
Is Rotten Tomatoes Killing the Movie Industry? No, Bad Movies Are - dpflan
http://www.philly.com/philly/entertainment/movies/rotten-tomatoes-tom-cruise-baywatch-brett-ratner-new-york-times-20170922.html
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jknoepfler
Although RT tends to produce false positives for me, it is a reasonably
reliable filter. If Hollywood is suffering, I'd look to the quality of its
product.

For example, marvel civil war is a false positive (for me). When I watch it, I
can't get past the clipped, contrived dialogue, close-ups on faces, ham-fisted
plots, inconceivably stupid action, schizophrenic scene changes, plastic cgi,
and awkward obviously demographically targeted identity fantasies.

But the movie Valerian and the city of a thousand planets, which was panned on
RT, was in almost every way actually objectively worse than its well rated
marvel counterpart. It was so bad it made me fill physically ill.

Through accumulated experience, I've found that RT, for me, is a reasonable
predictor of "a very bad time." And even if its high ratings don't
consistently predict a good time, they do predict relative enjoyability well.

I've had so many awful movie going experiences over the last twenty years of
adulthood that I've more or less stopped going. I have a very hard time
blaming a rating system. I'd look instead to very shallow, implausible
scripting (punchy one-liners, hollow melodrama), lackluster cinematography
(zoomed in facials, schizophrenic shot switching), repetitive and/or assinine
plots (corporations are eeevil), weird editing and incoherent writing (random,
poorly interjected side stories or comedy, bizarre scene shifts, prolonged
melodrama), boring, implausible, drawn out action (ugh), predictable
demographically targeted identity fantasies, and I don't know, the list goes
on.

I know beyond certainty that I'm not the target audience, but I can't help but
think people are increasingly demanding movies that repay rather than punish
sustained attention, and I can't help but think that these qualities passively
improve the commercial value of the Hollywood product.

Edit: grammar, removed repetition.

~~~
Sangermaine
It sounds like you've been going to the wrong movies, at least for your
tastes. You seem to be exclusively seeing blockbusters. Maybe you'd prefer
smaller, less action-focused films.

~~~
ericd
Eh, I love a good action movie, but it's hard to get into movies that you
can't believe. I watched a very low rated one from the 80s the other day
([https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/blood_of_heroes/](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/blood_of_heroes/)),
and while it had very little plot, and the production value was incredibly low
compared to recent movies, and just generally wasn't a very good movie, I
enjoyed it more than the vast majority of very expensive recent blockbusters,
because it felt real. They had real actors and real stunts. They moved like
real people. And in that world, a 50 foot fall could kill them, rather than
just cause them to touch a knee, so there was something at stake.

In a movie full of invincible people, who cares what happens? They'll be fine
regardless.

I wish hollywood would get to making movies about real people.

~~~
anigbrowl
Those are called dramas.

~~~
coldtea
Only on the labels of Hollywood cookie cutters.

------
slg
These type of articles never explore the potential results of the Rotten
Tomatoes voting system. As the article mentions the RT rating is not a measure
of how good a movie is, it is a measure of the percentage of people who viewed
the movie positively. A 100% doesn't mean a movie is perfect or even
particularly good, it means no one thought it was bad.

A movie designed to do well on a RT score needs to please everyone. The end
result is something that tries to be bland, uninteresting, and inoffensive. As
an avid movie goer, that is a horrible result. I would much rather see a movie
that takes risks and fails than something with little ambition outside turning
a profit.

If you ask people why they don't go to the movies more they will often cite
the idea that there is nothing new they haven't seen before (besides the
complaints you hear about prices). That is another way of phrasing this exact
problem. It is becoming more and more risky to innovate and try something new.
You end up with lots of sequels, remakes, and other cookie cutter projects. It
is safer to invest in the next mediocre superhero movie that most people will
be fine with than an innovative middle budget drama that might have a harder
time finding an audience. That is what is hurting the movie industry.

~~~
Sir_Substance
>If you ask people why they don't go to the movies more they will often cite
the idea that there is nothing new they haven't seen before

I have literally never heard someone say this

>(besides the complaints you hear about prices)

Yup, there it is.

But also, to watch a movie in the cinema I often have to sit in uncomfortably
off-center chairs. I can't adjust the volume if I think it's too loud, I can't
pause the movie to take a piss and I have to listen to the troglodytes behind
me eat popcorn with their mouths open. The movies start at rigidly defined
times that may not be convenient for me, I'm not allowed to bring a pizza in,
I can't do anything about it if someone has an inconsolable baby or kicks the
back of my chair repeatedly and to top it all off there's half an hour of ads
before the movie starts.

And yeah, I have to pay $15 for that.

All in all, cinema is still a very 1920's experience, and I don't really want
that. I have a 3D home projector man, I got it second hand for like $200. It's
not as good as the cinema projector, but I assure you my couch is nicer. I've
just delayed my cinema schedule by 6 months. Spiderman: Homecoming is being
released soon, I'm pumped. No spoilers please.

