Movie Studios Are Blaming Rotten Tomatoes For Killing Movies No One Wants To See (qz.com) 316
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales and Baywatch were never going to be critical darlings. Both movies led the domestic box office to its worst Memorial Day weekend showing in nearly 20 years. Quartz adds: In the fallout, are Hollywood producers blaming the writers? The actors? Themselves? (Of course not.) No, they are blaming Rotten Tomatoes. They say the movie-review site, which forces critics to assign either a rotten or fresh tomato to each title when submitting reviews, regardless of the nuances of their critiques, poisoned viewers against the films before they were released. "Insiders close to both films blame Rotten Tomatoes, with Pirates 5 and Baywatch respectively earning 32% and 19% Rotten. The critic aggregation site increasingly is slowing down the potential business of popcorn movies. Pirates 5 and Baywatch aren't built for critics but rather general audiences, and once upon a time these types of films -- a family adventure and a raunchy R-rated comedy -- were critic-proof. Many of those in the industry severely question how Rotten Tomatoes computes the its ratings, and the fact that these scores run on [the movie-ticket buying site] Fandango (which owns RT) is an even bigger problem," Deadline reported. [...] The site has a separate score that measures audience reception, which it displays next to the critic rating. And quite a few smell what The Rock is cooking -- 70% of Baywatch viewers on Rotten Tomatoes said they liked it. But the critic score is what many people look to when deciding whether to spend their hard-earned money at the cinema. Also read: Hollywood Producer Blames Rotten Tomatoes For Convincing People Not To See His Movie.
Translation: (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Translation: (Score:5, Insightful)
More or less. Prior to Rotten Tomatoes, our options for determining whether a film was worth seeing in theaters were all hit-and-miss. Most of us relied heavily on the tone and nature of the film's marketing to make those decisions, putting the control predominately in the hands of the studios. Every time they marketed a dud as a stud in order to profit from the gap between when a movie was released and when word of mouth spread about how bad it was, they made it clear that they valued our money more than our satisfaction.
Rotten Tomatoes changed all of that by providing consistently credible scores from day one, which, for most of us, were a much better indicator for determining whether a movie was worth seeing in theaters. They're not perfect, but they're so much more reliable than what we had before that many of us have started checking Rotten Tomatoes before heading to the theaters for anything other than a sure thing. Naturally, the studios are displeased that they can't profit on that gap between the release date and when the public catches on to how bad the film actually is.
Couple that with cheap rentals like Redbox or iTunes (as opposed to the expensive days of Blockbuster), subscription streaming like Netflix, and the dropping prices of big-screen TVs, and it's no surprise that people are skipping the theater experience when the film will be just as good/bad in a few months/years at home. When talking about upcoming films, my wife and I have even started saying, "That's a 'wait for Redbox' one" or "Maybe if it shows up on Netflix streaming someday".
Re:Translation: (Score:5, Interesting)
Yep, this is Hollywood complaining yet again that they don't control all the information. I still remember when "Gigli" came out and flopped, and Hollywood was pissed off that moviegoers were using their phones to text all their friends about how bad the movie was, saying they shouldn't be allowed to do that because it "disrupts our carefully crafted marketing".
Re:Translation: (Score:5, Insightful)
Huh? I was watching Siskel & Ebert 30 years ago when looking for the good versus bad movies. Movie critics have been around almost as long as movie, and all Rotten Tomatoes did was bring a number of the better known or well-syndicated ones together to sort of give a statistical scoring.
Also as old as movie critics is studios blaming movie critics for their shitty movies bombing. It's a tired complaint. Anyone who seriously thought a Baywatch reboot or yet another Johnny Depp pirate film were going to be smash hits ought to be forced into early retirement.
Re: Translation: (Score:3)
But S/E could only rate so many movies; I think the show was on about once a week if I remember right?
In the meantime if you wanted to see any other movie, you were mostly in the dark or relied on one or two reviews.
But the best aspect of RT is I can see divergence (if any) between movie critics and the people actually seeing the movie. That has been really valuable a number of times as sometimes my own feelings about a movie diverge from the RT critics average scores...
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Sometimes you just want 110 minutes of braindead popcorn munching rather than French film noir. A rating for "Good to watch once" is what I look for.
