The Scandal of Rotten Tomatoes

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Vulture article: www.vulture.com/article/rotte...
Rotten Tomatoes got in some hot water recently, leading many to question their integrity. But is the issue the Tomatometer itself? In this video I go over it all.
Music by Epidemic Sound (www.epidemicsound.com)
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Special thanks to Andrew Elliott (Stalli111: / stalli111 ) for editing this video.

[@grantmccoy6739]

It's so typical. You take a amateur website, monetize it, and it becomes corrupted. It's basically a perfect example of "selling out".

[@arminxvs3372]

Always the same story.

[@professorbaxtercarelessdre1075]

kinda makes me think of Netflix or Gamestop, a company organization or group with a novelty appeal that gets more rep than it was built to sustain, or something

[@alistairetheblu]

I remember when *this* was an amateur website.

[@andybrice2711]

Also, Goodhart's Law: _"When a metric becomes a target, it ceases to be a good metric."_

[@eightcoins4401]

It happened to IMDB ages ago

[@BugsyFoga]

I knew there was always something rotten about this tomato.

[@Iris_and_or_George]

Badum-tsssh! 🥁🥁 10/10

[@JerryTVong]

tenouddaten

[@IamjustBruh]

😐👉🏿🚪

[@minaDesuDesu]

​@@Iris_and_or_Georgeyou made me laugh out loud irl 10/10

[@velociraptor4you3291]

Wa wa!

[@tangroro]

I love how people are calling this a "scandal" when it's been a well-known fact for years now, literally this year they deleted all the negative reviews of Peter Pan & Wendy just to make it look better

[@revoltpuppy]

Wow, you are the smartest person in the room, no doubt. We respect your one-upsmanship.

[@tangroro]

@@revoltpuppy literally everyone knows that, I'm not smart, it's just a well-known fact, it's like saying Oscar or GOTY are rigged, everyone knows, even people at Oscar admitted sometimes they never even watched the films

[@revoltpuppy]

@@tangroro Amazing! You have invalidated the point and purpose of this video and nothing more needs to ever be said on the subject. I bow to your greatness and concede to your utter dominance.

[@revoltpuppy]

@@TheCoolCucumber Thank you for explaining the video and then the comments to me. I, for one, cannot handle such sophisticated discourse.

[@dementeddoom2425]

@@revoltpuppy Your sarcasm has gone stale. Stop pretending you're smarter than anybody else cuz you're not.

[@TheWolfXCIX]

It's so much worse than this. It's the "access media" who get invited to premiers and will review positively in order to keep being invited that are skewing things so dramatically. While not as explicit as being paid $50, it has a more detrimental effect.

[@joser1853]

This has been happening since like forever, though.

[@memes3751]

@@joser1853exactly. It’s a new concept for American millennials and Zoomers who think they’ve came up with a profound thought that no one has thought up before 😂

[@bobbyhillthuglife]

​​​​​​@@joser1853it's gotten worse recently imo Old school film critics played the same game but they were more insulated from any negative review fallout. If someone was the film critic for the major paper in an area, you couldn't really ice them out, because how else are you going to build hype for future films? That critic was likely some people's *only* source of film coverage. But nowadays, reviewers are a dime a dozen, and if someone gives a negative review, they can easily be blacklisted and other, more pliable reviewers found. It just creates a race to the bottom. This has essentially ruined all reporting, not just film reviews. In a world where everyone has a voice, paradoxically *no one* has a voice, because it's just a cacophony of voices. Often the only way one can differentiate oneself and stand our from the crowd is through access, and they will be loathe to burn any bridges since that access is all that seperates them from a sea of faceless commenters and bloggers and aspiring influencers.

[@jonfreeman9682]

You can't even trust media anymore. I ignore critics and only look at audience reviews.

[@gdnatural33]

@@memes3751when did the original commenter ever say or imply that this is a new thing? from what i can tell, they were just making an observation

[@vishalvenkat6]

I'm still surprised how many people don't know that the RT score is a review aggregate score and not a rating of the movie's quality itself.

[@thatoneguychad420]

Never be surprised by people's stupidity or ignorance.

[@CaptainRaccoonWhitly]

This. It's not enough that the score is there, because RT doesn't review anything. They just average a number based on what real human beings have to say.

[@calamorta]

And much like any index fund, ideally you should study what's behind that final score. What's the value of a product that only has bad stocks? What's the value of a review that's made by someone you tend to disagree with? Ofc this would take a lot of time so it's not worth it. Still, don't know why people overreact when it comes to Rotten Tomatoes.

[@corvus8638]

They don’t really do a good job of explaining it

[@mishynaofficial]

Well, but the quality of the movie can't be measured anyway. It just shows whether most people liked the movie or not. But who chooses a movie to watch based on scores? I personally don't look at the scores at all, I watch the trailer or get recommendations.

[@RaspK]

One of the worst aspects about RT is that it's "score" system is not even that. Not only do they aggregate scores in an opaque manner, partly because they basically "rescore" every score given by a critic according to an internal metric - which is also partly because so many critics use completely different scoring systems - but they also go out of their way to present as their "score" (the Tomatometer) the percentage of critics that they parse having given a positive review. When you compare the Tomatometer to the average rating of critics (esp. top critics), the gap can be pretty expansive, with Tomatometer figures nearing 80+ and having average ratings in the region of 6/10. A lot of people telling you a movie is just above barely worth watching it is not a sound metric.

