How The Triangle of Hollywood Controls What We Watch — And What We Like

If you think you're in charge of your own opinions, think again. There's something I like to call the Triangle of Hollywood, which controls the way we all perceive stories. Each leg of the triangle has significant influence on the types of movies and shows that get made and how they're received, and none truly overpower the others. However, because each leg can be so easily influenced, the triangle has the ability to permanently damage the state of storytelling in the industry. But the triangle's impact can be changed, if we're aware of what it is, how it works, and what we can do about it.

What is the Triangle of Hollywood?

The Triangle is not some secret illusive thing. These are the pillars of consumable story content made in the entertainment space, and they're a lot more familiar than you think. I refer you to The Three C's: Critics, Creatives, and Consumers.

Let's break down each component of the triangle and how they interact.

Critics are professional reviewers who analyze films and TV shows. They often have backgrounds in film studies or journalism and are expected to provide objective evaluations of a movie's strengths and weaknesses. Their reviews are published in newspapers, magazines, websites, and other media outlets.

Creatives are the responsible for creating the content. This includes writers, directors, producers, and everyone else involved in the filmmaking process. Their job is to create and market the content for consumption.

Consumers are the audience (yes, that's you). These are the people who buy tickets, stream movies, and contribute to the financial success of a project. Audiences have varying levels of cinema literacy and come with diverse backgrounds, preferences, and expectations. Any of the legs can be consumers in the literal sense, but the way critics and creatives consume media can be different than the audience because of the nature of their jobs, which can be both a benefit and a detriment.

Each leg of the triangle influences the other two, and no leg has more influence over the others.

Critics can make or break a film's reputation, influencing audience perception and box office numbers. We've all seen people say critics are dumb and that Rotten Tomatoes is useless when their favorite movies and directors take a hit, but we've also seen that with some big releases like Dune 2, Joker 2, and various TV shows, an overwhelmingly strong critical reception, either positive or negative, can influence public attendance.

But critics can also be influenced by audiences, or public discourse in general. Barbie and Oppenheimer were both really bad movies with horrendous screenplays, but due to the hype, they got smashing reviews from both critics and audiences. Who influenced who in this case? Was it the massive double feature spectacle? Was it decades of flawed film criticism shaping the way people think? It's hard to tell, but that's the point of the triangle: the lines get blurred.

This is especially true when it comes to creatives, who you might be surprised to find have more influence than you think. The Barbenheimer success story of course hinges on a lightning-in-a-bottle type of phenomenon due to social media, but let's not forget Barbie's massive marketing campaign, Oppenheimer's big cast, and the public branding and fanbases of Greta Gerwig and Christopher Nolan. That branding (Gerwig's shallow feminism and Nolan's faux-intellectualist style) has managed to trick many critics and audiences into believing that their films are good when they're not. But again, could they have become these big name directors if not for decades of bad film criticism or cinema illiterate audiences that preceded and overlapped with their careers?

At the same time, creatives look to audiences to determine what to make, or more specifically in recent years, what to make more of. I've talked about this a lot further in my episode on Hollywood's recent IP obsession, but the gist is that even though creatives have control of things like marketing, they also have the ability to craft based on audiences, making dozens of sequels to guarantee people show up to theaters, crafting entire TV universes out of nostalgia bait, and more. But of course, this filmmaking philosophy can also influence audiences without them realizing, and once again, the triangle becomes a closed circuit.

The Problem with the Triangle

The main problem with the triangle is that people just aren't good at story, either creating or understanding if it's decent, and this sort of thing is difficult when there's so many opinions being thrown at you from every corner of the earth along with a status quo that exists to maintain ridiculous rules and standards based on the wrong reasons.

First and foremost, it's important to note that critics are not some beacon of objectivity. They can base their reviews off existing trends and others in their field, personal preferences that color their worldview, relationships with big industry players, and a bad understanding of storytelling in general.

So many critics highly rate the most boring pointless movies you've ever seen just because it "feels" like an Oscar movie, aka it tackles a serious topic, or has a random screaming match in the middle to convey a false sense of drama, or even has a big name director attached. It also feels like some critics want their movies to follow set precedents, but then others will penalize a film for doing literally anything, any little thing, that they saw in another movie. Why do we give these people so much credit?

