
Attacked by Rotten Tomatoes - mooreds
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/07/business/media/rotten-tomatoes-box-office.html
======
CM30
> leading to grousing that a rotten score next to the purchase button was the
> same as posting this message: You are an idiot if you pay to see this movie.

> Kersplat: Paramount’s “Baywatch” bombed after arriving to a Tomatometer
> score of 19, the percentage of reviews the movie received that the site
> considered positive (36 out of 191). Doug Creutz, a media analyst at Cowen
> and Company, wrote of the film in a research note, “Our high expectations
> appear to have been crushed by a 19 Rotten Tomatoes score.”

Well yes. If your film is terrible, the reviews on sites like Rotten Tomatoes
and the overall scores generated from them will reflect that. And if that's
the case, people won't watch the movie.

The system works. You put out a terrible film, it got rightly bashed to pieces
and people decided it wasn't worth watching as a result. That's all it comes
down to; if you want to make money here, you should ideally release a decent
product.

~~~
eridius
I think there's some merit to complaints about rotten tomatoes. The problem
with reducing a movie to a single score is different people like different
things. Yeah, a score of 19 is pretty awful, so the Baywatch movie is probably
bad, but _some_ people liked it. When the whole movie is reduced to a single
score, you lose the ability to figure out what audiences like a movie vs what
don't, and so someone who might have actually enjoyed the movie is turned off
because of all the people who don't like it.

That said, Rotten Tomatoes does provide snippets of reviews, which mitigates
this issue a bit. You can skim the snippets and see why various critics liked
or didn't like the movie. But I'd wager that most people don't do that, and
even for the ones that do it only helps a little.

~~~
humanrebar
I already account for that a bit. Family movies get higher scores, gross-out
comedies get lower scores.

A 74% on a fantasy horror film may mean it's pretty good.

Of course, the risk is high for buying movie tickets. The prices are too high
these days for "Meh. Why not see this one?" or even, "Let's go to the movies
and pick out something there."

So the studios would have a more forgiving audience if they figured out how to
lower the risk that someone feels they wasted their money.

~~~
dragonwriter
> The prices are too high these days for "Meh. Why not see this one?" or even,
> "Let's go to the movies and pick out something there."

Adjusted for inflation, movie ticket prices are pretty static; there's some
variation, but current prices aren't abnormally high.

~~~
Spooky23
Adjusted for inflation, earning power is less. Taking my date to a $3 movie in
1992 was a relatively smaller investment than taking my kid to see a movie for
$15 today.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Adjusted for inflation, earning power is less. Taking my date to a $3 movie
> in 1992 was a relatively smaller investment than taking my kid to see a
> movie for $15 today.

1992 was, actually, a notably cheap year for a movies (ticket prices dropped,
even before accounting for inflation, from 1990 through 1993), but even so, $3
($5.23 in current dollars) was well below the average ticket price ($4.13;
$7.21 in current dollars ) in 1992, $15 is nearly double the average ticket
price (~$8.89) today.

And inflation-adjusted earning power (whether you look at median wage or
median income measures), while some measures have been _relatively_ static
over the last several decades, and generally have underperformed aggregate
output growth, were actually lower in 1992 than today.

See, for ticket prices,
[http://www.boxofficemojo.com/about/adjuster.htm](http://www.boxofficemojo.com/about/adjuster.htm)

~~~
solatic
It's hard to account for nostalgia if you're not controlling for geography.

Rural/suburban theaters (built and owned on cheap land) that OP may have gone
to as a child will certainly be cheaper than urban theaters (high rents)
frequented as an adult.

$15 is cheap for a ticket in an urban/wealthy area.

~~~
dragonwriter
Sure, but there is a big difference between “its much more expensive for me to
go to movies now”, and “it is generally much more expensive to go to movies
now”.

------
BLKNSLVR
> “I think it’s the destruction of our business,” Brett Ratner, the director,
> producer and film financier, said at a film festival this year.

The business of churning out poorly written, poorly conceived, nostalgia-
opportunist, demographic-appeal driven, passionless moving picture product?

Boo-hoo.

If Rotten Tomatoes is actually having an effect, then it's taken too long.
Rotten Tomatoes is an inevitable symptom of the existence of the
aforementioned "business" .

