Great article on why Rotten Tomatoes is an overvalued metric

[Underworld54]

A lot to digest here but it's stuff most of us suspected for years.

https://www.vulture.com/article/rott...ie-rating.html

[Tony208]

Don't care about the critics. The user rating is accurate when the movie isn't caught up in some culture war.

[mwynn]

If it is possible for a studio to pay for reviews.

In another break from standard practice, several critics say, Bunker 15 pays them $50 or more for each review. (These payments are not typically disclosed, and Rotten Tomatoes says it prohibits “reviewing based on a financial incentive.”)

Then it also stands that a rival studio can pay for bad reviews.

[mwynn]

Originally Posted by Tony208

Don't care about the critics. The user rating is accurate when the movie isn't caught up in some culture war.

This is why it is broken. If there are no real checks and balances anything someone does or does not likes is subject to this. All a person needs is time and effort.

“The studios didn’t invent Rotten Tomatoes, and most of them don’t like it,” says the filmmaker Paul Schrader. “But the system is broken. Audiences are dumber. Normal people don’t go through reviews like they used to. Rotten Tomatoes is something the studios can game. So they do.”

[Cremildo]

In short, RT is overly simplistic and corrupt (as are some of the reviewers).

[mwynn]

Originally Posted by Cremildo

In short, RT is overly simplistic and corrupt (as are some of the reviewers).

There are multiple examples of it. Including this.

But despite Rotten Tomatoes’ reputed importance, it’s worth a reminder: Its math stinks. Scores are calculated by classifying each review as either positive or negative and then dividing the number of positives by the total. That’s the whole formula. Every review carries the same weight whether it runs in a major newspaper or a Substack with a dozen subscribers.

[mar3o]

Why should a major site or newspaper review be worth any more in terms of credibility than any other random Joe? Critics are still just people and one opinion is not worth any more than any other opinion, in terms of value of opinion. Rex Reed is a horrendous "reviewer". He's been caught reviewing films he didn't see. Gene Siskel pretty much trashed anything that was horror, or sci-fi too for that matter. He hated just about everything I like. So why should their opinions be worth any more weight than say a web blog's opinion that actually follows the genre and might actually offer a more useful opinion than a stuffy critic?

One review should count as one review. Most critics are a joke imo. I did respect Ebert, even when I disagreed with his review, as he had a deep love for film. Most critics seem to just hate watching movies in general.

[mwynn]

Originally Posted by mar3o

Why should a major site or newspaper review be worth any more in terms of credibility than any other random Joe? Critics are still just people and one opinion is not worth any more than any other opinion, in terms of value of opinion. Rex Reed is a horrendous "reviewer". He's been caught reviewing films he didn't see. Gene Siskel pretty much trashed anything that was horror, or sci-fi too for that matter. He hated just about everything I like. So why should their opinions be worth any more weight than say a web blog's opinion that actually follows the genre and might actually offer a more useful opinion than a stuffy critic?

One review should count as one review. Most critics are a joke imo. I did respect Ebert, even when I disagreed with his review, as he had a deep love for film. Most critics seem to just hate watching movies in general.

They are attempting to create the idea of credibility. Which is destroyed in every other paragraph.

[mar3o]

To me, no reviewer has any more credibility than any other (other than the ones that are truly untrustworthy like Rex Reed). It's all just opinions. I like to read a number of them, whether from paid critics or casual reviewers or whoever.

[Jay H.]

Rotten Tomatoes shouldn't be used as the sole reason to watch or avoid a movie. Reading an article on Rotten Tomatoes shouldn't be used as the sole reason to use Rotten Tomatoes or not.

Oh, the irony...

[EvaDK]

A 10/10 score is weighted the same as a 6/10 score on RT, just as a 5/10 score is weighted the same as a 1/10 score.

That makes the score pretty useless in any context other than making a very broad and non-descriptive verdict of any film.

Familiarize yourself with a few film reviewers, whose opinions are usually well argued and fair and read their reviews.

