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Comment by yuan43 | Hacker News Reader

The idea that a film critic can be "legendary" seems hyperbolic. Film critics will quickly be forgotten because they created nothing. Directors can be "legendary". Writers can be "legendary". Artists can be "legendary". All of these roles risk the reputations of the creators. But film critics never put anything on the line.

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> Film critics will quickly be forgotten because they created nothing

I think that's terribly dismissive. I mean, take Ebert's reviews of the Mummy series for example. There's something touching and wise in there that actually makes the films themselves better because they give us pause to reflect on these things.

Or in a completely different ballpark, the Red Letter Media "review" of Star Wars Ep. 1 that manages to be not only a valid critique of the film, but is longer than the film and arguably a better film in its own right!

(Edit: Another good example that just occurred to me is one that I heard in a recent episode of the Rest Is History podcast. They were discussing Tolkien and one of the hosts pointed out that even if he hadn't written any of his Middle Earth fiction, he'd still be well-known in literary circles for his critical examination of Beowulf that changed how we see it today.)

Like any other "content" there's a spectrum from prolefeed and seo spam on one end, and actual art and literature on the other. Pull that rabbit out of a hat enough times and there's definitely a niche to carve out a legend there.

The parent would agree that Roger Ebert is notable. But s/he is arguing that legendary should have a higher bar. Shakespeare, for example, died 400 years ago, but is commonly known today. There are many other examples. But it's hard to imagine that Roger Ebert will be well known in 100 years from now.

> The parent would agree that Roger Ebert is notable. But s/he is arguing that legendary should have a higher bar.

I think that's a reasonable view, but that's not what I took issue with. I take issue with the claim that critics produce nothing and have nothing in the line. And with the notion that legendary stature would be impossible for a critic to attain.

Ebert was a script writer. He knew more about the inside baseball than any run of the mill J-school grad who got assigned to work on the entertainment section.

The article you're reading was written in 1979 by a guy who died in 1992. So "they created nothing" is wrong (as evidenced by the writings we're discussing) and "will be quickly forgotten" is wrong (we're discussing it four decades later).

Sorry, but I disagree. Good critics can put into words your feelings about certain art works, that maybe oneself can only awkwardly describe as “good”; they can enhance your enjoyment by bringing to your eyes something that you missed; and of course perform a curation labor.

While I don’t think you should blindly follow the critics, I think is lazy to just dismiss the job of a good critic.

> Film critics will quickly be forgotten because they created nothing.

Critizising something is an art, and requires vasts amounts of background knowledge. It is trivial to make a useless and unfair critique.

> But film critics never put anything on the line.

I disagree. Their reputation is on the line.

Roger Ebert, Leonard Maltin, Pauline Kael, Richard Roeper, Gene Siskel, Mark Kermode.

Criticism may not be seen as a valid form, but there are more than a few very respected film critics. I wouldn't use the word legendary though.

To me Roger Ebert fills the role of legendary but I'm not sure I could think of anyone else. Like all movie critics, Ebert would sometimes express opinions that would surprise or vex me, but - more or less uniquely to him - by the end of his reviews I would usually come to respect and somewhat understand his opinion despite the fact that I did not share it.

I think Leonard takes himself way too seriously and comes across as preachy. Ebert is the right guy.

I highly suggest you look into the history of movies, academic movie critics pretty much defined what cinema is in the first place, critics are much more than YouTubers giving their opinion on the latest Marvel flick, it's a whole field with filmmakers being critics such as during the Nouvelle Vague.

This is tangential to the point that you are making, but it never fails to irk me whenever I see the term legendary used to describe anyone who lived in the last 100 years.

I accept that the term now has a secondary meaning for someone who is highly regarded or significant in their field, but I can’t help but see this as an artifact of marketing speak that’s ingrained itself in our culture.

I think what’s lost is the sense of weight or gravitas that is implicit in the original meaning. The idea of a myth that is larger than any individual and now represents some manner of archetypal story that endures across the ages because it resonates deeply with our human nature.

The modern usage cheapens the special significance implicit in the original meaning. It piggybacks on the original’s import and drains it’s luster for it’s own short-term gain.

There's at least one legendary literature critic, Belinsky [1], in the old Russian Empire, who played a prominent role in "Westernizing" movement.

Even for reading his critique letter [2], one could get sentenced to death (e.g. Dostoevsky, although, after mock execution, his sentence was reduced to 4 years of forced labor in a remote settlement).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vissarion_Belinsky

[2] https://www.marxists.org/subject/art/lit_crit/works/belinsky...

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