Rotten Tomatoes watch thread

[AVEITWITHJAMON]

I know this isn’t a superhero film but didn’t the Last Jedi get like a 90% on RT? If you look at the top critics rating, TLJ actually has a whopping 95% fresh score on the site which I find kind of hilarious given how strong the vitriol for that movie is.

Well I despise The Last Jedi as a movie and that was the start of me losing faith in RT.

 

[writer0327]

But their job (the critics) is to review the movie itself...not the experience of watching the movie. I had a great time watching The Phantom Menace in theaters when it came out, but I later realized that experience skewed my perception of the movie into thinking it was better than it actually was. If the critics can be easily swayed just by the audience reaction, then they’re not doing their job right.

Well critics are also human, let's not reduce them to cold, dispassionate analyzers. How a movie makes you feel is certainly a part of the experience of watching it, and if a movie is supposed to be a joyful crowd pleaser, but you're watching it without a crowd, it will hit you differently. Many movies aren't slam dunk hits nor steaming piles of garbage. Most are floating around "okay" and "not okay" and a little thing like a big crowd and a lot of fans cheering have probably made the difference between a fresh tomato or a splat.

 

[Green Goblin]

Well I despise The Last Jedi as a movie and that was the start of me losing faith in RT.

The audience score for TLJ was rotten though.

 

[psylockolussus]

I mean... Rotten tomatoes is a site that collects reviews and come up with a consensus/average score/average rating. It does reflect on the quality of the movie but ultimately you will have to see the film for yourself to judge it. Samething with Metacritic . Just because something is 67% it doesn't mean the site told you to have believe that its only 67% good. Even the staff there love some movies with a rotten rating.

For eXample, Logan is the highest rated X-Men movie there and imo, its the most overrated comic book film of all time along with the Dark Knight. But I don't go ranting about rotten Tomatoes.

 

[Avs21]

I don’t know why the critics would be pissed off by that. They still get to review the movies whether they’re in theaters or streaming. It’s not like movies in general are becoming extinct.

It's just a theory I got, based on the huge difference between the first reviews and the later. I'm far from convinced it's true.

I assume most critics treasure the theatrical experience, if not it's a odd career choice.

 

[Prison Mike]

It's just a theory I got, based on the huge difference between the first reviews and the later. I'm far from convinced it's true.

I assume most critics treasure the theatrical experience, if not it's a odd career choice.

I’m sure they treasure it, but at the end of the day they’re reviewing the movie, not the actual experience of watching the movie.

 

[psylockolussus]

Having seen the movie, the movie would have been more disappointing if I saw it in a theater. It is a not good movie, not even fun.

 

[Fosterson]

Well I despise The Last Jedi as a movie and that was the start of me losing faith in RT.

If anything were to make one lose faith in RT, it ought to have been when Avatar got 82% Fresh.

 

[Fosterson]

I mean... Rotten tomatoes is a site that collects reviews and come up with a consensus/average score/average rating. It does reflect on the quality of the movie but ultimately you will have to see the film for yourself to judge it. Samething with Metacritic . Just because something is 67% it doesn't mean the site told you to have believe that its only 67% good. Even the staff there love some movies with a rotten rating.

For eXample, Logan is the highest rated X-Men movie there and imo, its the most overrated comic book film of all time along with the Dark Knight. But I don't go ranting about rotten Tomatoes.

Couldn't agree more. RT is not - and nor does it claim to be - the last word on film quality. It simply reflects the broad consensus of a large number of film critics.

So, if you take issue with a movie's score, then you really can't blame that on RT. They're just reporting on other people's reviews.

 

[Webfoot Hero]

I think a better arbiter of quality than the RT score is the metascore from Metacritic. WW84 is scoring a 59 while WW scored a 76.

 

[writer0327]

Right or wrong, Rotten Tomatoes is looked upon as a measurement or indicator of quality for films. It has been widely accepted throughout the media, it has been used in advertising, and the general public will make decisions on what they're gonna see based on the RT score. It's a very important number.

 

[Holy Slapper]

If anything were to make one lose faith in RT, it ought to have been when Avatar got 82% Fresh.

Was there something wrong with the math? This is for everyone who says they're "losing faith in RT". Are you losing faith in math? Because that's all RT essentially is.

 

[psylockolussus]

Since when do we put "faith" on critics, let alone a website that just collects hundreds of reviews - its a review aggregate site. I visit it regulary because its interesting but I certainly don't watch every film based on a Rt rating. It could be a guide if you're on the fence in watching ta certain film or if you are just curious about the reaction from critics. But if you are really interested in watching something that interest you, then a site like Rotten Tomatoes shouldn't stop you.

And if you don't agree with the score/rating/consensus (from different critics/site which sent their review to Rt in the first place) then just ignore it. I ignore Rt ratings for tv shows as there aren't a lot of critics that would review the entire season. This has been eXplained almost everytime there's a new blockbuster fliX.