[@android19willpwn]

It's a sound metric for what it is. The problem is that people see the percentage and interpret it as a direct scoring of quality, which it isn't. An aggregate 7/10 score can mean a lot of things, and based on a person's personal preferences they might find a movie to be way better or way worse than the averaged score on a site like IMDB. The tomatometer, on the other hand, is more reliable (when it's not being manipulated (and is being read correctly)) because what it's presenting contains far less information. How much will you like a movie? It doesn't pretend to tell you. What it will tell you is that the vast majority of people who saw the movie came away with a favorable opinion, so it's a pretty safe bet that you won't feel like you wasted your time. For people who prefer to go into things without expectations, but also don't want to waste their time and money on garbage that they'll hate, it's a very effective resource. From a critic perspective, it's right to bemoan it. It's a distillation of the mentality that movies are products, rather than art. But for a vast majority of the public, movies *are* products. They're art, too, but they're art that demands an investment of resources which people have a very limited supply of. Wanting and using a basic buyer's guide is hardly unreasonable.

[@roflmatol]

The problem isn't the rating system, but how people STILL don't understand how it works. A movie with a 90% fresh rating where almost all the "positive" reviews are 6/10 doesn't mean RT endorses it as a masterpiece

[@DanielFolsom]

I mean, this seems like a long way of saying that reducing reviews to an up-down vote is reductive ... which, yes. And hey reducing a full review to a X/10 score is also reductive.

[@jonfreeman9682]

The way they calculate the score is flawed. Bad scores are too punishing and good scores too generous. So I read the audience comments to get a feel for what the true score is and if it's worth watching.

[@robertyounger5849]

If I had created a scoring system that people never understood, and removes the weight of each critics score (oversimplifying their opinions into just a very basic good vs bad), I’d look at myself and see I’m the source of the problem

[@MrRapmaster19]

What’s worst about all of it is that the RT score doesn’t even say HOW good a movie is, just if a critic liked or disliked it. There are movies with 80% certified fresh scores that are just fine and 80% fresh scores where people loved the movie. You cannot tell from a single like/dislike rating anything truly substantial.

[@android19willpwn]

That's the point. That's why people like it. If you're wondering if you should see a movie but don't want to have your expectations set beforehand, that kind of low-information metric is ideal.

[@BluntsNBeatz]

Yeah, exactly, that's the point. Whether the 80% movie is "just fine" or is something you loved is down to you at the end of the day. RT score is not a replacement for your own opinion, just a good metric on whether a film isn't absolute garbage. The best way to use it is to just find your floor - do you actually like any movies that have a score of less than 30%? 40%? Figure out what your floor is and then watch any movies above that. It's a statistical indicator of how likely you are to be able to enjoy the movie, not an absolute metric of "how good" it is - because that's subjective.

[@sub_bacchus]

​@@BluntsNBeatzit rewards mediocrity over anything else though. Unless your only concern is is 'i will probably not hate this film' its worse than useless

[@BluntsNBeatz]

@@sub_bacchus That should be your only concern. No review can tell you whether you'll *like* a film. Only that you're less likely to hate it than others. You might like an awful film. It's all subjective. RT doesn't "reward" anything - it's not the oscars or the box office.

[@sub_bacchus]

@@BluntsNBeatz i completely disagree. A divisive film that some people loved and some hated scores worse than a film that everyone agreed was 'okay' on RT and is much more likely to be interesting and worth a watch. I don't want to be told 'what to think' about a film but the system of RT obviously punishes uniqueness significantly. Obviously that was not the way i was using reward, don't be obnoxious

[@memorian8472]

The moment I realized RT was penetrating the culture too much was the first time I noticed it popping up on films when you scroll through the Guide on cable. RT has no place there. Cable was sort of a great equalizer of channel surfing and finding something new to watch for the first time and judging for yourself whether it was worth it.

[@eatatjoes6751]

The moment I realized it was after the utter shitshows of Ghostbusters 2016 and Captain Marvel.

[@chasehedges6775]

⁠@@eatatjoes6751👍👍💯. Captain Marvel is one of the and of the worst

[@TheMysteryDriver]

I'd rather not waste my time with awful movies that the audience hates

[@chasehedges6775]

@@TheMysteryDriver 👍👍

[@chadkirk925]

@@TheMysteryDriverthat’s fine but I like being disconnected from reviews. I like feeling like I’m going on my own journey in a new world. If I get inundated with review scores, it deflates the movie’s immersion

[@BusterKay916]

I think the rise of Rotten Tomatoes is linked with the sheer increase in the amount of content being pumped out by film & television studios in the modern day. The average person is so spoiled for choice when it comes to what to watch, so I can see why looking at a simple percentage would be appealing in terms of trying to find something worth watching. Ultimately though it is reductive, but the worst part IMO is that it gives studios data/metrics to drive/support their decision-making when it comes to developing future projects.

[@bubbleglove4935]

Movies, shows etc are art. And yo distill them to just “fresh or rotten” is not only missing the point of cinema, but is actively anti art. I feel a great amount of pity who use rotten tomatoes to determine whether they wanna see a movie or not or whether it’s good or not.

[@trueblade3636]

You should see the guidelines of what you are allowed to post in your review at IMDb. Those are really ''Rotten''

[@WhosThere26]

This is a very reductive take. Movies, shows, etc., are art, products, business ventures, entertainment, vehicles through which people make their livelihoods, etc. As such, many factors should be considered, including whether the movie, show, and so forth are of value to those producing it, distributing it, and consuming it. Even if we took the art argument at face value and that was the only component worth discussing with movies, shows, etc. There's the fact that museums exist precisely to curate works that considered noteworthy for the populace. The fact that there isn't a "rotten" or "fresh" label attached to the works doesn't mean that at some point someone didn't go through the process of deeming those products "fresh" or "rotten" before they put them up in the museum. There's nothing inherently wrong with a rating system, even in the case of art, and especially not with movies and shows given that they're not just art.

[@samatar6852]

Movie going is expensive these days. Most people just don't want to risk throwing away their hard earned money on a badly reviewed movie where there's a decent chance they're not going to like it either and don't want to gamble on the chance that maybe they'll like it despite the negative score. Maybe that's anti-art but most people simply don't have the luxury to freely indulge in all art in the first place.

