Movie Studios Are Blaming Rotten Tomatoes For Killing Movies No One Wants To See (qz.com)

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales and Baywatch were never going to be critical darlings. Both movies led the domestic box office to its worst Memorial Day weekend showing in nearly 20 years. Quartz adds: In the fallout, are Hollywood producers blaming the writers? The actors? Themselves? (Of course not.) No, they are blaming Rotten Tomatoes. They say the movie-review site, which forces critics to assign either a rotten or fresh tomato to each title when submitting reviews, regardless of the nuances of their critiques, poisoned viewers against the films before they were released. "Insiders close to both films blame Rotten Tomatoes, with Pirates 5 and Baywatch respectively earning 32% and 19% Rotten. The critic aggregation site increasingly is slowing down the potential business of popcorn movies. Pirates 5 and Baywatch aren't built for critics but rather general audiences, and once upon a time these types of films -- a family adventure and a raunchy R-rated comedy -- were critic-proof. Many of those in the industry severely question how Rotten Tomatoes computes the its ratings, and the fact that these scores run on [the movie-ticket buying site] Fandango (which owns RT) is an even bigger problem," Deadline reported. [...] The site has a separate score that measures audience reception, which it displays next to the critic rating. And quite a few smell what The Rock is cooking -- 70% of Baywatch viewers on Rotten Tomatoes said they liked it. But the critic score is what many people look to when deciding whether to spend their hard-earned money at the cinema. Also read: Hollywood Producer Blames Rotten Tomatoes For Convincing People Not To See His Movie.

Comments

Translation:

[Anonymous Coward]

Waaaah, we can't trick people into paying money to see these movies anymore by showing deceiving trailers with all the good parts. Waaaahhh.

Re:Translation:

[Anubis IV]

More or less. Prior to Rotten Tomatoes, our options for determining whether a film was worth seeing in theaters were all hit-and-miss. Most of us relied heavily on the tone and nature of the film's marketing to make those decisions, putting the control predominately in the hands of the studios. Every time they marketed a dud as a stud in order to profit from the gap between when a movie was released and when word of mouth spread about how bad it was, they made it clear that they valued our money more than our satisfaction.

Rotten Tomatoes changed all of that by providing consistently credible scores from day one, which, for most of us, were a much better indicator for determining whether a movie was worth seeing in theaters. They're not perfect, but they're so much more reliable than what we had before that many of us have started checking Rotten Tomatoes before heading to the theaters for anything other than a sure thing. Naturally, the studios are displeased that they can't profit on that gap between the release date and when the public catches on to how bad the film actually is.

Couple that with cheap rentals like Redbox or iTunes (as opposed to the expensive days of Blockbuster), subscription streaming like Netflix, and the dropping prices of big-screen TVs, and it's no surprise that people are skipping the theater experience when the film will be just as good/bad in a few months/years at home. When talking about upcoming films, my wife and I have even started saying, "That's a 'wait for Redbox' one" or "Maybe if it shows up on Netflix streaming someday".

Re:Translation:

[Anonymous Coward]

It is strange that the non-critic reviews are so much higher than the critic reviews. That, IMO, gives some legitimacy to the gripe.

If the watchers like the movie, then they have the wrong critics rating it; or the critics are being forced to rate it in a way that fails to express the critic's actual judgment.

A movie that is supposed to be a brain-dead comedy should be rated by and for people who want to go see a brain-dead comedy. Maybe on some absolute scale of entertainment, brain-dead comedies are all bottom-of-the-barrel crap. Ok. But some brain-dead comedies are a whole lot funnier (to their target audience) than others, so it is still meaningful to say "funny as hell brain-dead comedy" so the right audience can go see it.

I don't want to get rid of rotten tomatoes....but I think the distillation of the rating down to a single number is a harmful oversimplification.

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[Grishnakh]

Yep, this is Hollywood complaining yet again that they don't control all the information. I still remember when "Gigli" came out and flopped, and Hollywood was pissed off that moviegoers were using their phones to text all their friends about how bad the movie was, saying they shouldn't be allowed to do that because it "disrupts our carefully crafted marketing".

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[MightyMartian]

Huh? I was watching Siskel & Ebert 30 years ago when looking for the good versus bad movies. Movie critics have been around almost as long as movie, and all Rotten Tomatoes did was bring a number of the better known or well-syndicated ones together to sort of give a statistical scoring.

Also as old as movie critics is studios blaming movie critics for their shitty movies bombing. It's a tired complaint. Anyone who seriously thought a Baywatch reboot or yet another Johnny Depp pirate film were going to be smash hits ought to be forced into early retirement.

Re:Translation:

[Grishnakh]

It is strange that the non-critic reviews are so much higher than the critic reviews. That, IMO, gives some legitimacy to the gripe.

If the watchers like the movie, then they have the wrong critics rating it; or the critics are being forced to rate it in a way that fails to express the critic's actual judgment.

No, it really doesn't give legitimacy to the gripe. Think about it: Fandango has both the Rotten Tomatoes score, and next to it the viewer score. Who's going to watch the movie after seeing the critic reviews are terrible? Only a select subset of people, likely ones either being forced into watching it by peer pressure, or more likely people who generally disagree with critics and have poor taste in movies.

So of course after you warn people that Baywatch is crap, the only people who still go to watch it (and use Fandango, where it just told them the critics thought it sucked) are not going to be representative of the population at large. And in fact, if you value critics' reviews rather than a bunch of morons, you're doing the right thing by avoiding the movie even though the viewer score is high. In short, there's nothing remarkable here. It's like wondering why fans of Transformers 5 (or whatever) like it even though all the critics say it's crap.

More interesting situations are when 1) the critics laud a movie, and the viewers say it's crap, and 2) the critics and viewers both laud a movie. In the latter case, the movie is likely extremely good all-around, whereas in the former case the movie is likely too intellectual for most audiences.

A movie that is supposed to be a brain-dead comedy should be rated by and for people who want to go see a brain-dead comedy

Most likely, the critics already take this into account and adjust their expectations, and are still very disappointed.

but I think the distillation of the rating down to a single number is a harmful oversimplification.

If you're going to have movies that, by your own admission, are "brain-dead", which obviously then must cater to "brain-dead" people, then a complicated rating system is not going to be very helpful.

Re: Translation:

[SuperKendall]

But S/E could only rate so many movies; I think the show was on about once a week if I remember right?

In the meantime if you wanted to see any other movie, you were mostly in the dark or relied on one or two reviews.

But the best aspect of RT is I can see divergence (if any) between movie critics and the people actually seeing the movie. That has been really valuable a number of times as sometimes my own feelings about a movie diverge from the RT critics average scores...

Re:Translation:

[Anonymous Coward]

Who the hell wants to go see a brain dead comedy?
An intelligent comedy is usually much funnier.

Re:Translation:

[Anonymous Coward]

Or the viewer reviews are tainted by astroturfing. Guess which i find more likely?

Re:Translation:

[elrous0]

I would also challenge the specific criticism critics are being unfair to raunchy comedies, fun family films, etc. over more complex films--and that's why these movies scored so poorly.

A good critic takes into account what a movie is trying to be and who it is aimed at when writing their review and figuring their score. No critic in their right mind is going to hold a movie like There's Something About Mary to the same standard as The Godfather. So I'm sure most critics were comparing Baywatch to other similar R-rated raunchy comedies, not complaining that it wasn't as good as Manchester by the Sea.

Re: Translation:

[Calydor]

Sometimes you just want 110 minutes of braindead popcorn munching rather than French film noir. A rating for "Good to watch once" is what I look for.

Re: Translation:

[Anonymous Coward]

Around here, every newspaper print movie criticism. I never felt a need to see movies on their launch day, so I always had plenty of critics to guide me. It is easy when you don't mind waiting a month or three. One even learns which critics to trust and which to go against; e.g. the one that rated star wars low because it wasn't an "art movie".

I never looked at rotten tomatoes - perhaps I'm too old. Whining about movie critics is pathetic though. Make good movies - or see them flop. Number 5 in a series hardly ever works out well . . .

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[Anubis IV]

It does seem as if there's a trend for low-brow films to be scored a bit lower by the overall critic consensus. I attribute that to the critics being split over how they should review them. The good reviewers seem to do exactly as you say, recognizing films that nail their genre without necessarily carrying a wide appeal, while the lousy reviewers ding films for being exactly what they're supposed to be.

Thankfully, the audience score usually does a good job of separating the wheat from the chaff in those scenarios. If you see a film with a mixed critic score and a high audience score, it's usually a good indication that the film won't be winning any Oscars, but that it'll still be well worth watching for some good entertainment.

Re: Translation:

[Anubis IV]

A rating for "Good to watch once" is what I look for.

Isn't that exactly what the audience score on Rotten Tomatoes is? It's basically a measure of how entertaining a movie is, even if it won't be winning any awards, come Oscar season.

Re:Translation:

[interkin3tic]

It's about risk, movie studios hate risking a loss on a big movie. Without people paying attention to reviews, they'll always break even.

Which is why it's so mind-boggling that they evidently don't bother reading the scripts they're producing. I mean "gods of egypt" sounded like a good idea to someone?

"lets make a movie based on that game 'battleship' that you played once as a kid then never again i bet everyone would line up to see that definitely."

Re: Translation:

[nasch]

The idea that film critics only like artsy or foreign films is outdated if it ever had any validity at all. For example, here's Siskel & Ebert's very favorable review of Terminator 2: https://youtu.be/-Gy1rEs-r3g?t...

Re: Translation:

[meta-monkey]

And the market is showing that the RT scores are well calibrated. If it's got a low critic score and a decently high audience score, that's a "wait for Redbox." And that's exactly what's happening. I'll probably see Pirates of the Caribbean at some point, but I'm not sure not going to the theater for it. Guardians of the Galaxy 2, though, was well worth the price of admission.

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[nasch]

What I find puzzling is when looking for a good horror movie (because there are so many bad ones) I see a lot of movies with critic ratings in the 90s and audience scores in the 40s or 30s. That isn't the genre I would expect that in. Maybe I need to watch one of them and see what I think.

Re:Translation:

[DuckDodgers]

You're overthinking this. The real reason I'm not watching Baywatch or Pirates of the Caribbean 5 is that I spent a lot of money to watch Guardians of the Galaxy 2 and I'm about to spend money to watch Wonder Woman this weekend and The Mummy next weekend.

If either of those films or even the King Arthur disaster had come out in January or February, the only popcorn junky cheesefest competition was XXX: The Return of Xander Cage. They would probably have done twice as well then versus what they'll get now. As it is, April to September is neck deep in silly adventure and action movies. I'm going to skip plenty of films I might otherwise watch just because I don't have the time and money to catch them all.

