Rotten Tomatoes Revamps Movie Audience Scores

[Sithborg]

According to that logic, Transformers 3 and 4 are some of the most beloved movies ever. And minions.

People are allowed to like bad movies. People equate "liking a movie" with "quality". Which is why the audience rating is bull****. It is used far too often to push a narrative to dismiss a movie someone didn't like. Or to dismiss valid criticisms of popular movies. I will take Ghost Rider 2 over the vast majority of Phase 3 content, but I will in no way say it is a better movie.

 

[DarthSkywalker]

People are allowed to like bad movies. People equate "liking a movie" with "quality". Which is why the audience rating is bull****. It is used far too often to push a narrative to dismiss a movie someone didn't like. Or to dismiss valid criticisms of popular movies. I will take Ghost Rider 2 over the vast majority of Phase 3 content, but I will in no way say it is a better movie.

I wouldn't say that, but it is nice to find someone else who gets a kick out of watching Ghost Rider 2.

 

[jmc]

On what planet is it a good idea for private companies to just allow the echo chamber of bigotry? Well history shows us what actually breeds something worse is giving it a platform, letting it grown.

Also you have a general hypocrisy on these discussions. You talk about how companies and artist should be free to do what they want and if someone wants to do something differently, then they should. But then when a company or artist does just that, you get mad about it. What the hell?

Silencing people doesn't stop their views, it's just pushes it underground where you can't see it, where it festers and grows, where you can't offer a counter argument, until one day it explodes in a way that catches everyone off guard. The very echo chamber you're trying to stop you inadvertently create and make worse. I ain't mad, I'm realistic.

 

[DarthSkywalker]

Silencing people doesn't stop their views, it's just pushes it underground where you can't see it, where it festers and grows, where you can't offer a counter argument, until one day it explodes in a way that catches everyone off guard. The very echo chamber you're trying to stop you inadvertently create and make worse. I ain't mad, I'm realistic.

The underground... of the internet!!!

Normalizing of hate for generations to come is far, far, far worse then some *******s talking to each other on a forum.

 

[Grootster]

People are allowed to like bad movies. People equate "liking a movie" with "quality". Which is why the audience rating is bull****. It is used far too often to push a narrative to dismiss a movie someone didn't like. Or to dismiss valid criticisms of popular movies. I will take Ghost Rider 2 over the vast majority of Phase 3 content, but I will in no way say it is a better movie.

Oh definitely, but my point is that the Transformers movies don't seem widely enjoyed. They were seen as dumb fun when they were being released, but they've pretty much completely fallen out of favor now (I'm talking about the Bay movies here, not Bumblebee).

A better example might be Twilight. Those movies were pretty big, and the Twilight series is still considered one of the highest-grossing movie series ever. Back when they were being released, there was an audience for them. But nowadays it's very hard to find anyone who admits to liking them. But their place at the box office will remain forever.

Yet another example is Avatar. Being the highest grossing movie ever, you'd think it would be one of the most beloved movies ever if box-office = audience reception. But it's not culturally significant these days. If box-office = audience reception, that would mean Avatar would be on the average person's list of favorite movies, which just isn't the case.

I'm not necessarily saying the Rotten Tomatoes audience score is a great representation of the majority audience. But I've always disagreed with the idea that box office = audience reception. There are plenty of things that can skew that. In Avatar's case, it's that 3D was the appeal, and 3D tickets cost more than regular tickets. In the case of Transformers and Twilight, it's that the audience has moved away from them.

 

[Sithborg]

Which is where you get into the analysis of numbers.

 

[Abudefduf]

Tell me, which of the movies that were 'review bombed' stayed rotten? I can tell you - none of them. All of them recovered when actual audiences who watched the movies saw it.

Captain Marvel is still rotten. A Cinemascore, great legs at the box office, yet we're supposed to believe that only 58% of the people who watched it actually liked it. It's just not credible.

Let's be real, that movie is the reason RT is implementing those changes. Its low scores proved that the real general audience clearly doesn't agree with the "audience" that votes on RT.

Interestingly, on IMDB Captain Marvel is currently sitting at 7.1, which seems pretty fair to me. IMDB isn't as bad as people say.

According to that logic, Transformers 3 and 4 are some of the most beloved movies ever. And minions.

Their success proves that people loved the movies you mentioned. Does that mean they were good? Obviously not, but a film doesn't make so much money without doing something right.

 

[BatLobster]

Honestly, even if you remove the troll armies and review bombs out of the equation, this is probably how it should've always been. Yeah, it may limit your sample size but at least anyone who gets to submit a review that gets weighed in an aggregate score at least is confirmed to have seen the movie. I never trusted the audience score for that reason, because it works the other way too where fans can inflate a movie's score before a movie even comes out.