~~~
paganel
> If you ask people why they don't go to the movies more they will often cite
> the idea that there is nothing new they haven't seen before

I've started skipping a lot of the super-hero movies because they started
being all the same to me ("Wonder Woman" was a little different and more
interesting, fortunately). The same goes for most of the action moves being
filmed today, which pains me to say it because I'm a huge fan of guys like
John McTiernan and the way action movies were made in the '80s - early '90s.
Maybe it's because I'm getting older? (I'm in my mid-30s now).

I actually like the experience of going to the cinema, with all that it
implies, is almost like a ritual. Some people wait for Sunday to come so that
they could go to church the same way as I wait for the weekend to come so that
I can go to the movies. It would be nice though if tickets were a little less
expensive, with that I totally agree.

~~~
bitexploder
I thought Wonder Woman was alright. Something about it felt a little "off" to
me. It is hard to put my finger on it. Maybe they tried to compress too much
plot into the time. I don't know. It was definitely more fun to watch than
many of the recent superhero goo moves. Perhaps it was th caricature Germans.
On the plus side they did WWI which is as overdone in modern cinema.

Netflix's Marvel shows are interesting too, especially Like Cage. But those
aren't movies :)

------
gozur88
Hollywood movies are getting objectively worse, and there's a good reason for
it. The market is global now - the North American box office is just a vehicle
for pricing deals when the international rights are sold.

So they have to make movies that appeal to the global lowest common
denominator. No witty or understated dialog. No cultural signifiers that might
be missed by someone from another culture.

All the money and effort is going into flashy stuff that someone in Beijing
will appreciate just as much as someone in Los Angeles. Thus all the superhero
garbage and Michael Bay style action.

~~~
Aloha
We also act as if older movies are on whole universally and objectively better
than they are now - which they're not - because of the lens of time, we don't
remember the 20 stinkers released every year, only the big blockbuster movies
that impressed everyone - as an infrequent movie goer - I'd say movies on
whole, are about as good as they ever were.

~~~
alexasmyths
"which they're not "

Many of them are though.

If you ever get a chance to study some 'old film's in Uni or whatever, it's
pretty interesting.

A lot oldies can seem a little bland to us, but they're like novels - they are
much richer than we grasp at first glance.

Also there is context.

Best example would be Charlie Chaplin. I mean, it can seem ridiculous ... but
really it's genius.

Pacing and language has changed so much especially - we have such short
attention spans these days ...

~~~
Aloha
Again, its the same lens of time, there were 2-3 times as many forgettable
dramas, romantic comedies, historical pictures, and lets not even start on
westerns - they're not even part of our collective memories anymore. Consider
that in 1939, there were something like two movies a week released - and 1939
was a banner year for quality too in all honesty - but still only 2-3 have
survived in popular memory, and only 10% of the total production was
considered notable.

Chaplin was genius, so was Lloyd, so was Keton, they all produced moves of
unbelievable quality, but how many of those three are known by people outside
the film industry or film historians today?

~~~
bostik
We came up with a ballpark metric back in the University, since Hollywood has
a pretty stable track record when it comes to quality films.

On any given year, Hollywood studios manage to produce at most 2 good films.
Total.

~~~
cholantesh
That's not a bad ratio. If you said Bollywood, it'd be much worse, and IMO,
generous.

------
beat
A flip side to this... is Rotten Tomatoes boosting movies that would otherwise
be ignored, by virtue of excellent ratings?

I'm thinking specifically of _Hidden Figures_ here. Who would ever have
thought that we'd see a _Star Wars_ movie (Rogue One) booted out of the #1
spot by a movie about black women doing math?

(This is in no way a criticism of either movie, btw. I loved both of them and
consider them high-water marks of recent cinema.)

~~~
Yen
That's quite possible. The article mentioned "_Logan's Lucky_"'s high rating
and low box office results. I hadn't heard of this movie at all, but the
ratings & reviews on Rotton Tomatoes convinced me to give it a shot, and I
quite enjoyed it.

~~~
beat
I did the same thing, and quite enjoyed it. Not high art, but well done
entertainment.

------
anton_tarasenko
I once plotted the TSPDT Top 1000 movies by year. That's an all-time ranking
voted by critics. The distribution plot peaks around the 1970s and declines
since then. For one, post-war European cinema was really great and influenced
the American industry.