I don't even look at Rotten Tomatoes.

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[Anubis IV]

Horror movies really are hard to figure out in advance. I mostly just skip them and rely on word of mouth from people who have tastes similar to my own to figure out which ones to watch later. I'm an unabashed sucker for single-room or small-setting thrillers (e.g. Cube, Killing Room, Saw, etc.), love surprising takes on the genre (e.g. Cabin in the Woods), and generally just love suspense (e.g. Alien). Unfortunately for me, I can't stand cheap scares and the torture porn sub-genre (e.g. subsequent Saw films, Human Centipede, etc.), both of which were all the rage a few years ago, so it made finding useful reviews virtually impossible.

Re:Translation:

[Anubis IV]

I certainly agree that those are factors as well, but I don't think they diminish Rotten Tomatoes' role in influencing the public's viewing habits.

Re: Translation:

[Anonymous Coward]

The Rock was expecting it to be the next star wars

Re: Translation:

[Archfeld]

Saw both. GoG2 was definitely the better of the 2 movies, but Pirates wasn't bad, and was worth the matinee price on a Tuesday afternoon. It wasn't nearly as funny as GoG2 and was predictable but I still enjoyed it. Baywatch is just plain bad, cheesy without be funny, even the Rock, whom I personally like can't save that lemon.

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[thegarbz]

They didn't trick anyone. People could just see both of these were really really shitty movies from the trailer and materials the studios themselves released.

My decision not to see either of them happened long before I learnt of their Rotten Tomato scores (which was just now). Actually my decision not to see Baywatch was made when I heard they were re-releasing Baywatch and was immediately reinforced when I saw the cast.

Re:Translation:

[Zontar_Thing_From_Ve]

Also as old as movie critics is studios blaming movie critics for their shitty movies bombing. It's a tired complaint. Anyone who seriously thought a Baywatch reboot or yet another Johnny Depp pirate film were going to be smash hits ought to be forced into early retirement.

Disagree strongly. I haven't seen Baywatch but I was pretty shocked that it came out as an R-rated comedy. That does reduce its audience somewhat. And I have to ask - if you HAD to make it a comedy to get the movie made, should the move have been made at all?

Pirates is a different story. USA Today loved it. And it was easily the box office champ over Memorial Day weekend. It has a 7.1 rating on IMDB, which is quite good. Here's the problem. It was really expensive to make. And even with leading the box office over Memorial Day weekend, and it did like double the business of film #2 which is Guardians Of The Galaxy 2, it didn't bring in enough to give Disney confidence it will turn a profit. I'd like to see Pirates 5 but haven't had time yet (was out of town over the weekend). And Alien:Covenant, which is another film I'd like to see, looks like it may barely break even despite good ratings from customers. Attendance is down at movie theaters right now. Everything that comes out is going to be lower than hoped for. Remember I said it first - Wonder Woman is likely to be underwhelming too where it doesn't make anywhere close to what it's studio is hoping for.

Re: Translation:

[MightyMartian]

For chrissakes, a quick review of Ebert's Top Films shows while he clearly loved Werner Herzog, he was also a big Spielberg fan. There's nothing artsy about Indiana Jones and the Lost Ark or Jaws, and yet both these films were among Ebert's favorite films ever made. For goodness sake, he even put Planes, Trains and Automobiles on that list (and justifiably so, it is an incredibly good film).

Re: Translation:

[Anonymous Coward]

No, you don't. Anyone who wants to sit through dross is a moron.

Re: Translation:

[tlhIngan]

Isn't that exactly what the audience score on Rotten Tomatoes is? It's basically a measure of how entertaining a movie is, even if it won't be winning any awards, come Oscar season.

The audience score is influenced by what the audience wants people to believe.

The REAL audience score is the returns.

Because face it - no Michael Bay movie will ever get any decent rating. Audience or otherwise. Yet they can bring in a billion dollars, meaning the audience is watching the movie (the real rating is "asses in seats").

If the audience rating is so poor, and the critic rating is atrocious, yet you're still raking in the cash as one of the top billings of the year, then something is seriously off. Bay even called "f**k the critics" when his movie is raking in the money despite bombing.

Asses in seats is the real measure of a movie, not audience ratings.

Re:Translation:

[Lord Kano]

I was working at a movie theater in July of 1996 and I remember Siskel and Ebert giving Independence Day two thumbs down, something like 24-48 hours before it went on to have the biggest (at that point in time) opening in history.

It wasn't the greatest movie ever but it was an entertaining summer movie. Sometimes, that's all it takes to be a commercial success.

LK

Re: Translation:

[JohnFen]

Depends on what you're rating. "Asses in seats" is the only thing that matters if you're rating a movie as a business venture. If, however, you want to know whether or not you personally would enjoy the movie, then asses in seats means literally nothing.

Re: Translation:

[Wycliffe]

My guess is critics are rating horror movies on originality while the audience is rating them on how much it scared them. So something with a high critic rating and low audience rating would be a quality movie that is not super scary while something with a high audience rating but low critic rating would be a really scary movie with maybe not much plot.

Re: Translation:

[nasch]

That could be, interesting thought. Scariness isn't that important to me so I will have to check out a few of them and see.

Re:Translation:

[reboot246]

Pirates of the Caribbean long ago (in the first film after the first 10 minutes) stopped being a pirate movie. It's akin to science fiction or fantasy. Give me a GOOD pirate movie and you'll have my money.

Black Sails was the best thing pirate-wise in decades.

Re: Translation:

[Zaelath]

I'm OK with that 6 months later at DVD rental prices ($4), but there's not a comedy been made that would get me to shell out $40 to watch with the wife.

Re:Translation:

[brantondaveperson]

I hope you've seen It Follows. If not, do yourself a favor, don't read about it, just watch it.

Re:Translation:

[Lord Crc]

What I find puzzling is when looking for a good horror movie (because there are so many bad ones) I see a lot of movies with critic ratings in the 90s and audience scores in the 40s or 30s. That isn't the genre I would expect that in.

Audience score of horror movies seem to be strongly correlated with gore and "direct" scare amounts. That is, popcorn flicks. Critics score them quite differently, at least so it seems to me.

For example take https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_blackcoats_daughter/. It isn't a movie with lots of teenagers getting ripped to pieces or similar visual gore. It doesn't have monsters jumping out at you etc.

It is slow and creepy, and you have to work a bit to piece together the story. So as a popcorn flick, it's a complete miss. But I wasn't after that, so I enjoyed it very much when I watched it.

Re: Translation:

[easyTree]

Maybe everyone is rating movies on inconsistent scales? Maybe even if everyone used the same scale it still wouldn't matter unless they rate exactly like you for all other films you share common?

Re: Translation:

[SuperKendall]

Yes, sometimes the critics also like mindless movies or movies that are simply a lot of fun...

But if the enjoyable fun of a movie is more specialized, often the critics will not "get it" as it were, at least not in relation to what I think of a movie.

The Rotten Tomatoes score for Interstellar is a great example, the critics score is way lower than what I would give it, and even the audience score is a bit low though reflective. That was a movie that I think required an actual level of scientific understanding to really enjoy, much more than most movie critics (and even most fans) have.

Re:Translation:

[mattack2]

Anyone who seriously thought a Baywatch reboot or yet another Johnny Depp pirate film were going to be smash hits ought to be forced into early retirement.

I'm not completely disagreeing with you, but there are a very few examples to the contrary -- I thought both of the "Brady Bunch" movies (and IIRC there was a third made for TV one I never saw) were very funny, they made fun of the TV show to some degree. "The Addams Family" was decent. "21 Jump Street" (I haven't seen "22") was very good and had an awesome cameo.

I think the other Pirates movies have done amazingly well, though I think only a couple have been 'ok'.

Re:Translation:

[eaglesrule]

Independence Day was worth seeing just for the scene where the president meets the captured alien invader. It is rare that such a small bit of dialog could have such terrifying implications. It is a shame that S&E couldn't appreciate the movie for that.

Re: Translation:

[Anonymous Coward]

an actual level of scientific understanding to really enjoy

What bullshit. The second half of Interstellar had huge problems and that's what most of the reviews acknowledge.

Re:Translation:

[epine]

It does seem as if there's a trend for low-brow films to be scored a bit lower by the overall critic consensus.

We're presently living in an era where almost any tent pole movie avoids nuanced dialogue like the plague, because it's hard to overdub in dozens of different languages. This is a big component of the cloak and man-panties renaissance. Action movies are the easiest movies to i18n (what we call action movies are internally thought of as cross-genre, but that's another matter).

Hence there's a big correlation lately between low-brow movies and cave-troll levels of verbal wit. What Hollywood is pissed about is how RT is making it harder to market the one-size-fits-all, sorry-about-the-shitty-dialogue (see Downey smirk) tent pole hammer-bammer fest.

I've generally found the RT scores to provide a highly effective first-order assessment. Without RT to guide me safely through the Braindead Marshes, I'd simply watch fewer movies.

This whole thing happened before after the original Star Wars. For a decade afterwards, every studio executive wanted to fund a candy placement with a McDonalds toy-promotion tie-in. Scorsese had to make After Hours (and this on a shoestring) because no studio would fund a worthwhile project (his Last Temptation was temporarily shit canned). Serious filmmakers remember the eighties as a lost decade.

I think the critics are far more consistent in their evaluations over the years than what the studios choose to churn out. Ebert rewatched his favourite movies from across the decades many, many times (there are at least half a dozen movies he dissected frame by frame in public venues).

When he had to ask himself in the theatre "who just rammed their peanut butter into my chocolate?" it didn't usually lead to multiple stars.

Especially when the peanut butter gums up the dialogue of all the actors, except for Biff Pow.

Re:Translation:

[DuckDodgers]

You're right, I overstated my case. But I really do have the sense that there are just flat out more big budget action movies and major films aimed at kids and young adults per year now than ten or twenty years ago. Maybe my perspective is skewed with age, maybe I'm just more aware of the barrage of options now than I was as a young adult.

Re:Translation:

[Aighearach]

Real pirates provide fairly limited story arcs. It was impossible to make more than a couple without going Monster of the Week/Year. They started with just enough fantasy genre to be appropriate to the level of superstition and myth normally in pirate stories, but they had to go off the rails to keep making them.

If they were smart enough they'd make Neal Stephenson's The Baroque Cycle into a series of 27 pirate movies, and it would work. But they're not going to manage it when the first one started off with Generic Action-Adventure Screenplay as the story.

