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Hollywood Producer Blames Rotten Tomatoes For Convincing People Not To See His Movie (vanityfair.com)
An anonymous reader shares a VanityFair report: These days, it takes less than 60 seconds to know what the general consensus on a new movie is -- thanks to Rotten Tomatoes, the review aggregator site that designates a number score to each film based on critical and user reviews. Although this may be convenient for moviegoers not necessarily interested in burning $15 on a critically subpar film, it is certainly not convenient for those Hollywood directors, producers, backers, and stars who toiled to make said critically subpar film. In fact, the site may be "the worst thing that we have in today's movie culture" -- at least according to Brett Ratner, the Rush Hour director/producer who recently threw the financial weight of his RatPac Entertainment behind Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. Sure, the blockbuster made over $850 million worldwide in spite of negative reviews ... but just think of how much more it could have made had it not had a Rotten Tomatoes score of 27 percent! Last week, while speaking at the Sun Valley Film Festival, Ratner said, "The worst thing that we have in today's movie culture is Rotten Tomatoes. I think it's the destruction of our business."
Hollywood Producer Blames Rotten Tomatoes For Convincing People Not To See His Shitty Movie
If your business depends on tricking people into watching crappy movies, it deserves to die.
The problem isn't the review aggregators; it's the constant stream of bad movies.
The destruction of the business is more likely due to Hollywood's seeming inability to produce an original idea.
"The worst thing that we have in today's movie culture is Rotten Tomatoes. I think it's the destruction of our business."
should be
"The thing that we have in today's movie culture is Rotten Tomatoes. I am glad not enough people use it."
Make movies that don't suck, and people/reviewers won't shit all over them.
Their curated list of critics simply don't like the same movies I do. Therefore there is little to no correlation between my enjoyment of a film and its RT freshness. It's also setting expectations. People went into BvS expecting a terrible movie. If you look for a terrible movie, you will find it.
Perhaps there needs to be an End User License Agreement for movies that bars unfavorable reviews. **ducks**
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Producers of shitty movies don't like Public to know their movies are shit, prior to paying them
Is the operative term. If your business is crappy movies, then absolutely is rotten tomatoes ending you and rightfully so. Anyone making good movies has absolutely no problems with aggregated reviewing.
It could be the fact the movie sucked.
Batman: [suffocating Superman with his foot on his throat] You were never a god. You were never even a man!
Superman: [hardly breathing] You're letting them kill Martha...
Batman: What does that mean? Why did you say that name?
Superman: Find him... Save Martha...
Batman: Why did you say that name? Martha? Why did you say that name? WHY DID YOU SAY THAT NAME?
Lois Lane: [enters running] It's his mother's name! It's his mother's name.
Rotten Tomatoes allowed me to set my expectations so goddamn low I ended up enjoying my self.
The WAAAMbulance has been called.
Or maybe the whole super hero genre, re-imagining, mashup, remake, thing is just getting played out?
captcha: hacking
Just because a movie sucked, doesn't mean the producer do not deserve massive amounts of money for it. They put a lot of work into it!
How dare those SOBS tell people what they thought about the movie. They have no right to freely talk about the movie - it's not like they are the President - not when BUSINESS is on the line.
End sarcasm
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
...of your abusive business model, where you make shit films, charge too much for them, trick people into going with clever advertising, and then get laws passed that criminalize format-shifting because you're so afraid that a tiny bit of revenue will slip through your greedy fingers. Even Hollywood accounting can't win in a free market. Man, that really sucks. Your life is so hard.
I watched the movie in question online a few weeks ago, I got bored and skipped an hour in the middle, and honestly don't think I missed anything important. I can't possibly imagine having to wait though the ever so slow plot line in a movie theater with no other distractions available.
Seriously.
Was it the best thing I've ever seen? No... but I certainly didn't regret spending my money on it either. It was some 2 and a half hours or so of escapism, and I enjoyed it on that level.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
they should sue the movie theaters for having high pop and popcorn prices / not being byob as that makes people less likely to go to them.
The worst thing that we have in today's movie culture is big budget movies that don't invest in good writers. Don't blame Rotten Tomatoes for sharing opinions. Directors and producers can no longer count on uninformed consumers giving them money for a movie just because it has good special effects or big name actors.
If Hollywood was creating a stream of innovative, original movies that might only appeal to a percentage of the viewing audience, his argument might have some merit. But when the Hollywood model is sequel after sequel with the odd reboot thrown in so we can make more sequels, I want to know if a movie is crap.
I can remember CHiPs when it first screened on TV. Couldn't tell you any storylines, but I'm pretty certain it was nothing like the drek I'm seeing advertised now. I don't need to see a Rotten Tomatoes score to avoid that one, but I'll be interested to see how low it can go!
To me, Ratner complaining about Rotten Tomatoes warning me away from his film is kind of like the pregnancy test kit manufacturers complaining about Australia's TGA (Therapeutic Good Administration; kind of like the FDA) warning that stick pregnancy test kit's don't work (as happened recently). Instead of railing against web sites that inform consumers about the quality of his product, Ratner might be better served if he made a better product.
You know, kind of like how the free market generally works.
... how things that provide consumers with more information about products before they buy them and commonly bad for business.