[@bubbleglove4935]

@@WhosThere26 well I will simply disagree and that’s ok. Movies are an extension of the artists making it first and products last, they can me used as products but if that’s the first thought you won’t have something as genuine. But it’s ok we disagree I respect your take

[@bubbleglove4935]

@@samatar6852 well if that’s true or not it’s still anti art. If it was critique from genuine critics who understand the art form inside and out I’d understand that, but not everyone has what it takes to understand and critique films. Most people who are “critiquing” films aren’t equipped with the knowledge needed for it. So yeah its a terrible idea to listen to rotten tomatoes people should just watch the film or not if they don’t wanna seek out educated opinions.

[@Lowbrass64]

I was so happy you mentioned Jump the Shark! I used to love that page. Remember causes such as introducing a new younger kid (cousin Oliver?) or the “a very special…”? It was totally user created content and it was brutal and hysterical

[@Afc230]

Can we also talk about how Rotten Tomatoes doesn’t always put a review in the right category?! Over the years I’ve noticed some review snippets under “fresh” that sounded negative and some under “rotten” that seemed to actually like the film. When I read the full reviews I realized they were the exact opposite of the “fresh” or “rotten” rating they put it under. How do you get that wrong?? And what other movies have suffered for it?

[@lexa_power]

This has always been an issue, I remember thinking that 20 years ago.

[@DefiantHeart]

One conclusion I've reached is that the worst thing to happen to any of the websites that grew a big audience back in the day was becoming "legitimate," whether through ownership or through who they brought on board to write for them. So many websites about comics, movies and TV, etc. have become "real media" and get in the door of movie previews and such, but they're only gossip blogs and serve to hype the party line from the producers, rather than actually provide anything useful.

[@damonlam9145]

I'm honestly tired of people blindly agreeing with first impressions without putting any extra thought or research into it, and blindly repeating that as their own opinions, and this scandal is proof of why you shouldn't do it. I want people to experience the product themselves first to form their own opinions before deciding whether to agree or disagree with other people's opinions. And sure you can still use reviews to decide whenever you want to buy it, but you should take it with a grain of salt and try to avoid having zero opinions on the matter until you personally decide to experience it yourself to form your own opinions, not plagued by other influences.

[@ZeBum]

This! It's always hilarious when someone calls a movie horrible, you ask them why they don't like it and either they can't answer because they never watched it or just regurgitate things they heard others say (staring at Cinema Sins). Just watch it yourself, you can still dislike something but then you actually have a valid reason for ripping into a piece.

[@damonlam9145]

@@ZeBum it pisses me off more when they call a film "woke" or something between though lines and doesn't bother to even watch it.

[@TheRedHorseman1208]

I agree but I think it's important to point out that its very expensive to go to the movies to form your own opinion. It's way easier and cheaper to just rely on someone else's opinion that already saw it.

[@velociraptor4you3291]

_VERY_ well put here (👏)!

[@damonlam9145]

@@TheRedHorseman1208 I understand that, but as I said at the very least try to stay neutral about something you haven't experienced yet.

[@Yakita60]

I will never understand the year Rotten Tomatoes was placed on such a high throne of criticism…it’s bonkers to me.

[@infantiltinferno]

...Because the alternative is IMDb. It's easy to look like quality critique when the competition is drooling from the mouth.

[@parthsavyasachi9348]

Disney etc have pushed it on dvds etc because they know they can control the website.

[@realtalk6195]

_Rotten Tomatoes_ has been owned by Fandango since 2016, which is owned by Comcast/NBCUniversal and Warner Discovery. Fandango is a ticketing company and NBCU and WD are film and TV show producers and distributors. Clear conflict of interest. _IMDB_ has been owned by Amazon since 1998. Amazon is a film and TV show producer and distributor. Clear conflict of interest.

[@sanitorz232]

If people just used IMDb like normal human beings this wouldn't be a problem. Stop looking at scores and start piling up a massive watchlist that you're never going to be physically able to finish.

[@CaptainRaccoonWhitly]

IMDB is worse than RT. RT has actual professionals review movies. IMDB is a troll farm.

[@sanitorz232]

@@CaptainRaccoonWhitly Imagine watching movies based on a number instead of your own intuition

[@CaptainRaccoonWhitly]

@@sanitorz232 I don't disagree, but IMDB is no better than RT. In fact, it was even worse than it is now back when the forums used to exist.

[@TheSuperappelflap]

Imdb is owned by amazon and every time a new movie from a big studio comes out the reviews are absolutely flooded with bot accounts / paid reviewers posting 9/10 and 10/10 scores repeating the same phrases and talking points. it is exactly as bad as using rottentomatoes. what i do is i just look at the title of a movie and maybe the poster and then decide whether im going to give it a shot or not.

[@Code7Unltd]

>IMDb >owned by Amazon, operator of a *horizontal movie studio* Do you not recall the Rings of Power and it's fallout?

[@0Impeesa]

It's interesting how everyone understands what "jumped the shark" means, but nobody agrees on exactly why, in a sense. Rather than being the moment that was so terrible that the thing could never recover, I had heard it explained as something that was by definition the absolute high point (in spectacle, if nothing else) because it was all downhill from there.

[@alistairetheblu]

More specifically, it was "ridiculous thing a show did to try to reinvigorate ratings". So it'd be a high point that couldn't be maintained yes, but specifically because they made it that way in a desperate attempt to salvage a failing show.

[@anonymous6705]

Rotten Tomatoes is so popular because tons of people honestly don't have the time or energy to read 10-minute-long reviews or try every film they're vaguely curious about for themselves. Call it laziness if you want, but people just want to know right away if something is worth their time and money or not.

[@Bustermachine]

@@tulikas9862 I mean, that's fair up to a point, I think. Plenty of movies and games don't really need to do anything more than be engaging. I certainly enjoy a fun adventure romp as much as the next guy. That said, even something as simple as what you or I find engaging and 'fun' is subjective and subtle. So a lack of honesty can still be quite harmful. It's the difference between watching the old Indiana Jones movies, and watching the Uncharted film, where I felt pretty much nothing due to the way that the latter was just checkbox of set pieces from the games. It's also the difference between the Super Mario Brothers movie we got, which was an inoffensive kid's film, but didn't really interest me enough to see in theaters, and Gretta Gerwig's Barbie, which was absolutely my jam.