Movie tickets aren't generally refundable, so there should be prior research
and an expectation of satisfaction. That's how it works for pretty much any
other conceivable outlay of money.

------
gnicholas
Surprising fact:

> _In an absurdist plot twist, Rotten Tomatoes is owned by film companies.
> Fandango, a unit of NBCUniversal, which also owns Universal Pictures, has a
> 75 percent stake, with the balance held by Warner Bros. Fandango bought
> control from Warner last year for an undisclosed price._

~~~
09bjb
When I last checked Rotten Tomatoes and saw a bunch of yet-another-damn-
superhero movie with 90+% scores, I wondered if this was the case. Knowing
that at least eight out of ten movies Hollywood puts out are riskless, brain-
dead re-hashes of the usual proven plot/style formulas...and that
RottenTomatoes was rating many of these "near-perfect"...that was the last
time I visited RT expecting to get some help with what movie to see in
theaters.

Anyone blaming Hollywood putting out mostly garbage as the source of
Hollywood's woes? Netflix and the rest of the new owners of scripted video
content know that you need great stuff if you're going to expect guaranteed
viewership.

~~~
deanstag
I totally agree. Before last year, I always had luck trusting the tomato meter
before going for a movie. Especially in the last year, I realised that
something had changed and movies ( especially the super hero ones ) with 90+
scores were not enjoyable at all. I have stopped trusting RT. I moved from
imdb to RT about 5 years back, and now I am looking for a new source for
reviews. If anybody knows of any good alternatives lemme know.

~~~
SOLAR_FIELDS
I commented on another thread with this link, but I will leave it here as
well. This recently appeared on HN and suggests that Metacritic is going to
give you the most accurate reviews if you assume that movie quality follows a
normal distribution: [https://medium.freecodecamp.org/whose-reviews-should-
you-tru...](https://medium.freecodecamp.org/whose-reviews-should-you-trust-
imdb-rotten-tomatoes-metacritic-or-fandango-7d1010c6cf19)

------
ducttape12
I really want to go to the movies. There's nothing out I want to see right
now. Heck, my friend who goes once a week hasn't been in like a month because
nothing interests him.

Reminds me of how video game execs kept blaming piracy for their woes, until
Valve realized it was a distribution issue. It's not rotten tomatoes,
Hollywood, it's because you're putting out garbage!

~~~
wutbrodo
I probably go the cinema once a year, and don't really watch much at home
either, but I have some movie buff friends so I get tangential exposure to
which movies are good: I just Googled what's out and the ones I've heard were
very good include Dunkirk, the new Planet of the Apes, Baby Driver and The Big
Sick, and Beach Rats. On top of that are the movies that I probably wouldn't
enjoy seeing but that someone who likes movies would likely enjoy: Guardians
of the Galaxy, Logan lucky, maybe even Wonder Woman (I just know that one's
popular, but not much about how good it is).

This is just stuff that I (who doesn't even enjoy going to the movies) happen
to Know about, and wouldn't mind being dragged to if a friend wanted to
socialize at the cinema. I find it kind of hard to believe that "Hollywood is
putting out garbage" could be true to the degree that that's the reason
there's nothing you want to see.

Note that I've left out indie movies since those tend to be less accessible
and more polarizing and also left out popular things like the Transformers
movie.

------
mmanfrin
Sure, Brett Ratner, your movies are flopping because of the review aggregator,
not because of anything that those reviews might indicate...

~~~
microcolonel
It worked for Amy Schumer, Netflix ditched their superiour star-based system
for thumbs up and down (which are now completely meaningless).

~~~
danso
How so? The information derived from the thumbs ups/thumbs down system is
conveyed to you in the form of a "XX% Match". How is that substantially
different than seeing that prediction mapped to a 5-star scale?

~~~
microcolonel
Yeah, the percentage scale is even more useless than the stars were. I went to
the effort of rating things consistently for things I watched, and it always
recommended garbage to me at 98% match, things I actually liked (but saw
elsewhere) showed up as like.. 60-90%.

Neither of them are particularly useful, but at least the star system usually
conveyed when something is irredeemable garbage.