Now all major movies originate in the same place. The last fresh blood had
come mostly from Latin America, Mexico in particular.

And the place for experiments changed. Now it's TV series. If the concept
works, they make another season. Two-hour feature films are reserved for
proven concepts. For moviegoers, it turns to be more like a social experience,
not an arty one.

~~~
beat
The movie industry has eras, marked by certain production styles. In Hollywood
at least, the 1970s was the era of the auteur director. A wave of directors
(and actors) who had apprenticed under the famed B-movie master Roger Corman
came to power on the strength of a series of absolute masterpieces. It started
with _Easy Rider_ , which was shot on a very low budget, and received massive
box office success and critical acclaim. It ended with _Heaven 's Gate_, an
outrageously expensive disaster that has never even been properly released
(I've seen one of the medium-length edits of it, and yes, it stinks).

The real end of the New Hollywood era, though, was the release of _Star Wars_
in 1977. It paved the way for the sci-fi/fantasy blockbuster. It turned into a
successful trilogy, and overlapped team-wise with Spielberg's fantastically
successful _Raiders of the Lost Ark_. Hollywood, and movie fans, lost interest
in the more intellectual fare of New Hollywood, in favor of kid-friendly,
cross-marketing-friendly entertainment.

So it's not surprising that there was a dropoff in critical darlings after the
1970s. Movies got a lot worse - they really did. Even directors who carried on
the New Hollywood traditions, like David Lynch and the Coen brothers, couldn't
see the kind of success the 1970s directors had.

Of course, before the New Hollywood era, Hollywood kinda stunk, big expensive
extravaganzas. Critical attention then turns to the French New Wave, and other
post-WWII European film with small budgets and big emotional punches (who
makes a movie like _Wages of Fear_ these days?).

I wonder how our current era will fare? I'm thinking about the sort of epic-
story serialization that the Marvel franchise and the reinvigorated Star Wars
franchise is doing. How will that be viewed?

~~~
sien
Easy Rider, Raging Bull by Peter Siskind is a great read about all this:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easy_Riders,_Raging_Bulls](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easy_Riders,_Raging_Bulls)

------
cgore
I think more than anything what we need is more movies made by low-budget
places. I really don't want to see another sequel, redo, or comic book movie.
It's just lazy on the part of the movie companies.

~~~
potatolicious
I agree, but this exists to a significant extent already (though more would be
great) - it's a really, really good time to be into low-budget indie flicks.

The problem is that your local multiplex is not going to be showing
independent films, nor are they going to be blasting marketing cranked up to
11 on all channels, so it's much harder to hear about them, and in some cases,
much harder to see them period.

But the scene is alive and well - I've gotten a lot more into over the past
year or so, and have really enjoyed it. The accessibility is poor in some
places (in the middle of Manhattan is pretty great), but absolutely worth it.

I find IMDB and Metacritic to give pretty solid coverage of these films, so
that alleviates some of the discoverability problems.

If you have small theaters near you, please patronize them - better yet,
convince a group to go regularly. They need the business, and I think you'll
find a lot of worthy films.

~~~
SomeStupidPoint
Things like Fathom Events are already managing to run more niche content a few
showings a week. (Example: there's a Studio Ghibli film doing 1 showing an
evening at 3 theaters around town for two nights next week.)

It's not inconceivable that we'll eventually see a similar platform for (more)
indie movies, using a screen or two a couple evenings a week. Movie theaters
are hard up for money, and I suspect would happily take a full theater for any
film they can do small batches of.

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rgbrenner
No one is killing the movie industry. Here are the stats:

[http://www.mpaa.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/MPAA-
Theatric...](http://www.mpaa.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/MPAA-Theatrical-
Market-Statistics-2016_Final.pdf)

~~~
platz
and yet the referenced article in the piece [1] doesn't seem to keep the execs
from complaining "studio head honchos lay the blame for several months of
horrific box office numbers — the worst in 20 years — on the website":

[1] [https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/07/business/media/rotten-
tom...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/07/business/media/rotten-tomatoes-box-
office.html)

~~~
kurthr
Exactly! Proving that movie execs are good at making S#!& up that makes them
money... and selling it to the media.

------
PopsiclePete
Movies lately:

* Generic Super-Hero Movie A.

* Generic Super-Hero Movie B. Different title from A, yet actually identical plot and sometimes actors.

* A new CG cartoon "for the whole family". They haven't had an original idea since Wall-E.

* Generic block-buster action movie with robots and/or ninjas or ninja-robots, explosions, Chevrolet placement ads, and at least 2 pairs of extremely shapely female breasts.