[@Merione]

I get what you mean, but that still doesn't excuse this system. It's true that people don't have the time to read through all the reviews or watch all the movies for themselves, so the function of critics is still important for everyday people. But personally I took the time to look into different movie critics and read their opinions on multiple films that I like and dislike, in order to find those with similar opinions and tastes to me. I now have a couple of individual critics that I trust and follow, so that when I'm looking for reviews about something I know that I can find what I'm looking for y reading their reviews. Movie criticism (and art criticism in general) is extremely subjective, and a piece that is a masterpiece for some could be trash for others. Once you find *your* critics, ones that you know have the same tastes as you do, you can trust them to give reviews that are relevant to you. Rotten Tomatoes is great as an aggregator, it allows you to find many different critics, and thus you can use it as a starting point, but from there you need to do your own research and then leave it. Because classifying art as just "good" or "bad" like Rotten Tomatoes does is extremely reductive and unproductive.

[@estebanrodriguez5409]

If you don't have 10 minutes to read a review, then you don't have 2 hours to see a movie. You really don't need to watch every movie that shows up, just see the things that you feel you are going to enjoy.

[@weregretohio7728]

Scores are simple heuristics that appeal to our brains on a number of levels. But people also like being able to throw out their own scores and promote the trash they like, no matter how nasty they have to get about it.

[@fairlyironic]

So true. I'll put 50 movies on my watchlist when I sign up for a new service and then do a quick check of rotten tomatoes to narrow down the list to the 8 or so films that I'll actually watch. Life is too short to spend the day reading the reviews for 50 films, lmao

[@singletona082]

they've basically been turned into a marketing arm and stick to beat people with if a movie is under performing. Aka 'review bombing' scandels or pointing at an artificially inflated score as if that invalidate's someone's dislike of a thing.

[@samazwe]

This discussion opened old wounds in relation to earlier DC films as there were some in the fan community who believed some critics had a vendetta against Zack Snyder. Whether that was true or not, what I understand is that the Pr firm who made the paymentasdid not have dealings with WB. Either way, RT has become too powerful and it's annoying when we can no longer have nuanced discussions about the quality of films beyond the 'rotten' or 'fresh' score

[@ultrascarlet5275]

Meh, I still disliked BvS, without knowing the critic score beforehand.

[@patrickarmstrong2492]

The biggest problem with Rotten Tomatoes imo is the fact that the Tomatometer doesn't accurately represent the critics' consensus. A movie can have all 5/10s and have a 0% Tomatometer score, or another movie could have all 7/10s and get 100%. How does that make sense? Metacritic's model has its own issues but at least we get an actual aggregate score out of it instead of this overly simple good/bad ratio that exaggerates every consensus to being much more positive or negative than it actually is.

[@TheSuperappelflap]

no the biggest problem is that its owned by a subsidiary of disney

[@cookieface80]

It's not really supposed to tell you how "good" it is, just how likely you are to enjoy it.

[@eightcoins4401]

@@TheSuperappelflap That actually explains alot

[@IK-yb5rn]

When the Mario Movie dropped people were saying it’s “bad” just because it got a 58 on RT. It’s ridiculous how public opinion would drastically change if the score were just 2 points higher. People live and die by that little tomato

[@cameron2069]

This. It’s so strange because the first Sonic movie got around a 64 which is “fresh” and that very flawed designation changes the discourse completely, even though realistically Mario and Sonic are in the same ballpark. (And even then it doesn’t represent each review accurately because of that same tomato system.)

[@dementeddoom2425]

It's even stupider cuz some of the criticisms boiled down to "it's like the games and not a deconstruction" and "eww there's a human girl being stalked by a turtle."

[@jliller]

A movie like Mario getting a 58% from critics seems pretty good. Similarly, an action movie getting better than 40% critic score on RT is good (the first Expendables has a 41%) because most professional film critics look down at action flicks, but a drama or biopic that pulls a 60% is suspect because critics usually love that stuff.

[@Martiancookiehunter365]

i feel like people have forgotten why they followed reviews in the first place it's not some dumb percentage meter or score slapped onto a movie you need to find a critic with similar tastes to you that you often find yourself agreeing with then if they like a movie then you know you'll most likely enjoy it as well. or better yet how about not listening to anyone and forming your own opinion about a movie fuck what everyone else has said go out there and watch it for yourself and follow your heart

[@chasehedges6775]

👍👍💯💯

[@eightcoins4401]

Its a symptom of the "social-mediafiction" of media criticism. A percentage without context fits into character limit unlike a full on review.

[@gmg9010]

I just watch movies if they look interesting to me meanwhile someone I know personally will literally go on rotten tomatoes after I suggest a movie and if it’s under a certain score he’ll just dismiss my suggestion.

[@terrencesimmons6651]

Being from the Midwest we had Siskel and Ebert. The entire show was two critics agreeing or disagreeing with a movie. The why did you like or disliked a movie is way more important than the score. I am totally baffled how Rotten Tomatoes is so popular but so inconsistent. There have been numerous times the audience did not agree with the critics. Then why have critics? I worry about the movie industry, especially if the audience can’t receive authentic feedback on a movie. Thank you Captain Midnight for giving us an educated and honest critique of industry.

