The Official Suicide Squad Rotten Tomatoes Thread - Part 1

[writer0327]

RT may be flawed to some folks, but it's simply telling you what percentage of critics actually thought it was a good movie. How good or how bad? That's the average rating and that is more important to me than the percentage.

 

[Kathemy]

I don't give points for average. It is either positive or it's not.

Really? In that case Suicide Squad has a Metacritic fresh rating of 41%.

 

[Kahran Ramsus]

Really? In that case Suicide Squad has a Metacritic fresh rating of 41%.

No, it doesn't. It has 11 positive reviews out of 53 total reviews. That's 21%.

 

[Kathemy]

No, it doesn't. It has 11 positive reviews out of 53 total reviews. That's 21%.

1: 6/10 is counted as average on MC and it's supposed to be counted as fresh at RT. That's shooting down your "21%" right there but I guess you'll ignore that in any answer.

2: If a review doesn't answer the question "good or bad" (i.e. "average") it has no bearing on a Fresh/Rotten vote. Those reviewers have not said "I wouldn't recommend watching this movie." In fact that question was not even posed to them.

3. The number of Good reviews are 11 and the number of Bad reviews are 16. 11/27 is 41%.

4. The entire system is meaningless anyway. Answer me this please, would you recommend your eight-year-old sister to watch The Seventh Seal?

 

[Kahran Ramsus]

A 'mixed' review is the exact sort of wishy-washy crap that Rotten Tomatoes is trying to avoid. Like I said before, anything less than a positive is a negative. There is a reason Siskel and Ebert didn't have a 'Thumbs in the Middle' rating. Mixed is the equivalent of saying 'I don't know' which is the most blatant and pathetic copout there is. To go to a show or to not go to a show is a binary choice. There is no third option.

53 reviews, 11 positive. End of story.

Even if you count 60/100 as being a positive, that is 6 more reviews that gives you a Metacritic 'Fresh' Score of 32%. That's still crap. Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic don't fundamentally disagree. Suicide Squad did very poorly according to BOTH sites.

Answer me this please, would you recommend your eight-year-old sister to watch The Seventh Seal?

This has nothing to do with anything. Of course recommendations are dependent on content and genre and who you are recommending it too. That goes without saying. That has absolutely nothing to do with what rating system is better.

 

[Kathemy]

A 'mixed' review is the exact sort of wishy-washy crap that Rotten Tomatoes is trying to avoid.

They are trying to avoid it by pretending there are no reviewers who give mixed reviews. There are people who don't even give a score, and those are counted as "positive" or "negative" anyway according to the "general tone" unless they enter their own score. The entire procedure is intellectually dishonest.

Like I said before, anything less than a positive is a negative. There is a reason Siskel and Ebert didn't have a 'Thumbs in the Middle' rating. Mixed is the equivalent of saying 'I don't know' which is the most blatant and pathetic copout there is.

Ho-hum. All critics aren't at the intellectual level of Siskel or Ebert. All critics don't limit themselves to writing about stuff they know anything about.

To go to a show or to not go to a show is a binary choice. There is no third option.

... and the idea that a critic could confidently make that choice for every living being on the planet is the worst conceit I've ever seen. Sure, a critic can say "I liked this film" or "I hated this film" and that's perfectly valid. He can also argue why any film is good or bad on a technical, literary and philosophical level. What he cannot do, however, is tell you if you should go see it.

Again these sites promote herd mentality by manufacturing consensus. It's bad for the intellectual climate of Western civilization. They tell everyone "it's a bad film" and then "it's a bad film" for everyone. It's lazy thinking, a product of attention span deficit, the twitter generation. A piece of art works on different levels. There are films which in my opinion are practically impossible to know if you could recommend. Films where a "fresh" or "rotten" rating becomes absolutely pointless.

Of course recommendations are dependent on content and genre and who you are recommending it too. That goes without saying.

How, then, can you give a binary answer?

 

[Kahran Ramsus]

How, then, can you give a binary answer?

Because it is a for an audience that is already interested. If I'm commenting on whether a particular seafood dish is good or bad, clearly that recommendation has no meaning for someone who is deathly allergic to seafood.

It is the same with film. Why would someone who hates all foreign films, horror films, romantic comedies, etc. even look at the reviews for those types of films? The reviews aren't for them.

For any further information and as to why the critic made the recommendation he or she did, you need to actually read the reviews. And Rotten Tomatoes has hundreds in one place, so it is the best place to go for that too.

