The Official Captain America Critic's Review Thread - Part 2

[Son of Coul]

Nice, so all the MCU films have a certified fresh rating on RT. 'Cept TIH, but even that has a fresh. Not particularly significant, but still pretty cool, considering how tough most critics can be (not on CBM's in particular, but in general).

[DyeLorean]

I don't remember a "certified fresh'" film that went from that to "fresh" again.

[TheVileOne]

Good to see the meddling from Time Warner couldn't even ruin the bad feedback for this movie. Nice try Rotten Tomatoes.

To people who think I am crazy there was definitely something shady about the way RT was scoring the film when reviews first started coming out.

[Marvel]

Even though it's "word of mouth week" for Cap it's good to see the bashers falling short.

They are trying on the IMDB reader review page however.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0458339/usercomments

Fans need to go there and vote "YES" at the bottom of the good reviews when they ask if the above review was helpful. This bumps the good reviews to the front page and to the top. This film deserves all the REAL praise it is generating.

[Jennn]

once a movie is Certified Fresh (at least 40 reviews with a 75% rating or better) the movie stays Certified Fresh unless it drops beneath 60%.

lol Even thought I know it's ridiculous, I can't help but be pleased that Cap worked it's way up to a certified fresh rating. yay for the little guy! It's also awesome that 4-5 of the most recent fresh reviews have been from international entertainment sources. Fingers crossed for a good WW box office showing this weekend.

[TheVileOne]

I don't think it was a matter of working its way up, but a matter of TW/RT cooking the scores.

[Jennn]

The entire rotten tomatoes SYSTEM works arbitrarily. If you believe RT was "cooking the scores" for Cap, then how do you explain Thor? It started in the 90's and dropped to the 70's. C&A was in the 60's, then 70's and is now back in the 50's. The way the system works on a 'first come, first serve basis' means early reviews have a much bigger impact on the score than later ones. And Cap could get another hundred reviews before it's all said and done. Which could easily lower or drop the rating. No input from RT needed.

If you're going to believe there was something fishy going that first day, well, there's nothing anyone could possibly say that would convince you otherwise.

But for a week? After it stabilized in the high 60's low 70's, it then took 2-3 days to work it's self up to 75. Did you look at the most recent reviews? the ones that pushed it up to 75%? 4-5 of those were international. That means they weren't even available last Friday or Saturday. They wouldn't publish those until this week because the movie doesn't come OUT until this week in those countries.

[RedSkull]

cant believe the idiots complaining about it being certified fresh on RT's twitter page.

[D4rkShaDoWz]

up to 76%! Maybe it can get a little higher

[Hurm...]

Thor has 246 reviews, and Cap only has 156. So It can still manage to go up to 80% by the time all the reviews are submitted.

[TheVileOne]

Originally Posted by Jennn

The entire rotten tomatoes SYSTEM works arbitrarily. If you believe RT was "cooking the scores" for Cap, then how do you explain Thor? It started in the 90's and dropped to the 70's. C&A was in the 60's, then 70's and is now back in the 50's. The way the system works on a 'first come, first serve basis' means early reviews have a much bigger impact on the score than later ones. And Cap could get another hundred reviews before it's all said and done. Which could easily lower or drop the rating. No input from RT needed.

If you're going to believe there was something fishy going that first day, well, there's nothing anyone could possibly say that would convince you otherwise.

But for a week? After it stabilized in the high 60's low 70's, it then took 2-3 days to work it's self up to 75. Did you look at the most recent reviews? the ones that pushed it up to 75%? 4-5 of those were international. That means they weren't even available last Friday or Saturday. They wouldn't publish those until this week because the movie doesn't come OUT until this week in those countries.

Correction Jennn, it *WORKED* arbitrarily before Time Warner bought the company .

[Jennn]

Originally Posted by TheVileOne

Correction Jennn, it *WORKED* arbitrarily before Time Warner bought the company .

LOL oh man, you can passive aggressive smiley all you want, but that doesn't mean the witch hunt over RT last week wasn't crazy. And that's all you got? really? The excuse that Warner Bros now owns it? That doesn't explain anything about how C&A started positive and then dropped. Or the numbers for any of the other movies coming out this week that are fresh.

There's always competition between movie studios... but I've yet to see an explanation that makes sense about how RT messed with Cap's numbers. And you certainly aren't giving me one.

Originally Posted by Hurm...

Thor has 246 reviews, and Cap only has 156. So It can still manage to go up to 80% by the time all the reviews are submitted.

I think it averages about 4-5 Fresh reviews (with no negatives) to move up 1% right now. So yes! And the last 15 reviews or so have all been positive! Cap at least has a chance of catching up with Thor.

[TomPiltoff]

Thank you for being the voice of sanity and common sense.