[@Bustermachine]

It's popularity and inconsistence come from the same source. Namely that it reduces something as complex as an entire movie down to a single digestible number. The fact that the number is frequently WRONG and doesn't actually measure anything useful is entirely besides the point to people who rely on it. As for 'why have the critics'. The problem is emergent, I think. You mentioned Siskel and Ebert. And one of the things that Roger Ebert once said is that a critics job is not, chiefly, to tell you whether a movie is good or not. A competent critic does offer their opinion on a film's subjective quality. But more importantly, their task is to inform the public, to contextualize films, to help deepen your appreciation of what you are watching. And this is also why critics will often disagree with the general audience review. Because the audience that goes to see any given movie LIKES that type of movie in particular, they are explicitly going out of their to see it, while a critic will generally be looking at anything they go to see as A MOVIE. A CULTURAL PRODUCT. AN ART. They will try to be subjective, but their criteria for good/bad is going to be inherently different just because of the knowledge base they come into seeing a film with as a professional critic. For instance, I agree more with the critics than the fans about the Super Mario movie. It's a completely watchable children's flick, but that is all it is. It was propelled to billion dollar status by the sheer weight of its IP and Nintendo breathing down illumination's neck whenever they so much as THOUGHT about inserting a fart joke. If Mario was not already a household name, the movie wouldn't have made any sense.

[@unseenmolee]

the thing is that art is sooo subjective, like everyone likes different things in movies, theres no objective way to rate them on a scale or anything, its all just bias, and thats not a bad thing, but i hate when these subjective opinions are turned into some pseudo-fact. i think its not a bad thing to rate movies, even on a scale of 1-10, i think its reductive but it is helpful it a lot of ways. but i wish we could all recognize that just because a bunch of ppl disagree with you that doesnt mean your wrong yk. 3 ppl can watch the same movie and have 3 different perspectives on it and that doesnt mean any of them are wrong or right, its just how art works, everyone will get something different out of it and thats really amazing imo. i think when we pretend that art is objective we lose a bit of the reason why art is so powerful in the first place

[@BestOneEver247]

🔴

[@disconnected22]

I NEVER put any stock in RT’s opinion. My local cinema’s website used to have the RT score right next to a movie’s listing. It’s like “shit, why even leave room for variations of opinion?”

[@tastyneck]

Jump The Shark is such a blast from the past.

[@MrGamerz20]

It seems the entire movie industry is in a sad state of affairs right now. Actors and writers are on strike and RT is exposed for being nothing more than paid critic advertising. I want to give Blue Beetle a chance but WB could be paying off critics to give more favorable reviews for the movie. There is a definitely a conflict of interest there and similar cases likely have been going on behind the scenes. This industry needs major overhauls but those in power don’t want to give up those almighty dollars.

[@christopherb501]

Here's a certified opinion: it's GOOD. If you can, GO NOW, before it leaves!

[@DarkLord-hl1fi]

Let me tell you something if you are interested in a movie then go see it and form your own opinion

[@eightcoins4401]

This isnt even new. This has been blatantly happening with all media criticsism ever since it became an industry. Theres a 90s NES Game magazine that gave Action 42 a 4/5 score, notoriously one of the worst videogames on the nes. Music reviewers also are blatantly paid off by major labels. I stopped reading any outlet when they started trying to sell the most bland and vapid top 40s pop as edgy and rebellious.

[@DizzyBusy]

​@@hoppingrabbit9849Where? If you live in a town where a movie ticket cost $25, get out of that town and move elsewhere. It's 8€ where I live.

[@demosneokleous4877]

​@@DizzyBusyits €10 here were I live

[@carrained]

this video was interesting, despite the fact that i've only ever used IMDB myself, since the swedish site for movie reviews went down when i was younger. I had NO idea that "jump the shark" came from the fact that fonzie jumped over a shark, that's absolutely hilarious and I thank you for sharing that with us lol.

[@Mark.G475]

What! You didn't know about Fonzie and Jump the Shark? My God Really? I'm disappointed!😊 Hello from Milwaukee Wisconsin 🇺🇲🧀🍻.

[@carrained]

@@Mark.G475 No, I hardly remember anything from this show except a few pieces of the first season! This was such a fun piece of TV trivia!

[@Mark.G475]

@@carrained Fonzie's Moto cycle in Happy Days was the same Brand and model that Steve McQueen used in The Great Escape.

[@BlushinGun]

I haven’t read this article in forever, but it’s titled, “Movies are scoring higher and higher on Rotten Tomatoes” and it shows that the average film on the site has been getting more favorable reviews over the last decade. And coincidentally it has been owned more and more by the entertainment industry…

[@raaid22]

I think a third option in the middle between fresh and rotten would help a lot.

[@fudgemonkeyz69]

How to fix Rotten Tomatoes🍅: Have a three-numbered score with a number for Good, Mid and Bad. For a mid movie like Ant-Man 3, it would be like 20% good / 50% mid / 30% bad. Have something like a green tomato represent mid. Give it a bar like the old KZbin like/dislike bar to visually show the ratio.

[@mramirez6138]

I never heard that Rotten Tomatoes was bought by IGN, but that’s honestly so perfect. Like Rotten Tomatoes scores often take the same place in the discourse(tm) that IGN scores do. So often, the discussion around a film/game devolves to its fans complaining that Rotten Tomatoes/IGN gave it too low a number, or haters complaining that those sites gave it too high a number.

[@JD-iu6rv]

I wasn’t expecting the Adam & Eve sponsorship lol

[@kelpsie]

He's actually done several of them, but it still gets me every time.

[@ShamanicEnzan]

I’m surprised there wasn’t an eggplant joke

[@northstarbrooks]

Thought it was just me lol. We’re all adults here

[@walliscorrice3197]

You nailed it with saying that there's seemingly no place for mixed reviews on the site- (a movie having mixed reviews is honestly kinda fascinating to me because there's probably debate around it!) but SO MANY of the scores for major movies released are in the 90% range- it permeates a lot of the website and its movies to the point where a movie getting 90%+ score happens SO often it becomes utterly meaningless and says nothing about the movie itself- even if said movie is ultimately good

[@UsiQuotidiani.18]

even if this scandal is related to critics, I would like to put the light on the audience score and how is also rotten. A lot of people always indicate the audience's score as the true value of a movie, as the audience is always right, without pointing out how messed up they are. A lot of times the people who really have the dedication to give a score are the who want to bully said movie or production and not how really people feel about the movie. How many people, which are not film nerd, actually give a score

[@Gemnist98]

Believe it or not, conservatives. They usually are the ones to put in the effort to actually care about movie ratings and review scores. It’s why Christian movies (speaking as a Catholic myself) always have an A+ CinemaScore. And it could also explain why Captain Marvel has a bad audience RT score because, you know… women.