* Generic ultra-patriotic military-hero-worship action flick where rugged, muscly bearded Alpha-Macho super-bros kill brown people, usually has the word "American" in the title, and a scene-that-lasts-too-long where Rick tearfully tells Sam to tell his wife he loves her as his guts slowly (all too slowly) fall out of his torn-up torso.

* Generic coming-of-age and beating-all-odds story about a lovable but bullied lonely/introverted/gay/black/Muslim kid from the streets/ghetto/Pakistan who overcomes all odds to be his neighborhood's/high-school's/country's star juggler/drummer/dancer/stripper/singer/refugee-turned-Nobel-laureate and gets the girl/boy at the end.

* A documentary telling me I'm fat, living in a banana republic Orwellian surveillance police-state dystopia with horrible health-care and a deteriorating environment.

* Girl-Squad/Bro-team Buddy Comedy with a bunch of 45-year-olds acting like rich, spoiled, immature 18-year-olds at friend X's wedding. Hilarity ensues.

Basically, I'm either being bored out of my mind for the whole duration, or
sad/frustrated that this world is so horrible/unjust, or watching a 120-minute
commercial for Pepsi/Chevrolet/Sex, or being actively recruited for the
Marines.

TV is _much_ better, with lots more variety.

~~~
criddell
> TV is much better, with lots more variety

That's pretty interesting. TV used to be the home for schlock and quality
story telling was mostly done by movies. These days, if you want to tell a
substantial story with depth, you do it on television. Movies are to
television as short stores are to novels.

~~~
MBCook
Yeah, it’s flipped. Part of that is more control when working for TV, part of
it is the ability to tell a story in more than 120m. Let’s you explore much
deeper things or have way more character development.

~~~
izacus
And also lower budget - due to "cheap" actors, even the most high-budget TV
shows don't come close to a single Hollywood blockbuster which makes them a
significantly less risky investment. Hence you see more innovation and tryouts
- similar to indie/AA gaming market vs. AAA gaming blockbusters.

------
Animats
The movie industry doesn't seem to be able to figure out if a movie will be a
dud up front. Most of the dud movies are broken at the script and actor
selection phase. Maybe productions need to do a staged reading in front of an
audience as a test before going into production. Perhaps with slides and
sketches from the storyboard for the action.

The CG people have their act together. When was the last time a big-budget
movie flopped because the special effects were done badly? Effects are
carrying many weak movies. People don't realize until it's over that it
sucked.

~~~
munificent
> Most of the dud movies are broken at the script and actor selection phase.

Nothing kills a movie quite like a bad script. You can pair up a lot of very
similar winners and losers and see that the key difference is the script.
Compare for example Baywatch and 22 Jump Street. Both rehashed Gen-X era TV
shows about good-looking people. 22 Jump Street was smart, self-aware, and
successful.

Since few bombs do have good scripts, you would think studio execs would
simply never put a weak script into production. While you _can_ have a
successful film with a shitty script, why risk it? Especially given how cheap
it is to change a script early on.

Given that they seemingly don't, there's probably some other forces in play.
Probably some combination of:

1\. Maybe it's just really hard to evaluate a script early on. There's
probably some truth to this, but I don't think much. Film execs read a _lot_
of scripts and it's an easily trainable skill.

2\. Maybe the script starts out good but gets screwed up because of perverse
incentives. This is, I think, a bigger part of it. The director wants to put
their mark on it. A big-name star wants their character to get more screen
time. All of a sudden, there are forces pushing on the script that make it
better for the people making the movie, but not for the view.

3\. Corporate politics at the studio comes into play. A studio brings on a
script doctor who is compelled to earn their check by making a certain amount
of changes even if the script didn't need them. An exec owes someone a favor
and gets a role jammed in for a particular actor. An exec got burned on a
previous film about shark and says all sharks must be removed from all
scripts.

4\. Then the reality of production, scheduling and budget. You read a lot of
stories about subplots that had to be cut because they ran out of money,
scenes that were rushed because of location access, etc. I think a lot of
times, the movie you watch is not the movie that was described on paper. It's
not uncommon for screenwriters to take their name off a film because the final
result of production hell isn't what they wrote.

~~~
criddell
What about the second part of the line you quoted? What do you think about
actor selection?

One of my favorite things is seeing a movie with an actor that I'm not
familiar with and being blown away by their performance. Some big actors (like
Tom Cruise) I never quite forget that I'm watching Tom Cruise act and that
takes away something from the experience.

Gary Oldman is a counter example. He's so good that I often don't notice him.

~~~
munificent
I poked around some best and worst box office lists before writing my comment
and couldn't get much of a sense of how casting impacts things. I can't think
of a lot of movies offhand that failed because of poor cast choices that
didn't also have other problems. Likewise I don't know many that succeeded in
spite of them (except for horror films, where cast seems to be relatively
unimportant).