Re:Translation:

[Aighearach]

Who the hell wants to go see a brain dead comedy?
An intelligent comedy is usually much funnier.

Teenage potheads. I think I remember it that way, anyhow. Small demographic, anyways.

Anyways, Baywatch needed to be a PG-13 teenager almost-showed-boobies type movie. And to teenagers, Baywatch is like... grandma boobs. Seriously people, you're 20 years too late for that movie to have any business asking to be at the top. As a B-movie it might remain a reasonable attempt. But trying to headline that?! That sounds like some executive producer forgot to phone it in during his working holiday.

Re: Translation:

[Wycliffe]

Maybe everyone is rating movies on inconsistent scales? Maybe even if everyone used the same scale it still wouldn't matter unless they rate exactly like you for all other films you share common?

A good critic should take a non-subjective view when it's deciding on a rating. An audience has no such objective and can rate a movie on whether or not they personally liked it.

Re:Translation:

[polyp2000]

Theres a remake of "The Mummy" unless by some miracle , thats probably a Rotten Tomato right there!

Re:Translation:

[mjwx]

Huh? I was watching Siskel & Ebert 30 years ago when looking for the good versus bad movies. Movie critics have been around almost as long as movie, and all Rotten Tomatoes did was bring a number of the better known or well-syndicated ones together to sort of give a statistical scoring.

Also as old as movie critics is studios blaming movie critics for their shitty movies bombing. It's a tired complaint. Anyone who seriously thought a Baywatch reboot or yet another Johnny Depp pirate film were going to be smash hits ought to be forced into early retirement.

However most movie reviews could be bought off and in many cases, written directly by the studios. There were few exceptions like Siskel and Ebert or Margret and David... but that is also what kept them out of major publications. The fact is most papers and commercial TV would happily take payola to parrot whatever the studios wanted. The sad truth was, as good as they were they never disrupted the status quo.

It also helped that you could look up Siskel and Ebert's opinion at a moments notice, you had to watch or read their weekly publications and this was enough to make most people forget about what they panned.

Re: Translation:

[easyTree]

Is it the case that there are greater and lesser degrees of universal or objective good in films?

Re:Translation:

[DuckDodgers]

Probably. But again, I don't mind catching the occasional Rotten Tomato. I still have fun.

I simply don't have the time or money to catch them all.

Re: Translation:

[Wycliffe]

Is it the case that there are greater and lesser degrees of universal or objective good in films?

Hollywood has a formula for mass appeal. X minutes of action, X minutes of romance, etc... The problem with creating a movie that appeals to everyone is that it's then almost by definition an average movie. It sells a lot of tickets but it's not going to be a great. I didn't like the movie "The Lego Movie" but everyone else seems to love it. I also love the movie "Inception" and similar movies but my parents can't follow these type of movies and hate them. Critics are looking for universal appeal and/or good films whatever that is. Audiences are just rating whether or not they personally like it. I personally liked both "District 9" and "Arrival" but I can see where a lot of people wouldn't and if you went in expecting an action flick you would probably be disappointed and that would likely be reflecting in your rating as well.

Re:Translation:

[Salgak1]

Ahem.

"The Internet is a communication tool used the world over where people can come together to bitch about movies and share pornography with one another. "

- "Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back", 2001

Re:Translation:

[DarthVain]

I think the only difference is that many critics by and large could be "influenced" directly by studios either by outright bribery or by favors, etc... whereas a crowd sourced type critique is more difficult to squash. Boo hoo.

Re: Translation:

[DarthVain]

Critics many times don't get it. Back in the day there were a ton of great movies that got panned, that turned into cult classics. Spaceballs, Super Troopers, Officespace, Event Horizon, Starship Troopers, etc... I think all of these got one star from critics as terrible movies, yet they are all some of my favorites...

Re:Translation:

[DarthVain]

Well I don't think you need to be a critic to know what you're getting with "XXX: The Return of Xander Cage"...

That said, I recall seeing the trailers for King Arthur and thinking wow this is going to be bad... It looked to have as much to do with the King Arthur mythos as the Easter Bunny. From what I could see there was a guy with a sword and that was about where the story ends...

Re: Translation:

[wwphx]

We had a reviewer in the Arizona Republic who was pretty much diametrically-opposed to my tastes: if he hated a film, I usually liked it, and vice-versa. I was never going to see the new Baywatch regardless, and I had no desire to see the new Pirates movie: I enjoyed the first one, but every one subsequent was a waste of time and money for me.

Maybe I should pay more attention to Rotten Tomatoes.

Re:Translation:

[giggles778]

I've setup a nice surround system and projector for my living room. I have tons of movies and Netflix. what's the point of going to see what is just essentially a larger version of my living room .... but it have to share it with strangers that don't know how to shut up and enjoy the movie. vr headsets for a personal movie experience in a theater would kinda work to get people in.

Re:Translation:

[Ecuador]

Actually, prior to Rotten Tomatoes we had IMDB, you just had to wait at least until after the first weekend to get a valid rating. And the IMDB rating (esp. with the demographic breakdowns) is a much better judge of quality/entertainment etc. If you want to go before IMDB, we still had the critics and the critic aggregators. I would buy a magazine the day before the new movies were out and it would have a sum of the reviews of all the critics, which was similar to Rotten Tomatoes, just with a smaller sample. Even better, I had a specific critic whom I followed and who did not really have the same taste as me, but having read him enough I had figured out where we differed and I could understand whether I would like something from his review, regardless of the rating he gave at the end which might not be relevant to me.
But you are right in that the effect of streaming, big-screen TVs etc is great. I used to go to the cinema almost every week in the 90s - I'd say I averaged about 40 films/year. And I know that many of those were not that good beforehand, via the methods described even though RT was not available. Now, I have so many sources and a home theater to watch them that cinema is not really required. In fact, regular cinema is worse both in audio and video (smaller in angular size) than my living room setup, so I wouldn't waste my money on getting a worse experience and when I go, I only go to a giant IMAX screen.

Re: Translation:

[Green Light]

DVD rental price of $4? If you are talking about American dollars, that makes no sense whatsoever, as a RedBox rental is less than half of that amount.

Re: Translation:

[Zaelath]

That's about the most I've seen a rental for in the RedBox equivalent here (Australia) unless you want to rent a movie from Google or Apple ($5.99 SD, $6.99 HD), but that's just lazy tax...

Re: Translation:

[Anonymous Coward]

"There's nothing artsy about Indiana Jones and the Lost Ark"
As a life long film fanatic, I have to dispute that. Sure it may not be artsy-fartsy in a let's deliberately piss off everyone who watches films to enjoy themselves sort of way, but...
The camera work is good, the script is solid, the pacing is great, the dialogue is well written, the story might not be particularly complicated but it's exciting and inspiring, the characters are well written, the acting is excellent, the choreography of the action scenes is tight, the themes and styling are interesting, set dressing and props are convincing, the effects are a bit dated but not jarring and good for the time, it ties in with loads of literature and mythology and all these aspects end up fitting together in a seamless enjoyable experience.
People who think Indiana Jones and the Lost Ark isn't artsy, or even art, don't know anything about cinema.

Re:Translation:

[Anonymous Coward]

piracy move (p2p)

Re:Translation:

[DuckDodgers]

I wouldn't even mind that, to be honest. I have nothing against a movie studio that takes a familiar story or myth and then twists it to make a new story with a handful of elements the audience is expected to understand. Clash of the Titans, the recent Hercules with Dwayne Johnson, Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief, or kung-fu Sherlock Holmes (which took.. what, one or two references that Holmes knew Chinese boxing from the original Sherlock Holmes stories and made him into an action hero... and I loved it)

But nothing in this trailer looked interesting to me. It just appeared to be a generic fantasy action movie with totally uninteresting characters.

It's never their fault, of course

[DontBeAMoran]

Never mind that all they're able to do is either come up with sequels or prequels, or movies with brain-dead characters and insipid stories filled with impossible computer-generated action scenes.

Re:It's never their fault, of course

[DickBreath]

Let's not forget about impossible physics as part of the plot.

It's not only sequels and prequels, but poorly conceived remakes of ancient TV shows that were made in some earlier millennium. Or horrible remakes of classic sci fi (The Day The Earth Stood Still). Moves based on books that have no resemblance to the book the movie is supposedly based on.

Action movies with adolescent dialog.

New prequels of decades old movies, where the prequel isn't consistent with what it is a prequel to. Or changes the characters in the original movie -- or makes liars out of the heroes.

Movies stretched into categories they don't belong in, as a form of false advertising. Clue: if it has vampires, warewolves, or magic, it probably isn't Sci Fi.

The problem is that new movies rarely have anything new. There are a few good ones. But very few.

I wouldn't mind a really good remake of a classic movie. (Forbidden Planet anyone?) Or a good prequel.

Re:It's never their fault, of course

[ranton]

Never mind that all they're able to do is either come up with sequels or prequels, or movies with brain-dead characters and insipid stories filled with impossible computer-generated action scenes.

None of that even prevents a movie from being great. There are plenty of great movies based on previous IP, and even great movies with little to no story.

I strongly disagree with the submitter's comment: "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales and Baywatch were never going to be critical darlings." That is bullshit. The first Pirate of the Caribbean movie had a Rotten Tomatoes score of 79%, so obviously a good movie can be made with this subject matter. And 21 Jump Street had a score of 85%, so obviously a movie adaption of an 80's/90's TV show can be a great movie.

Either of these movies could have been great with a 70+ Rotten Tomato score. But they would have had to be good.

Re:It's never their fault, of course

[GrumpySteen]

Let's not forget about impossible physics as part of the plot.

...

I wouldn't mind a really good remake of a classic movie. (Forbidden Planet anyone?)

A movie which depends on impossible physics as part of the plot....

Re:It's never their fault, of course

[pr0fessor]

I didn't even look at the rotten tomatoes rating and still wasn't interested in either of those movies because they have already been done to death.

Re:It's never their fault, of course

[Anonymous Coward]

I wouldn't mind a really good remake of a classic movie. (Forbidden Planet anyone?) Or a good prequel.

JMS was writing one, but the script got leaked, and the entire project was disappeared.

Re: It's never their fault, of course

[UnknowingFool]

I think most people going to see Baywatch are not concerned with RottenTomatoes scores. They are there to see the shirtless guys or the bouncing girls.

Re:It's never their fault, of course

[myowntrueself]

I wouldn't mind a really good remake of a classic movie. (Forbidden Planet anyone?) Or a good prequel.

Don't give them ideas... That was an awesome movie.

If theres one impression I get out of modern Hollywood movies; its that they are specifically forbidden from making good movies, especially good remakes. Its as if there is some unwritten Hollywood law "Thou shalt not make good movies."

