Rotten Tomatoes

[Olivia Bauer]

https://screenrant.com/joker-movie-reviews-rotten-tomatoes-broken/amp/

What do you guys think of Rotten Tomatoes? Apparently, the way they aggregate their scores makes no sense.

Basically reviews are only categorized as "Fresh" or "Rotten".
So hypothetically, if all critics agree a film is just "Ok", that film gets a 100%.

Not sure why people use RT before Metacritic.

[Gabriel Knight]

I think it's a terrible site that rigs scores for their own benefit. It's most aimed at "professional" critics rather than regular viewers, which I believe IMDb is a much better placer for this.

I avoid that awful place like the plague.

[Rev. Powell]

I think it's a terrible site that rigs scores for their own benefit.

Why do you believe that?

[RCMerchant]

I dunno. I never gave it much attention. After they ate up Flixter and stole all my reviews, I have little respect for them. And my reviews were almost all one liners! Why would they even want that crap? 

[Trevor]

I have had a few thrown at me, yes. 

[Gabriel Knight]

I think it's a terrible site that rigs scores for their own benefit.

Why do you believe that?

They already deleted a lot of reviews because they considered them "trolls". That means, every time someone bash a s**tty movie that they're defending, then those people are basically sexist / nazis / whatever, and their opinions aren't important. Recent movies that suffered from this selective reviews were THE LAST JEDI, GHOSTBUSTERS 3, CAPTAIN MARVEL, and I believe there are others. They actually changed the rules of the site to adjust to this agenda.

Not to say that IMDb is 100% trustworthy - sometimes it baffles me watching the ratings and then reading the user reviews. THE LAST JEDI is a prime example: the reviews with 1/10 score have thousands of votes, yet the overall movie score is 7, rarely other film have those numbers (the usual consensus is that, if the user reviews are mostly negative, it will be reflected in the final score). Then you have other situations like AFTER LAST SEASON which have a lot of fake accounts voting perfect scores.

The difference between both sites is that IMDb at least keeps the user reviews so you can see them, therefore having a more overall impression of the general opinion; not to mention, the reviews are generally more well written and complex, rather than "bad movie, me don't like".
Rotten Tomatoes has the nasty habit of deleting what they don't like. If they're currently keeping with this practice I have no idea, but to me, they're not a reliable site to visit.

Another thing that always kept me away is that the overall look and interface of the site is awful. 

[RCMerchant]

 I agree. f**k Rotten Tomatos.

 plus they smell bad-not as bad as rotten potatoes or onions...and the smell of a dead mouse in the heater vent of your car is really bad.Ugh! And in the dead of winter when you have to use the f**king thing and the only cassette you have is AIR SUPPLY - "I'm so lost in love-I can't live without you"  .
What were we talkng about?

[Allhallowsday]

I am not devoted to too many websites.  I see Rotten Tomatoes assessments occasionally, but I often disagree with reviews or "ratings" from anybody, though opinions and consensus are valuable.  Most of the recent popular films of THIS century do not interest me. 

I don't go to IMDB unless all else fails. 

I use Wikipedia every day.  When I was very young and an avid reader, I read World Book. 

I buy a few times a year from one or two others, but too many passwords are a pain. 

[Rev. Powell]

I think it's a terrible site that rigs scores for their own benefit.

Why do you believe that?

They already deleted a lot of reviews because they considered them "trolls". That means, every time someone bash a s**tty movie that they're defending, then those people are basically sexist / nazis / whatever, and their opinions aren't important. Recent movies that suffered from this selective reviews were THE LAST JEDI, GHOSTBUSTERS 3, CAPTAIN MARVEL, and I believe there are others. They actually changed the rules of the site to adjust to this agenda.

The difference between both sites is that IMDb at least keeps the user reviews so you can see them, therefore having a more overall impression of the general opinion; not to mention, the reviews are generally more well written and complex, rather than "bad movie, me don't like".
Rotten Tomatoes has the nasty habit of deleting what they don't like. If they're currently keeping with this practice I have no idea, but to me, they're not a reliable site to visit.