~~~
eridius
This is so true. What was great about the old system was Netflix showed you
both the average star rating, and the star rating for people like you. Both
values together provided a fairly meaningful signal. But the percentage scale
isn't very helpful, and Netflix is constantly recommending garbage at high
values and good stuff at lower values.

~~~
sbierwagen
"Star rating" is at least vaguely objective, but a "recommendation score"
would give Netflix more latitude to put a thumb on the scale, if a movie
studio was interested in paying money to increase a movie's rating.
Recommendations are ads, and people who spend more get bigger ad spots.

------
abpavel
> "Sony set a review embargo of opening day for “The Emoji Movie,” which left
> the Tomatometer blank until after many advance tickets had been sold and
> families had made weekend plans."

So studios do know that the movie sucks in advance, but still blame RT for
poor performance? I don't see them putting an embargo on Spider-Man...

------
metatation
Maybe it's just me, but I find the "Tomatometer score" to be confusing. The
combination of the tomato graphic with a number confuses an otherwise obvious
rating.

I have a very strong (but false) intuition that the tomato graphic is a
qualifier for the rating number. i.e. "Is this saying that 92% of people would
throw tomatoes at this performance? Oh it's a fresh tomato...but wait, why
would they throw tomatoes if they like it. Oh I see, the tomato is a lame
representation of the rating, not saying something about the rating number."

Anyway, my false intuition is so strong that I still have to concentrate to
ignore the tomato and simply look at the number (even if the number itself is
controversial as noted by this discussion thread).

~~~
symlinkk
it's called "rotten tomatoes". the tomato is rotten, e.g. more greenish
colored, the worse the movie is.

i admit i was a little confused at first too.

~~~
metatation
Except that rotten tomatoes are _not_ green..they are deeper red in color than
a fresh one. Plus, why throw tomatoes at all if you like a performance. For me
it's a completely broken analogy.

------
seibelj
I look at RT if I'm on the cusp of seeing something, but sometimes I have
found it inaccurate. Both my wife and I loved Dark Tower (I read the first 2
books and she had never heard of it) despite a dismal RT score[0]. If you want
to see an action / sci-fi / Matrix-esque movie with some well timed jokes, I
recommend it.

[0]
[https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_dark_tower_2017/](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_dark_tower_2017/)

~~~
nxsynonym
I haven't see TDT yet, so I can't speak to the quality of the movie, however,
liking something is not the same as thinking it is good.

There are plenty of movies that I love watching, but in no way consider well
made.

I look to RT to see what's a "must see" (high critic and audience scores) or
"must avoid in theaters" (low critic and low audience). Anything in between I
decide like a I usually would.

The bigger issue is that of course Hollywood hates RT. It's much easier to
dismiss a review than it is to make a good movie. I've also found that reviews
in general have gotten way more divided (everything seems to be great or
awful, not much in the middle) which I believe can be attributed to fishing
for clicks. It's all speculation, but I can see middle-of-the-road reviews
getting glazed over while "you must see this movie!" or "this is trash!"
reviews will get the most clicks/comments/shares.

~~~
nextlevelwizard
>There are plenty of movies that I love watching, but in no way consider well
made

This is my problem with every review(er). They keep talking about using too
many same kind of shots or how something was lit and other stuff that has in
my opinion nothing to do with the actual movie.

There really should be two scores, technical score and story score. I don't
care about technical aspects (almost) at all. I just care if the movie is
entertaining or not. (Even the word 'entertaining' is bad to use, since some
reviewers like to use it as insult i.e. 'movie was so bad it was entertaining
to laugh at it')

------
njarboe
I used to use Rotten Tomatoes to help select which movies I went to see.
Recently I've seen some very highly ranked movies that I thought were
terrible. "Baby Driver" was a 97% critics rank when I saw that movie (93% now)
and I would put it at a 20. I don't really like personalized computer filter
systems for what I see, but does anyone know of a site that rates current
movies based on how you would rank other movies? What would be really great is
to have a survey that would match me up with a movie critic.

~~~
Udik
> does anyone know of a site that rates current movies based on how you would
> rank other movies

Try criticker.com

~~~
techer
Criticker depressed me as it finally formalised the fact that no one has a
remotely comparable taste to me! Great site though!

