Roger Ebert: The Innovative Critc

Film criticism hardly seems like an innovative profession, but one man became synonymous with movie reviews: Roger Ebert. His passing last week caused all within the film industry to grieve and look back at a fruitful career. Ebert didn't just review films, he connected mainstream America with art criticism and critical thinking. His approval became a stamp films promoted to audiences.

Ebert innovated film criticism by making the profession mainstream in a way that captivated audiences. Film critics long before him wrote columns in local newspapers, but Ebert took his skills in writing and created a television series that America tuned into for his recommendations. Television wasn't enough to be deemed innovative, but Ebert changed criticism again by creating a new system of critical rating: the thumbs up. He trademarked the term "two-thumbs up" with his cohost Gene Siskel. Together these two changed film criticism by making it relevant to pop culture. While Ebert wrote about the most artistic films ever made, his show highlighted films for the masses. Often he had colorful insults for movies, but his show brought character to bland reviews for 33 years.

(1:13 mark to see how Ebert devised the Thumbs rating)

Ebert didn't stop innovating however. He also embraced Twitter as a means for mass communication from its beginnings. He used blogs to connect readers to other topics of discussion. Ebert's innovation was his ability to connect his views to a general population using any form of mass communication available to him.