I find humans being utterly reliant upon reviews for every fucking thing in their life completely pathetic. Can't even drink a cup of coffee or eat a pizza without asking a panel of five-star rated liars. Ever heard of product satisfaction being subjective?
Use your own brain for once and make your own judgements. Live a little. Good or bad, it is satisfying knowing at the end of the day the decisions you made were yours, and not made based on sponsored bullshit.
It's very simple. Stop remaking the same movies over and over. Come up with something NEW for once.
Corporatism != Free Market
If anything is contributing to the destruction of the movie business its the people involved in making the shitty movies not the people who smartly avoid them or assist others in doing so.
I don't watch very many movies anymore, too many of them are just remakes of older movies or are just not interesting subject wise. Why do producers think that everyone will want to watch their particular piece of drivel?
Unless you can provide a movie-sucked refund policy (that doesn't require me to jump through hoops) at the movie theater, pay per view, video rental or purchase, I will stick with online reviews like Rotten Tomatoes or Meta Critic. I will not spend my money to watch your crappy movie.
Or, as summarized in other posts, make good movies! RT, MC and other aggregate critic review sites will indicate as such if they are actually good movies.
The irony is that the film industry relies on massive amounts of funding to essentially brainwash people into seeing their movie through advertisements, commercials, and other mediums of swaying the public mind. So he's tacitly saying it's ok for THEM to sway you, but honest, objective sources of independent review are horrible, terrible concepts that interrupt their ability to mind control you.
The plan to be successful with a crappy movie. Trick people into going to see it. The people who really want to see it will go anyway. You need to trick people with flashy previews and actor interviews to get the rest of the people to go and be disappointed with the experience. Then you need to complain about them not liking it, to trick more people into watching.
Or continue to make shit films and then whine that people have the means to discover if a film is shit before wasting their money and time watching it.
Or even imdb, but rather the people paid to astroturf there. One can't blame the platform for the 'rotten' practices of the industry. I have no doubt that a good third of reviews are paid for. Another third are left by very young people on their first phones (likely too young to have understood whatever film is in question, you can tell by the language). The last third are probably legit, left by people that actually saw and considered a film, and very seldom, even if positive, are a perfect score. Thumbs up or down would only obfuscate things further. Whatever the Roman origins, bear in mind that Siskel and Ebert, where the gesture originated in relation to films, spent an entire show actually explaining their views and giving them context, they were not human 'like' buttons randomly giving arbitrary, binary responses.
The whole notion of big data and its utility is a seriously, seriously flawed one. We are the dumbasses pushing it.
Following his logic, trailers are the worst things to happen to the movie business. I have never used Rotten Tomatoes and I didn't go see the movie. I watched the trailer and it sucked so badly that there was no way I was going to go watch the film. The trailer is supposed to encourage people to go see a flick, but the Batman v Superman trailer was like nails on a chalkboard.
Maybe, just maybe, if you want more people to see your movie you should make a decent movie and an appealing trailer rather than blaming people who point out your work sucks.
Most of my favorite movies have low scores, most movies I consider epic and mind blowing have mediocre scores. That website is horribly wrong about movies 99% of the time. In my opinion, anyone that gives that site even a smidgen of credibility is doing themselves a huge disservice when deciding to see a movie or not. Admittedly I don't know of any good sites that review movies because they're all bad. It's because movies are art forms, they are subjective. Hell I don't even pay attention to movies my brother recommends to me anymore because I think he has poor taste in movies and we're related. What he likes I don't and what I likes he doesn't. We both do agree on one thing though, Rotten Tomatoes scores are incorrect garbage most of the time. I can definitely sympathize with movie studios, actors, etc.. in this scenario. I'm not saying review sites and critiques shouldn't be around, just not in that kind of format.
Dammit, where are my mod points when I need them?! +1
and other people can find out before giving you money, somehow that's wrong?
Yeah you and every scammer who releases shitty products and wants to make a ton of money anyway.
Maybe stop making tons of cheap shitty CG for everything and just hope to cash in.
I saw the bad reviews and still watched it. The reviews were right. The base story is there but this movie still isn't good. Reviewer have at times even when it was just the newspaper reviews give a movie bad service but the audience liked it. This is not one of those scenarios.
Exactly this. There are amazing numbers of untapped novels out there that would make wonderful movies.
That the movie industry spends most of its effort ignoring this resource leaves me with absolutely no sympathy whatsoever for any whining I hear from them. Where's Neuromancer? Where's Tau Zero? Where's (any one of) the Bolo stories, or Galactic Odyssey? Pretty much anything Gene Wolfe ever wrote? Axis of Time series? Novik's Temeraire? I could on for days just in the areas of fantasy and SF. There are tons of untapped thrillers and etc. out there too; Lots of as-yet-to-be-mades (not to mention as-yet-to-be-made-wells) from Clancy, Clavell, etc.
And then, when they commit crimes against art like create utter crap like "Soylent Green" out of really good books like "Make Room, Make Room"... then I'm glad they're not digging up good novels as sources. Let 'em make more formula superhero movies like the (utterly terrible) Batman vs. Superman we're talking about here. Keeps me from tearing my hair out.
Honestly, if the movie industry died (which it shows no sign of, this buffoon's whining aside), I'd just read more books.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
After all Rotten Tomatoes is owned by Universal Studios. o.O
Hollywood is getting free feedback. Rotten tomatoes and such sites are casual comments. Netflix and Amazon prime streaming statistics are people paying money and actually watching stuff. Instead of using the feedback to improve the product, these guys are bellyaching about it.
