So, the rather controversial concepts of objective criticism and objectively bad art are a fairly hot topic, even more so nowadays.
Leaping past the massive flame wars around certain movies, this is the first time I felt like I had no clue to go on and reach a conclusion.
On one hand, there's the whole "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder" thing, but it's also true that the large majority of people hated X movie. It's also true that many of the reasons people hated X movie were also present in the previous well-received movies as well. So, most people are dumb and can't be relied on for thoughtful criticism.
Now, judging art by an objective metric is possible. However, I'm unsure if said objective metric itself is good or bad. For instance, let's assume a group of theoretical and spherical stereotype romance readers and theoretical stereotype objective critics in a perfect vacuum. The romance readers' objective metrics reward a lot of bonus points for empty female protagonists that they can identify with. The most vocal advocates of objective criticism would consider that group's opinion to be bad, and the group itself to be a bunch of degenerates or at least tasteless plebians. However, there's no real reason why that couldn't go the other way. Similarly, saying that more people adhere to X objective metric doesn't make that metric inherently good for the same reason nazis weren't good.
Another example, Jaws sits at a solid 90% on Rotten Tomatoes, whereas The Last Jedi is 48%. However, The Last Jedi only hurt the image of fictional characters, whereas Jaws more-or-less singlehandedly started a damaging stereotype about sharks that had consequences in real life. By my objective metrics that's not just bad but an outright war crime that Steven Spielberg should answer for.
So, it's a tie for me, but that can't be the case, can it? Could objective criticism exist, and if yes, is it something that you as a writer should take into consideration?