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The idea that film critics only like artsy or foreign films is outdated if it ever had any validity at all. For example, here's Siskel & Ebert's very favorable review of Terminator 2: https://youtu.be/-Gy1rEs-r3g?t... [youtu.be]
Re: Translation: (Score:5, Informative)
For chrissakes, a quick review of Ebert's Top Films shows while he clearly loved Werner Herzog, he was also a big Spielberg fan. There's nothing artsy about Indiana Jones and the Lost Ark or Jaws, and yet both these films were among Ebert's favorite films ever made. For goodness sake, he even put Planes, Trains and Automobiles on that list (and justifiably so, it is an incredibly good film).
Re: Translation: (Score:5, Insightful)
And the market is showing that the RT scores are well calibrated. If it's got a low critic score and a decently high audience score, that's a "wait for Redbox." And that's exactly what's happening. I'll probably see Pirates of the Caribbean at some point, but I'm not sure not going to the theater for it. Guardians of the Galaxy 2, though, was well worth the price of admission.
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I would also challenge the specific criticism critics are being unfair to raunchy comedies, fun family films, etc. over more complex films--and that's why these movies scored so poorly.
A good critic takes into account what a movie is trying to be and who it is aimed at when writing their review and figuring their score. No critic in their right mind is going to hold a movie like There's Something About Mary to the same standard as The Godfather. So I'm sure most critics were comparing Baywatch to other simi
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Re:Translation: (Score:4, Interesting)
If either of those films or even the King Arthur disaster had come out in January or February, the only popcorn junky cheesefest competition was XXX: The Return of Xander Cage. They would probably have done twice as well then versus what they'll get now. As it is, April to September is neck deep in silly adventure and action movies. I'm going to skip plenty of films I might otherwise watch just because I don't have the time and money to catch them all.
I don't even look at Rotten Tomatoes.
The other side to that is (Score:2)
There's bound to be some stuff in a movie that isn't for everyone (which is a nicer way of s
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It is strange that the non-critic reviews are so much higher than the critic reviews. That, IMO, gives some legitimacy to the gripe.
If the watchers like the movie, then they have the wrong critics rating it; or the critics are being forced to rate it in a way that fails to express the critic's actual judgment.
No, it really doesn't give legitimacy to the gripe. Think about it: Fandango has both the Rotten Tomatoes score, and next to it the viewer score. Who's going to watch the movie after seeing the criti
It's never their fault, of course (Score:5, Insightful)
Never mind that all they're able to do is either come up with sequels or prequels, or movies with brain-dead characters and insipid stories filled with impossible computer-generated action scenes.
Re:It's never their fault, of course (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not only sequels and prequels, but poorly conceived remakes of ancient TV shows that were made in some earlier millennium. Or horrible remakes of classic sci fi (The Day The Earth Stood Still). Moves based on books that have no resemblance to the book the movie is supposedly based on.
Action movies with adolescent dialog.
New prequels of decades old movies, where the prequel isn't consistent with what it is a prequel to. Or changes the characters in the original movie -- or makes liars out of the heroes.
Movies stretched into categories they don't belong in, as a form of false advertising. Clue: if it has vampires, warewolves, or magic, it probably isn't Sci Fi.
The problem is that new movies rarely have anything new. There are a few good ones. But very few.
I wouldn't mind a really good remake of a classic movie. (Forbidden Planet anyone?) Or a good prequel.
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Let's not forget about impossible physics as part of the plot.
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I wouldn't mind a really good remake of a classic movie. (Forbidden Planet anyone?)
A movie which depends on impossible physics as part of the plot....
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All the sci-fi movies back then had completely impossible physics, except perhaps "Destination: Moon" (1950). I highly recommend that one; it's a rather boring movie really plot-wise, but the physics are really interesting considering it was made in 1950, well before the Apollo missions or even the Mercury missions. They got a lot of things right: zero-g, spacewalks, the transit time, the Moon's low gravity, etc. Watching it was like watching a movie about aviation made before the Wright Brothers.
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I wouldn't mind a really good remake of a classic movie. (Forbidden Planet anyone?) Or a good prequel.
Don't give them ideas... That was an awesome movie.
If theres one impression I get out of modern Hollywood movies; its that they are specifically forbidden from making good movies, especially good remakes. Its as if there is some unwritten Hollywood law "Thou shalt not make good movies."
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if it has vampires, warewolves, or magic, it probably isn't Sci Fi.
I got your vampire Sci Fi right here [rottentomatoes.com] buddy!