[@Fantallana]

@@Gemnist98it was indeed review bombing that caused the low score. Most of those negative reviews came in before the movie was even released to the public. This caused RT to change course so movies can’t be reviewed until they are released. (Good, but that should have been the case to begin with.) And yet, they didn’t remove all those dishonest reviews, which convinced me that RT didn’t care about integrity, only saving face. So the losers still had the satisfaction of making the Captain Marvel score look like general audiences hated it, great job RT.

[@LinkMarioSamus]

@@Gemnist98 As far as I know she’s a very contentious character in general, so it’s not terribly surprising her vocal hatedom would make themselves heard.

[@jammygamer8961]

@@Gemnist98 Or maybe instead of you blaming it on the fact its a women maybe its just because the movie was just "Ok" Wonder women was received well and that film has a women as its lead actor

[@Googledeservestodie]

That's why I don't even look at the audience score. That system has been gamed for years, every Christian movie gets a high audience score even if it's one of the laziest scripts put to paper, a lot of them have some political or social agenda, and then they shove it at people who just like the film "WELL THE PEOPLE HAVE SPOKEN NERD" it shouldn't even exist imo. The audience is more bias than even the highest paid critic, and frankly the average person is kind of a dummy anyway.

[@cameron2069]

A film like 1982’s The Thing was savaged by critics but by now it has a fresh rating on RT because of how it accumulated reappraisal over the years in the evolving landscape. Now, there are so many online critics (of different persuasions), combined with the broken system, and this very influential website that makes a film’s reception instantaneous, and also might cement it with this bad reputation for years to come, stagnating its ability to grow an audience. It might get some strong enough grassroots appreciation, but the weight of the tomato still looms.

[@zakuraiyadesu]

Love the videos, man. Keep it up!!!

[@NigelThrashner]

I swear a lot of people will not see a movie below 80% on RT.

[@senecavermeulen8110]

my friend has this type of mental illness, lol

[@christopherb501]

I once knew an idiot who was like that with a NINETY-percent threshold, and that was a decade ago.

[@christopherb501]

​@@senecavermeulen8110 Don't let's be reductive about mental illness with that kind of comparison, kay?

[@DarkLord-hl1fi]

It’s so annoying just ignore reviews and go form your own opinion why is that so hard for people?

[@senecavermeulen8110]

@@christopherb501 chill out

[@KingOfMadCows]

Rotten tomatoes is owned by NBCUniversal and WB Discovery. They can manipulate the scores just by deciding which critics to include and which critics not to include.

[@RobinSteiner]

I have gone to avoiding reviews to a great lengths before watching a movie, because a bad review can kind of spoil my experience. I don't think I am the only one here.

[@WillOnYT]

The one dark thought I have from all of this is if these “critics” were giving positive reviews for one movie via payment, and giving a negative review for another movie that’s during the same theater cycle.

[@antoinedesgagnes9969]

I really like the phrase "fun 1.0 site". It encapsulates so much how was Internet back then and how it did change. Back then, Web-marketing for movies mostly revolved about creating websites for them and sometimes trying to make a publicity stunt . Internet didn't have so much weight so trying to flip the score on a specific website would had been then easily disregarded as a waste of time and money.

[@mellowmelee5024]

I vaguely recall the first time I saw a RT score mentioned in a trailer and thinking 'you guys are taking those seriously?' The whole Metacritic/RT thing is just for fun and should be taken as seriously as an amazon review score.

[@kevincomerford2242]

I stopped going to RT years ago and learned to just enjoy the films for what they are.

[@JYZProductions]

It's way more fun going into a movie blind and not knowing what to expect. Especially with streaming services where you're not spending money to see a certain movie. There were some surprises that I liked a lot more than some movie snobs or so. Yet there was a lot I hated that people praised like Pulp Fiction I still can't get over how bad it is or Fast And The Virginous .. I mean furious is.

[@Scottk2022]

I stopped going off of their reviews when they were deleting reviews do to “review bombing”. If people hate the last Jedi or whatever film and a bunch of people give it 1 star, who is rotten tomatos to determine that those reviews don’t count?

[@ragnarockerbunny]

Review bombing is a problem though and can skew a rating for unrelated reasons. Steam has a pretty good system where liftime reviews and recent reviews are two different metrics, and also tracks reviews over time. It's fine if people hated a film, but if a bunch of yahoos who didn't even watch the film leave a bunch of 1 stars because the lead star said lord of the rings was boring, that's an issue and while I don't necessarily agree with RT's handling, they do actually have to do something.

[@RexMortis_]

It worked because of its obscurity. Becoming mainstream greatly reduced its charm and, in a sense, its ability for genuine credibility.

[@Bustermachine]

Given enough knowledge of the inner workings of any system, humans will game it for their advantage and destroy any filtering value that it once had.

[@chasehedges6775]

@@Bustermachine💯💯

[@MrZachtheKingsfan]

It’s probably the most unreliable site to get an honest review of a movie or show. On one hand, you have critics that get invited to these premieres who are terrified to post a negative review in case that leads to them no longer being invited to events. On the other, you have people caught up in culture war issues that will mass review bomb a movie because it was “woke” or it has a “woke moment” and ruins the entire movie. It just sucks to rely on film reviews now unless it’s from a trusted source.