Critics are not taught what makes a movie or show or any piece of media good or bad. Anyone can learn these things inherently through experience consuming and also sometimes creating. So if critics are said to be experienced in evaluating films objectively because of exposure to content and prior critical literature, then shouldn't creatives have that same validity 'cause they've also had that same exposure? Are audience members with extensive Letterboxd records the same caliber of critic as someone who writes reviews for a major publication as their day job? Being a critic doesn't have any qualifications other than you've written a bunch of reviews and eventually maybe people start to take you seriously 'cause of your essay writing skills.

Audiences are equally unreliable. They can base their opinions off hype, marketing, or the opinions of others, and even by the time they think they're forming their own opinions, they've got a whole lifetime of societal influence that has shaped the way they consume and perceive stories. Audiences can also participate in review bombing or padding, slamming or praising films because of who made it, who's in it, what topics it covers, what aesthetic it has (and whether it matches their own personal aesthetic of the month), and other superficial reasons like getting mad over people of color or queer people existing in a movie or show.

Genre conventions can shape how both critics and audiences see a film.

This is especially the case for fantasy, sci-fi, and action, where the spectacle or novelty can overshadow their understanding of the actual story. Just look at how the Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy are received. Both critics and audiences see these movies as no more than fun action-fantasy and don't acknowledge the important themes. Critics especially skewed public perception of the second and third films with their mixed and negative reviews, and it feels like only recently have people come around to appreciate the trilogy as a whole. But even then, they don't fully understand the storytelling involved and just praise it for the action, spectacle, iconic moments, and VFX.

Similarly with the Harry Potter films, despite having generally positive reception, the reviews are all over the place. People criticized the first two movies for being too "kiddie" even though the main characters are literally children. The third movie gets praised more just because it's darker and has a prestigious director, while Order of the Phoenix gets knocked for "lack of spectacle" despite being the first to really tackle politics and real-world implications. No one understands the coming-of-age subgenre of Goblet of Fire or Harry's character journey in both Order and Half-Blood Prince. And Deathly Hallows is criticized for being split into two parts while four through six are criticized for omitting a lot from the books.

See all the contradictions? And we're supposed to take reviews seriously. But there's one genre that highlights how the triangle can pose a serious problem that goes beyond missing the point of a fantasy movie.

Boston Strangler and the True Crime Phenomenon

Without spoilers, let me explain the case of Boston Strangler, an amazing film that was heavily misunderstood and therefore criticized by both critics and audiences because of how the triangle has conditioned everyone's expectations.

When this movie came out, it had like a 61% on Rotten Tomatoes (it went up to 68% but still, not even 7 out of 10 people had a positive review). That's ridiculously low for how good this film is. Critics complained it was too "drab" and "brooding" because women weren't being brutally murdered on screen every five minutes. But this movie isn't about glorifying the killer — it's a period drama about two female journalists investigating and uncovering a possible serial killer. The movie's focus is journalism, women's experiences in the 60s, and how society responds to violence against women. The themes are there in every scene, but nobody has to give some dramatic speech about being oppressed — it's just shown through the characters' experiences.

This really demonstrates how the preconceived notions of both critics and audiences can lead to a film being unfairly judged. People didn't understand or even want the nuanced social commentary or the focus on the main character. In fact, they were actually torn, with some saying the movie didn't focus enough on her home life while others saying they focused on it too much, and both criticisms are wrong because the focus was just right, weaving her personal story with the larger investigation.

Most notably, people were upset that it wasn't, in essence, a slasher film. The true crime craze, fueled by an endless stream of documentaries, podcasts, and TV shows, has warped expectations so much that people don't want a movie that looks at the broader societal context.

And this craze exists because of the triangle:

• Creatives see the popularity of the genre (as well as the semi-adjacent slasher genre) and keep making more of the shocking "inside the killer's mind" and "look at all these dead bodies" type content, prioritizing sensationalism over substance (looking at you, Ryan Murphy).