It shows how much of their product is real and how much of it is smoke-and-mirrors. If your product is steak you can realistically gather and meet user expectations. So you would love feedback. If your product is sizzle, you would hate people who mess up the expectations.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
I agree, Rotter Tomatoes is bad. Every time I see "Certified Fresh" in a movie trailer, if it was a movie I was on the fence about I instantly know to avoid it. Because quite frankly it feels like they are buying reviews at that point.
Just to be clear, I am not accusing anyone of buying reviews. I am simply stating that it has that same feel to it.
Review sites may well destroy the tired old formulas, but this need not destroy the business. At worst it injects some risk back into the business again, as studios are forced to find new formulas to replace those now being rejected by moviegoers as played out, but is that such a bad thing? The last period of experimentation produced the original blockbusters that spawned these remakes and sequels, after all, and it was considered a golden age.
And your crappy movie. The only thing wrong with Hollywood is that you are still making movies.
--80% of the people that saw your crappy movie.
"... just think of how many more people we could have bait-n-switched into watching had it not had a Rotten Tomatoes score of 27 percent!"
We adults were kids once, and some of us enjoyed reading comics. With a good superhero movie, we get to see some of that come to life. It can be done well, and has been; you can also get a real stinker. Like Superman vs. Batman.
You know, just because I'm 60 doesn't mean I'm dead. Yet.
Also, comics are an art form. Like most art, it doesn't speak to everyone. That's okay. Like most art, it can be done well, or poorly. Also okay. And conversions to movies... same. But when someone does such a conversion poorly, and then claims that the audience is at fault, as here, for sharing their opinion about it... well, that's just humor.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
All recent DC Comics universe movies are know to have had an awfully hectic production process. The producers, and generally the Fox production teams have turned the movies into horrible mess.
By the way, Batman VS Superman is surely not the worst of all. Sure it is bad, but not so bad. This movie is just an average failure.
Man of Steel was a total trainwreck. The worst is that it looks awful. Visually, Man of Steel is the worst high budget movie I have seen for years. It looks like utter crap. It feels like the director had no steering power over his own film to make it consistent. I had not seen so many lens flares in a video since I watched Babylon V. The colors are mostly awful, and for whatever reason, the time in the movie is almost always late afternoon, whether the scene is in the US or in the foreign country. As a photographer I know that the golden hours sure look good, but it should be used sparingly.
How can such high budget movies can be shot so badly?
Stupidity is the root of all evil.
...bad reviews kill bad movies. Rotten tomatoes just delivers the message.
Think of how much more Batman vs Superman could have made if it wasn't a disorganised clusterfuck complete with characters doing things that made no sense, a plot that simply made no sense, and fight scenes which seemed to go out of their way to ensure that to the viewers they made no sense.
It made $850million based on the name, and the expectations of the rabid fanbase, and I'm sad to count myself as part of it. It was garbage. Probably the first superhero film I won't be getting on Bluray.
Filmmaker complains when social media borks film. But it's fine and dandy when it borks a right-winger.
Holy Crap! , "I'm a whiney baby & deserve all your love & money because I work in Hollywood." WOW. There's simply no other response to something like this. It doesn't generate helpful discussion of any sort, it's just a whine about how a bunch of people saw the movie, hated it & told the world. I watched it on Netflix, that's about what it was worth (e.g. 10 cents given how much other stuff I consume on Netflix for my $9/month).
Potential Earnings.
Seriously, what did he expect would be the reviews of a movie that drags a plot out well over 2 hours that only contained enough substance to fill only part of a half-hour episode of a cartoon/anime series?
The Title "Hollywood Producer Blames Rotten Tomatoes For Convincing People Not To See His Movie" does not accurately represent the content of this article.
It should read:
"Hollywood producer blames Rotten Tomatoes for popping his hype bubble and exposing the lousy product he produced prior to moviegoers purchasing his tickets."
Having Seen Batman v Superman I have to say it was a comic book movie and delivered a comic book movie experience, but the producer followed a very bad trend in trying to compress too much into a one to two hour film. The story he simplified into this movie should have had a back story movie for each character detailing what lead them to make the choices that brought them into conflict. Then two to three movies for the ramp up with a cliff hanger and an entire movie for the fight, reconciliation, and conclusion. Then there is the complete surprise entrance of Lex. Who is he, why does he hate superman, what motivates him?
Cramming all this into one movie created an "executive summary" of the story:
Batman, orphan, vigilante, filled with rage, insane
Superman, conflicted, super moral, self righteous
Mysterious Woman, unknown, possible love interest? What the heck it's Wonder Woman!
Lex Luthor, bad guy, insane, manipulative
Mysterious running around Lex a shadow manipulating it all, makes Batman hate superman, uses leverage to radicalize Superman. Fighting, Fighting, Holy smoke Wonder woman joins in!, Lex creates a monster that is unknown in cannon universe, explosions, explosions, Credits.
That is practically the entire script of the movie, taken from a universe that took three or four comic series many issues to relate. So audience involvement is minimal unless the viewers are familiar with the series and involved with the characters already. It's no wonder the audience didn't like it, and the fact that it was a comic book movie ensured the critics would hate it. Rotten tomatoes didn't kill his movie he did, they just made his failure visible, but typically for narcissistic persons he cannot take the failure as an opportunity for improvement and aim to do better next time. Instead he blames someone else and creates the internal illusion that he is effective.