[Samus Aran]

I saw a fake review for Mission: Impossible III on Rotten Tomatoes months before the movie even came out. Just some random guy with a nothing website, and it was obvious he never saw the movie because he never said one specific thing about the plot. Eventually they took it down, but it was up there for a long time.

[Hedrox]

Originally Posted by Underworld54

A lot to digest here but it's stuff most of us suspected for years.

https://www.vulture.com/article/rott...ie-rating.html

It's a great read, but most people aren't even gonna bother to open the link. You should've quoted some of the more interesting topics covered.

“The studios didn’t invent Rotten Tomatoes, and most of them don’t like it,” says the filmmaker Paul Schrader. “But the system is broken. Audiences are dumber. Normal people don’t go through reviews like they used to. Rotten Tomatoes is something the studios can game. So they do.”

Studios are so scared of what the Tomatometer might say that some work with a company called Screen Engine/ASI, which attempts to forecast scores. (“According to the studios, the predictions are very close,” says another publicist. I’ll refer to these informers, who asked for anonymity to speak candidly, as Publicists Nos. 1 and 2.) An indie-distribution executive says, “I put in our original business plan that we should not do films that score less than 80.

When a studio is prepping the release of a new title, it will screen the film for critics in advance. It’s a film publicist’s job to organize these screenings and invite the writers they think will respond most positively. Then that publicist will set the movie’s review embargo in part so that its initial Tomatometer score is as high as possible at the moment when it can have maximal benefits for word of mouth and early ticket sales.

For smaller movies, the opposite is more common at film festivals, where critics tend to get swept up in the glamour (or maybe just the jet lag) and give kinder reviews than their peers back home. “It happens all the time,” says the indie-distribution exec. “A movie will come out of a festival with a 90-plus -Rotten Tomatoes score and then, boom, when it hits the marketplace, it goes down to 60 percent.”

Could the allegedly more inclusive Rotten Tomatoes have simply expanded its ranks in hopes that the new critics would be nicer to the IP-driven event movies that Hollywood now mostly depends on? Intentional or not, this appears to be what happened. According to a study by Global News, in 2016, the average Tomatometer score for all wide releases was in the rotten low 50s. By 2021, that average had climbed to a fresh 60 percent.

Attempts to evince a relationship between movies’ Tomatometer scores and their financial success have yielded conflicting results. A 2017 study by the director of USC’s Data & Analytics Project concluded that “Rotten Tomatoes scores have never played a very big role in driving box office performance, either positively or negatively.” In 2020, an investigation by the Ringer found that Tomatometer scores do correlate with box-office returns, especially for comedies and horror films, but the authors admit that the pandemic may have scrambled moviegoing habits in ways that data may not fully account for yet.

[tcripe]

Oh boy. RT gonna have to make some changes from the top down. If they dont their site about to become irrelevant.

[Hedrox]

Originally Posted by tcripe

Oh boy. RT gonna have to make some changes from the top down. If they dont their site about to become irrelevant.

The fact that studios actively try to take advantage of it and rig the game tells you they're more relevant now than they've ever been.

[Michael11]

Another disturbing trend is IMDB changing scores that they don't agree with.

[Ernest Rister]

I shed no tears for the collapse of Aint-It-Cool-News, which was so corrupt, the site was practically a by-line in a film's marketing budget. Yeah, there's corrupt critics, websites, YouTube vloggers, but the truth eventually comes out.

[drb999]

Originally Posted by Hedrox

The fact that studios actively try to take advantage of it and rig the game tells you they're more relevant now than they've ever been.

Maybe they do but it doesn’t mean they are right though.

[-JKR-]

Originally Posted by Tony208

Don't care about the critics. The user rating is accurate when the movie isn't caught up in some culture war.

I don't give a **** about either of those. If a movie looks interesting to me, I'll watch it, and then I'll judge it on my own terms, either positively or negatively.

[Underworld54]

Originally Posted by Michael11

Another disturbing trend is IMDB changing scores that they don't agree with.

That and weighing scores differently for different movies.