 

[writer0327]

It could be a guide if you're on the fence in watching ta certain film or if you are just curious about the reaction from critics. But if you are really interested in watching something that interest you, then a site like Rotten Tomatoes shouldn't stop you.

My uneducated guess is most people who use RT probably watch between 5-10 movies a year. They want to make sure they don't see a dud when they do get out and see something.

 

[idiot09]

I think a better arbiter of quality than the RT score is the metascore from Metacritic. WW84 is scoring a 59 while WW scored a 76.

True. Most people think(wrongly) that RT gives a score for a movie, like a test. If its 60/100, that's just a average score, and anything less than that means its a bad movie. But that's not how the site works, and that's why its misleading. People saying "dont blame the site, its just math", are missing the point. Sure its just aggregating, but its a silly way of doing it. Metacritic makes more sense.

Here's something I agree with that I read recently :

Millions of people rely on Rotten Tomatoes, but not many of them know how it actually works. Rotten Tomatoes scores are calculated in the simplest of ways: the share of positive reviews a movie received by well-established film critics. This score does not distinguish between an extremely good review and a barely positive one.

That is crazy. As a data analyst, if I was trying to assess the quality of a product, I would never take a set of nuanced reviews and turn them into what statisticians call “binaries” (yes or no, 1 or 0, positive or negative). By doing it this way, you lose tons of pertinent information. Instead, I would try to assess the positivity of the review on a continuous scale, like 0-100 or A-F or even 1-5 clamshells, and then take the average or median of those scores.

Luckily, there is a review website that does just that: Metacritic. Whatever the other merits of these sites, Metacritic’s method of scoring movies is simply better than Rotten Tomatoes’.

Metacritic takes reviews from critics, gives them a 0-100 score, and then averages those scores. Metacritic has a higher threshold for the renown of the critic whose reviews are considered for the site, so while the Rotten Tomatoes’ score for Aquaman includes the reviews of 312 critics, Metacritic only uses 49. (The movie got a score of 55.) Also, as Allison Wilkinson explains in Vox, Metacritic gives more weight in its average to the most highly respected critics, like those from the New York Times.
A comparison of the Metacritic and Rotten Tomatoes scores for the hits Crazy Rich Asians and A Star is Born reveals the differences between the two sites. Crazy Rich Asians, a fun romantic comedy, scored a 91 on Rotten Tomatoes, while A Star is Born, a leading contender to win Best Picture at the Academy Awards, received a 90. A virtual tie. On Metacritic, by contrast, Crazy Rich Asians got a 74, compared with an 88 for A Star is Born. Both are pleasant movies, so I can see how going by just yes or no answers, they could be rated similarly. But to me and most critics, A Star is Born is a much higher quality movie. If I could only see one of them, it would be wise to go with Gaga.

Statistics are a powerful tool for assessing culture, but only when used properly. The next time you are deciding which movie to see, if you want to see something great, and not just good, consider what goes into that review sites’ calculations.

The way I see it, RT rewards mediocrity. Make a safe, vanilla, crowdpleaser, you will be rewarded. Make something more ambitious, you may flirt with "rotten". I mean its a site where Ant Man 2 is at 87% while Joker is 68%. Its far from being the last word, or being a general indicator of the "quality" of a film. It doesnt tell us the quality of the film, it only tells us the consensus among critics.

I personally dont obsess over RT score. If its a movie I'm excited about, I'm not happy if the score is good, nor sad its bad. Do I look at what critics are saying about a song I like? No. Most people have their own subjective ideas about movies, and that's what matters. If you wanna know what the critics are saying, metacritic is a good bet. You get to know how many reliable reviewers are positive, mixed or negative about a movie. It tells you how the critics think about that movie(not that critics are a monolithic entity but anyway). I just dont get the mentality of people who obsess over the score, as if its test, and then if it goes below a threshold, that it suddenly means that the movie is bad. That's just weird to me lol.

 

[TheFuture]

Joker started out like 80% and dropped into the 60s. That's the only other time I can think of, but I didn't follow other films like I do CBMs

65% now. Which is the same as Aquaman.

So, at this point, I think we gotta ask...what exactly was going on with that first wave of reviews?

I think you will see more of this happening with Rotten Tomatoes tbh. I mean it makes sense when you think about it since they added hundreds of certified reviewers recently.

First you have the ones with early access which generally float towards positive (not saying anything necessarily wrong there, just that all things add up to a positive movie going experience).

Then you'll have the reviews from the experienced, reputable outlets. Speaking from my own locality, the film was getting generally 3/5 or average grades from the likes of the Guardian and Irish Times.

Then the final flood comes from the hundreds of, I can't think of a better phrase, the "lowest tier" of certified critics who probably don't have early access. The simple truth now is that it is this tier, the lowest one, that is going to decide on a films final score on RT.