He is right, I'm sure it has nothing to do with the teal and orange ( http://theabyssgazes.blogspot.se/2010/03/teal-and-orange-hollywood-please-stop.html ), zero contrast, gray haze, bad shaky cameras and of course, bad stories and bad actors at all. It must be the Rotten Tomatoes... surely. ;)
Garbage in, garbage out..
Anything more that needs to be said?
BAN OPINIONS!
For the first week or so the theatre only gets about 10% of the ticket sales. They need the high prices on the popcorn and drinks in order to pay for everything. When movies stay in the theatre longer then the percentage going to the studios drops as the weeks go by and the theatres can start to make money. The cheaters want successful movies with long runs because short run films don't make much for them.
.... thinks it is a great movie. Why is this a surprise? Why is the producer surprised that he, himself, thinks he produced a great movie. On the other hand, it may well be a great movie. But that does not mean it has to be a popular movie, or that people will want to spend money to see it.
I saw batman v superman, and it was a huge disappointment. No bullshit and no trolling, they seriously dropped the ball. They deserved the low reviews, and the people who chose not to see it due to the low reviews probably spent their time doing something more enjoyable instead.
Far from being the death of the industry, I think sites like Rotten Tomatoes are an excellent quality control measure.
I went to see the movie in question. We spent about $30 and close to 3 hours of our lives. It was tedious, way too long, and boring. It has been available on the cable for a few months, and I won't even bother to watch it again. So, the producer complains that Rotten Tomatoes told the truth about his "ground turkey" and it cost him a few million. Give us better and original entertainment, so that your Tomato score draws us to it, and stop crying over the money you didn't make.
Why can't they just believe our marketing team?
Because every marketing team is renowned for their honesty and integrity...!
...of your abusive business model, where you make shit films, charge too much for them, trick people into going with clever advertising, and then get laws passed that criminalize format-shifting because you're so afraid that a tiny bit of revenue will slip through your greedy fingers. Even Hollywood accounting can't win in a free market. Man, that really sucks. Your life is so hard.
While I agree with you overall, I disagree with you assessment of Hollywood accounting, it always wins. A film's purpose is not to make a net profit, it's to take the angel's money and make a profit for everyone except those investors. Hollywood accounting is a brilliant scheme to do just that.I mean, where else can you spend 60$Million, make 580$Million, and still be in the red so you don't have to payoff the people who gave you the money in the first place?
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
Just lobby Congress for a law mandating that every adult must go to the cinema each week or pay a penaltax.
Here's an idea, you director and producer nitwits: PRODUCE BETTER MOVIES. Look at Logan, Deadpool, the Marvel films in general, classic good scifi like Aliens, Sunshine, the original ghost in the shell. While people might, on paper, appear to want dumbed down plotlines, that just doesn't pan out in the long run, as evidenced by review aggregation after the fact.
Dear Movie Director:
You sir, are a faggot.
If only we had rottentomatoes.com for EVERY consumer good, the world would be much better.
what the bleep is rotten tomatoes again ??
I doubt they will have much influence over how your crapmovies are viewed by the general public themself.
This rotten whatever could be the least of my wories. Your crapmovieattempts to rip off the general public speak for themself.
People who think like this belong in a mental institute , yes that means all of hollywood and record industry.
and I'm glad not to have paid to see it. Piracy saves the day AGAIN.
Perhaps don't let a website do all your thinking for you. IDK about you, but I read reviews in an attempt to make an informed decision. You watch the trailers, talk about it with your friends, read the critics reviews, read the early user reviews, weigh it all, ignore everything up to this point, stream a camrip online, then after all that if you think it'll be worth it, buy a ticket.
If we let these people go about, You'd soon be buying a ticket , not even being sure if you would even get a movie shown at all....like a lottery ticket on some fancy fair. They want you to spend money to find out what crap they made. That would be tollerable if we the customer could demand refunds after watching the crap.
Rather than looking for ways to improve, Brett has stooped to pointing fingers and blaming the messenger of bad news (RT). The people called you out on a bollocks film, Mr. Ratner - take it as the gift that it is - an outpouring of free feedback. The messenger is very efficient at collecting the voices of many to arrive at a thorough analysis. It's the sort of things businesses had to once pay big money to get and could use to their benefit without anyone else ever seeing it. Now that it's nearly instant and public, when things don't go well, everyone knows. On the flip side, if you have something that resonates with viewers - it can be a runaway hit and you didn't have to invest $100m to do it necessarily. This should be a key take-away for anyone wanting to make a brilliant film. Hollywood studios would be wise to adapt their business model to the new reality and embrace it unless they want to end up a failed bit of history. My hunch is that the person making the original comment is upset with having to deliver bad news to investors and answer to shareholders. He should be upset - the analysis shows it was a terrible movie. Impartial analysis doesn't easily lie.
Parmasean Cheese. It's what's for dinner.
"The worst thing that we have in today's movie culture is Rotten Tomatoes. I think it's the destruction of our business."
Burn baby burn!
I RTFA and it seems that his problem isn't just with the aggregation it's with the fact that the reviews of mere viewers are given credibility. He cites the decline of Movie Critics as the reason why these types of things aren't useful.