Naked vampires from space. Excuse me for a moment...
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Moves based on books that have no resemblance to the book the movie is supposedly based on.
The rest of your post is spot-on but I have to object to this one. There's nothing wrong with making a movie that's inspired by some book, but veers off in a very different direction. In fact, movies which attempt to be extremely faithful to the book usually end up being terrible; it just isn't that easy to shift a story between two such totally different media and still make it come out good.
For evidence, I cite
Re: It's never their fault, of course (Score:2)
King copywrites mostly airport novels, not many of his works are masterpieces (actually can't think of any). They don't adapt well to films because the story lines are cheesy, predictable, boring crap.
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I sometimes wonder what it would have been like if Peter Jackson had had the budget and approval to make two 3-hour movies for each LotR novel (6 3-hour movies total).
Seriously? After the mess of the Hobbit movies, you wonder what he'd have done?
Think love triangle between Gandalf and Galadrial, with Saruman has a spurned lover, and imagine a 30-minute long CGI rendered single combat between Legolas and Sauron.
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Or horrible remakes of classic sci fi (The Day The Earth Stood Still).
They didn't set out to make a horrible remake. You could just say "bad movie" intead.
Moves based on books that have no resemblance to the book the movie is supposedly based on.
That doesn't automatically make a movie bad, either. A slavishly accurate adaptation of a book to film is probably going to be worse than any adaptation.
Re:It's never their fault, of course (Score:5, Interesting)
Never mind that all they're able to do is either come up with sequels or prequels, or movies with brain-dead characters and insipid stories filled with impossible computer-generated action scenes.
None of that even prevents a movie from being great. There are plenty of great movies based on previous IP, and even great movies with little to no story.
I strongly disagree with the submitter's comment: "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales and Baywatch were never going to be critical darlings." That is bullshit. The first Pirate of the Caribbean movie had a Rotten Tomatoes score of 79%, so obviously a good movie can be made with this subject matter. And 21 Jump Street had a score of 85%, so obviously a movie adaption of an 80's/90's TV show can be a great movie.
Either of these movies could have been great with a 70+ Rotten Tomato score. But they would have had to be good.
Re: It's never their fault, of course (Score:2)
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If you want bouncing girls, check out the Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball games.
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The book was better.
/ kidding. Please tell me there isn't a Baywatch book.
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https://www.newkadia.com/?Bayw... [newkadia.com]
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The first Pirate of the Caribbean movie had a Rotten Tomatoes score of 79%
Yes but it was the first one and showed a little creativity and risk taking. By sequel 5 or whatever they are up to they are just milking the same idea for profit. I suppose it's possible for it to actually be good but it's not likely. They deserve to be spanked
Baywatch? How many times can you make a beach movie? You don't make a movie like this to compete with "My dinner with Andre"...
Re:It's never their fault, of course (Score:5, Insightful)
I didn't even look at the rotten tomatoes rating and still wasn't interested in either of those movies because they have already been done to death.
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People don't want anything new or different. They want the same over and over again. If there's something unusual they don't know how to categorize and compare it so they reject it.
If it takes more than 5-10 seconds to find out what you get people will skip it because there is just too much out there to spend more time on every single potential piece of entertainment.
I don't think so. I think it's just the studios and writers being lazy and unimaginative, and trying to cash in on baby boomer nostalgia. It's not so much driven by demand right now as it is supply. (Baby boomer nostalgia plays a role in the demand, but I don't think there's as much as the studios would like to believe.)
Very little fault of Rotten Tomatoes (Score:5, Insightful)
While I agree there are some good movies that have poor Rotten Tomatoes ratings which makes me wonder if I missed a movie because of RT reviews, I would still consider them to be a pretty good indicator of movie quality. The studios are just mad that RT tells me what I need to know about crappy movies before I spend my money on them!
Re:Very little fault of Rotten Tomatoes (Score:5, Interesting)
While I agree there are some good movies that have poor Rotten Tomatoes ratings which makes me wonder if I missed a movie because of RT reviews, I would still consider them to be a pretty good indicator of movie quality. The studios are just mad that RT tells me what I need to know about crappy movies before I spend my money on them!
I never look at critic's scores, just whether the audience liked it. Critics have a tendency to be windbags...
