
‘Ghostbusters’ Is a Perfect Example of How Internet Movie Ratings Are Broken - duck
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/ghostbusters-is-a-perfect-example-of-how-internet-ratings-are-broken/
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dharmon
If you regularly watch movies at all, you are far better off spending a few
hours calibrating by reading real reviews of movies you actually saw. You then
can find 2-3 reviewers who match your tastes (pick a few cause nobody will
match exactly). Then skip the stupid point systems and go straight to, ya
know, actually reading reviews.

As Ebert said, if a reviewer did their job, you should be able to tell if
you'd like the movie or not, independent of whether or not the _reviewer_
liked it.

~~~
tracker1
Have to agree.. this is part of the reason that Netflix's algorithm can do so
well... It would be cool if Netflix would expand their star system to movies
that aren't on video yet, so that people can star the in the theaters movies.

~~~
yoasif_
You could try Movielens: [http://movielens.org](http://movielens.org)

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minimaxir
Granted, a big problem with this approach is that IMDb ratings are skewed (for
movies anyways) and follow a strict 4 point scale from 5-8 rating
([http://minimaxir.com/img/movie-revenue-ratings/box-office-
ra...](http://minimaxir.com/img/movie-revenue-ratings/box-office-
rating-5.png)) so it's hard to gauge the relative impact of the Ratings
difference. Also IMDb is prone to brigading, which may indicate that the
reviews are not necessarily neutral.

What would be interesting is comparing the differences in ratings between
genders of the Rotten Tomatoes critics, although that data is not easy to
obtain. (That data is not in the dataset I used for that chart)

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whack
The portion I found most interesting, and best illustrates their point:

 _" Here are a few stats I collected early Thursday for the new “Ghostbusters”
movie: IMDb average user rating: 4.1 out of 10, of 12,921 reviewers IMDb
average user rating among men: 3.6 out of 10, of 7,547 reviewers IMDb average
user rating among women: 7.7 out of 10, of 1,564 reviewers The movie isn’t
even out in theaters as I’m writing this, but over 12,000 people have made
their judgment. Male reviewers outnumber female reviewers nearly 5 to 1 and
rate “Ghostbusters” 4 points lower, on average."_

And from its related article:

 _" “Sex and the City” has seven Emmys and a suite of Golden Globes and Screen
Actors Guild awards... Any reasonable person should concede that “Sex and the
City” was an above-average television program ... “Sex and the City” has an
overall rating of 7.0 ... the average score ... is 7.3. So why did a show
roundly considered seminal in the now ubiquitous genre of driven-New York-
women-make-a-go-of-it programming score so low? Yeah, it’s men. Nearly 60
percent of the people who rated “Sex and the City” ... are women, and looking
only at those scores, the show has an 8.1 ... Male users, though, who made up
just over 40 percent of “Sex and the City” raters, assigned it, on average, a
5.8 rating."_

We like to think of these aggregated ratings, as some objective measure of
crowd-sourced wisdom. But in reality, it's just an aggregation of thousands of
people's personal preferences and biases.

If you're someone whose tastes line up with the average critic/online-
commenter, the aggregated ratings will sound pretty accurate to you. If you're
someone who differs from the average critic/online-commenter, you'll be left
wondering why all your favorite shows are rated so poorly.

There's probably a moral in here somewhere regarding top-rated posts/comments
on HN.

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adamnemecek
I fail to see why their views are not as valid as anyone's.

~~~
dublinben
"Their views", as in the opinions of men who are upset about a female-driven
reboot? Most importantly, they haven't seen the movie yet, so any 'review' is
completely worthless.

~~~
J_Darnley
The women (or femininsts) are just as guilty for rating the movie without
seeing it first:
[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1289401/ratings?ref_=ttcrv_ql_4](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1289401/ratings?ref_=ttcrv_ql_4)
[EDIT] I think I really meant to use this link:
[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1289401/ratings-
female](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1289401/ratings-female)

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colemickens
It's really something to watch how absolutely angry men on reddit are about
Ghostbusters. It's kind of beyond words for me how incredibly childish and
petty it makes them appear, while simultaneously giving fuel to the notion
that there is a surge of misogyny in reaction to things labeled as "feminism",
as if a female-reboot of Ghostbusters ought to be deemed an act of 'feminism'.
Kind of similar to the backlash of outright racism on reddit that happens
everytime the nation has to talk about racial issues as the result of yet more
violence against or involving minorities.

It's like, maybe if you weren't screeching about and denigrating feminism and
anti-racism efforts... people wouldn't perceive you as being anti-woman and
anti-minority.

Sorry, probably a bit political, but it's more or less the phenomena that the
article is actually tip-toeing around. (And yes, there have been campaigns
organized on reddit to astroturf Ghostbuster ratings.)

~~~
tracker1
I'm not sure what the opposite of misogyny would be called, I'm not
particularly upset about the reboot, or the mostly female cast... I'm a bit
upset about the role of Chris Hemsworth in the new movie, which is _very_
different and sexist compared to the role that Annie Potts played. At least
that's how it comes across in the previews that I've seen. It's pretty obvious
sexism, and the same people who would pan this type of sexism with reversed
roles are in favor of it here. It's hypocritical.

Personally, I'll probably see the movie anyway, just find that bit of
hypocrisy irritating, especially since it's a pretty obvious skew from the
original character with the female role.

~~~
colemickens
>It's pretty obvious sexism, and the same people who would pan this type of
sexism with reversed roles are in favor of it here. It's hypocritical.

While I understand the criticism that his character's role doesn't map to the
original character's role... is it possible that this is an example of what it
means to "punch up"? What does it mean that there is so much hand-wringing
about Chris's character and yet when a female plays that role in basically
every other movie that comes out... much less is vocalized by the folks upset
at Ghostbusters?

I dunno, it still seems like a weird thing to spend this much time trying to
form a strong opinion on (I say ironically as I keep thinking about it). I
wish studios would leave classics alone but that ship has long since sailed.
If they had to reboot it, I think the gender reversal is kind of novel.

~~~
tracker1
I'm upset at the dramatic change in the role of the character... beyond this,
I don't have a problem with guys or women playing a sex-figure in a movie...
It happens a lot. My issue mainly comes from the marketing of the movie, and
the change in the character for the movie. There are plenty of people that get
upset by reboots of a movie in any number of ways.

Likewise, I didn't get upset when they made Starbuck and Boomer women. It
wasn't that they changed the gender role, or even elaborated on the nature of
a character or role, but that they fundamentally changed that character.