With a few exceptions official movie reviewers were easily bought and would give stunning sound bites for movies. Those would be plastered all over the advertising and say just what the studios wanted to hear. Since they can't buy off the viewers with anything but good movies of course they're not going to like aggregation.
As many comments have said - if 999 out of 1,000 reviews say your movie sucks then there's an excellent chance your movie sucks.
Brett Ratner is one of the biggest problems in Hollywood, not Rotten Tomatoes. Here's his directorial resume (I count one decent movie):
2014/I Hercules
2011 Tower Heist
2007 Rush Hour 3
2006 X-Men: The Last Stand
2004 After the Sunset
2002 Red Dragon
2001 Rush Hour 2
2000 The Family Man
1998 Rush Hour
1997 Money Talks
The ability to find out what people, in general, think of a movie before shelling out $20+ to see it will, in fact, destroy the current Hollywood business model. They need to completely alter how they approach the business.
They need to start making movies that don't suck throbbing purple donkey dick. Then, Rotten Tomatoes is, literally, the best thing that could possibly happen to them.
If your business depends on people not knowing what they're buying from you, you're a con artist.
Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. Sure, the blockbuster made over $850 million worldwide in spite of negative reviews ... but just think of how much more it could have made had it not had a Rotten Tomatoes score of 27 percent!
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Right. The freer the market, the harder it is to win with Hollywood Accounting. It works as well as it does because it's not a free market. In a free market, you pull that trick once, people will never work with you again.
Make better movies. Not only huge amount of CGI, actually nice stories.
This article makes the grave mistake of assuming since they use a particular site, that everybody else does.
That distilling all the reviews down to a single number removed any actual useful commentary they had, and just encourages people to only watch movies that people have already watched. Which in turn encourages the industry to keep producing movies that are identical to the ones we have already watched. I wouldn't go so far as to say it was _ruining_ the industry, but I could buy the argument that it had a negative effect.
Any such validity is instantly negated, however, by the fact that we're talking about the guy who made "Bambi vs Godzilla 2: the DCification." Do you know what is destroying your industry sir? You. Personally. One movie at a time.
I shouldn't really say "the one good thing" because I didn't see the movie yet so I don't know if there's more I would like...
But what Batman Vs. Superman did set up was a lot of really great ongoing batman/superman at the diner scenes the end most How It Should Have Ended episodes.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
As someone who is aware of super hero comics and once faithfully followed one of them and watched the cartoons, the whole idea of Batman vs. Superman was just ludicrous from the title alone.
Batman is basically a rich guy with fancy gadgets on his toolbelt. He's not a LOT different from anybody. He just has better gadgets.
Superman is a God, effectively.
This fight is over before it even starts so why the hell would I want to pay to see it? Well, I wouldn't and didn't and never needed to read the reviews. These characters used to be allies as well so the idea of having them fight each other sounds like something a four-year-old kid would come up with, bashing action figures in a sandbox. Whatever, man. Not gonna see this movie. Honey Boo Boo, which I have also never seen, sounds more interesting.
Sig for hire.
The incredible coincidence of this whole story, however, is that Rotten Tomatoes was actually conceived in 1998 by a movie buff named Senh Duong, who was looking for reviews of films starring Jackie Chan—the star of the 1998 Brett Ratner–directed movie Rush Hour—when the idea for Rotten Tomatoes struck him.
In the UK, if you watch any broadcast TV channel in realtime (or watch the BBC stuff in any form on the net from the official BBC app) you are forced by ***criminal*** law (not civil) to buy a BBC 'license'. The BBC parasites hang with the worst of the Hollywood producers and infect these coke-headed idiots with the obscene state of UK law. This leads useless idiots like Ratner to fantasise about a world where his garbage is effectively forced on people whether they want it or not.
Doing away with accurate honest assessments of the quality of a given movie is one such tactic. IMDB (like the BBC) has banned user forum opinions, for instance, because film producers like Ratner pay Amazon (the owners of the IMDB) to buy promotion and inflated film scores on the IMDB page for their film. When the forums were present, it was all to easy to spot when Amazon had taken money for a pay-for-play promotion, because forum comments would run counter to the film score (and reviews in the review section written by troll accounts working for reputation management companies doing promotional 'PR' for the movie).
The BBC banned user comments beneath their 'news' reports because the comments frequently contained factual refutements of the biased BBC reports, and if the BBC deleted said comments, they were hosted on other sites proving the fact that the BBC censors accurate corrections to their frequently fake news. The BBC, in the days of radio, was set up to act as the propaganda arm of the British Government's Intelligence agencies before MI5/MI6 had these names.
Ratner wants the right to use fake reviews of his movies to pull the punters in, just as the BBC wants to be free to push fake news without question.
Every year critics slam films that are overwhelmingly well-received and rated by fans.
Equally, they cheer at films that generally are shit, even for people interested in these types of films.
Conclusion? Critics should always be ignored. ALWAYS.
Doesn't matter if it is films, games or even books, wll critics are shit in their own ways.
Yes, even your little 'gem' reviewer that only you and 5 MILLION other people know about.
I'd say the usefulness of aggregators lies in the extremes - if the aggregate score is 80-90%, that's a remarkably wide range of people saying it was good, so clearly it has a broad based appeal and you'll likely enjoy it too.