Re:It's never their fault, of course

[cyberchondriac]

People don't want anything new or different. They want the same over and over again. If there's something unusual they don't know how to categorize and compare it so they reject it.

If it takes more than 5-10 seconds to find out what you get people will skip it because there is just too much out there to spend more time on every single potential piece of entertainment.

I don't think so. I think it's just the studios and writers being lazy and unimaginative, and trying to cash in on baby boomer nostalgia. It's not so much driven by demand right now as it is supply. (Baby boomer nostalgia plays a role in the demand, but I don't think there's as much as the studios would like to believe.)

Re: It's never their fault, of course

[DontBeAMoran]

If you want bouncing girls, check out the Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball games.

Re:It's never their fault, of course

[s1d3track3D]

The first Pirate of the Caribbean movie had a Rotten Tomatoes score of 79%

Yes but it was the first one and showed a little creativity and risk taking. By sequel 5 or whatever they are up to they are just milking the same idea for profit. I suppose it's possible for it to actually be good but it's not likely. They deserve to be spanked

Baywatch? How many times can you make a beach movie? You don't make a movie like this to compete with "My dinner with Andre"...

Re: It's never their fault, of course

[Oswald McWeany]

The book was better.

/ kidding. Please tell me there isn't a Baywatch book.

Re:It's never their fault, of course

[ArhcAngel]

if it has vampires, warewolves, or magic, it probably isn't Sci Fi.

I got your vampire Sci Fi right here buddy!

Naked vampires from space. Excuse me for a moment...

Re: It's never their fault, of course

[Bodhammer]

It's a comic book with lots of pictures.
https://www.newkadia.com/?Bayw...

Re:It's never their fault, of course

[Grishnakh]

Moves based on books that have no resemblance to the book the movie is supposedly based on.

The rest of your post is spot-on but I have to object to this one. There's nothing wrong with making a movie that's inspired by some book, but veers off in a very different direction. In fact, movies which attempt to be extremely faithful to the book usually end up being terrible; it just isn't that easy to shift a story between two such totally different media and still make it come out good.

For evidence, I cite Stephen King's "The Shining". I never read the book, but I'm told it was good for a King novel. Stanley Kubrick made an adaptation of it around 1980 starring Jack Nicholson, and it's widely considered a masterpiece of horror, which I agree with. However, it diverges from the book's plot immensely. King hated the movie, probably mainly because of this. But it was a critical and fan success. Later on, King got involved with a miniseries adaptation starring Rebecca DeMornay and some forgettable guy. This version was extremely faithful to the book, yet fell fall, like pretty much all faithful adaptations of King novels do. King's books just don't usually translate well into movies, unless huge liberties are taken.

Another example of this is 1987's "The Running Man" starring Arnold Schwarzenegger; it bore very little resemblance to the book, but was a fantastic and fun movie (though it's actually quite disturbing to watch now because it predicted an over-the-top dystopian future but was obviously not serious about it, whereas today it's mostly come true). Ridley Scott's "Blade Runner" is probably another good example here.

Offhand, the only movies I can think of that were remotely faithful to the books and came out well were the Lord of the Rings movies, and even here they had to cut tons of material, such as the very important Scouring of the Shire at the end. Movies just aren't long enough to contain everything in a normal-length novel, which is why the Game of Thrones show uses 10 hour-long episodes to tell the story told by a single novel in the series (and here again they cut stuff out for length). I sometimes wonder what it would have been like if Peter Jackson had had the budget and approval to make two 3-hour movies for each LotR novel (6 3-hour movies total).

Re:It's never their fault, of course

[wonkey_monkey]

Or horrible remakes of classic sci fi (The Day The Earth Stood Still).

They didn't set out to make a horrible remake. You could just say "bad movie" intead.

Moves based on books that have no resemblance to the book the movie is supposedly based on.

That doesn't automatically make a movie bad, either. A slavishly accurate adaptation of a book to film is probably going to be worse than any adaptation.

Re:It's never their fault, of course

[Grishnakh]

All the sci-fi movies back then had completely impossible physics, except perhaps "Destination: Moon" (1950). I highly recommend that one; it's a rather boring movie really plot-wise, but the physics are really interesting considering it was made in 1950, well before the Apollo missions or even the Mercury missions. They got a lot of things right: zero-g, spacewalks, the transit time, the Moon's low gravity, etc. Watching it was like watching a movie about aviation made before the Wright Brothers.

Re: It's never their fault, of course

[Anonymous Coward]

The book was better. /kidding. Please tell me there isn't a Baywatch book.

Well...

Re: It's never their fault, of course

[guruevi]

King copywrites mostly airport novels, not many of his works are masterpieces (actually can't think of any). They don't adapt well to films because the story lines are cheesy, predictable, boring crap.

Re:It's never their fault, of course

[DickBreath]

Good point. I would make a distinction between obviously impossible physics, and suspension of disbelief impossible physics.

Obviously impossible: how a character dies in Mission To Mars.

Suspension of disbelief impossible: FTL interstellar travel.

Re:It's never their fault, of course

[DickBreath]

I would love to know more about the leaked script. Or the story. I knew JMS was writing one. After years, I assumed it had disappeared. I had no idea why. Being right in the middle of B5 season 3 DVDs this week, I suspect it would have been a great story.

Re: It's never their fault, of course

[Megol]

Boring may be (that is a matter of taste) but cheesy and predictable they aren't. Not my favorite author but I really wonder if you ever read anything by King.

His later works is IMHO stretching too little too much so I partially agree abut the boring...

Re:It's never their fault, of course

[Anonymous Coward]

If the movie is only loosely based on some (successful) book, don't name it after the book. Solves that problem, nobody is pissed off by the mismatch, but they don't get the free marketing from that successful name.

As for cutting stuff from books - they could fit a lot more if they didn't absolutely have to add stuff of their own. Remove everything from LOTR/game of thrones/Harry Potter that isn't in the books, and you could fit more of what is.

I understand that they can't fit everything from a book - but the stuff Hollywood always adds in has never been very interesting. Reign in those 'creative' scriptwriters . . .

Re:It's never their fault, of course

[Grishnakh]

If theres one impression I get out of modern Hollywood movies; its that they are specifically forbidden from making good movies, especially good remakes. Its as if there is some unwritten Hollywood law "Thou shalt not make good movies."

That depends on your definition of "modern" (how far back is "modern"?).

Here's a list of some movies that may qualify as "good modern remakes":
Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978 - remake of 1956 version)
The Invasion (2007 - another remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, not fantastic, but not bad IMO)
Lord of the Rings trilogy (remake of animated movie from 70s)
The Ring (2002 - remake of 1998 Japanese movie Ringu)
3:10 to Yuma (2007 - remake of 1957 version)
Cape Fear (1991 - remake of 1962 version)
The Departed (2006 - remake of 2002 Hong Kong movie) (personally I didn't like this one much, but a lot of other people did)
Disturbia (2007 - remake of Hitchcock's "Read Window" from 1954)
Heaven Can Wait (1978 - remake of 1941 movie)
The Fly (1986 - remake of 1958 movie)
Heat (1995 - remake of the same director's 1989 movie LA Takedown)
Insomnia (2002 - remake of 1997 Scandinavian movie)
Ocean's Eleven (2001 - remake of 1960 version)

Re: It's never their fault, of course

[Anonymous Coward]

But the girls in a video game aren't real.

Whaddya mean the movie girls aren't either?

Re:It's never their fault, of course

[DickBreath]

> Later on, King got involved with a miniseries adaptation starring Rebecca DeMornay
> and some forgettable guy.

I think you mean Steven Weber. I saw trailers of it. But not the mini series. I did not consider him to be forgettable. But the actress was forgettable to me.

I seem to recall the first two movies of The Chronicles of Narnia (2005, 2008, Walden Media) were reasonably faithful to the books. Especially the first. Then there was the third movie of the set where The Voyage of the Dawn Treader had to chop out a lot of material to fit into a movie.

I haven't seen Game of Thrones. I've heard nothing but good about it, but even though I have HBO on my Roku, I can't cross the hurdle to decide to invest the time into watching it. Loved LoTR movies. Enjoyed Running Man. Really liked Blade Runner -- and saw it a couple years ago and was surprised that it wasn't made more recently -- the effects were just so good I was shocked when I looked at it more carefully and realized when it was made.

Re:It's never their fault, of course

[DickBreath]

A good movie doesn't have to slavishly follow the book. But there should be more than a passing resemblance.

Re:It's never their fault, of course

[Notabadguy]

I sometimes wonder what it would have been like if Peter Jackson had had the budget and approval to make two 3-hour movies for each LotR novel (6 3-hour movies total).

Seriously? After the mess of the Hobbit movies, you wonder what he'd have done?

Think love triangle between Gandalf and Galadrial, with Saruman has a spurned lover, and imagine a 30-minute long CGI rendered single combat between Legolas and Sauron.

Re: It's never their fault, of course

[Bob the Super Hamste]

What you didn't like any of the film versions of the 3 stories from Different Seasons that were made into films?

Re:It's never their fault, of course

[ranton]

Yes but it was the first one and showed a little creativity and risk taking. By sequel 5 or whatever they are up to they are just milking the same idea for profit. I suppose it's possible for it to actually be good but it's not likely. They deserve to be spanked

Marvel has shown you can make a dozen superhero movies with none of them being bad. The worst one was Thor: The Dark World with a 66% score. With some creativity you could also make a dozen great supernatural pirate movies if they wanted to.

Baywatch? How many times can you make a beach movie? You don't make a movie like this to compete with "My dinner with Andre"...

It doesn't have to be Oscar worthy to get great reviews from critics. 21 Jump Street wasn't competing with "My dinner with Andre" either but it was a success in the box office and with critics.

Re: It's never their fault, of course

[ranton]

I think most people going to see Baywatch are not concerned with RottenTomatoes scores. They are there to see the shirtless guys or the bouncing girls.

Maybe they were in the 80's, but no one cares about that enough anymore to prop up sales. Look at Playboy for another example of a brand built on T&A which cannot keep up with past success with only that going for it. T&A still sells, but only when combined with quality.

You are correct that the people going to see Baywatch are not concerned with RottenTomatoes. But there are plenty of people who would have seen it but didn't because it is a crappy movie. My opinion on both Baywatch and Pirates 5 was that I would see them if they were good. There are at least a couple dozen movies per year I put in that category.

Re:It's never their fault, of course

[wonkey_monkey]

Why must there? Why can't it be vaguely based on it?