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While I agree there are some good movies that have poor Rotten Tomatoes ratings which makes me wonder if I missed a movie because of RT reviews, I would still consider them to be a pretty good indicator of movie quality. The studios are just mad that RT tells me what I need to know about crappy movies before I spend my money on them!
I never look at critic's scores, just whether the audience liked it. Critics have a tendency to be windbags...
That's what I used to use IMDB for. The audience ratings are broken down by gender and by age ranges. While I don't strictly go by these ratings, I do factor them into whether I see a movie in the theater, wait for the Blu-ray, or wait until it's on HBO/Netflix. That is, until IMDB killed the movie forums. Now I use RT.
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I never look at critic's scores, just whether the audience liked it. Critics have a tendency to be windbags...
I look at both. The problem with critic ratings is that critics look for somewhat different things in a movie than I do. The problem with audience ratings is they are doubly self-selected, as well as vulnerable to astroturfing. I find that looking at both gives me a really good idea of whether I'm going to like it: if both critic and audience ratings are high, I know I'm good. If either one is really low, I can be pretty sure the movie sucks. In other cases, I have to look closer, which means actually readi
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I never look at critic's scores, just whether the audience liked it. Critics have a tendency to be windbags...
I look at both. The problem with critic ratings is that critics look for somewhat different things in a movie than I do. The problem with audience ratings is they are doubly self-selected, as well as vulnerable to astroturfing. I find that looking at both gives me a really good idea of whether I'm going to like it: if both critic and audience ratings are high, I know I'm good. If either one is really low, I can be pretty sure the movie sucks. In other cases, I have to look closer, which means actually reading a sampling of both critic and viewer reviews. I do weight critic ratings/reviews a little more heavily.
In the case of these movies, a 32% RT score is a strong negative indicator, but if the audience ratings are high, I might see it. I probably will see Pirates 5. Any RT score below 20% is a clear loser. I'll stay home if there's no better option.
I have a seen a number of movies that critics decided were rubbish but that audiences loved. They keep analysing the quality of the acting, the depth of the characters, blah, blah, blah, and that is certainly important in some movies but sometimes it does not matter how a movie stands up to a Woody Allen classic masterpiece, you just want to see the Hulk bash the crap out of aliens ... or something ... even if the acting compares badly with the masterpieces.
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It's not a great system. Does anyone know why Rotten Tomato
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Thats actually a good point now that I think about it. Generally, I dont go by the overall score at all. I read what most of the critics are saying. That usually tells me almost everything I need to know to either prepare myself for watching the movie or to not go at all.
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It's utter rubbish and ignores the audience ratings. Bad movies have always gotten rubbish ratings from "critics". This is nothing new. I remember how the critics trashed ever original Star Wars movie.
It's the audience ratings that are more likely to kill a picture.
This is a good thing. Companies shouldn't be able to make money off of garbage that the customers don't even like.
translated: (Score:4, Insightful)
we cant make sub par unfunny comedies and lame predictable dramas any more because people tell other people they suck! Give writers more creative freedom and things may turn around.
Re:translated: (Score:5, Interesting)
The problem is they are locked into a formula. If they're going to spend $500 Million to make a movie, then they have got to guarantee it will be a success and recoup the investment.
So they can't take risks. Can't be innovative. A movie must follow one of Hollywood's formulas for success. And this is the very thing making movies bad.
Here's another idea: How about a movie that doesn't cost $500 Million to make? Don't get a-list actors. Could there possibly be very good but unknown actors? Don't make the movie effects heavy. Do have a good story -- oh but that would require giving more creative freedom, which brings us back to the start.
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Relevant movie to your post :
https://www.rottentomatoes.com... [rottentomatoes.com]
98% Tomatometer, so you cannot go wrong. ;)
Don't forget China (Score:2)
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Or, they could still hire a few A-list actors and just not go nuts on effects and executive producers. There is no excuse for it costing $500m now when it cost under $100m very recently.
They should save the expensive effects for the movies that need it, like superhero movies that in the past had to be animation. And you don't need more than a couple A-list actors to make a good superhero movie. They're so caught up in fighting for the top selling movie that they forget to aim for a high profit margin on mul
Sobs (Score:5, Funny)
Boo hoo, I can't compete in the market place with a terrible product by taking advantage of the customers inferior access to information about it.