My impression is that there are so many people who want to act that it's a
buyer's market and most films can afford good enough talent.

From what I saw, by a very large margin, the largest signal of what leads to
success in films is familiarity. Almost every winner in the past decade was a
sequel, remake, or part of a larger cinematic universe.

------
alister
Talking about gaming the ratings and user reviews on sites likes IMDB, I
surprised by how often it _doesn 't_ happen.

The Matrix at this moment has 1,336,956 user votes and 3739 user reviews --
and that's to be expected.

But I regularly come across movies on IMDB that have less than 10 votes and
_no_ user reviews at all. Or a single user review that happens to be negative.
These are movies less than 10-15 years old and with budgets of at least $1
million.

It's totally puzzling why the director, producers, actors, friends of the
cast, or anyone else connected with the movie didn't bother to add a user
review. Someone had enough passion to make the movie, spend all that money,
work on it for months or years, and they haven't heard of IMDB?

------
Legion
Some of the good material that would have been turned into movies in the past
gets turned into television/streaming shows now. Game of Thrones occupies the
kind of cultural space that something like Star Wars did during the original
trilogy.

It's not that that material doesn't exist, it's simply that it no longer is
the sole domain of the movie format.

~~~
2bitencryption
> Game of Thrones occupies the kind of cultural space that something like Star
> Wars did during the original trilogy.

I don't know, I don't think the magnitudes match up here.

Game of Thrones is a cool show that people enjoy watching, which happens to be
emblematic of the current trend of long-form, character-driven drama with a
bug budget.

Star Wars was a more of a complete revolution.

------
AdmiralAsshat
We're due for another studio crash. Hopefully that will scale back some of the
ridiculous budgets on these things and let some new blood break into the
scene.

~~~
irrational
Wouldn't that make them even more risk adverse?

~~~
MBCook
If they make fewer $200m movies and experiment more with $10m movies... would
that be bad?

They are risk averse right now but they’re doing it by putting all their eggs
in one or two baskets.

------
jokoon
Personally I just go to wikipedia, jump to the "reception" part, and see what
rotten tomatoes or metacritic tells about it.

People tell me I should not trust critics, but I really don't want to waste 2
hours of my time. Generally critics are accurate, and RT offers an audience
rating too to give some contrast.

------
LeoNatan25
I fear the conclusion here does not stand the test of reality either, sadly,
as many quality films have gone overlooked by audiences despite fantastic word
of mouth and reviews. Is big part of it the terrible taste of the audience?
I'm sure. Is there a new trend of the same audience to spend less on cinema?
Yes, but it may not be due to the low quality output (hasn't stopped them
before). I think television—including Netflix, Hulu, etc.—is the culprit.
There is just so much quality television being produced, that people don't
want to leave the house. Much more convenient, cheaper, etc. Let's hope this
quality television brushes on the taste of the audience and it demands similar
rise in quality from films.

------
drblast
I often wonder if movies will simply occupy a niche market in the future. I
wonder that about a lot of industries. Appealing to huge demographics with
excellent movies would certainly be more profitable, but what if the current
status quo of rehashing comic books over and over again is profitable
_enough_? That's certainly a safer bet.

Monster truck rallies cater to a small subset of society, and they're probably
not going anywhere. Nobody wonders why the monster truck rally industry
doesn't try to expand its audience; they do what they do and it's profitable
enough to keep them going. Why change what works?

Capitalism is like evolution. You don't have to be excellent to survive, you
just have to be good enough not to die.

~~~
gizmo686
I suspect that the division between "movies" and "television" will start to
dissapear. As television continues to shift from TV to online video on demand,
it will face less and less pressure to divide itself into 22 or 44 minute
episodes. Further, the notion of paying for add free shows online appears to
be tenable. We are also seeing Netflix release entire seasons at once.

------
overcast
Thing is, the ratings are irrelevant. Someone is paying to see these movies,
else executives wouldn't approving them to be made. It's all about money, and
brainless, rehashed, sequel nonsense makes tons of it. You want someone to
blame? Blame the public. It's not Rotten Tomatoes or the Movie Industry. The
latter is giving everyone exactly what they want.

In response to below.

The Mummy made $403,814,493 with a 16% !!

Poor turnouts at the theater are due entirely to home streaming services.
People don't want to leave their houses to go sit with a bunch of strangers
anymore. It doesn't have anything to do with garbage movies. There has always
been tons of crap in the theaters.

~~~
watwut
I would go to see movie, if there would movie that I would be interested to
see. Crickets,nothing, just sameness I have already seen hundreds times or
comics/star wars or other old franchise I never cared about.