There are good films that have nothing to do with books. There are good films that are quite a lot like a book. Why can't there be a good film which is only a bit like a book?

Good films can be made that are vaguely based on bad books, bad films can be made that are vaguely based on good books, and so on.

Re:It's never their fault, of course

[sootman]

Or not enough nudity. Anyone else remember the 80s? :-/

Re:It's never their fault, of course

[JohnFen]

I wouldn't mind a really good remake of a classic movie. (Forbidden Planet anyone?) Or a good prequel.

Me either. Or even a mediocre remake. The problem is, I can't think of a remake in the last decade or two that can even rise to the level of "mediocre".

Re:It's never their fault, of course

[serviscope_minor]

The first Pirate of the Caribbean movie had a Rotten Tomatoes score of 79%

Personally I think that's too low, it's astoundingly well done, from a technical point of view of strytelling etc. But anyway:

And 21 Jump Street had a score of 85%

And that's for basically a 2 hour dick joke. Probably the finest 2 hour dick joke ever made, so don't ever let it be said reviews are snobs!

Re:It's never their fault, of course

[nuckfuts]

Let's not forget about impossible physics as part of the plot.

Damned straight! It pissed me off that Gravity (2013) had characters floating in orbit, waiting to be impacted by debris in the same orbit! Surely if the debris was travelling at a high enough velocity to overtake and smash into them, it would be orbiting at a different altitude.

Re:It's never their fault, of course

[Grishnakh]

The Hobbit movies came later; the LotR movies were great, though I do have to admit that Fellowship was the best. But anyway, Jackson seemed to be a different person back then, and did a much better job. No, I wouldn't want the modern-day Jackson making a new set of LotR movies at all; I'm sure they'd be terrible.

Re:It's never their fault, of course

[Grishnakh]

Citation needed on adding stuff. I can't help you with GoT or Harry Potter (never read the GoT books and never saw or read Harry Potter), but with LotR, I can't think of anything significant offhand that was added except maybe 10 seconds of a minor plotline about Aragorn's romance with Arwen. There was tons of stuff taken out of those stories, some of which probably wouldn't have translated that well to the screen anyway (like Tom Bombadil), and some which was pretty important (Scouring of the Shire).

As for GoT, I've never heard of them adding anything, and those shows were made with significant involvement from the books' author himself.

Re:It's never their fault, of course

[eaglesrule]

The Martian, Interstellar, and The Arrival were all original movies that were intellectually satisfying. There's still some hope left.

Re:It's never their fault, of course

[youngone]

Holy crap! I looked up Forbidden Planet and it's got Leslie Neilson in it.

Man he had a long career.

Re: It's never their fault, of course

[Aighearach]

King copywrites mostly airport novels, not many of his works are masterpieces (actually can't think of any). They don't adapt well to films because the story lines are cheesy, predictable, boring crap.

Well, not directly, but the mechanical nature of his writing makes it very easy for production screenwriters to convert into storyboards that the producer can mangle according to the fads, hype, and echos of the day.

Re:It's never their fault, of course

[Aighearach]

When you replaced "should" with "must," you could have just stopped right there and not said anything and it would have the same weight.

Re:It's never their fault, of course

[Aighearach]

It just seemed that way because nudity was less common. We didn't have internet.

A movie back then might show 10 seconds total of boobs, and it is most of what people talked about. So it seemed like the movie was just about boobs. And people watched the whole movie waiting for those few seconds.

But if you rewatch R-rated films from the 80s now, there is very little nudity. Some of what was R then would be PG-13 now, too, if they only flashed it.

Re:It's never their fault, of course

[Anonymous Coward]

I did not consider him to be forgettable. But the actress was forgettable to me.

That's because you're a faggot.

Re:It's never their fault, of course

[Hognoxious]

Then be honest and give the movie a different name.

Re:It's never their fault, of course

[myowntrueself]

I'm really thinking since 2000 roughly, its hard to tell exactly when this law came into effect.

Re:It's never their fault, of course

[Grishnakh]

Fair enough; 39 years for Donald Sutherland's Invasion of the Body Snatchers is probably a real stretch, I admit. I also forgot to mention 1982's "The Thing", a horror classic and masterpiece that's a remake of some 50s move.

But still, limiting "modern" to the 21st Century still leaves us with 7 movies and one trilogy out of my list. Some other people might have more; I went through Wikipedia's list of movie remakes and picked only ones I liked or at least heard really good things about since ~1978.

I will admit, however, that we're now over 7 years into the 2010s, and I didn't find any movies that I thought qualified as "good remakes" there. But I also haven't watched as many movies during this decade so maybe I'm missing some. Honestly, it does seem to me that many things in society have generally gone way downhill since 2008, when we had the economic crash. But that could be a continuation of a trend started in 2000; from my perspective, things were generally much better in the 1990s and that decade was the peak for American society.

Re:It's never their fault, of course

[radarskiy]

"With some creativity you could also make a dozen great supernatural pirate movies if they wanted to."

If they could yet did not, isn't that justification for a critic to give it a bad score, even (especially) if grading on a per-genre curve?

Very little fault of Rotten Tomatoes

[parallel_prankster]

While I agree there are some good movies that have poor Rotten Tomatoes ratings which makes me wonder if I missed a movie because of RT reviews, I would still consider them to be a pretty good indicator of movie quality. The studios are just mad that RT tells me what I need to know about crappy movies before I spend my money on them!

Re:Very little fault of Rotten Tomatoes

[Freischutz]

While I agree there are some good movies that have poor Rotten Tomatoes ratings which makes me wonder if I missed a movie because of RT reviews, I would still consider them to be a pretty good indicator of movie quality. The studios are just mad that RT tells me what I need to know about crappy movies before I spend my money on them!

I never look at critic's scores, just whether the audience liked it. Critics have a tendency to be windbags...

Re:Very little fault of Rotten Tomatoes

[David_Hart]

While I agree there are some good movies that have poor Rotten Tomatoes ratings which makes me wonder if I missed a movie because of RT reviews, I would still consider them to be a pretty good indicator of movie quality. The studios are just mad that RT tells me what I need to know about crappy movies before I spend my money on them!

I never look at critic's scores, just whether the audience liked it. Critics have a tendency to be windbags...

That's what I used to use IMDB for. The audience ratings are broken down by gender and by age ranges. While I don't strictly go by these ratings, I do factor them into whether I see a movie in the theater, wait for the Blu-ray, or wait until it's on HBO/Netflix. That is, until IMDB killed the movie forums. Now I use RT.

Re:Very little fault of Rotten Tomatoes

[guises]

No, the gripe is a legitimate one. The way RT's scoring works, a mediocre movie that everyone agrees is mediocre will get a very low score, while a really bad movie which appeals to a small number of people will get a better score. A controversial movie will get a score in the middle, and the top end has the same problem as the bottom - scoring is more about agreement between critics than it is about how much the critics like or dislike the film.

It's not a great system. Does anyone know why Rotten Tomatoes seems to be the popular one, while others (like Metacritic) are less often cited?

Re: Very little fault of Rotten Tomatoes

[Anonymous Coward]

This. The two biggest critics in the world used to argue with each other all day about what made a movie good or bad.

They have a predefined notion of a movie before they even see it.

Re:Very little fault of Rotten Tomatoes

[parallel_prankster]

Thats actually a good point now that I think about it. Generally, I dont go by the overall score at all. I read what most of the critics are saying. That usually tells me almost everything I need to know to either prepare myself for watching the movie or to not go at all.

Re:Very little fault of Rotten Tomatoes

[jedidiah]

It's utter rubbish and ignores the audience ratings. Bad movies have always gotten rubbish ratings from "critics". This is nothing new. I remember how the critics trashed ever original Star Wars movie.

It's the audience ratings that are more likely to kill a picture.

This is a good thing. Companies shouldn't be able to make money off of garbage that the customers don't even like.

Re:Very little fault of Rotten Tomatoes

[swillden]

I never look at critic's scores, just whether the audience liked it. Critics have a tendency to be windbags...

I look at both. The problem with critic ratings is that critics look for somewhat different things in a movie than I do. The problem with audience ratings is they are doubly self-selected, as well as vulnerable to astroturfing. I find that looking at both gives me a really good idea of whether I'm going to like it: if both critic and audience ratings are high, I know I'm good. If either one is really low, I can be pretty sure the movie sucks. In other cases, I have to look closer, which means actually reading a sampling of both critic and viewer reviews. I do weight critic ratings/reviews a little more heavily.

In the case of these movies, a 32% RT score is a strong negative indicator, but if the audience ratings are high, I might see it. I probably will see Pirates 5. Any RT score below 20% is a clear loser. I'll stay home if there's no better option.

Re:Very little fault of Rotten Tomatoes

[Anonymous Coward]

Critics have a tendency to be windbags...

As do commenters on slashdot.

Re:Very little fault of Rotten Tomatoes

[Anonymous Coward]

I never look at critic's scores, just whether the audience liked it. Critics have a tendency to be windbags...

But the audience has a tendency to be idiots.

Re:Very little fault of Rotten Tomatoes

[Freischutz]

I never look at critic's scores, just whether the audience liked it. Critics have a tendency to be windbags...

I look at both. The problem with critic ratings is that critics look for somewhat different things in a movie than I do. The problem with audience ratings is they are doubly self-selected, as well as vulnerable to astroturfing. I find that looking at both gives me a really good idea of whether I'm going to like it: if both critic and audience ratings are high, I know I'm good. If either one is really low, I can be pretty sure the movie sucks. In other cases, I have to look closer, which means actually reading a sampling of both critic and viewer reviews. I do weight critic ratings/reviews a little more heavily.

In the case of these movies, a 32% RT score is a strong negative indicator, but if the audience ratings are high, I might see it. I probably will see Pirates 5. Any RT score below 20% is a clear loser. I'll stay home if there's no better option.

I have a seen a number of movies that critics decided were rubbish but that audiences loved. They keep analysing the quality of the acting, the depth of the characters, blah, blah, blah, and that is certainly important in some movies but sometimes it does not matter how a movie stands up to a Woody Allen classic masterpiece, you just want to see the Hulk bash the crap out of aliens ... or something ... even if the acting compares badly with the masterpieces.

Re:Very little fault of Rotten Tomatoes

[Anonymous Coward]

Even without RT, I'm looking at how much it's going to cost me at the theatre, before I start looking at the commentary of movies..

If new movies were $5 instead of $8-15~ (local area pricing may vary), I might not be as interested in where my limited funds are going. I'm sure a good sector of the public doesn't have $50, or even $100 a month, JUST to spend at the movies. Or if they do, that's their entertainment budget in total.

