his review isn't the pan you're claiming it is. nor is it off the mark from what most everyone else has written. nothing about it comes off sounding like a hatchet job to me. he found most of it boring, which as others have pointed out, seems to be a pretty consistent opinion.
your response doesn't come off as someone convinced brantley's power is insignificant.
there is nothing about his review that indicates he has anywhere near the kind of investment in the success or failure of ROCKY you do. i'm not entirely clear exactly what nefarious plans you're trying to attribute to him. how exactly would "putting a hurt" on a blockbuster (that- if i'm reading you correctly -even you concede from the initial sales doesn't appear to be a blockbuster at all) benefit him? what exactly is he supposed to getting out of whatever it is you think he's doing?
some shows (usually bad ones) were critic proof in whichever decade you'd locate the apex of the critic's power.
your assertion that a pan or a rave from brantley is "just what one guy thinks" doesn't really hold water. your own response seems evidence of that. you're exactly right about the diminishment of the critic in general and the rapid (potentially devastating) decline in the number of critics as print media takes it's blows but the result is the times is now more powerful than ever. it was always the loudest voice in the room. now the chief critic of the ny times is, for all practical purposes, the last man standing. he has a bully pulpit like never before. i'm not saying that's a good thing, i don't think it is, it's just how i see things being right now.
i think your passion for this production - for whatever reason - is a beautiful thing and i applaud you for it. i mean that sincerely.
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