True though there are some genres of movies on Rotten Tomatoes that get consistently over-rated compared with their relative merits. Pixar movies and disney-esque animation in general tend to get higher reviews than they probably deserve in many cases. For example Wall-E was a very solid movie and I enjoyed it but it got a 96% on Rotten Tomatoes. You'll never convince me that it was THAT good of a movie. I would have put it somewhere in the high 70s or low 80s. Maybe high 80s at best which is where the audience score was at 89% and even that is a bit high. Totally worth a theater ticket but not exactly best picture material. There are some that deserve ratings in the 90s but those should be much more rare than they are.
Fortunately I'm aware of this fact about RT so I can mentally adjust but it's kind of annoying and makes it harder to separate the good from the great and sometimes results in movies that should be skipped getting decent recommendations.
Similarly, if something is ranked at 10-20%, that's a remarkable consensus that it's bad.
Agreed. I've never seen a movie rated that low on Rotten Tomatoes that wasn't indeed a hot mess.
If the movie is great, the aggregate review is very positive, spurring fence-sittings to go see it. Now you love rottentomatoes.com.
If the movie sucks, you know what happens. Now you hate rottentomatoes.com
The solution is to stop making crap movies.
The only downside I can see to this is that people who based their movie-going decision off of a place like Now you love rottentomatoes.com are putting faith in the aggregate of strangers' opinions. This may stop people from "checking it out for themselves" and may strengthen a hivemind mentality over time.
Want people to see your movie? Want better than 27% on RT? MAKE A MOVIE THAT PEOPLE WANT TO SEE.
Want to know what's truly destructive to the movie industry, specifically, and business, in general? The idea that bad ideas should be protected. RT acts as a wonderful market force. Funny how unabashed capitalism is nice when one's doing well, but when they're not, they clamour for protectionism...
The destruction of a business is when the business no longer makes good products. Not when someone starts telling consumers that the product is not good.
Because they it as high as 27. 7 would be closer to the mark!!!
I think people should read the reviews before deciding if they will like a movie or not, instead of blindly following the arbitrary score system. What a 10/10 score or 5 stars tell you, outside of it being popular? I say out of experience: many movies I enjoyed received bad scores, The Great Wall is an example. The opposite is also true: many movies I disliked received good scores and some of them even won prizes like The Revenant.
Don't always assume your opinion or taste will be in synchrony with the majority or the critics.
Christopher Reeve was handsom, but not severely so. When he played Clark there wasn't much needed to turn him into a fairly ordinarily good looking man. Henry looks beautiful, though, and as Clark Kent he'd STILL be noted and conspicuous.
Val Kilmer worked very well IMO as Batman *as Batman* but was less believable as Bruce Wayne. Somewhat for the same reasons.
Michael Keaton nailed it.
Just because taste is subjective doesn't mean we can't agree on an evaluation of a film.
Consensus says Batman V Superman was a shit film. That's a relevant fact.
Just because you are a snowflake doesn't render near-unanimous disdain isn't relevant.
Any way you define consensus, it's fairly known that the film was garbage.
I'm not saying Rotten Tomatoes is a good measure or that all critics hated BvS...that's not it at all.
I am rejecting the notion that consensus is irrelevant because everyone has a unique perspective and opinion.
Thank you Dave Raggett
- As opposed to movie reviews gone "Tame". Come on! Movie reviews have opinions and - they're not always there to be liked or agreed with.
For one, I've always liked the story of, "Beauty and the Beast". I've always enjoyed movies portraying that story. But if Disney insists that they have to use the newest version to add a "Gay" theme to it, my opinion, like it or not is that it deserves a poor review. That is not what the story of Beauty and the Beast has always been about. Throw stones if you want. People have a right to be politically incorrect . . . . . . not just pc.
Right. The freer the market, the harder it is to win with Hollywood Accounting. It works as well as it does because it's not a free market. In a free market, you pull that trick once, people will never work with you again.
While that may be true, a number of people who back films either:
a. Have some other way they are getting paid for their involvement so they don't care about the upfront costs since they will make money anyway. In addition, they don't have to share that money but profits would be shared so they have no good reason to want a profit
b. It's a way to get to hang around Hollywood types and that's the cost of entry...
The ones who get screwed are those who take a cut of the net profit because they don't understand the system; such as a writer who doesn't understand the system and gets a 10% of the net instead of .1% gross.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
Wow, how is this /.???
DICE ????
Stoopid, this is totally off base, foolish..
\slow day ??
I would expect that RottenTomatoes has also *increased* the viewing of many movies as well. I know that I have often gone there and looked at the highest rated movies when looking for something to add to my Netflix DVD queue. I like looking at the critics vs reviewers rating as well. Many a good movie (to me) has been panned by critics. Likewise, many critically acclaimed movies don't always get good reviews.
It's just information though, the choice of what to watch is still mine.
And I knew Batman vs Superman was poorly rated.... and I still added it to my queue. I didn't make it through it though, shut it off after about 1/4 of the way in. Just terrible.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around 'Brett Ratner' and 'film festival'. Those two things don't go together and I feel like maybe there's a little tear in the space time continuum we should be more concerned about right now.
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If I could get a refund for a crappy movie, I would be more willing to give them a try.