Re:Very little fault of Rotten Tomatoes

[Calydor]

That's what my grandmother used to say when reading the newspaper: "Let's see what we're supposed to think of the movie we watched last night."

Re:Very little fault of Rotten Tomatoes

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep, if the critics hate it and most of the audience like it, it's usually a good movie, at least for entertainment value which is all most movies or shows are, entertainment. Nothing more, nothing less.

Lord of the Rings = entertainment, nothing else
Star Wars = entertainment
Howard the Duck = entertainment

Critics have a tendency to be morons and try to grade every little aspect of a movie, play, etc. There is no real logic behind a critic's opinion. If the audience loves it, it's got mass appeal. If the critics love it, it's a pretentious piece of shit that appeals to a very small percentage of the human population.

Re:Very little fault of Rotten Tomatoes

[swillden]

I have a seen a number of movies that critics decided were rubbish but that audiences loved.

Me too. What I haven't seen is a movie that critics decided was terrible, but audiences loved, and I liked. YMMV, of course.

Re:Very little fault of Rotten Tomatoes

[Freischutz]

I have a seen a number of movies that critics decided were rubbish but that audiences loved.

Me too. What I haven't seen is a movie that critics decided was terrible, but audiences loved, and I liked. YMMV, of course.

That's true, I just tend to take with a grain of salt what somebody who lives and breathes the masterpieces of the filmmakers art has to say about a move like 'The Mummy' for example. I really liked those movies but critics generally didn't while audiences gave them a much higher score. The only reason I stopped watching the franchise was that without Rachel Weisz the third film really wasn't the same as the old ones because she and Brendan Fraser complemented each other really well in those roles.

Re:Very little fault of Rotten Tomatoes

[WrongMonkey]

What are you complaining about exactly? The movie that actually "the Hulk bash the crop out of aliens" got a 92% of Rotten Tomatoes. Critics loved it! https://www.rottentomatoes.com...

Re:Very little fault of Rotten Tomatoes

[WrongMonkey]

What critics trashed the original Star Wars? Roger Ebert gave it a rave review. http://www.rogerebert.com/revi...

Most of other majors critics did too: http://www.businessinsider.com...

Re:Very little fault of Rotten Tomatoes

[Anonymous Coward]

Says the commenter on Slashdot....

You sure it's rotten tomatos?

[Anonymous Coward]

And not Toxic Masculinity?

Re:You sure it's rotten tomatos?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't get this toxic masculinity meme.
Feminists argue toxic masculinity, yet they praise female characters donning the traits of toxic masculinity and becoming inferior versions of men like in capeshit superhero movies.
Doesn't make sense.

Re:You sure it's rotten tomatos?

[Anonymous Coward]

One imagines that men have noticed all the Hollywood action scenes involving heroines beating the hell out of gangs of men.

Re:You sure it's rotten tomatos?

[Archangel Michael]

The problem with Toxic Feminism is that it views as toxic anything masculine, unless it is a woman with balls the size of Bayonne. The problem I have with this, is that it doesn't ever embrace the true strengths of women as virtuous on their own merit. The unreal expectation that a woman can bear the part of a man, with exceptional strength, skill and agility is part of the problem, short of the superhero genre.

There are rare exceptions, where a strong woman character fits the script, the genre and doesn't go overboard with the Machismo Woman character. I think the original Alien movie makes a great example. But the whole movie wasn't about a bad ass woman going to town, it was about a normal woman going to town. The power of two "mother" figures out to protect their "young". Classic play missed by the feminists, and douchebag men equally, because they are overtly looking at things completely wrong.

There are lots of other strong characters built around women, and it is sad to see them play second fiddle to Wolverine movies. Not that those were unwatchable, but Black Widow (Avengers) probably needs her own movie, where we can see her full skillset, not just her badass fighting techniques.

But we get Wonderwoman so .... there is that.

Re:You sure it's rotten tomatos?

[TechyImmigrant]

>There are rare exceptions, where a strong woman character fits the script,
Fargo.

Re:You sure it's rotten tomatos?

[Anonymous Coward]

>There are rare exceptions, where a strong woman character fits the script,
Fargo.

Terminator 2 (that's the one actually worth watching, possibly adding "Terminator" as warmup). Nikita. The Professional (I am serious: probably the best Natalie Portman performance ever, and the script making a world of senseless violence start to revolve around her).

Re:You sure it's rotten tomatos?

[chuckugly]

..... I think the original Alien movie makes a great example. But the whole movie wasn't about a bad ass woman going to town, it was about a normal woman going to town. The power of two "mother" figures out to protect their "young". ....

The cat came into the show pretty late to be a surrogate child didn't it?

Re:You sure it's rotten tomatos?

[Slider451]

..... I think the original Alien movie makes a great example. But the whole movie wasn't about a bad ass woman going to town, it was about a normal woman going to town. The power of two "mother" figures out to protect their "young". ....

The cat came into the show pretty late to be a surrogate child didn't it?

Think the GP was describing/conflating the plot from Aliens (the second movie with Bill "Game over, man, game over" Paxton).

Re: You sure it's rotten tomatos?

[Evtim]

Yeah, Jim Cameron did it all the way back in the 'macho' 80's.
Aliens has no less than 4 great female characters - Ripley, Rebecca, Vasques and the Queen. It covers completely the feminist criteria - more than one woman, they have a talk and the talk is not about men.
I mean the final showdown is between 3 females and half an android. Two mothers fighting for their children.
It is not a surprise then that when Empire ran a 'most favorite movie character' pool the only female in the top 10 was Ripley. The top 3 were for the biggest womanisers in cinema - Han Solo, Indiana Jones and 007. I think would piss some feminists even though the readership of Empire is gender balanced....poor modern girls, they think they invented emancipation...

Re:You sure it's rotten tomatos?

[fuzznutz]

I think the original Alien movie makes a great example. But the whole movie wasn't about a bad ass woman going to town, it was about a normal woman going to town. The power of two "mother" figures out to protect their "young".

You are confusing the original Alien movie (Alien - Ridley Scott) with the first sequel (Aliens - James Cameron). In the original, there was no indication Ripley was a mother and there were no human children in the story. The sequel Aliens featured the Xenomorph queen and the showdown between her/it and Ripley who protected Newt. The director's cut of Aliens also had a subplot where you discovered Ripley's motivation was due to the fact she was a mother and her young child had grown up and died while she was drifting through space over decades after the destruction of the Nostromo.

Re:You sure it's rotten tomatos?

[chuckugly]

Ah yeah, that makes more sense, although (spoiler alert) that didn't end well at all anyway.

translated:

[Anonymous Coward]

we cant make sub par unfunny comedies and lame predictable dramas any more because people tell other people they suck! Give writers more creative freedom and things may turn around.

Re:translated:

[DickBreath]

They can't give writers more creative freedom. Nor directors.

The problem is they are locked into a formula. If they're going to spend $500 Million to make a movie, then they have got to guarantee it will be a success and recoup the investment.

So they can't take risks. Can't be innovative. A movie must follow one of Hollywood's formulas for success. And this is the very thing making movies bad.

Here's another idea: How about a movie that doesn't cost $500 Million to make? Don't get a-list actors. Could there possibly be very good but unknown actors? Don't make the movie effects heavy. Do have a good story -- oh but that would require giving more creative freedom, which brings us back to the start.

Re:translated:

[PoopJuggler]

The problem is also that they can't pay-off an aggregator and buy a good review.

Re:translated:

[BlackPignouf]

Relevant movie to your post :
https://www.rottentomatoes.com...

98% Tomatometer, so you cannot go wrong. ;)

Re:translated:

[Anonymous Coward]

The master shot that opens that movie was worth the price of admission.

Re:translated:

[Anonymous Coward]

Could there possibly be very good but unknown actors?

Of course there are... but well known actors and actresses are part of the formula as recognizable/brand names.

Re:translated:

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's another idea: How about a movie that doesn't cost $500 Million to make? Don't get a-list actors. Could there possibly be very good but unknown actors? Don't make the movie effects heavy. Do have a good story -- oh but that would require giving more creative freedom, which brings us back to the start.

Actually it doesn't. "No freedom" was because they don't want to loose $500 million, but that one evaporate if the movie cost $10 million. "Want to go experimental? Ok, do a low-budget one." And when it works, make a big-budget sequel.

See some non-Hollywood movies now and then. One of the perks of living in Europe. . .

Re:translated:

[Aighearach]

Or, they could still hire a few A-list actors and just not go nuts on effects and executive producers. There is no excuse for it costing $500m now when it cost under $100m very recently.

They should save the expensive effects for the movies that need it, like superhero movies that in the past had to be animation. And you don't need more than a couple A-list actors to make a good superhero movie. They're so caught up in fighting for the top selling movie that they forget to aim for a high profit margin on multiple moderately successful movies for the same money.

It only takes a little bit of good special effects to make a great science fiction movie, because science fiction is mostly about making it possible to tell different stories than can be told in a contemporary setting. If anything they should hire better writers instead of focusing on "screen"writers who have the biggest resumes.

Sobs

[DarkOx]

Boo hoo, I can't compete in the market place with a terrible product by taking advantage of the customers inferior access to information about it.

Damn internet. Its so unfair

Re:Sobs

[DickBreath]

Dang Netflix! They can make a short one season TV series for 1/20 to 1/40 the cost of a major motion picture, yet it is more engaging than the movie. Each episode leaves you wanting to watch the next. It's just so unfair!

Re:Sobs

[Anonymous Coward]

Boo hoo, I can't compete in the market place with a terrible product by taking advantage of the customers inferior access to information about it.

Damn internet. Its so unfair

That's why we need to kill Net Neutrality, so that parties like NBCUniversal/Comcast can decide for themselves exactly what parts of the Internet we can access. I mean we can't have our children going around and deciding what is a good movie or a bad movie without actually paying to see the movie themselves.

Re: Sobs

[Anonymous Coward]

Netflix spends a lot of fucking money on its TV shows. Only comedies and kids shows are somewhat cheap. The rest are expensive as hell these days.

Re: Sobs

[DickBreath]

I'm thinking if Netflix spends $20 million on a short TV series, that is about 1/20 ($400 million) to 1/40 ($800 million) of a major motion picture. So my assumed numbers might be off somewhat. Suppose I said Netflix spends 1/5 to 1/10 as much, yet it is still more engaging than a movie. Would my point still be somewhat valid about how "terribly unfair" (said in whiny voice) that it is?

Re:Sobs

[callahan2211]

It is popular recently to blame the Russians for failed endeavors. So when I saw someone refer to Rotten Tomatoes as RT, I thought the movie houses were blaming it on Russia Today.