Damn internet. Its so unfair
Re:Sobs (Score:5, Insightful)
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I didn't go, but not because of Rotten Tomatoes (Score:5, Interesting)
I looked up movie times on Google. It had a sidebar with a metacritic score that seemed low. I followed that and saw actual reviews, which were also (in the aggregate) pretty bad. Are all of those equally at fault?
This is for Pirates 5, by the way. Part of the reason I looked is because Pirates 4 was already really disappointing compared to the first three, and Depp has been in a death spiral for years. That and the appearance of yet more dead/undead pirates (how many different ways is that even possible) in the previews had me seriously worried. If all of that hadn't already been hanging over the movie, I wouldn't have bothered to second-guess my impulse to just go down and watch it.
I'll still see it, by the way, just put it off until it's on Redbox.
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I actually had the chance to go watch a movie this weekend, which I rarely get due to having kids that don't do well with baby sitters.
When I looked at what was available the two movies mentioned at the top were the two I considered. I ultimately decided to just stay home and watch some Netflix. I missed the fourth pirates movie because it hasn't hit Netflix yet, and so going to see the fifth one seemed silly, plus the wife would probably want to watch it as well. Baywatch looked funny as hell if possibly a
Make something worth watching (Score:5, Insightful)
and the problem will go away.
Simple really but Hollywood would rather make endless sequels and prequels.
Is it little wonder that I gave up on going to watch them years ago, there really was very little worth watching that wasn't full of bangs, explosions and car chases OR a stupid plotless romcom.
Where are films like "North by Northwest" these days?
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Its the symptom, stupid (Score:4, Insightful)
Metareview sites such as Rotten Tomatoes have become so successful and influential because they've proven to be a reliable means for many people to avoid seeing shitty movies. Their methodology is of course imperfect and many movies fall through the cracks, but nonetheless I think Rotten Tomatoes wouldn't be successful if there wasn't a demand for it, and the reason that demand exists is that consumers are tired of the blatant abuses of movie producers phoning it in for easy cash outs and audiences carrying the burden.
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I'll rent a shitty movie, or worse, wait to see it on TV, which makes it shittier by slicing and dicing to fit with the commercials and the 3 hour time slot. And most of the time, it is not worth it even then.
Great movies don't always stand the test of time, good movies usually do, and rarely do bad movies last forever. Most movies are forgettable. And people have figured that out. It isn't worth $50 date night for a bad movie, bad popcorn and flat soda.
Take Dumb and Dumber ..... (Score:2)
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fixed that for you...
It takes a wonder woman... (Score:4, Informative)
Wonder Woman has a 96% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. What studio is going to complain about that?
http://www.thewrap.com/wonder-woman-has-a-higher-rotten-tomatoes-score-than-any-other-dc-or-marvel-movie-so-far/ [thewrap.com]
Re:It takes a wonder woman... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Judging by the moderation on my apparently controversial question I'd say you have it correct.
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There is some merit here (Score:5, Interesting)
Now, applying this logic to the apparent failure of yet another 'Pirates' movie seems like a major stretch. As for Baywatch, I don't know.
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Indeed. I think scores like Rotten Tomatoes provides are useful; however, it's not the whole story. I wouldn't see/not see a film based purely upon it's ratings. I've like films Rotten Tomatoes called rotten, and hated films it loved.
We're all individuals and none of us will always like what the mainstream always like.
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Which is exactly the point. Not everyone is, or wants to be, a movie buff. A lot of people just go "what's in the theater today?", knock out anything they've already seen and look for a quick ranking of the stuff that's left. They don't want to spend 3 hours scanning through every pissant's comment (or even real critic comments) to decide whether or not they should watch a 90 minute movie.
Of course they are... (Score:3)
One small problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Tastes change (Score:3)
and if you don't change with them then maybe you're the one wrong. This has Skinner meme written all over it.
I have an idea (Score:2)
Fixed that for you (Score:2, Insightful)
Movie goers Are Blaming Rotten Studios For Making Movies No One Wants To See
I can imagine a scenario (Score:2)
I can imagine a scenario where Hollywood starts making lots of really good quality films, and half the reviews on rotten tomatoes are still bad because of higher expectations caused by all the great new films and relative grading (i.e. on a curve).
I can also imagine in this situation that people will be willing to go see more movies, because they find that they thoroughly enjoy even the movies that got mediocre scores on rotten tomatoes.