But the actual recommendation is a binary choice. They either recommend it, or they don't. They can't both recommend it and not recommend at the same time. And if they don't make a recommendation at all, they aren't doing their jobs as that's why reviews exist.

If you went on Ebay and were interested in ordering something and all the reviews said something like "I don't know how I'd rate it" would you order that item? I sure as heck wouldn't.

 

[The Joker]

A 'mixed' review is the exact sort of wishy-washy crap that Rotten Tomatoes is trying to avoid. Like I said before, anything less than a positive is a negative. There is a reason Siskel and Ebert didn't have a 'Thumbs in the Middle' rating. Mixed is the equivalent of saying 'I don't know' which is the most blatant and pathetic copout there is. To go to a show or to not go to a show is a binary choice. There is no third option.

53 reviews, 11 positive. End of story.

Even if you count 60/100 as being a positive, that is 6 more reviews that gives you a Metacritic 'Fresh' Score of 32%. That's still crap. Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic don't fundamentally disagree. Suicide Squad did very poorly according to BOTH sites.

This has nothing to do with anything. Of course recommendations are dependent on content and genre and who you are recommending it too. That goes without saying. That has absolutely nothing to do with what rating system is better.

Exactly

 

[psylockolussus]

I thought this was better than BvS, so yeah its really bad that it got a lower rating than BvS by 1 point!

 

[Erzengel]

So we need a rating system that caters to a variety of demographics and interests?

 

[Kathemy]

Because it is a for an audience that is already interested. If I'm commenting on whether a particular seafood dish is good or bad, clearly that recommendation has no meaning for someone who is deathly allergic to seafood.

It is the same with film. Why would someone who hates all foreign films, horror films, romantic comedies, etc. even look at the reviews for those types of films? The reviews aren't for them.

The problem is that the films aren't necessarily reviewed by people who are knowledgable or interested in the genre. If I wanted a recommendation about a Shakespeare play I'd rather ask Patrick Stewart than Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Just look at the RT-linked reviews of Srpski Film which was generally voted as "rotten" by people just because they couldn't stomach the material. It's the same as with early reviews of Schönberg's music.

 

[BestGirl]

They are trying to avoid it by pretending there are no reviewers who give mixed reviews. There are people who don't even give a score, and those are counted as "positive" or "negative" anyway according to the "general tone" unless they enter their own score. The entire procedure is intellectually dishonest.

You're talking about RottenTomatoes, right? I believe it's the reviewer who indicates whether their review was positive or negative when posting it on the site.

 

[writer0327]

You're talking about RottenTomatoes, right? I believe it's the reviewer who indicates whether their review was positive or negative when posting it on the site.

RT looks for a score (1 1/2 stars out of 4 or something like that) but not every reviewer gives on.

 

[writer0327]

The problem is that the films aren't necessarily reviewed by people who are knowledgable or interested in the genre. If I wanted a recommendation about a Shakespeare play I'd rather ask Patrick Stewart than Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Just look at the RT-linked reviews of Srpski Film which was generally voted as "rotten" by people just because they couldn't stomach the material. It's the same as with early reviews of Schönberg's music.

And people who read the reviews should take that into consideration. They should actually consider if they are in agreement with the reviewer.

For instance, I know that certain reviewers will never like movies that I like, so if I am reading one of their reviews on a film I'm interested in seeing, I keep that in mind. This isn't always the case. One reviewer I'm usually in lock-step with is Kenneth Turan of the LA Times, but even he writes glowing reviews of films I think are absolute crap.

We are all different people with different experiences in this world and films will move us and affect us all differently. That's why you should just read the reviews for what they are, discuss them and see how their views measure up to your own, and move on. RT is a good overall picture of various reviewers from various backgrounds, and 9/10 I find their scores pretty on the nose with my own.

 

[Mjölnir]

You're talking about RottenTomatoes, right? I believe it's the reviewer who indicates whether their review was positive or negative when posting it on the site.

Yes, it's the reviewers that get to decide if it's fresh or rotten, although they can opt not to choose and then the RT staff has to interpret the review themselves.

 

[Kahran Ramsus]

And people who read the reviews should take that into consideration. They should actually consider if they are in agreement with the reviewer.

For instance, I know that certain reviewers will never like movies that I like, so if I am reading one of their reviews on a film I'm interested in seeing, I keep that in mind. This isn't always the case. One reviewer I'm usually in lock-step with is Kenneth Turan of the LA Times, but even he writes glowing reviews of films I think are absolute crap.