[@BestOneEver247]

@@waverlyking6045 tell me how corrupt both sides are

[@brainthebrian3690]

"Woke" movies are usually very bad, and the lacking skills of the writers who wrote them are the reason why the movie is "woke" in a way that causes people to write negative reviews about it. So it's not so much woke = review bomb, so much as it bad woke movie is called out for being bad at being "woke" and a movie.

[@eightcoins4401]

​@@brainthebrian3690 If people had a brain theyd realize stuff like Ghostbusters 2016 isnt bad because its "woke", but because its a vapid bad quality product thought up by cynical millonaires for a paycheck. Movies that try to seem progressive like that fail hard because they're written by rich hollywood business people. They can only really do performative virtue signalling hoping it raises profits since anything else would be them handcrafting their own guillotines. It's pretty visible with Ghostbusters 2016, it's pretty blatant the executives behind it saw women as nothing but a marketing gimmick.

[@claytonrios1]

There have been plenty of times where I've disagreed with Rotten Tomatoes and their critic and audience scores anyways. I think we need to move on as well.

[@roberttreacy8271]

I agree.

[@okrajoe]

Everything has to be short now (X/Twitter, TikToks, Memes), so movie reviews have shrunk to just a pair of numbers.

[@allyqueen2927]

I love this take on Rotten Tomatoes; I love how you made it clear you're not here to just bash the thing when its down, and you cited sources that make it clear you've always had an interest in reviews and you're not just jumping on the bandwagon to give your take like a lot of people are doing. Super nuanced and thought provoking. Never used rotten tomatoes much myself bc I'm not a film buff in the least, but i never thought about all these things

[@fasle2]

@captainmidnight your link is wrong on your description! Dont want you getting in trouble with your new sponsor. Thanks for the thoughtful video as always

[@taakotuesday]

Good on you for getting the Adam & Eve sponsorship!

[@maxmetalknight]

That Scorsese quote.. Feel like lately people do care more about things around movie than the movie itself. Trailer comes out and people are pissed at casting or involvement of people who had controversy in the past...

[@Gemnist98]

Should they NOT be a little pissed if a rapist is starring in a movie rather than rotting in a jail cell?

[@Bustermachine]

@@Gemnist98 Honestly, yes we should be. On the other hand, I understand why people feel so exhausted walking on egg shells regarding artists and actors these days.

[@sterling7]

Rotten Tomatoes, at least in its current form, is the product of a faltering attention span. "I don't have time to delve into a six-paragraph review, let alone a dozen of 'em; just tell me if the film is good!" Perhaps that's inevitable, in the current state of things, when there are multiple streaming services, a hundred channels, the web, and video games all jockeying for attention. But as I hear of the decline of newspapers and print media (including books) in general, I can't help but feel uneasy. It feels like we're weaning ourselves from the ability to concentrate on *anything* .

[@briantrafford4871]

I prefer the rating system at IMDB to be a better indicator of how good a movie will be. Sadly most critics seem to have sold out to ideology over actual judgement of the quality of the work itself.

[@MasterTangerines]

Not to say DC's movies were actually great, but I remember DC fans claiming it was rigged or influenced back when Batman V Superman came out and they were called idiots since "It's just a collection of different scores, it can't be rigged." And here we are now where people are saying "Oh it's always been rigged we've known this for years."

[@timlamiam]

I've stopped giving any meaningful weight to online review scores ever since it became popular to review bomb things that triggered people.

[@realtalk6195]

The "Certified Fresh" logo has been shown on DVD covers since the start of the 2010s. I think that's actually how I first found out about RT. It was totally off my radar but then one day I see it on the cover of _The Raid_ in 2012.

[@chasehedges6775]

You can only trust your own individual opinion

[@StarmenRock]

Not even that now, with the way we're easily influenced and manipulated.

[@chasehedges6775]

@@StarmenRock Good point but still.

[@StarmenRock]

@@chasehedges6775 yeah, everything is so scary nowadays. I can't believe it has come to a point where we don't even own our opinions and bodies.

[@hsimah5921]

Very insightful video thank you!!

[@rb5078]

I forgot about Jump the Shark. I loved that website. Makes me wonder how many other cool websites I’ve forgotten over the decades.

[@TwiggyPone3617]

Maybe… hear me out, _ just maybe_ media analysis is more complicated than a lot of people realize, and that things like audience scores and box office numbers alone are not good indicators of quality.

[@hellgirl1512]

That's why I literally have never looked at Rotten Tomatoes review score if I'm looking for a movie to watch. I always go to IMDB, at least you can read viewer's full review.

[@kimballwolfs5863]

That last quote is everything. Love it.

[@angrysarcasm2229]

The exact moment a website/person/business/organization becomes important enough to make a difference in the outcome of a situation is the same moment they become open to corruption and or manipulation.

[@GrievousReborn]

It's the same thing with Metacritic scores for video games

[@themanwiththegoldengooch9811]

i knew there was something when movie trailers started mentioning their rottem tomatoes score in the ad

[@shawnhenderson2091]

All of these sites need to seperate the weighting mechanism for each genre, comedies and horrors generally rate lower than dramas or action flicks even, they need to scale it better so one can evaluate a horror movie as it compares with other horror movies, and so on with other genres, rather than cross comparison - or even just have the original cross comparison but also include its own rating scaled to its genre. Also, its helping me like these sites that they're cracking down on review bombers. Man I hate that stuff.

[@Tonytonytone582]

Yet another reason to adopt the Turkington/Heidecker 5-bag system

[@stateyournameplease]

Rotten tomatoes used to be the best place to go when the internet/youtube was just starting to mature (early 2010s). Nowadays, even imdb gives better overviews of movies...

[@davenelson8592]

What are your alternatives? You mentioned the defunct Dissolve but any currently up sites you like?

[@BlazingOwnager]

I feel so vindicated by this. I completely wrote them off after Return of Skywalker, when the "verified" score dropped to 86% in the first four hours and then was frozen indefinitely. The real audience score still existed then, but I keep seeing people talk about that movie and cite it's 86% "audience" score. It was a total fabrication.