He's mad because....it's easier for people to find out his shitty movie is shitty? I think he's on to something....
Let's get rid of Amazon/Ebay seller feedback....because it makes it easier for people to find out shitty sellers are shitty.
Let's get rid of Angie's list, because it makes it easier for people to find out shitty contractors are shitty.
Let's get rid of interviews, resume's, and contacting previous employers....because it makes it easier for people to find out shitty prospective hires are shitty.
and thats why we throw them at people who suck.
My advice is to try to suck less.
Anyone would be right to listen to anyone who says "don't see this contrived turd of a film". It's utter dogshit. First, anyone who thinks Batman could beat an alien who can fly at or near the speed of light on the power of sheer will, without seemingly any effort... Jesus christ. Also, the acting is shit, the characters unbelievable... it's just a shit movie all around.
He basically argues that it's not fair because people don't understand what goes into making these things.
As if the fact of effort being expended ENTITLES him to monetary earnings somehow.
A lot of people don't understand what goes into building a house either.
But if the thing's drafty, you have holes in the walls you can drive a forklift through, the house is settling crooked, you have mold in various areas, using electricity in the home starts fires, BUT THE CARPETING IS TOP FUCKING NOTCH, people are going to call bullshit and not patronize your home building business or buy your latest built home.
Are you going to bitch about a review site where your former customers outline all the shit you did wrong in THEIR homes?
And Rotten Tomatoes is nothing more than a dispassionate aggregation of the general public's response to your film. It's not as if the site has it out for you.
But no. Ratner just wants a bigger payday. Because Ratner thinks that he was dealing with a bigger bunch of IP on a bigger budget. Therefore his overall renumeration should be N+1 of whatever he ACTUALLY gets.
Fuck him and the dolly rig he rode in on.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
The sheer contempt the elite has for the unwashed mass of peasants never surprises me. "Those filthy serfs wouldn't know greatness if it bit them in their foul deplorable asses."
...to always get it wrong.
I nearly always find they give ridiculously high scores to all the most undeserving utterly fomulaic Hollywood dross, and am frequently pleasantly surprised by the entertainment value of movies they give the very lowest scores to.
I didn't see any of the reviews or even know people thought it was bad until well after I saw Batman vs. Superman and saw for myself what a pile of garbage it is.
A whining movie producer is just pathetic.
This is not what RT does. we do not even really have a name for what RT does, since their is no situation where their particular data analysis makes much sense. The closest thing might be a gauge of the inverse of how controversial a movie is. Really average crowd pleasures do well, and not much else. RT has loads (literally tens of thousands) of movies with 99-100% ratings. Most of them other sites label as 60%-75%. They are decent movies, that pretty much everyone likes, but no one really loves. They also have hosts of movies with 10-30% ratings that routinely get 80%+ on other sites, and have huge cult followings. They did not have a big advertising budget or were simply the wrong genre.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic are both horrible. Sometimes it seems like professional critics love boring movies that are plotless and meander all over the place and end without closure. The user reviews that exceed two or three sentences tend to be more useful, but then you run the risk of spoilers. If there was a movie review site that relied solely on audience EKG readings it would be far more useful.
I've tried http://movielens.org/ which seems like it should work but it still seems to miss the mark. I can't be the only one who is fed up with some of the insane reviews on Rotten Tomatoes. Why isn't there a better site?
Sure, the Super Hero block busters are fun, they are like roller coasters. Not much intellectual stimulation, no real plot to speak of, no real story either. I hesitate to call them "movies," I think "blockbuster" is perfect.
Don't get me wrong, I like "blockbusters" sometimes, but there are so many really really good films being produced that have to go to netflix or amazon because there is no screen space at the theaters. "Beauty and the Beast?" are you f*&^&*king kidding me? Sure, its good to see Hermione with a day job, but its on every damned screen in the theaters.
We need to differentiate between "big" movies and all the others. The "big" movies need to cost more. The other movies should cost less. Then there will be openings for better "movies."
"For the first week or so the theatre only gets about 10% of the ticket sales."
Why? And if those are the terms of the distribution contract why should we feel sorry for anyone involved in the whole stinking mess? Media creation and distribution is a folly, and no one involved with it deserves a scrap of sympathy.
If anything, more people should be aware of Rotten Tomatoes or we need more streamlined widespread movie reviews websites so that directors stop spending so much money on such garbage movies....
No matter how much directors and Hollywood complains about critics and stuff like piracy, there has never been a time when they had such a wide and accepting market in history.
You make a crap movie that borrows characters from another medium which fans hated, and you are still able to turn a profit... it's ridiculous.
There are so many comics based, recycled franchises, shitty sequels, westernalized stuff, retelling and unoriginal content that I don't even know what an original story is anymore. Just search for "movies 2017".
Most of the good movies I watch these days never got a chance to shine because of all that crap that Hollywood keeps spewing. And yet, some people involved still have the nerve to complain.
The destruction of your business is the crappy movies they keep making.
Chris, know what else would make a superb movie from Laumer? The Long Twilight. That book is awesome fun.
It has superhumans, aliens and alien artifacts, AI constructs, alien empires, broadcast power, several quite different levels of plotting, alternate history, near-future tech, military aspects of various ages, a love story, revenge, reconciliation... and it's all reasonably doable, movie-wise.
