I like how Larry Lessig in his TED video "Laws that Choke Creativity" gives us examples of how many of the things we see and listen to today are remixes of previous work. It's very difficult to come up with truly original work, and even Hollywood, the professionals, are struggling to do so lately. Letting regular people borrow and use other work to make their own creations should be allowed in my opinion, except for if they are trying to make money off of it. This gives not only young people but all creative people the chance to showcase their vision and creativity by using elements from other mediums. There have been plenty of music videos that have been made by fans who many argue were done better than the actual professional music video, this is an example of how user generated content is a positive force and should be allowed to continue.
With film, just like any other sort of entertainment industry, reviews and ratings are a huge factor that effect whether or not people will go spend the money and time to see the finished product. I know many people, myself included, who will wait a couple of days to see how the ratings of a movie have done. There have been times where the critics ratings have swayed me to not see a movie, and although I follow the ratings of popular sites such as rottentomatoes.com, Imdb.com, and Metacritic I have still watched movies that even all three of those sites have deemed "rotten." On the contrary, I haven't seen movies that all three of those sites have deemed "classic" "fresh" "oscar worthy" or given very positive ratings. While it's true that there have been times where I may not have seen a film that I would have liked to experience and seen films that I probably shouldn't have wasted the money on. I'm sure that there are plenty of people out there who have only gone to see movies that critics and users have given favorable reviews. I usually am one of those people too. This has the potential to effect the box office and cause studios to try and get as positive reviews as possible for their movies. There has been talk that Marvel/Disney has paid off reviewers to give their films higher ratings while the critics have constantly bashed DC films, and while I find this train of thought silly and almost conspiracy level garbage, it is kind of fun to imagine. Is it too much to believe that maybe the DC films are just not as well made in general as the Marvel films? Or is there really an actual conspiracy going on? All of this talk originated from user generated content.
Technically Metacritic is arguably the best since it averages the rating from multiple critics sites and sources. It also takes user review scores and displays them next to the critic's score. There have been times where the professional critics have been wrong and a movie has ended up being more popular with audiences than the critics ever thought it would be. Even in recent memory the movie Batman Vs. Superman had initial pretty bad reviews and was getting 27% on Rotten Tomatoes while a majority of audiences enjoyed and liked the movie and is currently sitting at a decent 64% user rating.
I have problems with the way some of these sites allow aggravating reviews. Imdb.com for example, allows users to post and rate a movie before it has even released in theaters. This should leave the assumption that the ratings that have been posted are from early screenings of the film. I would like to see Imdb provide a better system that reduces aggravating ratings and forces users to submit a small review and give reasons why they gave the movie the rating they did. With a 50 word minimum, and an intern or employee who screens the reviews, so the copy and paste reviews don't slide by. If a site wants to have it's ratings be taken seriously they have to make users put a little more effort into their ratings. This not only would reduce the troll ratings who only give 1/10 ratings because they hate the director or an actor/actress. but it gives the site a little more credibility as well.
The forum boards are no worse, users are constantly posting aggravating posts and seem to be looking for attention more than actually discussing the film. There are multiple ways that a site can grow it's credibility and the example I gave is just one of many.
All in all, user generated content has the potential to be a great tool. I think it is usually used in a negative way though, more than it should be. We can't control everything that people post using the internet, we can't control how people view something, or their experience with it. However, I do think we can control the way users can post and express their opinions in a more efficient and credible manner.
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