~~~
mavhc
There's lots of good movies out, are they not showing anywhere near you?

~~~
watwut
Examples?

~~~
macintux
Logan Lucky looked really good, vanished from theaters before I could see it.
Baby Driver was very good. Dunkirk. And those are just the big productions.

~~~
watwut
I have seen baby driver, it was ok except large plot holes (especially around
his girlfriend and boss behavior which made little sense to me by the end of
movie). Dunkirk does not seem my thing, but I will check Logan, thanks.

~~~
ashark
The last few years have been a kind of mini-golden-age for low- to mid-budget
horror, if that's your thing, and especially if you like your horror a little
off-kilter. It Follows, The Babadook, The Conjuring (kind of a low-key
superhero movie blended with very not-scary horror, in many ways, but well
acted, plotted, paced, and put together), Train to Busan, You're Next, The
Void. The new Evil Dead. Some others I'm sure I'm forgetting right now. I've
heard Girl with all the Gifts and Get Out are excellent, but haven't seen them
yet.

There are serious stinkers to avoid (It, Insidious series, many others) of
course, so it's a bit of a minefield, but worth the effort if you enjoy that
kind of thing.

~~~
watwut
Thanks! Bookmarking this, this sounds like it might be my thing.

------
OneTimePaddy
Hollywood just has 2 hours- and in those two hours cant win against the great
novel story tellers of our times- tv-series. So they made it rollercoaster
rides - filled with sfx and instant soup stories. Which just is not the value,
people now are used too. The irony is that rick and morty like animated series
show- that you can squeeze incredibble stories into the smallest format. You
just have to be willing to risk it. But hollywoods movies have become to big
to whale.

------
newscracker
Movie ratings from Rotten Tomatoes or IMDB or another site will always have
exceptions where the rating doesn't match one's perception (after watching).
But they give something to start with when deciding whether or not to check
out a movie or read further about it and/or watch trailers, etc. That "initial
push" is what I rely on these sites for - in other words, they help indicate
whether a movie is a dud or not.

For me, the Rotten Tomatoes rule of "60%+ approval as fresh" doesn't work
quite well. So I rely a bit more on IMDB ratings and the top reviews. If I had
to rely only on RT, I'd have missed many movies that I personally enjoyed
(sorry, don't remember the names/ratings).

As a rule, I usually avoid anything rated below 5 on IMDB, but I do like
checking some movies out for the cast, even if the story, script, direction,
editing, etc., are awful. In fact, looking at the cast is one of the ways I
look for movies, and I sometimes binge watch one particular actor's movies to
catch up with older ones that either weren't super hits or were made at a time
when the actor wasn't yet well known. Those are usually so heartwarming to
watch and get the breadth and depth of the actor's capabilities and also see
how they have grown or changed over time.

There are also differences between how some movie critics, with a lot of
knowledge and deep appreciation for certain aspects of movies and movie
making, look at and rate a movie vs. how an average person (like me) would.
Many people _just want to be entertained_ when they watch a movie or show.
There are fewer, in proportion, that have high standards for all aspects of
movies. Even many people who claim to be "movie buffs" or write movie reviews
on their personal blogs aren't as stringent. The masses need a more balanced
view between what's strictly critical and what's strictly sheer entertainment
value.

------
SadWebDeveloper
The day the movie industry allows me to legally stream a "just released movie"
straight to my 4k tv (or my phone), that day, they will have the same or more
revenue as before. Until that happen, i would definitely check the
ratings/reviews before spending solid amount of money and time on "going" to
the cinema.

~~~
criddell
I have a nice television, but I still prefer going to a good theater to see
movies.

There are a few theater operators that have figured out that just showing the
movie and selling expensive popcorn isn't good enough. They have to have
comfortable seats, decent food, great drinks, rules against talking and using
phones, and reserved seating. When the experience is good, I'll pay to see
movies I already know well. For example, I just went to see the original Blade
Runner two weekends ago.

It's a little like how I can watch baseball on TV, but every year I still love
to go to the ballpark to watch live. There's more to it than just the thing
you are ostensibly there to see.

So I agree with you. They should have same day streaming. For people that like
going to the cinema, they will still go.

