Is it fair that Rotten Tomatoes constantly updates critical reaction scores?

[The Laughing Fish]

He's absolutely right. Rotten Tomatoes is weaponized propaganda.

It sure is. And it get's even worse: Amazon and Wal-Mart are now starting to sell Blu-Rays with 'Certified Fresh' RT logos on the front cover. For example, last year's Ghostbusters.



Now, I haven't seen the new Ghostbusters, because it doesn't appeal to me. But my point is there is something wrong when people expect to look at some arbitrary score AND the bloody logo as some kind of seal of approval to confirm a film's quality.

I fear film discourse is dying.

[thecolorsblend]

There was a time when RT offered some valuable nuance to arguments. It's tempting to argue about, say, the relative merits of the Star Wars prequels. But the nay-sayers have a hard row to hoe when it comes out that Episode I (originally at least) received broader critical acclaim than Star Wars '77 and Empire did.

Doubtless that has changed now. But at one time I do believe that was the case.

And it cuts both ways. The prequel lovers had to accept the fact that Star Wars had rarely ever been a critical darling so comparing the prequels to the originals didn't take you very far anyway.

RT offered meaningful insight at times. But this idea of fetishizing it bugs me (A) because it gives people another opportunity to their brains off and (B) I'm sick of arguments from authority, which is what RT has become. It's weird that film critics are almost universally loathed and yet the aggregate of their opinion is giving some retarded authority and merit as though it means something worthwhile.

The hypocrisy here is off the scales...

[The Dark Knight]

It sure is. And it get's even worse: Amazon and Wal-Mart are now starting to sell Blu-Rays with 'Certified Fresh' RT logos on the front cover. For example, last year's Ghostbusters.

Well, there we go. This just confirms everything I've said about Rotten Tomatoes.

Oh, you silly Dark Knight. Rotten Tomatoes isn't used to prove opinions as fact.
Oh, you silly Dark Knight. Rotten Tomatoes is only as important as you make it.
Oh, you silly Dark Knight. There's nothing biased about Rotten Tomatoes.
Oh, you silly Dark Knight. Just ignore it.

We can't ignore it now. It's being rubbed in our faces.

The fact we have a certified fresh sticker on a Blu-ray cover proves Rotten Tomatoes is now the 'gold standard'.
Dawn of Justice received 27% so therefore it's a stone cold fact the film sucks.
Anyone who likes a film with a low Tomato Meter score therefore likes 'bad movies'.

I've more than had enough of this mentality.

[Silver Nemesis]

We can't ignore it now.

Of course we can ignore it. It's a tiny graphic added to a DVD jacket for marketing purposes. Nothing more. There's no reason why anyone should be emotionally upset by something so trivial. It's no different from when distributors plaster 5-star ratings over film posters or DVD covers, which they've been doing for decades. This is just the shorthand version of the same thing.

[johnnygobbs]

Of course we can ignore it. It's a tiny graphic added to a DVD jacket for marketing purposes. Nothing more. There's no reason why anyone should be emotionally upset by something so trivial. It's no different from when distributors plaster 5-star ratings over film posters or DVD covers, which they've been doing for decades. This is just the shorthand version of the same thing.

Video covers have been taking critical quotes out of context for decades.  For instance, a review for Live Free or Die Hard that originally said it was "hysterically overproduced and surprisingly entertaining" was reduced to "hysterically...entertaining" in a commercial.

As with 'fresh' RT ratings being used to promote films, one should take them all with a pinch of salt.

By the way, I have now seen Ghostbusters 2016, and unfortunately it is pretty bad but that's not to say that an all-female Ghostbusters could never have worked.  It's just that in this instance it seems the filmmakers were so impressed with their politically-correct concept that they forgot to add anything else to the movie, including decent jokes, an interesting and coherent plot, and anything approximating originality.

[The Dark Knight]

We can't ignore it now.

Of course we can ignore it. It's a tiny graphic added to a DVD jacket for marketing purposes. Nothing more. There's no reason why anyone should be emotionally upset by something so trivial. It's no different from when distributors plaster 5-star ratings over film posters or DVD covers, which they've been doing for decades. This is just the shorthand version of the same thing.