We are all different people with different experiences in this world and films will move us and affect us all differently. That's why you should just read the reviews for what they are, discuss them and see how their views measure up to your own, and move on. RT is a good overall picture of various reviewers from various backgrounds, and 9/10 I find their scores pretty on the nose with my own.

And the reason for that is that it takes a consensus of hundreds of reviews, so it reduces bias by a substantial margin.

Of all the reasons posted earlier as to why Rotten Tomatoes is better than Metacritic, that to me is the most important. RT gets its consensus from many more critics than Metacritic does, so the margin of error is far less.

 

[idiot09]

This is John Ostrander,the first SS comicbook creator's thoughts on the movie.He liked the movie.And this is what he had to say about its reception :

Even if someone who is in the industry can acknowledge it,no reason this should be mocked in the fanbase.

 

[Pretty Boy]

RT is supposed to be a quick way of people checking out if a movie is worth watching or not. In theory, that's great. The problem starts when the consensus doesn't reflect the audience's opinion on a movie. That doesn't happen every time, but it happens often enough for it to be a very flawed and untrustworthy system.

If it works for you, great. It's all about finding out what helps you with your choices. Personally, i think critics screw up way too often for me to put any sort of credibility in what they say.

I haven't seen SS, but with BvS, for example, Rotten Tomatoes is basically telling people the movie isn't worth watching. That's what a 27% tells you. It's not an inviting number. It's a "stay away from it" number. Is it accurate though? Is it a good advice? I'd say AT LEAST 60% of the people i know liked the movie. Not too long ago, i think the like/dislike ratio on twitter was 3 to 1. Just checked the BvS poll and around 70% of the users gave it a positive rating. What this tells me is that a lot of people disliked the movie and it has a lot of problems, but it was still entertaining for the majority. So, i don't think a "not worth watching" is really a good advice.

Sharknado is a better movie than BvS, according to the critics. It's difficult not to see their opinion as a bad joke.

The consispiracy theories are pretty ridiculous, but they're motivated by the fact that so many horrible and so many underwhelming movies get at least a decent rating and a movie like BvS is treated like something you should avoid at all costs. In all honesty, i'm not crazy about BvS and i was very disappointed by it, but there's no way i would consider Superman Returns, Thor: TDW, Iron Man 2, TIH, Batman Forever, among other stinkers as being much better movies than BvS like the site suggests. I also can't agree that BvS has the same artistic and entertainment value as Green Lantern or Superman III. According to this amazing site, you're better off spending your money on Daredevil than BvS. How can i take it seriously? It's difficult.

Sadly, these couple hundred of reviews actually influence the opinion of millions. How many people decide not to go see a movie after reading that it sucks? I'd say a large number.

 

[Mjölnir]

RT is supposed to be a quick way of people checking out if a movie is worth watching or not. In theory, that's great. The problem starts when the consensus doesn't reflect the audience's opinion on a movie. That doesn't happen every time, but it happens often enough for it to be a very flawed and untrustworthy system.

If it works for you, great. It's all about finding out what helps you with your choices. Personally, i think critics screw up way too often for me to put any sort of credibility in what they say.

I haven't seen SS, but with BvS, for example, Rotten Tomatoes is basically telling people the movie isn't worth watching. That's what a 27% tells you. It's not an inviting number. It's a "stay away from it" number. Is it accurate though? Is it a good advice? I'd say AT LEAST 60% of the people i know liked the movie. Not too long ago, i think the like/dislike ratio on twitter was 3 to 1. Just checked the BvS poll and around 70% of the users gave it a positive rating. What this tells me is that a lot of people disliked the movie and it has a lot of problems, but it was still entertaining for the majority. So, i don't think a "not worth watching" is really a good advice.

Sharknado is a better movie than BvS, according to the critics. It's difficult not to see their opinion as a bad joke.

The consispiracy theories are pretty ridiculous, but they're motivated by the fact that so many horrible and so many underwhelming movies get at least a decent rating and a movie like BvS is treated like something you should avoid at all costs. In all honesty, i'm not crazy about BvS and i was very disappointed by it, but there's no way i would consider Superman Returns, Thor: TDW, Iron Man 2, TIH, Batman Forever, among other stinkers as being much better movies than BvS like the site suggests. I also can't agree that BvS has the same artistic and entertainment value as Green Lantern or Superman III. According to this amazing site, you're better off spending your money on Daredevil than BvS. How can i take it seriously? It's difficult.

