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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."
Rober Ebert was a genius, though. He understood that pretentious movies are not the ultimate in entertainment and is sometimes cheap crap is great.
Just look at this snip from his review of Gremlins (movie picked at random):
"Gremlins" is a confrontation between Norman Rockwell's vision of Christmas and Hollywood's vision of the blood-sucking monkeys of voodoo island..... At the level of Pop Movie-going, it's a sophisticated, witty B movie, in which the monsters are devouring not only the defenseless town, but decades of defenseless clichés.
Also, please no more comic-based movies, especially not in Sci-Fi. There must be many thousands of awesome scripts and novels that could be adopted for the big screen, and all Hollywood can do is dust of the most obscure old comic books for inspiration? And why all these endless action scenes in the end? Does Hollywood really think people like them? We go to the movies despite the needless action, not because of it!
Make an intelligent Sci-Fi movie not based on a comic, and you'll also get good reviews, and stop compartmentalizing your productions into either action or intelligent, because these categories are not mutually exclusive!
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.
Ebert also said video games are not an expressive media and only idiots consume them.
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By your standard, The Fifth Element should never have been made.
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I think it's worse than that. The guy's movie netted big and yet he feels his movie should have been entitled even bigger windfall despite having plot holes that Superman can throw a container ship through.
Rotten Tomatoes has a Critics score *and* an Audience score. A lot of popular movies have a higher audience score. BvS has a 63% audience score. Iron Man 3 got 78% audience score. Lest it be a Marvel v. DC thing, The Dark Knight got 94% audience score *and* 94% critic score, so it's not like so many reviewers are snobs about comic book super hero movies.
You mean like when people complain that you almost ran them over?
Did they want me to do a better job at running them over?
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A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.