I also think that on your way out the theater, they should have DVDs and
BluRays of the movie you just saw for sale.

~~~
mulmen
Power lanes? It will never work! The best time to sell someone a product is
months after their initial exposure when they have forgotten completely about
it. /s

------
pasbesoin
You know, if RT ratings are "unfair" and don't "reflect the public's
experience/preference", the public will figure this out, quick enough.

If RT continues to suppress your audiences, maybe that's for a good reason.
And, maybe it's not RT.

Stop bitching about the other guy's product, and start fixing your own.

------
ajeet_dhaliwal
Part of this includes giving all my favorite series to JJ Abrams to turn into
charmless, box ticked, nostalgia milked, super polished hollow 'visual
experiences'. The grit, the charm, the lovable clumsy parts, and most of all
originality are all missing.

------
socratewasright
The issue with movies is that they are constrained to a 2 hour window. There
is only so much character development, nuancing and world building you can do
in such a short time frame.

TV shows have hours upon hours to build up their story.

Another thing that bugs me is that directors keep reusing the same big shot
actors, many of whom are not worth their price tag in my opinion. Acting isn't
rocket science. With enough practice, any graduate from an acting school could
do well. Why not try new blood more often? It would drive production costs
down and add variety to casts. Straying away from the usual body models
wouldn't hurt either. After seeing Tom Cruise lookalike #4, I would gladly
welcome anything but a #5.

------
oh_sigh
RT isn't killing the movie industry, but bad predictors or review engines are
certainly not helping consumers. If any website ever shows you some kind of
function(eg average) of the general population's perspective, and you are
using it to determine if will like it or not, it will probably be wrong.

Just as there is no 'average human', there is no average movie. A movie which
is universally panned by most people may be adored by some. Ratings can only
make sense within an egocentric data model.

------
julianj
I tried to read this on my phone twice and was twice thwarted with full screen
ads I could not close. I am grateful for the title that may tell me all I need
to know.

------
kylehotchkiss
Well, looks like there is a price trying to save cash by trying to make a
sequel to everything (so you don't have to re-create characters, some sets,
audiences...)

------
notadoc
Perhaps the movie industry is to blame for releasing tons of garbage movies
and rehashing tired ideas. They pour a lot of effort into blockbusters and
then many decent movies fall under the radar, often to be discovered through,
oddly enough, RT or IMDB, or word of mouth.

Meanwhile, shows on Netflix and HBO are very popular, quite good, and manage
to have good RT ratings.

------
thuris
Georg Rockall-Schmidt released a fine video on essentially the same subject,
yesterday: [https://youtu.be/VVdh6-4Hgys](https://youtu.be/VVdh6-4Hgys)

------
noncoml
I don't know what the complaints are about. I have observed that RT has
constantly over-inflated rating for movies while they are still playing in the
theaters.

~~~
fishywang
Are you confused RT with IMDb by any chance? IMDb do have inflated rating for
new-ish movies, but I don't think RT has the same issue (if you are looking at
critic rating a.k.a. freshness, not the user rating)

~~~
noncoml
No, RT.

For example look at "Wind River". Rating is at 86%

By comparison, some older movies around or lower than that rating:

"The Big Lebowski": 81% "Gladiator": 76% "The Wolf of Wall Streer": 77%

~~~
fishywang
Do you have a better example? Because there's no guarantee that The Big
Lebowski or Gladiator or The Wolf of Wall Street should be better than Wind
River.

~~~
noncoml
Well, you are right, even if some movie that I or you like more scores lower
than another doesn't mean anything.

My original claim was movie rating changes dramatically during the lifetime of
the movie, i.e. while in theaters and after, which I don't have any data to
prove is, so if I am allowed I would like to retract the original claim.

------
nacho2sweet
It is $14-$19.50 to see a movie where I live (probably closer to $30-40 after
popcorn), I am not going to take a chance with my money on a middling movie
when I can just pirate an HD copy in a month now. I will take a chance with my
time however.

Everything is being made for international audiences now. Everything has to
try and be one of the 30 movies a year let into the Chinese market. Plots and
messages are dumbed down the lowest denominator now. I can't wait to see what
movies are like now that Disney is using face scanning technology on
audiences... It is a horrible time for art.

------
6stringmerc
It's funny a guy working for a Print medium being linked via digital has any
grounding to talking about what is killing what. Bro, you're re-arranging deck
chairs on the Titanic. Film is changing at the pace of technology, and Rotten
Tomatoes will have its time and then the next generation will go elsewhere.

You know, because IMDB and its comment section totally killed the movie
industry. Wait, scratch that. It didn't. It turned into a cesspool and life
moved on. Or, as Dr. Malcom might put it, "life, uh, finds a way."

------
horusthecat
...except neither is, and Hollywood accounting is a real thing. Even domestic-
market box office failures tend to turn a profit internationally.

------
coldcode
I prefer to watch Cinema Sins on youtube, its more entertaining than the
movies it describes.

------
mavhc
I don't even go to RT now that Google puts a critic rating from there or
elsewhere up when I Google a title.

See what's airing, google them all, if they get high marks read what they're
about, if there's 3 or more films that are good and I want to see, go and see
them in a day

------
bachaco
Anyone else thinks this is just a Rotten Tomatoes publicity campaign?