That's where we differ. We can ignore it, but I don't think we should. And I won't. It doesn't matter how big the 'seal of approval' graphic is. It's there and it's validating everything RT stands for. I take RT with a pinch of salt, but its supporters don't. I'm not going to let the other side dictate the conversation just because some people deem the matter trivial. I will say something. RT has been fetishized as an authority and this logo further pushes that message.

[thecolorsblend]

The reason the seal of RT bugs me is because it's appealing to a vague, ill-defined authority.

In the old days, movie posters and VHS/DVD covers might have "Two Thumbs Up!" from Siskel and Ebert. They were respected critics and their views meant something. But even if you didn't know who they were, you could investigate their claims and decide if your views align with them. That would establish their credibility (or lack of the same) for you.

The same is true for any critic, really.

Listing an RT rating is different inasmuch as Rotten Tomatoes isn't a person. It has no objective authority unto itself. It's merely the aggregate of a ton of critics... some likely having more credibility and authority than others.

The little emblem may as well say "A bunch of people, most of whom are Cheetoh-munching, basement-dwelling bloggers, love this movie!"

If others respect the RT seal, I'm not here to argue with them. I'm just explaining why it's worthless to me.

[johnnygobbs]

Someone cited Pauline Kael earlier on, and I thought I'd add that I'm a huge fan of the late critic.  I own a couple of books compiling her various reviews for The New Yorker circa 1980s.  She was a brilliantly evocative writer who didn't simply give the equivalent of a 'yay' or 'neigh' as far as a given film would go, but would forensically discuss the various performances, the overall style, and occasionally the themes (although Kael, despite her superior prose and the literary publication she wrote for, was always quick to distance herself from highbrow avant-gardism).  Unlike many of today's critics her reviews were a joy to read for their own sake, even if one had relatively little interest in the film being considered, and what I particularly liked about Kael was her refusal to go along with 'perceived wisdom'.  She wasn't quite a habitual contrarian like say Armond White and her opinions were always genuine rather than an attempt to play Devil's Advocate simply for its own sake, but she definitely wasn't concerned about political correctness or adhering to any particular agenda.

That said, I wouldn't necessarily have gone to a Kael review if I was deciding what film to spend my hard-earned cash on (as it happens, Kael retired before I was in any position to do so in any case), not least because I have often disagreed with her opinions, even though I've always appreciated her overall perspective, and, in particular, the way she expressed it.

But speaking more broadly, I do tend to avoid reading reviews before seeing a film because I prefer to see a film 'cold' so to speak, without any preconceived notions regarding the plot etc.  That means I tend to go by trailers, posters, and yes, I am sorry to say, RT scores.  If a given film has a particularly bad RT score (I'm not talking about the 40-60% 'Certified Rotten' region, but anything significantly below 40%) then I'm going to be very wary about spending the equivalent of $20 and two/three hours of my time on something a large swathe of individuals, representing a reasonably large cross-section of sources, have given the 'thumbs down' to.  I can give some latitude to those films that just fall under the 'Fresh' threshold by ten/twenty per cent, but if 80% or so of critics are saying a film is trash, and the social media feedback appears to concur, I can only reasonably conclude that it's far better to wait until the film is on freeview.

That said, I wasn't swayed by Ghostbusters 2016's 73% 'Fresh' rating.  The same logic doesn't always apply to a 'Fresh' film because whilst I will generally tend to rule-out paying my cash on a 'Rotten' film, I am not compelled to see a 'Fresh' one, especially where all the trailers, TV spots, and production details indicate the film in question is worth none of my time (unlike some of you, I had no issue with an all-female Ghostbusters reboot, but when the filmmakers involved make no attempt to add any iota of originality to the concept, cribbing even the same poster design from the 1984 original, it doesn't take a particularly dire trailer to make my mind up that this is a film to miss).

Bear in mind also that a film can get a '73% Fresh' RT rating simply by receiving the equivalent of 3/5 stars (i.e. an average/slightly above average score) from 73% of the critics tallied.

[The Laughing Fish]

Martin Scorsese has expressed his distaste for Rotten Tomatoes.

Rotten Tomatoes has had its share of directors who have publicly voiced their hatred of the review aggregator site. And now you can add a living legend to the list.