~~~
BLKNSLVR
Do you like Alien 3? I like Alien 3. It's a pretty exclusive club.

~~~
techer
Somehow I've avoided it but will watch and report back.

------
everyone
Just out of curiosity recently, I looked up some of the best films ever on RT,
to see if they all have 100% from critics.

Bicycle thieves [arguably the best film ever(it is amazing and does seems to
top quite few best film ever lists)] does not have 100%!! David Jenkins
writing for Time-Out decided to be an edge-lord hipster extraordinaire and
give it a thumbs down. Just thought that was funny. The audience scores seem
to be a lot more trustworthy than the reviewer ones on RT anyway, there is a
lot of talk going around anyway about how Sony for example are getting 100% by
letting certain 'reviewers' review the film on RT before any other reviewers.

Link to RLM guys discussing this

[https://youtu.be/_HrR5X72_LM?t=9m2s](https://youtu.be/_HrR5X72_LM?t=9m2s)

_

Also personally. I dont get why anyone would go to the cinema. Be at their
location at a time not of your choosing, pay through the nose, get price
gouged for shitty food, be subjected to 10 minutes of ads, in order to watch a
mediocre film on a super-loud boomy system with terrible audio balance, in a
noisy room filled with potential assholes who may block your view / break your
immersion, and also you cant pause the film at any point to piss.

~~~
icebraining
_Also personally. I dont get why anyone would go to the cinema._

Some films are still better on a very big screen - I've watched _Apocalypse
Now_ on TV and then on my local film museum, which has a cinema, and it was
totally worth it.

They are also cheap, don't have food, don't show ads, show good films instead
of just what's new, and attract a respectful audience :)

~~~
Mediterraneo10
Indeed, some films are better on the "big screen" than on a television. But
that's a good reason to get an HD projector, not go to the cinema.

I've had a projector for nearly five years now, and I have never once missed
going to the cinema. Instead of going out to a rather dingy venue, paying for
a ticket, and having to share the space with other people who may not act
respectfully of others, I can just torrent Blu-ray images for free and enjoy
them in the comfort of my own home.

~~~
icebraining
Gotta have big empty walls to use a projector. Some of us live in small
apartments :)

~~~
Mediterraneo10
You don’t have to have empty walls: decent screens are cheap (mine cost
somewhere around 125€). And if I could long enjoy a big projector screen in a
typical Eastern European socialist-era flat, I’m sure many others here could,
too.

------
coloneltcb
good solution to industry woes: stop making shitty movies

~~~
Clubber
Yes, the article reads like, "we're having trouble because people don't like
our shitty movies. Not our fault. We should get rid of RT because then people
won't know our movies are shitty until they pay to see them."

~~~
V-2
YMMV, but I found quite a lot of shitty movies to be rated surprisingly high
on RT. Based on my experience, high rating doesn't mean a movie will be good,
although low rating does translate to a pretty good chance it's poor, so the
feature is half useful to me.

~~~
sliverstorm
Isn't the score a function of how many people thought it was a good or bad
movie, rather than an average score like Amazon reviews?

Which means you could make a "decent" movie with universal appeal (100% of
reviewers give C+), that would score better than a "great" movie with really
niche appeal (10% of reviewers give A+, 90% give D-)

Which makes it a good meta for "worth seeing, you'll almost certainly enjoy
it", but not the best meta for "objectively the greatest crime noir ever
filmed"

~~~
humanrebar
It's more like whether a film is worth seeing. Critics don't think talking
animal movies are _good_. They think the kids and parents will enjoy the
experience and not regret the tickets. So they all rate it "sure, see it" and
it gets 95% on rottentomatoes.

------
ghaff
"Consumer behavior is also changing. People increasingly rely on review
aggregation sites like Yelp and TripAdvisor to make all kinds of spending
decisions. The trend is especially visible among young people, who make up
Hollywood’s most important audience."

To the degree that there's an actual trend here, I suspect this is the money
quote. Siskel and Ebert did thumbs up and thumbs down but I suspect that
relatively few people actually made viewing decisions based on their thumbs.

Now, many people device on many actions based on reviews. And if nothing seems
all that hot this weekend? Well, there's always Netflix, Amazon, or iTunes.
It's certainly cheaper and many of them have big screen TVs.

I'm not the referenced demographic but I know I'm about a one/year movie
viewer in theaters when I have the time and deem something worthy of the IMAX
treatment.