[StarkTheProdigy]

I'm glad to see this rise up from the 30 percentile and make it to certified fresh.

[TheVileOne]

Originally Posted by Jennn

LOL oh man, you can passive aggressive smiley all you want, but that doesn't mean the witch hunt over RT last week wasn't crazy. And that's all you got? really? The excuse that Warner Bros now owns it? That doesn't explain anything about how C&A started positive and then dropped. Or the numbers for any of the other movies coming out this week that are fresh.

There's always competition between movie studios... but I've yet to see an explanation that makes sense about how RT messed with Cap's numbers. And you certainly aren't giving me one.




I think it averages about 4-5 Fresh reviews (with no negatives) to move up 1% right now. So yes! And the last 15 reviews or so have all been positive! Cap at least has a chance of catching up with Thor.

here you go

[Jennn]

Originally Posted by TheVileOne

here you go

okay, well, I got three paragraphs in and had to stop because of the utter ridiculousness. Some choice bits from the beginning:

As I write this the score stands at 58% with a 7/10 rating, 14 positive reviews and 10 negative. Wow? 7/10 still, and it sits at a 58% rating?

This, my friend, is simple math. RT uses a scale of 1-10. So if the 14 Fresh reviews were VERY positive, they probably rated Cap with a 9 or 10. And if the majority of the Rottens were just mediocre reviews with a rating between 2.5-3/5 (or 5-6/10) then it is safe to say they that all the reviews together would average out to a 7/10. I was following the reviews coming in as well, and there was only that one insanely negative village voice review.

But 14 out of 24 is still just 58%. There are two very different rating systems at work here.

I know for a fact there are way more than 14 positive reviews from major critics out there, and maybe there are more than 10 negative reviews from major critics but I don't see them. In fact every negative review that I see on the web is updated on RT, but there are still tons of positive reviews yet to be released.

I said this last week and I'm saying again, not all of those positive reviews were from critics who post on RT. There is actually an entire process to becoming a RT reviewer (you can read about it on the RT site) and then reviewers have to actually SUBMIT their reviews to RT. RT does NOT go looking for them. There is absolutely no way for us to know when a critic submitted their review to be counted on RT. (Those critics had to be more concerned about getting their reviews up on their own sites than posting to RT.) I'm willing to bet this guy is counting positive blogger reviews that will never be counted on RT. Not last Wednesday. Not last Saturday. Not today. Not ever.

I also find it odd that of those 10 negative reviews 3 of them don't actually seem negative and they all have a score over 60%, is RT actually reading these things?

This was originally something I questioned as well. Why a critic rates something a 2.5 and it's fresh for one movie but then rotten for another. But then another poster explained that when critics submit their reviews THEY decide whether it's fresh or rotten. So it's not RT "cooking with the system" it's actually the critics themselves who are failing at sticking to their own personal rating systems. RT just publishes what the critics submit.



Yeah, I'm done. There were at least 5 or 6 more paragraphs to that article and I can't stand to read it. If there was something more specific you wanted to make a point of, go for it. But these arguments don't hold their weight. Was the RT twitter poking a little fun at Cap? Sure. I didn't like it either. But that doesn't mean there's some nefarious plan in the works to bring Cap down.

TBH I'm just happy that Cap has managed to make it up to 76%! That's awesome! I loved the movie and I want it to do well. But articles like the one you linked to do nothing but to make everyone look crazy.

[psylockolussus]

Thor and Incredible Hulk are way better than the Captain America. So Captain America better not get a 80% rating.

[Infinity9999x]

Originally Posted by psylockolussus

Thor and Incredible Hulk are way better than the Captain America. So Captain America better not get a 80% rating.

Opinion's my friend. Opinions.

[GhostPoet]

I really can't stand Rotten Tomatoes. I'll take metacritic over it. Though I generally stay away from review sites...if I had to go to one, it'd be metacritic.

[D4rkShaDoWz]

At 77% now - long way from the original 33%

[Iceman]

No numbers mean anything till you've got a decent number of reviews as your sample size and Cap has not been low since those reviews came in. I don't think there's any conspiracy, just that RT twitter is extremely irresponsible. The point of an aggregator site is to give a much fairer representative (critical) view than any individual reviewer could ever give and if you're going to start sending out tweets after 6 or so reviews (whether the film is +ve or -ve at the time) then you have defeated the purpose of your site.

[TheVileOne]

RT Twitter is irresponsible and immature who ever writes on them.

[jmc]

Review in other thread.

[Liam_H]

Originally Posted by jmc

I couldn't see a user review thread so I'll just post this here.

Isn't the user review thread a sticky that's right next to this one? But its all the same in the end.

[jmc]

Originally Posted by Liam_H

Isn't the user review thread a sticky that's right next to this one? But its all the same in the end.

I saw two review threads and chose this one, lol. I'll post it in the other.