[@chasehedges6775]

Rise Of The Fanfiction was garbage

[@spicymemes7458]

I used to use it to decide which movies I will skip. Now I use it to decide which movies I will wait for streaming. Keep in mind this is a site that was conceived in the 90s when the only way to watch movies legally was one time transactions (theater, rentals, DVDs, VHS, etc.) Streaming has made it more convenient in that your one time transaction now isnt just for one movie or show, but the equivalent of a Blockbuster in your living room. People had to make or break decisions because it cost a lot to see a movie and get burned when its bad, but streaming makes it such that you are wasting your time more than your money. In a way, its good for bad movies and bad for good movies. If a movie has a bad score, I will see it eventually, just maybe not interested in spending the same amount I do for Netflix to see it once in theaters. Its purely economical.

[@HonestWatchReviewsHWR]

Am I the only one who never actually used Rotten Tomatoes, and always preferred IMDB instead?

[@musthaf9]

I just googled. google display both usually, if they are in agreement, it's probably accurate

[@Joe-ft4qm]

Is that what jumping the shark means? I've always understood it as the moment when a show kinda reaches a climax which is can't rise beyond and starts going down?

[@jtjvalenzuela]

I like RT, I use it often when I have a few movies in my watchlist and I want to choose one. Now, that doesn't mean at all that the score the movie had is going to affect the way I like a movie. But it's common that I enjoy a movie that has both a good audience and critics score, so I find it helpful. What I don't understand is people that use a score to justify why a movie is great that not many people enjoy. For me the RT score is just a guidance for what to watch next and is no different than a letterboxd or a IMDB score, it's just more helpful that has both critics and audience in one website. Great video Captain!

[@ArchOfWinter]

The tomatometer can add a few more grades. Something like Fresh off the Vine, Some Blemishes, In the Fridge for too Long, and lastly Rotten.

[@Extinguisher10]

Kim Bauer fighting a Cougar? Hell yeah!!! Wait, are we talking about the same kind of Cougar?

[@vermeermarkiv4450]

Rotten Tomatoes truly never occupied a lot of my space or mind. In a way it still doesn't, but I feel like it had far more of a presence in it's early days as a website because so much of its content was visual-based in the same IMDB was (or is), and never pretended to be anymore than a website for film discussion. I remember looking for images for the film "Reign of Fire" a couple years after it's release. If I wasn't being redirected to IMDB or Dark Horizons, I was being sent to Rotten Tomatoes repeatedly. That's how I came understand the website as an "official" movie hub of sorts. Its transformation into the go-to place for a film's quality has always been a strange notion for me. The Jump the Shark comparison is pretty apt, though.

[@idiot_city5244]

I hate they literally print the rotten tomatoes "Fresh!" logo thing onto some bluray slip cases... drives me nuts

[@parkmannate4154]

I kind of liked Ophelia. Glad it got distribution. Interesting that this is coming out around this movie, I would guess something like this has happened a lot

[@MIKELIN8]

I had Jump The Shark among my AOL favorites. I loved that site.

[@Anarckitty83]

I used to cruise the site and message boards during my HTML class in high school. I remember when they got rid of the message boards. Such a sad day.

[@fearlessweaver]

For a little perspective: in the 80s and 90s we had Siskel and Ebert, two thoughtful reviewers who boiled their reviews down to "thumb up" or "thumb down," a binary system that roughly translated to "recommended" or "not recommended." For me RT is just a more sophisticated version of this same system. "Fresh" means "recommended" and "rotten" means "not recommended." It isn't an ultimate arbiter of quality. We all have a limited media budget (both in time and money) and I think RT is a great tool for helping one to decide what media to consume.

[@Code7Unltd]

>I think RT is a great tool for helping one to decide what media to consume. It would be, if you aren't adventrous and/or share the taste of the mouldy critics.

[@jukkauh]

To fix their reviewer hacking problem, all RT needs to do is weight reviewer scores by two factors: (1) how new they are to the site and (2) how historically accurate they have been in matching audience scores.

[@lorocko_3665]

I always knew that critic scores on RT was way off before this news

[@awsome14619]

Are you going to make a video about the community movie?

[@jameskingsbery3644]

It's a common problem - people invent a metric, other people get wind of that metric and change their behavior, and then the original metric isn't as useful anymore.

[@rivereee]

You could do one about how IMDb and Box Office Mojo, also influential, are both owned by Amazon... who also make movies and TV

[@RaviBMaharaj]

I don't think of Rotten Tomatoes as something that judges a movie as being good or bad, but it tells me if more people like or dislike a movie and why that might be

[@otakubullfrog1665]

The main problem is that there's really no unbiased way to come up with the score in the first place since somebody needs to decide who counts as a critic and how to convert every scoring system ever used by critics (along with how to interpret reviews that don't even have scores). Everyone knew that things were really going off the rails when they started selectively deleting certain audience reviews that they labeled as trolls even those the whole point of the audience category was that the audience was everybody and there was never any rules for critics or the audience about what were considered valid reasons to like or dislike a movie.

[@Googaliemoogalie]

I was talking/complaining about RT yesterday, weird how this video dropped and said everything on my mind and more

[@hieunguyenrileygekko]

i think the first time people actually take RT score serious was BvS fiasco back in 2016, before that people had barely cared about it nowadays both critic score and audience score are unreliable, especially audience score when its easy to manipulate with bots

[@ShaunInce123]

It pretty much confirms all the theories everyone had about that site for years.

[@JMonique41]

I also frequented Jump the Shark back in the day so that part of the video unlocked some memories lol

[@JB-bq2qj]

I only use IMDB score and even then I disregard if it’s a show/movie with a well known crazy fan base

[@bluemonkey88]

I've felt this way for a while about Rotten Tomatoes so I prefer to check Metacritic and then read through the orange reviews