I just finished watching the very last episode of the long-enduring movie review program, At the Movies. It all began with Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, film critics for the Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Sun-Times, respectively, WTTW, Chicago’s larger public television station, and Sneak Previews. Every week Gene and Roger would give thumbs up or thumbs down to the new movie releases of the week, explaining their reasons, sometimes agreeing, sometimes disagreeing quite vehemently. That was 35 years ago and I was an avid fan of Siskel and Ebert’s show right from the very beginning.
There have been many, many changes since then. In 1986 Siskel and Ebert found a no doubt more lucrative home with Disney and renamed their weekly movie review program Siskel and Ebert at the Movies. Gene Siskel died in 1999. Roger Ebert’s struggle with thyroid cancer left him unable to continue appearing on the series after 2006. A string of substitute hosts for the show never really captured the following that Siskel and Ebert had.
The end of the show really marks the end of an era and I don’t know whether to mourn its passing or rejoice in it. Will there ever again be film critics as influential as Siskel and Ebert? A thumbs-up from either one of them could make an unknown gem (or, occasionally, an unworthy dog) into a hit, thumbs-down could doom an expensive blockbuster.
In many ways the fortunes of At the Movies have paralleled those of the newspaper industry and the movie industry themselves. Neither newspapers nor movies have the influence they once did. Television, magazines, blogs, and, more recently, social media like Twitter or Facebook compete with or even replace newspapers as sources of information and television, video games, blogs, and social media have eroded the movies’ role as entertainment.
The resulting magazinization of film commentary means that people are more likely to seek out a medium that confirms the opinions they already hold than they are to take the word of a couple of middle aged white film critics and, perhaps, learn something new or learn to ask more of what they like.
Farewell, critics. Farewell, Gene, Roger, Richard, Jeffrey, Michael, Ben, and all of the others. Hello, viral marketing.
There’s still a powerhouse of movie criticism: rottentomatoes.com. It’s a site that polls and links to various critics and provides an overall number in percentage terms. Ebert is one of the critics who appears there.
Ebert can still be a pretty influential critic via his reviews posted online.
I always like Ebert’s reviews, even if I don’t agree with them. He never really slams a movie because it’s basically become fashionable to do so (like how most of the “Airbender” reviewers did in constantly going after Shymalan personally).
Would his influence be as strong had it not been for Sneak Previews/At the Movies? I doubt it.