For the last two years before this summer, I have gone to every movie theater using pre-purchased tickets that I received as a birthday gift from a relative. If I wanted to see a film, all I needed to do was open a drawer with the small stack of golden slips of paper and exchange them for tickets at any time, no questions asked.

But like all good things, my movie-watching bliss came to an end. When every trip to the theaters meant a nearly $15 ticket with an explicit monetary transaction, bad movies stung a bit more, and a forgettable movie’s only lasting impression was the memory of a waste of time. Soon enough I was browsing critical reviews before every movie I saw.

Then came Suicide Squad, a movie with fan enthusiasm, effective marketing and promotional backing and a star-studded cast; a movie that had the potential to be the savior for a rather disappointing summer season.

Instead, movie-goers got a film that at best is a fun blockbuster with a simple plot and at worst a “double cop-out, disappointing both fans of the source material’s grown-up gloom-and-doom aesthetic and discerning adolescents,” according to Michael O’Sullivan from the Washington Post. With a 42 percent difference between critical and fan approval according to Rotten Tomatoes and a petition to take down the review aggregate site, viewer reviews were split, and many revolved around whether specific comments critics had made were right instead of their actual overall thoughts on the movie. The narrative of the average viewer versus the critics is a wholly unnecessary and unproductive endeavour which defeats the purpose of professional critical analysis.

If people see critics and their reviews only as an avenue for self-validation of one’s own opinions or dismiss them as pretentious snobs with some sort of disconnect with what people like, they miss opportunities to gain or at least consider pursuing a deeper appreciation for films they already enjoy through the lens of professional film criticism while learning to enjoy other types of widely unknown films.

By blindly defending our film preferences and refusing to recognize problems in the works we may love, we become unable to differentiate truly great films from the rest, and slowly, every movie can become the same average experience. Going into a movie with the mindset that one needs to deflect every negative comment critics have made will often reduce one’s enjoyment of the movie and inhibits one’s ability to develop one’s own independent opinions. Having preferences which are fundamentally different from those of critics is OK. Just don’t go charging after critics with a vendetta every time a movie comes out.

This piece was originally published in the pages of the Winged Post on August 26, 2016.