~~~
edoloughlin
Don't think so, reading to the end:

 _But even a cursory look at recent Rotten Tomato ratings shows a tenuous
relationship between the site’s ratings and actual box office. It has assigned
a rotten rating to movies that have done well (The Hitmans’ Bodyguard, The
Emoji Movie), and it affixes an overwhelmingly positive rating to a film that
fared poorly (Logan Lucky)._

------
Dowwie
Is there a greater money grab than Transformers?

------
EdwardCoffin
It seems to me that people are a lot harsher on movies now, less willing or
able to suspend disbelief [1]. I see scathing assessments of sequels, but with
examples of the imagined problems being problems that have reasonably close
equivalents in their predecessors which no one had a problem with when those
were released.

Here's a concrete example: probably the most commonly cited 'problem' I hear
about Prometheus is that near the end of the movie the heroine "tried to run
away from a wheel in a straight line", and therefore it is a bad movie. The
general criticism I take from this is not that she took the reasonable general
action (running away) but the specific course she took (running in a straight
line so the wheel just followed, and not noticing it was following).

The thing is, I think that both the main previous movies in the series, Alien
and Aliens, have comparable incidents which no one complains about.

In Alien, near the end of the movie when she was the sole remaining survivor,
we had Ripley delaying her escape in the shuttle in order to scuttle the ship
- an entirely pointless action. If her plan of escape in the shuttle had
worked, it wouldn't matter whether the alien were still alive. What did she
think it would do, learn how to fly the Nostromo and pursue her? Scuttling the
ship both increased her risk of dying at the alien's hands (it could have
easily snuck up on her when she was engrossed in the scuttling procedure), and
also nearly caught her in the explosion.

In Aliens, we had Ripley delaying her escape with Newt from the processing
plant in order to exterminate the room full of eggs which posed no immediate
threat to her (especially those still in the egg sac). Further to this, she
did not bother to spend even one bullet or grenade on the queen herself.
Ripley expended virtually all of her ammunition on this task, not reserving
any to cover her retreat, and she apparently did not bother packing a spare
magazine despite being given the resources of a fully-stocked armoury when she
was preparing to go get Newt. If she had not exterminated the eggs (pointless,
given the impending explosion) the queen would not have had reason to
personally follow her and cause all the subsequent grief. Needless to say,
those problems could also have been averted by simply shooting the queen along
with or instead of the eggs. Again, no one complains about this.

Note that I am not complaining about the above aspects of Alien or Aliens. I
love both those movies, and think the examples I gave above are nit-picking.
The thing is, I think the criticism of Prometheus is also nit-picking, and
directly comparable.

My tentative hypothesis for this recent nit-picking is that, unlike the
earlier movies which were from a pre-internet era, it is easy for people to
congregate in online communities to pick apart inconsistencies in movies they
were personally disappointed in, and then anyone who looks at discussions of a
movie they just saw will read all of this stuff they might have otherwise just
overlooked. Further to the particular example I chose above, lots of people
were disappointed with Prometheus particularly because it was not what they
wanted: another formulaic Alien or Aliens movie, so that gave them extra
incentive to pick it apart.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suspension_of_disbelief](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suspension_of_disbelief)

~~~
LeoNatan25
Suspension of disbelief only works when the world presented is believable and
the story interesting. I find myself able to suspend belief on Nolan films,
for example, because of their engrossing story and style.

With your example of Prometheus, no, the flick is not bad because of that
scene, but the scene is an indication of the overall laziness of the plot. All
the nit-picking, as you put it, is because there is nothing else to hold on
to, which is not true of Alien at least (I don't particularly like Aliens).

~~~
EdwardCoffin
> no, the flick is not bad because of that scene

The thing is, most of the criticisms of Prometheus that I have read cite that
scene as a reason for its purported badness, which is why I drew comparisons
to scenes in movies that are widely regarded as good, and pointed out that
those scenes are not criticized.

------
jdlyga
If a movie is over 2 and a half hours long, and doesn't bring anything new to
the table, then I'm not interested.

------
alexasmyths
Rotten Tomatoes is a bad system because it's binary - ie thumbs up/down.

Which means a 'consistently good' film can get almost all thumbs up - even if
it's not that-that good.

Whereas an unevenly good films, with pangs of genius can get not so many
thumbs up.

It tends to skew way up or down.

Metacritic I think is much better.

~~~
LeoNatan25
Why would you stop at the binary initial impression, though? All the
information you need is one click away.