Because there's so many of them in this tier, it's very possible that you will see a large drop from the initial score.

The last thing I would say also in regards to this tier is that this is where you're going to see a myriad of all sorts of criticism, and where one makes a fanciful claim the rest will follow and latch on.

 

[psylockolussus]

My uneducated guess is most people who use RT probably watch between 5-10 movies a year. They want to make sure they don't see a dud when they do get out and see something.

Hmm I feel like a website like rotten tomatoes is targeted more for movie junkies. Like I dont know any person who rarely watch movies knows what rotten tomatoes is. But I guess it might have become yelp for movies.

 

[Prison Mike]

My uneducated guess is most people who use RT probably watch between 5-10 movies a year. They want to make sure they don't see a dud when they do get out and see something.

Yeah...that sounds like me. I do look at the RT score before going to the theater to see whether the movie is worth going out for. I only go to the theaters a handful of times a year.

 

[Mjolnir Reborn]

True. Most people think(wrongly) that RT gives a score for a movie, like a test. If its 60/100, that's just a average score, and anything less than that means its a bad movie. But that's not how the site works, and that's why its misleading. People saying "dont blame the site, its just math", are missing the point. Sure its just aggregating, but its a silly way of doing it. Metacritic makes more sense.

I don't really agree with that due to the reason that I don't think aggregating views on art has much merit since it's about the individual experience. Therefor if it's done I think it should be done as superficially as possible (focusing on a simple yes or no question) and any desire to have any more depth to base a potential decision on is far better served by reading a review. RT also has a lot more critics so if someone necessarily wants an aggregate I'd say that having 4-5 times as many critics makes that effort better.

It's similar to how I think people put too much emphasis on grades, which causes them to have unnecessarily detailed scales. I prefer people using a rough scale and putting the detail in text, where it can be appropriately handled.

The way I see it, RT rewards mediocrity. Make a safe, vanilla, crowdpleaser, you will be rewarded. Make something more ambitious, you may flirt with "rotten". I mean its a site where Ant Man 2 is at 87% while Joker is 68%. Its far from being the last word, or being a general indicator of the "quality" of a film. It doesnt tell us the quality of the film, it only tells us the consensus among critics.

You calling it mediocre in that context is inevitably you pushing your view on someone else, when it's entirely subjective. A critic that says a film is fresh likely doesn't think it's mediocre (perceived mediocrity seems to be counted as rotten more often than not). I also see no reason for anyone to say that a film is good because it did something more unique or ambitious if that person thinks that thing was bad.

As a side note, Metacritic has Ant-Man 2 as "good" at 70 and Joker as "mixed" at 59, so RT and Metacritic doesn't differ on that point. I personally prefer Joker out of those but it doesn't change my views on aggregates.

 

[psylockolussus]

Its now down to WW64% with over 300 reviews.

 

[Steyin]

This movie though, sadly, is now going to become the beacon—the shining example going forward of why to never trust early reactions.

Early reactions for quite a few movies over the last couple of years have met the same fate, so I wouldn't deem this the go to reference. Seems normal now for several superhero/sci-fi/fantasy films.

 

[Detective Conan]

Here’s a pretty good video going into the reasons behind the massive drop in its RT score.

 

[Frodo]

Early reactions for quite a few movies over the last couple of years have met the same fate, so I wouldn't deem this the go to reference. Seems normal now for several superhero/sci-fi/fantasy films.

Yeah. I find alot of the first sort of tweet reviews are from reviewers who are more a part of the fan community and tend to work for publications or outlets which cater to or are really in hooked into fandom, superhero, fantasy etc stuff.

So in a sense, I think they can be more accepting or receptive to a given cbm than other more non comic based mainstream critics, websites, publications may be with the same cbm.

In other words , an IGN critic, for example, may end up giving a more positive review to a given film than a critic from Newsweek, The Washington Post, or The New York times. I'm not arguing it happens all that time , because sometimes both groups align and have the same opinions.

Still, i've found with several films recently, that the first wave of positive reviews/tweets tend to be the more geek culture critics and then the onslaught of mixed to negative comes from the mainstream non geek culture critics.

So there ends up being this sugar high at first , and then it comes crashing down once the bigger outlets and more critics begin weighing in with harsher assessments.

 

[Micromind]

Wonder Woman 1984 is a comic book movie, and it will get more than 450+ reviews, number of Top Critics reviewing this movie is also higher than usual (so far 66 Top Critics have reviewed this movie). Top Critics rating is now at 70 %.

 

[UncleSam1776]

If you look at the IMDB ratings stats for this film you can clearly see that it is getting ratings bombed by people. It's already the lowest rated DCEU movie and over 10% have rated it 1 out of 10. That's nearly 7% more than a very divisive Batman v Superman.