Blame who you know

There are few people in the world more pretentious than those who fancy themselves internet critics, but really know nothing more about film than the average Joe. There are many annoying things about these people, but today I'm going to talk about just one thing.

They blame who they know.

A perfect example is last year's "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen". The film (using that term loosely) was terrible, barely anything redeeming about it, no argument there, "critics". My problem comes in with who they blamed for this atrocious thing, they blamed Michael Bay. Why? Because he's the director, I guess. But who was really to blame? Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci. "Who?" you're probably asking, unwittingly proving my point. They are the writers of Transformers 2, and they should hold a large chunk of the blame. They wrote the script in a very short amount of time (rumors range everywhere from 1 month to 3 days) in order to get it finished before the writers strike. Unfortunately, the studio decided to continue production on the film despite a barely workable script, and what resulted was the terror we witnessed on screen. Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci aren't that great anyway, [they wrote the first Transformers, "Star Trek" (2009), "Mission Impossible III" (with JJ Abrams), "The Island" (with Caspian Treadwell-Owen) and "Legend of Zorro" (with Ted Elliot & Terry Rossio)] but in a rush they could hardly be expected to create anything good. So for this reason, the studio is as much to blame as anyone for not stopping production when the script went bad.

Here's how the blame should have been divided
24%-Alex Kurtzman
24%-Roberto Orci
31%-Paramount Pictures
17%-Michael Bay
4%-Industrial Light and Magic
But of course it was really divided like this
97%-Michael Bay
3%-Shia Labouef

Another good example is the 2000 film, "Battlefield Earth". I haven't seen it, but with a 2.3/10 on IMDB, that seems like a good thing. The film was directed by Roger Christian, a relative unknown, so of course he wasn't blamed for the atrociousness of the movie. It was written by Corey Mandell and J. D. Shapiro, but they weren't blamed because no one knows who they are (or any writers for that matter). It was produced by Jonathan D. Crane, and Elli Samaha, but no one knows who they are so they weren't blamed. So who was blamed? John Travolta. He starred in the film and was the third producer, next to Crane and Samaha. Of course, he overacted ridiculously in the picture, but he hardly deserved the 100% of the blame he received. I haven't seen the film, but here's how the blame should have been divided.

Roger Christian-27%
Corey Mandell-18%
J. D. Shapiro-18%
John Travolta-13%
Jonathan D. Crane-10%
Eli Samaha-10%
Warner Bros Pictures-4%

So next time you see a movie, don't just blame the name, blame the person who mucked it up in the first place.