Another thing that always kept me away is that the overall look and interface of the site is awful. 

But those were only user reviews, which no one pays attention to anyway. (At least, no one should). Critics may not be totally unbiased but they have at least seen the movie and are not anonymous voters.

And there really were trolls for the movies you mentioned. A Facebook group organized people (and claimed to use bots) to downvote THE LAST JEDI before it was released. If they can identify these illegitimate votes, they definitely should delete them. (One of the rule changes RT made was to stop allowing people to vote on movies before they had been released--not sure how anyone could object to that).

IMDB audience votes are just as bad. There were 12,000 "Ghostbusters" votes before the movie was released. People (on both sides) were obviously voting for or against the movie without having seen it based on agendas. That makes those votes useless for anyone who cares about the quality of the movie rather than the gender politics. (All three of the movies you cite were "controversial" and subject of organized downvote campaigns because they featured women as heroes).

IMDB ratings for smaller movies are often heavily manipulated by people who worked on the film and their friends giving high ratings. (And here's another report about audience votes being manipulated in a positive direction on RT: https://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2018/06/something-suspicious-is-happening-with-rotten-toma.html).

Bottom line is, at least in the few high profile cases where gender politics rather than the quality of the movie are determining how people are voting, the critic's opinions are more valuable than the audience votes. Audience ratings will always be more manipulated, because anyone can vote and no one insures they have seen the movie or don't have an agenda.

Metacritic is better, except that it has a much smaller base of critics and they don't cover nearly as many movies.

Here's a good unbiased breakdown of "Ghostbusters": https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/ghostbusters-is-a-perfect-example-of-how-internet-ratings-are-broken/ It touches on a lot of different issues we mentioned here.

[The Burgomaster]

They said Trevor's undies are 100% fresh. That's good enough for me.

[WingedSerpent]

Seems like every time I hear about Rotten Tomatoes these days is how it shows that there is a disconnect between film critics and the normal viewing public. 

Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019) for instance has only a 41% approval from Critics but and 83% approval from audience.

[Svengoolie 3]

RT was eaten by capitalism. Because capitalism eats everything.

A review site starts with the best of intentions. It either stays small and largely ignored or becomes successful, gets larger,  more influential,  and bought up by the very people whose products they were  reviewing. When a site becomes a potential resource, big biz finds a way to shut it down or take it over.

[RCMerchant]

I am not devoted to too many websites.  I see Rotten Tomatoes assessments occasionally, but I often disagree with reviews or "ratings" from anybody, though opinions and consensus are valuable.  Most of the recent popular films of THIS century do not interest me.  

I don't go to IMDB unless all else fails.  

I use Wikipedia every day.  When I was very young and an avid reader, I read World Book.  

I buy a few times a year from one or two others, but too many passwords are a pain.

I had a set of World Book from 1949 that told me man would never set foot on the moon. My Dad found them in an old farmhouse we rented in 1969. So- yeah.
That's when you start to use your own brain and doubt everything you hear and half of what you see.  

[Svengoolie 3]

I am not devoted to too many websites.  I see Rotten Tomatoes assessments occasionally, but I often disagree with reviews or "ratings" from anybody, though opinions and consensus are valuable.  Most of the recent popular films of THIS century do not interest me.  

I don't go to IMDB unless all else fails.  

I use Wikipedia every day.  When I was very young and an avid reader, I read World Book.  

I buy a few times a year from one or two others, but too many passwords are a pain.

I had a set of World Book from 1949 that told me man would never set foot on the moon. My Dad found them in an old farmhouse we rented in 1969. So- yeah.
That's when you start to use your own brain and doubt everything you hear and half of what you see.  

Thast was based on an idiotic and completely inane belief that a rocket could not fly in space  as in vacuum there was no air form the exhaust to push against. This was based on a statement made by a scientifically half ignorant person who did not understand laws of motion.

[El Misfit]

I don't use RT since the rating system is bizarre.  Personally I thought IMDb had a more consistent rating system between critics and users  than RT. IMDb still has a better system than RT, but personally I think it's been borked when Amazon bought them.