But some of these troll armies have tried to weaponize that audience score even though it never mattered all that much in the first place. That shouldn't just get a free pass. And I swear, if anyone complains that their free speech is being violated by this move, give me a friggin' break. You do not have any inherent right to negatively impact a review score for a movie you haven't seen yet. And they're still allowing everyone to vote and will have an "All Audience" score option anyway for those who want to see that.

Part of me kind of wishes RT would just go away entirely tbh though, although that won't happen anytime soon haha. I think its value has diminished when it's so easy to access your own favorite critics/Youtube reviewers, which will always give a better indication of whether something is worth checking out for you.

 

[jolldan]

I still don't get why people put too much stock on audience scores on RT, it's no different from IMDB.

I have never and will never take movie advice from a website named after a decaying piece of fruit lol I probably missed when the site first got big and now I find it strange when I hear things like "Hey this movie is getting terrible ratings/reviews or RT."

 

[MadVillainy]

Honestly, even if you remove the troll armies and review bombs out of the equation, this is probably how it should've always been. Yeah, it may limit your sample size but at least anyone who gets to submit a review that gets weighed in an aggregate score at least is confirmed to have seen the movie. I never trusted the audience score for that reason, because it works the other way too where fans can inflate a movie's score before a movie even comes out.

But some of these troll armies have tried to weaponize that audience score even though it never mattered all that much in the first place. That shouldn't just get a free pass. And I swear, if anyone complains that their free speech is being violated by this move, give me a friggin' break. You do not have any inherent right to negatively impact a review score for a movie you haven't seen yet. And they're still allowing everyone to vote and will have an "All Audience" score option anyway for those who want to see that.

Part of me kind of wishes RT would just go away entirely tbh though, although that won't happen anytime soon haha. I think its value has diminished when it's so easy to access your own favorite critics/Youtube reviewers, which will always give a better indication of whether something is worth checking out for you.

I think RT still has value, not everyone has time or is savy enough to go look and find reviewers they like and listen to them. It's easier for people just to use RT. I'm not mad at that at all

My problem isn't so much with RT, it's the culture surrounding it:
1) People don't understand it. Just because a movie has a 90 doesn't mean that critics are saying it's a 9/10 movie, but people don't understand that. I think where RT the Avg Score should be right next to the percentage
2) People just care way too much about it. And again that's not RT's fault. Like if you look at the last few pages of the Aladdin movie thread and you see people constantly posting updates
-"Oh it's at 58"
-"Now it's at 61" "That's good it's fresh"
-"Well 61 is still failing grade if we were in school"
-"It's at 58 now"
I just don't get why that's a discussion. To me it's kinda loser-ish to care so much about an arbitrary score. We all have movies that people loved that we dislike or the opposite. So why care about some score and bring it up constantly? To need that much validation from strangers' score or using strangers' score to show your dislike of something is nothing short of pathetic to me.

None of those things are inherently RT's fault though. It's like cars or social media, or cellphones. They're not inherently bad, but people are abusing them. You can't really blame something that's not designed for malicious intent if it is used for malicious intent. That's how I feel about Rotten Tomatoes

EDIT: I mean honestly, the whole conversation around critics has always been weird to me. From caring so much to the people who poke out their chests and say things like "I don't need critics. I make up my mind on my own" or "Screw the critics what do they know." Again that's just really pathetic to me

 

[BatLobster]

Yes, I agree. What annoys me about RT is the rampant misunderstanding of what it is moreso than anything else.

 

[SPO2 Dalisay]

I still don't get why people put too much stock on audience scores on RT, it's no different from IMDB.

Because people in the audience see critics as elitist who are trying to show how much better they are than the masses. Only now political players have taken over the user reviews. So we are left to actual conversation to try to determine if a review is filtered through a political lens.

 

[Dr.]

I wonder… has a studio every promoted a movie’s “audience score” rather than the “Tomatometer” - hoping that the consumer doesn’t notice (or care about) the difference? Obviously, this would only make sense if the former is more positive than the latter. E.g.: Venom (29% critics, 81% audience) would be a prime candidate. And technically, the “audience score” is a bona fide RT rating - inasmuch as RT compiles, endorses and publicizes this number.

 

[psylockolussus]

There shouldn't even be an audience score. That's the last thing I go off of.

Yeah. I look at it but its not reliable to me compare to the critics percentage/score. I don't even log in to Rt to give my own scores but I visit the site everyday.

 

[Dr.]

Hmmm... kinda empty looking nowadays. Just older streaming movies and TV shows.