How about that Hollywood? Make better movies. I get that the public d
Same as last one (Score:5, Informative)
32% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
The previous Pirates movie also got 32% and grossed over a billion dollars.
http://screenrant.com/worst-re... [screenrant.com]
I never trust Rotten Tomatoes (Score:3)
So which is which? (Score:2)
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Riiiiiggggghhhhhtttt (Score:2)
Evidence? (Score:2)
I don't see (in that article) any evidence for the case that reviews are actually a part of the problem here.
I don't need to read a single review to know whether I want to see more PoC (seen too much, over it) or Baywatch (over it 20 years ago).
Using existing IP to churn out film after film is not a safe bet. At some point, audience interest saturation will be reached. Very little could convince me to go and see most of the retreads out there these days. I've already seen most of them half a dozen times ove
Who in their right mind? (Score:2)
Who in their right mind listens to to Rotten Tomato ratings? Every year is is like dozen black and white french films that get 100% along with a few Hollywood films that are equally as horrible. What gets high rating on Rotten Tomatoes appears to about .1% of the moving going audience. Anyone who pays attention to reviews knows that a Rotten Tomato is in no way indicative of your viewing pleasure.
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So many pretentious art movies! Like Mad Max:Fury Road, Star Wars: Episode VII, and The Lego Movie.
I like plenty of movies that were badly rated (Score:2)
So I don't put much stock into rotten tomatoes. I've looked up movies that I love and many have crap ratings even though I was entertained. To me if it receives a low rating I just consider it more niche and with less wide appeal. That doesn't necessarily make it a bad movie.
I've also hated plenty of movies with high ratings.
If rotten tomatoes does have an effect maybe they should blame this on something more fundamental such as lack of critical thinking and independent thinking.
Rotten Tomatoes didn't stop DC Comics (Score:2)
25% rotten Suicide Squad earned $325 million in the US and $725 million worldwide.
The truth is that audiences will go see your movie if they want to regardless of the critics. Pirates has been on a steady decline since the first movie and no one really cares any longer and a raunchy adult comedy spin on Baywatch completely ignores why it was so popular in the first place.
Prior art... (Score:2)
I agree with Hollywood. This new way of forcing reviewers to choose good or bad gets two thumbs down from me.
The studios have a point. (Score:2)
An ideal rating system would have a flat histogram across all movies and across all critics, but Rotten Tomatoes' is not flat [tumblr.com] (see the second graph on that page) and so it's just downright clumsy. It's amazing that it works at all!
And when a critic likes or dislikes two similar movies, I want to see which one he or she likes more, but the fresh/rotten criteria prevents that. Even a 5-star rating system doesn't have enough precision much of the time.
This is why movies should be rated not in isolation but aga
Should... (Score:2)
Should we blame the Internet?
Or blame society?
Or should we blame competition from TV?
Yes, but for different reasons. (Score:2)
For me, it's all of the inflated reviews that are killing the movies for me. There was a time when you could trust the RT reviews (within reason). But some of the worst movies I've seen, in recent years, were all in the high 90s on RT. All the hype, marketing and junkets had led me to wait a year or so before finally watching a movie. By then, things have settled down, and you can get a true idea for how you'll like a movie, from user comments (and rarely ever, professional reviews).
Dick pic (Score:2)
Baywatch lost me as a potential viewer when the ad for it includes a scene of The Rock taking a dick-pic of a corpse...
Make better movies Hollywood.
Silly Plots (Score:2)
I get tired of movies (and TV shows) with silly improbable plots. All of the technobabble that doesn't even make sense to non-technical people. Plots that NOBODY would do. The good guy with an AK-47 disabling a computer system by inserting a USB stick in some hole in a completely improbable place instead of just putting a round or two in the main CPU. The hero runs all over the place trying to fix something they should just ignore, or the bad guy is coming and they get OUT of their car and hide! The go
They have a point (Score:2)
They have a point, the Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer critic score is "31%" for Pirates of the Carribean with an average critic score of 4.7/10, while the audience score (percentage of users that rated it 3.5 or higher) is 71% with an average rating of 3.8/5 (equivalent to 7.6/10)
Since most people aren't critics, it seems that they'd be better served by the Audience Score rather than the more critical Tomatometer which is the score that's more heavily promoted on the site.
RT breaks the studios' old formulas (Score:2)
Movie tax (Score:5, Insightful)
We should all pay a special movie tax to the government, even if we don't see any films. Then redistribute that money to Hollywood, even if they make bad films. Because we as a society should bend over backwards to support failing business models that cannot adapt to change.
