews are splashed across trailers and posters. Indifferent reviews are cut down to power exclamations like "exciting" or "thrill ride." Bad reviews are ignored, or, in at least one recent case detailed by Bishop's own publication, turned into a rave with the clever application of Tom Hardy's head (a topic broached in a recent edition of our Gridlines series).

The notion that the alliance between studios and critics is, in Bishop's words, "unspoken, often uneasy" is somewhat difficult to digest, given how boldly studios publicize words written by critics who praise their movies. Also strange is the idea that anything Disney and LucasArts does around The Force Awakens has relevance for film criticism at large. The film is such a phenomenon, inspiring a rash of articles when even the tiniest bit of new footage is released in a television spot, that it can only be considered an exception and not standard business practice. Will every film print its scripts on red paper to avoid photocopying too?

The more troubling note in Bishop's article than whether or not The Force Awakes will continue to marginalize the established film critic is his vision of a softened critic's role—and by extension, the role of independent film houses like the Wex, working to screen underserved works and preserve viewership and appreciation of the films not backed by billion dollar marketing blitzes. "They show us movies early to get free press," says Bishop, "and in exchange we say what we think to help readers decide, discuss, and contextualize." But critics do more than deliver a singular opinion on whatever reel a studio puts in front of them. They seek out worthwhile, relevant, insightful, creative, woefully underappreciated storytelling and champion the films and filmmakers in which studios are not investing, and for whom the support of press and art houses means so much.

Bishop warns smaller films would feel the brunt if press access dries up ahead of big-budget releases, since the little guys "rely on the larger entertainment coverage ecosystem for their survival, and if people get used to not reading reviews about the upcoming blockbusters they know about, they’re likely not going to spend a lot of time reading about the smaller films they've never heard of." For our part, we remain invested in supporting the storytelling you won't be seeing between plays during the next Super Bowl.