Rotten Tomatoes is owned by Fandango

[Anonymous Coward]

which is owned by Universal (?) which is owned by Comcast

The reviews there, if anything, are faked to make movies look better than they are.

I think most people are like me and just don't give a fuck about milquetoast horseshit designed for chinese audiences. You bet on the wong horse.

Re:Rotten Tomatoes is owned by Fandango

[PCM2]

Correction: Fandango is co-owned by NBCUniversal (Comcast) and Warner Bros (which still has a 30 percent stake). So, yeah, I guess Fandango and Rotten Tomatoes must be single-handedly destroying the movie business.

Fandango

[Anonymous Coward]

Many of those in the industry severely question how Rotten Tomatoes computes the its ratings, and the fact that these scores run on Fandango (which owns RT) is an even nbigger problem.

Re:Fandango

[Anonymous Coward]

congratulations on parroting the summary and adding nothing of value

It's costly to see movies.

[Anonymous Coward]

People have to pick and chose what they're willing to spend their discretionary cash on, if they even have any. Either the movie experience needs to cost less or they have to accept the fact that not all of the movies released will get large audiences. (and make more money)

I don't see this happening so eventually less movies may be made. But then again they may still do well on blueray/dvd/streaming.

I didn't go, but not because of Rotten Tomatoes

[Quirkz]

I looked up movie times on Google. It had a sidebar with a metacritic score that seemed low. I followed that and saw actual reviews, which were also (in the aggregate) pretty bad. Are all of those equally at fault?

This is for Pirates 5, by the way. Part of the reason I looked is because Pirates 4 was already really disappointing compared to the first three, and Depp has been in a death spiral for years. That and the appearance of yet more dead/undead pirates (how many different ways is that even possible) in the previews had me seriously worried. If all of that hadn't already been hanging over the movie, I wouldn't have bothered to second-guess my impulse to just go down and watch it.

I'll still see it, by the way, just put it off until it's on Redbox.

Re:I didn't go, but not because of Rotten Tomatoes

[Anonymous Coward]

That and the appearance of yet more dead/undead pirates (how many different ways is that even possible) in the previews had me seriously worried.

Hmm. maybe they should try Ninjas instead of undead pirates. Or robots. Or Predators.

Re:I didn't go, but not because of Rotten Tomatoes

[Anonymous Coward]

Motherfucking Snakes on a Privateer!

Re:I didn't go, but not because of Rotten Tomatoes

[Whorhay]

I actually had the chance to go watch a movie this weekend, which I rarely get due to having kids that don't do well with baby sitters.

When I looked at what was available the two movies mentioned at the top were the two I considered. I ultimately decided to just stay home and watch some Netflix. I missed the fourth pirates movie because it hasn't hit Netflix yet, and so going to see the fifth one seemed silly, plus the wife would probably want to watch it as well. Baywatch looked funny as hell if possibly a smidgen too juvenile, but when I considered the cost and effort to go see it I just couldn't muster the necessary fucks.

I'll watch them both eventually I suppose when they make it to Netflix or Amazon Prime.

Re:I didn't go, but not because of Rotten Tomatoes

[Grishnakh]

No, they should use alien xenomorphs. That'll totally fit into a Pirates of the Caribbean movie.

Re:I didn't go, but not because of Rotten Tomatoes

[avandesande]

Somehow I just knew Pirates 5 was going to stink.

Re:I didn't go, but not because of Rotten Tomatoes

[TeknoHog]

Pirates 4 was already really disappointing compared to the first three

The really sad thing about Pirates 4 is that it was supposedly based on this wonderful novel. It looks like the studios had kept the movie rights for the novel for years without doing anything, and then they used them up for a bit of atmosphere and themes.

Re:I didn't go, but not because of Rotten Tomatoes

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem with Pirates 5 is Disney. They had a bit of a surprise hit with the first movie (which is legitimately good), and in the typical Disney fashion now they're going to absolutely milk the franchise until there's nothing left. They'll keep cranking out mediocre Pirates movies as long as they bring in more money than they cost to make. At that point they might stop, or they might just make them cheaper with increasing shitty straight to video releases. Once it's truly dead then they'll reboot it and start all over again.

Make something worth watching

[RotateLeftByte]

and the problem will go away.

Simple really but Hollywood would rather make endless sequels and prequels.
Is it little wonder that I gave up on going to watch them years ago, there really was very little worth watching that wasn't full of bangs, explosions and car chases OR a stupid plotless romcom.
Where are films like "North by Northwest" these days?

Re:Make something worth watching

[WrongMonkey]

Plenty of good movies are still released these days. Just based on rottentomatoes alone, 22 of the top 100 movies of all time have been released since 2010: https://www.rottentomatoes.com...

Re:Make something worth watching

[nealric]

I think there's a bit of a recency bias at play with that list. Mad Max Fury Road was a great movie. But better than Casablanca? I think not.

Re:Make something worth watching

[helpfulcorn]

Be careful, you'll give someone the idea of remaking North by Northwest with Shia LaBeouf.

Re:Make something worth watching

[roc97007]

There are still good movies being made (for a reasonable definition of "good"), but they're almost always not blockbusters and are usually independently produced. The trick is to find them.

The two most common business plans for films seem to be:

(a) put in a lot of explosions and digital effects, create up to four trailers containing the only parts of the film worth watching, and market the living hell out of it. Get someone to say "a great popcorn flick [1]" and plaster that on the posters. Depend on first weekend to recoup 1/3 to 1/2 of your cost, expect a $70M drop on second weekend, make up the production and marketing costs in foreign markets. DVD sales are gravy.

Or (2), a director makes a film based on his own vision on a relative shoestring with little to no studio interference, and creates something actually worth watching. Being a low budget film, it's not marketed much, and the only people who actually see it are the ones specifically looking for that type of film. They enjoy the experience and tell their friends, making the film a modest success. In my opinion, Son of Rambow (2007), Pirate Radio (2009), About Time (2013), Predestination (2014) and Time Lapse (2014) are examples of (b).

Big hollywood studios tend to do (a), and small independent studios tend to do (b). The trick is to look for those films.

An then, most probably, see them at home, where you can have decent food and beer.

[1] A "popcorn flick" is apparently any $100m+ film with lots of eye candy but no plot or characterization.

Its the symptom, stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

Metareview sites such as Rotten Tomatoes have become so successful and influential because they've proven to be a reliable means for many people to avoid seeing shitty movies. Their methodology is of course imperfect and many movies fall through the cracks, but nonetheless I think Rotten Tomatoes wouldn't be successful if there wasn't a demand for it, and the reason that demand exists is that consumers are tired of the blatant abuses of movie producers phoning it in for easy cash outs and audiences carrying the burden.

Re:Its the symptom, stupid

[Archangel Michael]

I'll rent a shitty movie, or worse, wait to see it on TV, which makes it shittier by slicing and dicing to fit with the commercials and the 3 hour time slot. And most of the time, it is not worth it even then.

Great movies don't always stand the test of time, good movies usually do, and rarely do bad movies last forever. Most movies are forgettable. And people have figured that out. It isn't worth $50 date night for a bad movie, bad popcorn and flat soda.

Choices

[Anonymous Coward]

Rotten Tomatoes is just one source. Go read actual reviews. Eg, for PotC, reviews are pretty consistently negative. Is Rotten Tomatoes to blame?

Take Dumb and Dumber .....

[kfh227]

Distributers should stop distributing crap movies. God, stop focusing on special effects and tits and focus on story. It's not hard. Here's a shitty story but hilarious movie: Dumb and Dumber No one thinks it is an Oscar contender but you know what, it's 66% on rotten tomatoes. And you know what. If it were not funny it would probably be 10%. What movie at my local theater has me most excited? They play classic movies on weekends and I might go see The Holy Grail. Why? it's funny. Stop giving us Snakes on a Plane and other utter crap and start giving us good movies.

Re:Take Dumb and Dumber .....

[WrongMonkey]

Hollywood still makes plenty of good movies. Out of the top 100 movies on RottenTomatoes, 22 are from the current decade (since 2010).

https://www.rottentomatoes.com...

IMO, this in particular has had a high percentage of quality movies: Get Out, Hidden Figures, Colossal, Lost City of Z, Logan. Even Wonder Woman has received good reviews.

Re:Take Dumb and Dumber .....

[yodleboy]

"God, stop focusing on special effects and focus on story."

fixed that for you...

Re:Take Dumb and Dumber .....

[Bob the Super Hamste]

This seems to be what studios have forgotten. Not every movie needs to be a mega blockbuster, or Oscar winner. There can just be good movies that will never be the next Shawshank Redemption but we need more good movies like Dr. Strangelove. Movies like Gattaca, The Usual Suspects, Blazing Saddles, Heat, The Good The Bad and The Ugly, are all good movies and tell a good story. People do like to think movies were better before but that is because we have forgotten about the huge number of shitty old movies that were made. In looking at what films came out the same year as Laurence of Arabia (looks to be a surprisingly good year for movies) there are a few others I recognize like Dr. No, The Manchurian Candidate, How the West Was Won, Lolita, and To Kill a Mockingbird, but most I have never heard of.

Re:Take Dumb and Dumber .....

[serviscope_minor]

Stop giving us Snakes on a Plane

Are you kidding? Snakes was an awesome movie in a very B movie sort of way. I went to see it purely because of the title. Perhaps it was the audience that made the film though when I saw it. Mr L. Jackson got a huge cheer when he told us just how tired he was of the snakes being on the plane.

Unbiased opinion

[Anonymous Coward]

My son watched the latest Pirates and without any help from Rotten Tomatoes told me it was the most boring movie in the series.

Reviews scores are ruining a lot things

[Anonymous Coward]

Especially in entertainment, reviews from "professionals" are way too often politically motivated.

Reviews from consumers on the other hand are a shitshow of their own. It's all hype, brigading and outright retards leaving non-reviews like "I'm waiting for better reviews". Yet somehow reviews scores are the end-all when it comes to judging, for example, video games.

It takes a wonder woman...

[__aaclcg7560]

Wonder Woman has a 96% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. What studio is going to complain about that?

http://www.thewrap.com/wonder-woman-has-a-higher-rotten-tomatoes-score-than-any-other-dc-or-marvel-movie-so-far/

Re:It takes a wonder woman...

[TimothyHollins]

In all fairness, don't you think that could somehow be connected to the genital wars that have surrounded the movie since its announcement?

Re:It takes a wonder woman...

[SuiteSisterMary]

You know, I was thinking something like this just the other night. If WW does well, people will complain that it's just because of the gender angle. If WW does poorly....people will complain it's just because of the gender angle.