~~~
52-6F-62
Do that many people really rely on reviews? I've found I trust them
significantly less with movies than I do with many things.

I wish I could remember some specific details, but some incredible films are
given ridiculously low ratings within Netflix itself.

I don't even bother with Rotten Tomatoes anymore because it's seemed like such
a crap-chute for so long.

If I know I really want to see something, then I'll just see it in the
theatre. If I miss it, or I'm less thrilled but still want to give it a go
then I wait until it's out on an ubiquitous source like Netflix or I'll rent
it.

\---

(Speaking of IMAX I'm really upset right now because I tried to book free
tickets for a TIFF screening of Dunkirk attended by Christopher Nolan at the
Ontario Place Cinesphere[0], but their site wasn't working well the day of the
bookings and I couldn't get through!)

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinesphere](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinesphere)

~~~
ghaff
I don't know. I definitely do even if I take them with a very large grain of
salt. I'm usually watching them when they come out on DVD though so I also
pre-filter a lot based on Oscar nominations as well as "Doesn't seem like the
sort of movie I'd like."

I also watch few enough movies that I'll also tend to read the reviews of a
couple major media critics before I rent/buy something.

[ADDED: I mostly start with metacritic but not so much as a recommendation
engine but to get a quick look at a movie I've already decided looks
interesting.]

------
omot
Dunkirk Spoilers: I feel like Rotten Tomato doesn't work all the time. I
watched Dunkirk, excited from the 93% on RT, and I walked out and felt
disappointed. Like I get the cinematography was great, the story structure is
amazing, everything a critic should be looking for was all there, but did I
enjoy it? No. I thought it was boring. The movie didn't do anything to foster
the relation of characters to the audience. I frankly didn't care about any of
them, maybe except the Captain that stayed behind to help the French. I
personally thought this was Nolan's weakest movie, although the RT score would
suggest otherwise: Inception - 86%, Interstellar - 71% both of which I enjoyed
way more than Dunkirk.

I think the audience score also on RT is more telling: Inception - 91%
Interstellar - 85% Dunkirk - 82%

We could also take movies that people mentioned on this thread: The Dark Tower
- RT: 16%, AS: 54% Baby Driver - RT: 93%, AS: 89% Baywatch - RT: 18%, AS: 60%

I also don't trust critics on the basis of people like Armond White, and since
many of them do this for a living, a lot of critics can be bought.

I think what I'm trying to say is that Rotten Tomato is actually inaccurate
metric for how enjoyable the movie actually is, and consumers are being
misguided.

I also think theres an inherent misunderstanding of the RT score. People look
at the score and think this is the quality of the movie, when in reality I
think of it as a probability that I would like the movie. A score of 50%
doesn't mean the movie has a failing grade, it's that when 100 critics viewed
it half the critics enjoyed it and the other half didn't, so there's probably
a 50% chance that I'll enjoy the movie.

~~~
imaginenore
I can't believe Wonder Woman got 92%. It was one of the worst superhero movies
I have ever seen. The dumbest story and the plot, the dumbest dialogue, subpar
action and CGI, very mediocre acting. There are a few _okay_ jokes in it, I
admit, but that's about it.