Cons: we pay an unnecessary tax.
Pros: we don't have to actually waste our time watching the bad films.
RT ratings aren't always fair to comedies (Score:2)
To be fair, RT often slaps poor ratings on comedies that the fans of the genre still find to be entertaining and worth of watching.
Waaaaa Alert! (Score:2)
DMCA 2.0 will ban bad reviews! (Score:2)
DMCA 2.0 will ban bad reviews!
wait a minute... (Score:2)
So, there isn't the slightest possibility that (a) the movie really was crap, (b) the cost of making it was overblown, (c) prices to see it in-theater are outrageously high, and (d) more and more often, one's home system, which isn't being managed by bored, narcissistic teens, provides a better experience?
Or are they saying that they know that all the above is true, and their business model depends on people not knowing going in that they're about to have an expensive, lousy experience? Because that's what
Rotten Tomatoes Is Losing Its Touch on Reality (Score:3)
I've been an avid user of RottenTomatoes since its inception - and I'd like to think that I've saved a lot of money over the years as my wife and I are both avid movie-goers - we use it to dodge some real turds.
But over the last couple of years, I'm increasingly starting to feel like RottenTomatoes is losing its relevance. It used to be that audience reviews were within a few percentage points of critic reviews. Now...its like critics go out of their way to dislike anything that isn't an indie-film documentary, and don't write reviews that align with anything the movie-going public might think.
Baywatch is a prime example. 17% critic review, 70% audience review. What kind of bullshit is that? What value is a critic, or an aggregate site like RottenTomatoes if the work they are doing doesn't reflect what a movie-goer might think of the film?
Two issues, critics and Rotten Tomatoes (Score:3)
They are not the same thing.
Movie Critics as a whole tend to ignore/poorly rate certain types of movies (comedies, action) while excessively praising certain other types. (Documentaries, drama). This is a separate issue than Rotten Tomatoes. I would agree that the movie critics need to fix how they grade movies. Among other things, they should be forced to bell curve, WITHIN categories. That is they should rate action movies only in comparison to other action movies, and give the best one of the year a 5 star rating, even if they did not like it as much as the documentary about how horrible murder is.
Rotten Tomatoes is another, separate issue. It is a great informational site, and they are complaining about it being GOOD at it's job, rather than bad it's job. They are in no way to blame for the scores the critics give and should not be blamed if movies do poorly because no one wants to see a piece of crap.
People who start the comment in the subject box ar (Score:5, Insightful)
e retards.
Re: (Score:2)
Correction: Fandango is co-owned by NBCUniversal (Comcast) and Warner Bros (which still has a 30 percent stake). So, yeah, I guess Fandango and Rotten Tomatoes must be single-handedly destroying the movie business.
Re:You sure it's rotten tomatos? (Score:5, Interesting)
The problem with Toxic Feminism is that it views as toxic anything masculine, unless it is a woman with balls the size of Bayonne. The problem I have with this, is that it doesn't ever embrace the true strengths of women as virtuous on their own merit. The unreal expectation that a woman can bear the part of a man, with exceptional strength, skill and agility is part of the problem, short of the superhero genre.
There are rare exceptions, where a strong woman character fits the script, the genre and doesn't go overboard with the Machismo Woman character. I think the original Alien movie makes a great example. But the whole movie wasn't about a bad ass woman going to town, it was about a normal woman going to town. The power of two "mother" figures out to protect their "young". Classic play missed by the feminists, and douchebag men equally, because they are overtly looking at things completely wrong.
There are lots of other strong characters built around women, and it is sad to see them play second fiddle to Wolverine movies. Not that those were unwatchable, but Black Widow (Avengers) probably needs her own movie, where we can see her full skillset, not just her badass fighting techniques.
But we get Wonderwoman so .... there is that.
Re: (Score:2)
>There are rare exceptions, where a strong woman character fits the script,
Fargo.
Re: (Score:3)
There is a lot of mob politics in anonymous rating systems. Consumers are often unqualified to evaluate the artistic merits of a piece, or to provide unbiased feedback or reviews. Judging something subjective, such as film, is pretty difficult to do fairly and in a way that provides value.
Review systems that ask individuals to rate something based on how they personally liked it, then averaging thousands of those together gives you one easy metric that has almost zero value.
If we were to rate fruit, I might