Sadly, these couple hundred of reviews actually influence the opinion of millions. How many people decide not to go see a movie after reading that it sucks? I'd say a large number.

That's the thing with critics, you need to find out how your opinion relates to them. It's impossible for critics to cater to your, or my, specific taste so they can only go by their own opinions.

Personally I have had it a very hard time finding movies I think are good that are rated rotten, so for me it's a warning sign when a movie drops down that far. I still go and see movies I've been looking forward to, but in regards to the DCEU I've been burned thrice now. Out of the movies you mention in comparison to BvS I think all that I've seen are clearly better, so I see nothing strange in that they have better reception. Not that I would find it strange that other people could like a movie I don't, or vice versa. I have not seen Sharknado (skeptical towards if the genre is for me), but I don't think it's outlandish to imagine that it could be a better made intentional B-movie than BvS is a superhero movie.

But things like RT is needed. People neither have the time or the money to go and see all movies so they need things to make their decision on. RT is one thing among a number of others.

I don't see how it's worse to listen to critics than to listen to us here, who inevitably have a big bias towards these kinds of movies.

 

[Greens]

If you take RT at face value... it's a pretty damn nifty site. An aggregation of what the critics think about a movie? Cool idea. How you use it is up to you.

 

[xenos5]

I haven't seen SS, but with BvS, for example, Rotten Tomatoes is basically telling people the movie isn't worth watching. That's what a 27% tells you. It's not an inviting number. It's a "stay away from it" number. Is it accurate though? Is it a good advice? I'd say AT LEAST 60% of the people i know liked the movie. Not too long ago, i think the like/dislike ratio on twitter was 3 to 1. Just checked the BvS poll and around 70% of the users gave it a positive rating. What this tells me is that a lot of people disliked the movie and it has a lot of problems, but it was still entertaining for the majority. So, i don't think a "not worth watching" is really a good advice.

You can't use just your own friends as an example to say the majority found BvS entertaining. That is way too small a sample size. BvS is a polarizing/mixed movie at BEST with audiences. Maybe you're more easily able to overlook certain problems so that makes the movie more worth watching for you but you can't say the same for everyone else. For people who want to know if the movie is good and would probably come out of the movie regretting that they watched it if they saw it, RT can be a way of becoming more informed to see if from the plot summary and other details within the reviews used if it sounds like a movie they would like .

 

[Kahran Ramsus]

That's the thing with critics, you need to find out how your opinion relates to them. It's impossible for critics to cater to your, or my, specific taste so they can only go by their own opinions.

Personally I have had it a very hard time finding movies I think are good that are rated rotten, so for me it's a warning sign when a movie drops down that far. I still go and see movies I've been looking forward to, but in regards to the DCEU I've been burned thrice now. Out of the movies you mention in comparison to BvS I think all that I've seen are clearly better, so I see nothing strange in that they have better reception. Not that I would find it strange that other people could like a movie I don't, or vice versa. I have not seen Sharknado (skeptical towards if the genre is for me), but I don't think it's outlandish to imagine that it could be a better made intentional B-movie than BvS is a superhero movie.

But things like RT is needed. People neither have the time or the money to go and see all movies so they need things to make their decision on. RT is one thing among a number of others.

I don't see how it's worse to listen to critics than to listen to us here, who inevitably have a big bias towards these kinds of movies.

Rotten Tomatoes isn't nearly as good for tv/dvd stuff because the number of reviews are so low. Sharknado, for example, only has 17 reviews. That isn't enough for any sort of consensus. Suicide Squad for comparison has 248 reviews. That's a HUGE difference.

 

[NotSoLongAgo]

Sadly, these couple hundred of reviews actually influence the opinion of millions. How many people decide not to go see a movie after reading that it sucks? I'd say a large number.

Obviously comcast and WB both see the value in criticism seeing as, once again, they own rotten tomatoes.

 

[StormC]

RT will either sway me or tell me to stay home when I'm on the fence. Simple as that.

 

[Pretty Boy]

You can't use just your own friends as an example to say the majority found BvS entertaining. That is way too small a sample size. BvS is a polarizing/mixed movie at BEST with audiences. Maybe you're more easily able to overlook certain problems so that makes the movie more worth watching for you but you can't say the same for everyone else. For people who want to know if the movie is good and would probably come out of the movie regretting that they watched it if they saw it, RT can be a way of becoming more informed to see if from the plot summary and other details within the reviews used if it sounds like a movie they would like .

I didn't. I used several examples in my post. I have yet to find any piece of data that supports the claim that the majority didn't like the movie.