Peter Bart now has a blog, but that’s no reason for him to play nice with the blogosphere. In a post from earlier this week, he did his best to discredit any opinion about this impending Hulk movie that is not his own:

The dweebs may not like the effects. The star, Edward Norton, may not like the cut. And the blogosphere is steeped in bad buzz. So here’s what Universal decided to do about it Sunday night: Throw a party, invite 5,000 folks to a screening and celebrate The Incredible Hulk as an instant hit…The audience roundly applauded the set-pieces of CGI mayhem, as if to tell Comic-Con-ish doubters, “Get a life.”

Because of course, it’s better to manufacture the illusion of “an instant hit” than to actually make an attempt to appeal to the “Comic-con-ish” built-in fans of the brand. I could go on and on about how to claim that the reaction of an invited audience (probably predominantly made up of people on the Marvel, Paramount or associated payrolls) is more valid that the worries of a film’s core ticket buyers is unforgivably solipsistic and probably not in line with Variety’s ostensible mission to couch all value judgments in assessments of commercial viability. But instead, I’ll just quote at length from one of Bart’s more articulate commenters, Shawn Bowers, after the jump.

I suppose I”m one of those that finds this article a little difficult to swallow, if only because of the ongoing “battle” between the “geeks” and “everyone else.” I don”t mean to use so many quotes there, but I feel like we should be past the idea that there’’s actually any difference between these groups of people. Everyone is a geek or a dweeb about SOMEthing…Peter, you”re just as big a geek about movies and the entertainment business as some people are about comic books or genre pictures or whatever. To insult the others just reflects poorly on the actual depth of your cultural awareness…which is frustrating, because someone in your position should be more open-minded to the different forms that fandom takes these days…

It just happens to be that the fanbase for these properties is more vocal in their active participation through the development stages than, say, someone waiting anxiously for their Kite Runner movie and screaming on the message boards about whether or not it’’s faithful to the book. It’’s a vocal minority, as you well know, and still…many of those people don”t actually WANT a movie to be bad, they just want to ensure a decent representation on the big screen of a favorite story or character…

I like you Peter, I’ve always been a reader, but opinions like this don”t bolster your credibility. They just come off as elitist.