Any Laumer fan who hasn't read it... I highly recommend it.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
if you want the money I work hard for then produce something worth seeying not a turd.
And this is Jack's complete lack of sympathy. Hollywood has always argued that their business somehow deserves special legal protections from new technologies or competition and those arguments have always rung hollow. What about all of the hard working Americans who've lost their jobs to automation or overseas competition? Are they somehow less deserving of laws protecting them from automation or overseas competition? Should we outlaw the automobile and bring back the horse and buggy? These Hollywood people, with their hilltop mansions, flashy jewelry and exotic cars need to understand how the rest of us live. If that means some pain and suffering for them then so be it. Screw Hollywood and their silver spoon up the ass problems, they've had it coming for decades now and they deserve every bit of it.
"think of how much more it could have made had it not had a Rotten Tomatoes score of 27 percent"
I wish it were good enough to not get 27% too. Alas, it was a turd in film format. 27% was too kind.
I have learned to basically trust Rottentomatoes on most genres of movies. I do find it to be fairly accurate within reason, except when it comes to comedies. Peoples' comedic senses are so different that it may be impossible to put a fair score on them. Some cheaply made comedies with nobodies for actors I personally just find hilarious. While on the other hand, I find most comedies with a 90+ rating to be overly safe and/or politically correct and I actually avoid them usually. Anyone else feel this way? Just curious.
Also, if it weren't for Rottentomatoes, I'd definitely watch a hell of a lot less movies, because it makes discovery so much easier.
Posted by yintercept - "...science...[is] the study of the 'divine creation.' "
Some of my favorite movies have terrible ratings on rotten tomatoes.... And vice versa; I've seen so called good movies on rotten tomatoes and thought it was troll.
Sounds like the same logic that killed game demos. They can't show off how bad their games are, now can they?
At least Let's Plays are still legal, so I can see a game before I buy it. If not for YouTube, I would have far, far less than 100+ games in my Steam library.
still wondering why American ad agencies use the word "Blockbuster", and why I am reading it here of all places
Well, yeah, he's whining, and maybe his film is a piece of shit, *but*... I actually do think RT is not a power for good, in the same way as other aggregate sites like Metacritic. The question comes down to what a review is supposed to be. It's perfectly understandable that what"everybody" thinks about a movie or game can inform you about this weekend's plans, but let's be clear - these sites are sampling the Internet, which is, as we all know, 99% bullshit. I happen to like the older model of someone who is paid to review media and acquires a history and knowledge about the medium. Sure, they are susceptible to bribery subtle or otherwise, but the vast majority of the web reviews that skew the samples are by a bunch of high functioning idiots with as much insight into film as that noisy twat at Starbucks playing Final Cut Pro tutorials at full volume on his airbook. I learn who to trust through their history of reviews, but when RT tells me 52% and that is tainted with reviews by those wankers, well it's about as trustworthy as political polls predicting Hilary by a landslide.
I just go to TorrentFreak and check "Top 10 Most Pirated Movies of The Week on BitTorrent." There's your Must-to-Avoid in a nutshell.
...of your abusive business model, where you make shit films, charge too much for them, trick people into going with clever advertising, and then get laws passed that criminalize format-shifting because you're so afraid that a tiny bit of revenue will slip through your greedy fingers. Even Hollywood accounting can't win in a free market. Man, that really sucks. Your life is so hard.
He should cry more.
His tears are delicious!
Rotten Tomatoes Blames Hollywood Producer For Convincing People Not To See His Movie
Movie producers blame everybody else these days for their movies not making enough dosh, but the people who make these subpar movies. The whole philosophy of making movies for *everybody* is what's wrong with the movies in the first place. It waters them down. It makes them bland and dull. Blame yourself for a change, Mr. producer.
"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." - Jiddu Krishnamurti
Boo who - that's you, Ratner. Only a pathetic Piece of tRump would cry about only grossing $850 million.
Does this absurd, ridiculous shit-shovelling fuck-knuckle really think that potential customers informing themselves of the content of the perpetual conveyor-belt of dirge shat out by Hollywood is wrong?
There are a number of posters above who have mentioned the opinion that they like the odd no-brainer flick. I have no problem with anyone who goes in informed, and knows what to expect, and has their expectations lowered appropriately. Hell, I bought Fallout 4 so I'm not trying to pretend I'm above liking a bit of mindless simplistic entertainment.
But for me the moment where someone seeks to suppress dissenting or critical opinion because it will adversely affect their bottom line is the sticking point. I have the tiniest shard of sympathy imaginable for these bland, lowest-common-denominator dreg vendors and I would say that there needs to be a better product provided. Or they can die. Either way I can't see myself giving even one single thrust from a fuck.
If Rotten Tomatoes didn't exist, some other site that does exactly the same thing would exist in its stead. And everyone on there would be slating your movie too. Just own up and say you wish people wouldn't share their opinions with each other.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
I said the same thing about the Star Wars prequels, particularly for the older Anakin Skywalker. I didn`t think the actor deserved all the flack he got. Sure, I didn`t think he did a fantastic job, however you could have taken a much better and more accomplished actor, and unless they really went off script, would still have to read the same stupid lines... No matter how good the delivery if the writing sucks, it sucks.
This web comic (while a older one) is my favorite description of how that fight would go, even given Bats detective smarts and preparation time with gadgets etc...
http://biggercheese.com/index....