While people might be interested to know what critics have to say, that doesn’t mean they make ticket purchasing decisions based solely on their response.
People will always have different reactions to art and the only way for any one person to know how they’ll respond is to see it for themselves.
I think they may be giving critics a bit too much credit.
It honestly feels like that people involved with the studios are trying to argue that, maybe the movies were bad, but if only there wasn’t a website telling people that, they’d still make all the money.