Same with John Wick: Chapter 2. 90%, dumb as a bag of bricks.

~~~
mcphage
> I can't believe Wonder Woman got 92%. It was one of the worst superhero
> movies I have ever seen.

Not even having seen Wonder Woman, I can easily believe the 92% score—plenty
of people I know who saw it, really loved it. If I saw it and didn't like it,
maybe I would be surprised that so many of my friends liked it, but I still
wouldn't be surprised that it got a high rating, because they did.

------
civilian
It's the quality of movies, and also we're living during Peak Televsion. TV
shows have an awesome capability to tell really long stories, that go further
in depth than movies can.

For a lighthearted take on it, watch "F __k You, it 's January!"
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H18RUB1cxfI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H18RUB1cxfI)

------
noncoml
Really? My personal experience with RT is that during the weeks that the movie
is actually playing in the theatres, the rating is over inflated. So much that
I stopped trusting it.

Take for example “Wind River”. The current score is 84%. You would expect to
see an awesome movie for 84%, but it is nothing more than average.

For comparison the movie Gladiator has a score of 76%, and the “The Wolf of
Wall Streer” 77%.

------
smegel
This is garbage. Rotten Tomatoes are _way_ too positive IMO. I have wasted
good money on 95+/95+ movies only to find they were absolute rubbish. A good
recent example is John Wick 2. I really like the first one, and based on the
RT score I didn't think twice about going to watch the second. Only to find it
was the most mind-numbing continuous violence I could even imagine, without
the noir of the first one. And there were a string of similar movies that got
unbelievable scores only to be absolutely average.

Yes some get terrible scores, and probably deserve it. But the worst crime is
all these big blockbuster movies that are rated 98/99 and should be somewhere
in the 60s or 70s.

My solution - just don't go to the movies, it has become an ongoing
disappointment and waste of time. Wait for some critical YouTube reviews that
actually analyse and explain in some depth why a movie is good or bad then
maybe consider getting it on DVD or something.

------
graton
Personally I like to look at
[https://www.cinemascore.com/](https://www.cinemascore.com/) as I tend to
trust audience surveys a touch more than the critics. I do look at Rotten
Tomatoes also. The problem with RT to me is that if all the critics are
slightly negative than it gets 0%, all slightly positive it is 100%. The
percentage score isn't really nuanced on how bad or how good the movie is. At
least that is how my understanding of how the system works.

One of the worst cases for me was the movie Drive:
[https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/drive_2011](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/drive_2011)

Terrible movie in my opinion, but critics just loved it so 93% RT positive.
But Cinemascore gave it a C-, which is a terrible score and the way I felt.

~~~
aktau
Just an odd note, I agree with a lot of the comments on this thread, but I
thought Drive was a fantastic movie.

I saw it in the cinema and remember my heart was rushing from all the emotion
after seeing it. I could hear the soundtrack in my head for days afterwards
(it may be the best part of the movie for me). Drive's easily in my top 10 of
the last decade.

Maybe my taste is just strange.

~~~
graton
Or maybe my taste is strange. I saw it in the theater and was very bored. I
was tempted to leave the theater midway through, but watched the whole film.

------
legohead
They mentioned King Arthur. I didn't want to see it after seeing the RT score,
but my wife saw it anyway, and now says it's one of her favorite movies.

We both decided to see the new Planet of the Apes because of it's 90+ RT
score, and both absolutely hated the movie.

------
reilly3000
It seems that to be a studio exec is to be out of touch. In what rarified
world should people have to pay for the derivative crap they push? I think
Hollywood's understanding of technology from TIVO to streaming is generally
terrible.

------
api
Hollywood had a terrible summer because they made a lot of movies nobody wants
to see. This summer's films were all awful or too derivative and predictable.

------
solaarphunk
Its not that Rotten Tomatoes is solely at fault for pointing out that movies
are low quality, its that Netflix now provides a very simple alternative!

Before, if you wanted to see a movie, you'd settle for the best of the worst
and still show up to the theatre. Now, the alternative of binging a new series
or some other hosted content is likely far more appealing.

------
chrischen
Netflix personalizes rating scores (based on your ratings). Rotten tomatoes
should implement that instead.

------
GeorgeTirebiter
[https://medium.freecodecamp.org/whose-reviews-should-you-
tru...](https://medium.freecodecamp.org/whose-reviews-should-you-trust-imdb-
rotten-tomatoes-metacritic-or-fandango-7d1010c6cf19)

This was posted here a week or so ago, but seems relevant.

------
ss64
My opinion of RT went down significantly when I tried to actually login and
post a review. It is so horrible to use, I'm now convinced the site is
deliberately setup to favour bots over real people.

------
bebop22
This is absolutely true. I've seen a few movies recently with some self
pronounced critics and we were amazed at how good the movies were that were
rated horrifically low.

------
spo81rty
I was stunned that they gave Captain Underpants a 87. Audience score was only
64.

Movie was awesome though!

Rating are nothing new. Seems like the old paper TV Guide had ratings in it.

------
MrZongle2
In related news, Ford Motor Company blames Connecticut attorney Ralph Nader
for poor Pinto sales...