• Critics keep praising these stories for being dark and edgy, keeping in line with years of previous films and shows that set certain guidelines for what a "good" true crime story looks like (see above).

• Consumers, bombarded all this true crime, quickly get desensitized and crave increasingly shocking content, which shifts the focus from the victims to the perpetrators and the vibe, glorifying violence and ignoring the trauma and horrors beyond the shock value.

This makes changing things up a serious challenge. People have dissociated from crime victims so much because they're used to true crime that glorifies the murderers. When you make a hundred movies about Jeffrey Dahmer, people get mad when you then tell a story that humanizes the victims and digs into societal aspects such as journalism and police response. They're mad that they didn't get to see all the brutal murders actually take place since so many audiences enjoy seeing that on their screen just so they can feel something after a mind-numbing 10-hour work day.

It's basically dark escapism — instead of escaping to somewhere nice, they escape to somewhere they can safely and vicariously experience something dark and even violent that they would never expect in their own lives, and that's absolutely the wrong takeaway society should have from true crime.

What do we do when audiences are so used to the garbage pumped out by the industry and praised by critics, the hundreds of horrible movies and shows glorifying serial killers, and a true crime genre that thrives on sex and violence, that when they see a movie that actually takes itself and the subject matter seriously and adds various layers directly tying into society, they feel like they deserve something else? The triangle's perpetuation of toxic or trash content actually makes it much harder for people to challenge that status quo. It's okay to like or dislike something, but when you dig into the reasons why, it reveals a lot about the industry and its impact.

It's okay to like or dislike something, but when you dig into the reasons why, it reveals a lot about the industry and its impact.

Especially when you add trauma and mental illness to all that serial killer stuff, it just gets so much worse. The more Hollywood makes negative content surrounding mental illness, the more critics keep praising it simply for being bold enough to discuss mental illness, the more audiences buy into harmful depictions and want more and even blanche at non harmful depictions or positive depictions 'cause they're not thrilling enough I guess.

And if someone wants to come in and make a movie about a killer who doesn't have mental illness, doesn't have a sad backstory, isn't some tragic sympathetic character or a super unhinged crazy person that comes second only to Michael Myers, then those creators are screwed 'cause critics and audiences will probably hate it for not propping up their existing preconceived notions.

That's why when something truly well crafted like Boston Strangler comes along and tries to do something different, focusing on the journalists and societal impact rather than glorifying the killer or treating the victims like horror fodder, people don't know how to handle it.

So where do we go from here? Is there nothing we can do?

How to Change The Triangle's Outcomes

The triangle may be ruining storytelling, but it's not going anywhere. Critics, creatives, and consumers will always exist, but that doesn't mean they can't change. So what do we do to make sure Hollywood is making good content and that the good content gets properly praised and highlighted?

The best thing you can do right now is start thinking for yourself instead of just following what critics or audience scores tell you.

When you're deciding what to watch, think about:

1. Does the premise actually interest you? Does it work as a concept?

2. Does the trailer have good dialogue? If not watching the trailer, then do the first few minutes grip you? Do you feel like you have to skip or fast forward?

3. Does the story fit within existing expectations, and whether it does or doesn't, is that a good thing? A necessary departure? Or trying too hard?

4. Does the story and the way it's told make sense? Does it fit what the creators were trying to do?

This isn't an exhaustive list, but the point is, we just need to think about what we watch and do our best not to be influenced by others. Don't roll your eyes at crazy action sequences or funny cartoon logic just because you were told it's not "realistic." Don't jump on a hype train just because a movie did something that hasn't been done before, or has been done before and takes you back to the good old days. Don't assume that a fantasy movie can't be meaningful just because it has magic or mythical creatures.

Most importantly, understand that this is a fluid process. You won't have all the answers all the time or at the right time. The goal is to just get better at understanding story.

If we all start thinking more critically about what we watch and why we watch it, we can break out of these cycles and get more diverse, interesting content of actual good quality. Because, if you're anything like me, you're sick of seeing the same crap over and over just because the triangle refuses to change and give us what we deserve.