Seth Rogen would like film critics to know that negative reviews 'hurt' and are 'devastating'
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Seth Rogen's made some great films in his day. Superbad. Knocked Up. Pineapple Express. The End. 50/50. Sausage Party. He's currently featured in the Oscar-nominated The Fabelmans.
But he's also made some not-so-great films and no one's going to try to start a #JusticeForGreenHornet campaign any time soon. Still, having been on the receiving end of his fair share of scathing reviews, Rogen recently opened up about how it feels to have your work eviscerated in a public forum. Spoiler alert: not great.
On an episode of the "Diary of a CEO" podcast, Rogen spoke with host Steven Bartlett about self-doubt and how negative reviews play into that. When asked if that kind of criticism hurts, Rogen responds emphatically, "Oh yeah! It hurts everyone. Very much so."
"I think if most critics knew how much it hurt the people that made the things that they are writing about, they would second guess the way they write these things," Rogen said. "It's devastating. I know people who never recover from it honestly — years, decades of being hurt by [film reviews]. It's very personal…It is devastating when you are being institutionally told that your personal expression was bad. That's something that people carry with them, literally, their entire lives and I get why. It f---ing sucks."
Jaimie Trueblood/Sony; Ed Araquel/Sony Seth Rogen in 'Green Hornet' (left) and 'The Interview'
Though Rogen admittedly got bummed by the bad reviews for The Green Hornet, the 2011 superhero flick that was resoundingly dismissed by critics, he was at least able to find solace in what was then his biggest box opening.
"For Green Hornet, the reviews were coming out and it was pretty bad," Rogen said. "People just kind of hated it. It seemed like a thing people were taking joy in disliking a lot. But it opened to like $35 million, which was the biggest opening weekend I'd ever been associated with at that point. It did pretty well. That's what's nice sometimes. You can grasp for some sense of success at times."
Rogen was able to dismiss the criticisms of Green Hornet as him just "falling victim to a big, fancy thing," and maybe being ahead of the superhero curve, but for something like The Interview, which he co-directed with longtime collaborator Evan Goldberg, the negative reaction hit much closer to home.
Starring Rogen and former closest work friend James Franco, The Interview was mired in controversy over its depiction of North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un (played by Randall Park), resulting in a hack of Sony Pictures along with threats to pull the film, which then led to Sony cancelling its wide theatrical release. Once folks finally saw it, streaming on Netflix, the reviews were tough.
"People were taking joy in talking s-- about [The Interview] and questioning the types of people that would want to make a movie like that," Rogen said. While he considered Green Hornet more of "a conceptual failure" and not a creative one, with The Interview "people treated us like we creatively failed, which sucked much worse."
Rogen added that negative reviews feel like "a very personal rejection" that "doesn't feel constructive," but concedes that "in the grand scale of things" that they aren't that bad. And he's gotten much better in dealing with harsh criticism.
"When I was younger I really did not have as much perspective as I do," Rogen said. "Now, I do not carry it with me as much as I used to."
Recently, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania scribe Jeff Loveness described feeling "despondent" and "really sad" about the film's negative reaction, but star Jonathan Majors added his own perspective, saying of critics, "It's just people. They have an opinion. You always have an opinion. I'm no fool. I know these are people writing it."
Majors added, "The artists and the filmmakers that made these movies invested years, sometimes, into the two hours and 15 minutes you see. I'm not saying be nice, I'm just saying understand it's a real transaction that's happening when you put pen to paper, you know?"
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