In a guest column for The Hollywood Reporter that went online Tuesday, Martin Scorsese ripped into the popular site.

Voicing his displeasure with the box-office culture the movie industry has become since the 1980s, the Oscar-winning director then shifted to the industry scapegoat, Rotten Tomatoes.

Though general audiences use the site often to gauge what movies are getting "fresh" reviews from a collection of critics (or "rotten" ones), most filmmakers — especially the old guard — don't get the attraction.

In March, director/producer Brett Ratner called the site a "the destruction of our business," and now Scorsese has added that it's "set a tone that is hostile to serious filmmakers."

"They rate a picture the way you'd rate a horse at the racetrack, a restaurant in a Zagat's guide, or a household appliance in Consumer Reports," Scorsese wrote, also calling out CinemaScore, which does exit polling of wide releases on opening weekends. "They have everything to do with the movie business and absolutely nothing to do with either the creation or the intelligent viewing of film. The filmmaker is reduced to a content manufacturer and the viewer to an unadventurous consumer."

And Scorsese wasn't done.

"Even the actual name Rotten Tomatoes is insulting. And as film criticism written by passionately engaged people with actual knowledge of film history has gradually faded from the scene, it seems like there are more and more voices out there engaged in pure judgmentalism, people who seem to take pleasure in seeing films and filmmakers rejected, dismissed and in some cases ripped to shreds."

The criticism to Rotten Tomatoes comes when the site is at its zenith. Studios market movies using "fresh" Rotten Tomatoes scores all the time, and this past summer Sony purposely held the review embargo of its release "The Emoji Movie" to just hours before Thursday preview screenings, so its eventual "rotten" score (for a day or so it was at 0%) wouldn't affect its box office. The movie earned a surprising $US24.5 million its opening weekend.

"Good films by real filmmakers aren't made to be decoded, consumed or instantly comprehended," Scorsese went on, highlighting the work of Darren Aronofsky's "Mother!," which received a "F" through CinemaScore.

"They're not even made to be instantly liked. They're just made, because the person behind the camera had to make them."

Source: https://www.businessinsider.com.au/martin-scorsese-criticizes-rotten-tomatoes-in-a-scathing-column-2017-10?r=US&IR=T

[riddler]

It would be refreshing to see more people taking a stance against such sites, and judge films for themselves without being swayed by popular consensus. Want to watch something? I say do it on your own terms and crush the goddamn tomato!

This. I didn't even realize a site that calls itself "Rotten Tomatoes" was supposed to be taken seriously, let alone that people consider it the definitive word on a movie's quality, until the BvS sh*t started. The definitive word is the viewer's own individual opinion, and I guess it is okay for a tool (I admit using IMDb ratings to see what perception was of certain movies before I watched them but even if it had a low score and bad reviews I still watched it to see for myself) but it seems like a lot of people are using it not as a tool but to define their own opinion without watching something. Newsflash: these critics don't know you. They don't know your individual tastes and quirks, and they probably don't share them. Unless it's word of mouth from people who know me or who I know are pretty similar to me in taste (which is why I've still yet to watch Gotham) I take opinions with as much salt as is in the Dead Sea. The only way *I'LL* know is if *I* watch.

Both sites are flawed but I do find the IMDB the more accurate of thet wo. I find a rating out of 10 more appropriate than having to rate a movie on a pass/fail basis and we all know critics have agendas, mainly towards boring movies. Sue IMDB has it's own problems including people with multiple accounts (I'm looking at you Nolanites) but honestly I couldn't care less what percentage of critics say they like a film.


Batman Forever is a perfect example. We all seem to remember how well received it was and how well praised it was for being far more of a fun family film than either Burton film. If it weren't, the next film wouldn't have been rushed with most of the same players involved . Then as we all know Batman and Robin came out and the rest was history, the two Schumacher films got lumped together, Schumacher himself was labelled a hack and made an easy target. Had these sites been as popular during the 90's, I'm sure you would have seen the ratings significantly drop for Batman Forever once the next film was released.


Back to the topic at hand, I do find it kind of cheap to include modern rating for older films.  Anyone can give a rating based on consensus ratings once a film is released, the more objective reviews are the ones given before everyone else sees a film and gives their two cents.