You have to hand it to RT. They’ve successfully branded their simple, binary (fresh vs. rotten) approach to movie evaluation. And this is perfect for the modern era in which attention spans are limited and in which quick, definitive answers are prized over time-consuming nuance. Indeed, the general public, media and even studios (when it suits their purposes) seem to acknowledge the Binary Truth of RT’s classifications.
To the extent that aggregate review scores are useful, I prefer the old school designations of “mostly positive,” “mostly mixed” and “mostly negative.” (IMO, this better captures a continuum and the fuzzy boundaries between good, mediocre and bad.) Of course, this is the system that Metacritic employs. But hardly anyone cites Metacritic.