Re:It takes a wonder woman...

[__aaclcg7560]

In all fairness, don't you think that could somehow be connected to the genital wars that have surrounded the movie since its announcement?

Everyone knows that Wonder Woman can beat Superman's sorry ass.

Re:It takes a wonder woman...

[budsetr]

Nah, it's a win-win: Women: strong female lead Guys: hot super-chic

Re:It takes a wonder woman...

[Anonymous Coward]

Its Batman who likes that sort of thing.

Re:It takes a wonder woman...

[TimothyHollins]

Judging by the moderation on my apparently controversial question I'd say you have it correct.

Re:It takes a wonder woman...

[Anonymous Coward]

In all fairness, don't you think that could somehow be connected to the genital wars that have surrounded the movie since its announcement?

Only partly.
A greater effect is that the ratings are pushed up because the lead actress is an Israeli Jew, and in the movie she is beating up Germans.
Yes, I'm aware that the character isn't a Jew, but the people who care about this care a lot, and there's a great many of them in the industry.

Re:It takes a wonder woman...

[Tranzistors]

You mean that it wasn't a flamebait?

Re:It takes a wonder woman...

[Dutch Gun]

Compare this to the Ghostbusters remake. Apparently, Wonder Woman had a female director as well. Like I care. I only know because of the linked article. Maybe people just recognize a fun, smart, kick-ass movie when they see it?

Re:It takes a wonder woman...

[TimothyHollins]

It was softly worded and didn't point towards either side as being the aggressor. It would require some effort to take offense or feel singled out by such phrasing.

Re:It takes a wonder woman...

[Tranzistors]

I would agree that it wasn't trollish, but it's like mentioning systemd in a discussion about latest LINUX release. Sure, it is somehow related, but it is known to spark off topic rants. While I didn't moderate your post, I can see how soft worded allusion could be seen as flamebait -- it wasn't particularly informative or insightful (for it lacked details), so maybe better bury it for the sake of the discussion. Alas, there is no karma neutral negative moderation.

Re:It takes a wonder woman...

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.netfunny.com/rhf/jokes/88old/supes.44.html

Re:It takes a wonder woman...

[serviscope_minor]

Not really. The way you have posed the question basically makes it no win.

Re:It takes a wonder woman...

[mjwx]

You know, I was thinking something like this just the other night. If WW does well, people will complain that it's just because of the gender angle. If WW does poorly....people will complain it's just because of the gender angle.

Point in short, people complain.

I'm certain the success has nothing to do with the fact Gal Gadot is smoking hot. Not like sex sells or anything.

Re:It takes a wonder woman...

[SuiteSisterMary]

No, but it's more insidious than that, you see.

Man of Steel, Batman v Superman and Suicide Squad were all considered critical flops, regardless of what their box office takes were.

So, Wonder Woman may be DC's first 'good' movie. Or it may be yet another bungled attempt at replicating the Marvel movie magic. But because it's been made a cause, rather than a movie, it can never stand or fail on it's own merits.

If it's the first 'good' DC movie, there will always be the insinuation that it's being treated as 'good' because of the feminist angle. If it's yet another 'bad' DC movie, there will always be the insinuation that anybody that legitimately doesn't like it actually only dislikes it because they're misogynistic.

Re:It takes a wonder woman...

[mjwx]

So, Wonder Woman may be DC's first 'good' movie.

Wonder Woman was far from the first good DC movie. People under 30 often forget that the 80's and early 90's were the golden age of DC films with Superman and Batman being some of the biggest blockbusters of the day. Even today, none of the Marvel or DC villains compare to Danny DeVito's Penguin. DC's recent moves weren't that bad, but the couldn't capture the audience the way the old ones could.

This was the time where Marvel and Stan Lee were steadfastly refusing to sell their comics to the movie studios despite quite good offers being made. I think if they had of made Marvel movies in the 80's, the ones that came in the 00's would not have been as well received.

Also not buying the "feminist agenda" crap.

Re:It takes a wonder woman...

[SuiteSisterMary]

Sorry, I'm specifically referring to the current crop of DCMU movies; Man of Steel, Batman v Superman, Suicide Squad, now Wonder Woman.

There have been some excellent movies made about DC properties in the past.

My original point stands.

Simple Solution

[Anonymous Coward]

The solution is simple: Make better movies.

People who start the comment in the subject box ar

[Anonymous Coward]

e retards.

There is some merit here

[chispito]

Review aggregators like Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic are incredibly useful... yet also promote groupthink and over simplify the value of a film. I've really enjoyed some films that most critics panned, and I've really disliked films that most critics adored. By distilling the value of a film down to a fresh/rotten percentage (much like Siskel and Ebert's thumbs up or down system of yore) it encourages people to stop there and not read the reviews to find out what does or doesn't appeal to the reviewers.

Now, applying this logic to the apparent failure of yet another 'Pirates' movie seems like a major stretch. As for Baywatch, I don't know.

Re:There is some merit here

[Oswald McWeany]

Indeed. I think scores like Rotten Tomatoes provides are useful; however, it's not the whole story. I wouldn't see/not see a film based purely upon it's ratings. I've like films Rotten Tomatoes called rotten, and hated films it loved.

We're all individuals and none of us will always like what the mainstream always like.

Re:There is some merit here

[Altrag]

Which is exactly the point. Not everyone is, or wants to be, a movie buff. A lot of people just go "what's in the theater today?", knock out anything they've already seen and look for a quick ranking of the stuff that's left. They don't want to spend 3 hours scanning through every pissant's comment (or even real critic comments) to decide whether or not they should watch a 90 minute movie.

Re:There is some merit here

[Anonymous Coward]

Review aggregators like Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic are incredibly useful... yet also promote groupthink and over simplify the value of a film.

Last time I went there, it was after enjoying watching "Left Behind" starring Nicholas Cage on the local equivalent of Netflix with a room mate who is a fan of Cage. Or was. I went to Rotten Tomatoes in order to enjoy reading what others had to say about the most abysmally unironically awful movie I ever had the pleasure to get into convulsions of laughter about to the embarrassment of my co-watchers.

You cannot imagine just how awfully bad that movie is. And I enjoyed reading through a whole lot of Rotten Tomatoes reviews afterwards to gain further insights into the awfulness and the likely causes for the producers thinking that making this movie would be anything but a stupid idea.

So I learnt that this movie was actually a more expensive remake of an awful preexisting movie. Now that would be an idea for a topical movie night, but it's probably a tossup with eating horse manure and puking in your shoes.

Hooray for Rotten Tomatoes.

Re:There is some merit here

[Moof123]

This. I got tired of crappy movies, and on the whole if RT gives a good score and the genre is what I am in the mood for I rarely get let down. The few times I ignored bad ratings for a sequel or a favorite actor I have ended up kicking myself for wasting 2 hours of my life.

Like most things in life I need a way to quickly weed out most of the bad choices. Finding the optimal choice, or a hidden gem just isn't worth the headache and time unless I want to start treating movies as hobby instead of entertainment. RT is very useful, even if a few movies end up getting the short end of the stick (a nice reversal).

Re:There is some merit here

[Anonymous Coward]

distilling the value of a film down to a fresh/rotten percentage encourages people to stop there

There's a lot more to RottenTomatoes than that –there are summaries and snippets of reviews which give you a flavour of the reasons for the critics' opinions. You can also get to the full review if you want the details. I read these to help decide if the things that bothered the critics really matter to me, e.g. "this subject has been done to death" might not necessarily put me off. I think Hollywood's complaint really doesn't stack up from any perspective.

Of course they are...

[evolutionary]

They gotta blame somebody. Not that I always agree with rotten tomatoes, but 80% of the time I do. and if not Rotten Tomatoes, I look in local magazines ("Now" magazine is a popular free website/publication). Also Rotten Tomatoes is a metasite compiling results of other reviews so, the movie producers can blame movie reviewers in general. Of course that is the review's JOB. It feels little like Trump blaming the media for making him look bad with "fake news". (A lot of is is actually true..)

Re:Of course they are...

[Anonymous Coward]

For in-depth and accurate review I look to The Onion movie reviews.

Baywatch?!?

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you fucking kidding me? Why would I ever want to see that?

Now there's an Emoji movie coming out. Dafuq?

It's like in Idiocracy. "The most popular movie was called Ass. That's all it was. And it won best picture."

One small problem

[Daetrin]

I'm entirely unsympathetic to movie studios' distress over the idea that consumers are using the tools available to make informed choices. However if Rotten Tomatoes is able to sink movies with bad reviews why are Michael Bay's Transformers movies still a thing that exists?

Re:One small problem

[Grishnakh]

Exactly. And according to another comment here, the new Wonder Woman got 97% on RT. So it's not like it's sinking all movies, or even all mass-market action movies.

Re:One small problem

[jezwel]

...why are Michael Bay's Transformers movies still a thing that exists?

'Cause we still like explosions, hot girls, fast cars, and nostalgia for the toys we played with as youths? We know the plot is scabbed together.

Re:One small problem

[turp182]

Kids don't pay attention to Rotten Tomatoes.

There are some really good kid's movies though, Inside Out was incredible (barely a kids movie in my opinion).

Tastes change

[H3lldr0p]

and if you don't change with them then maybe you're the one wrong. This has Skinner meme written all over it.

70% ... who cares about them?

[Anonymous Coward]

70% of Baywatch viewers on Rotten Tomatoes said they liked it

That's a self-selected audience. Do I want to listen to "people who willingly went to Baywatch and then thought it was worthwhile to RATE it" or a "movie critic"?

The hubris of these studios is stunning. (... not really.) They actually think that people need a review site to figure out Baywatch would be a garbage movie? They named it Baywatch, after the garbage television series that no one has forgotten is garbage. It was doomed from the beginning.

I have an idea

[kfh227]

Here's what you can do Hollywood. Start treating your high budgets for what they are when done correctly. Start making moving pictures .... ART! You know what, people will appreciate a well shot film with a good story whether it be a comedy, horror or drama movie. When you focus on the business risks and all that other crap you forget that you are artists. What you have become are dollar whores. I have very little respect for Hollywood in general and mostly respect movies that are shot with Art in mind. Start thinking about why some directors have a cult following like Ridley Scott, Stanley Kubrick, The Coen Brothers, Quentin Tarantino, etc. Think about those classics from the 80s. They were innocent family movies that a FAMILY COULD GO TO! Who on earth is going to take their 13 year old to go see Baywatch? You are a bunch of idiots.

Re:I have an idea

[Whorhay]

Screw Kubrick! He took a nice short scifi novel and turned it into one of the worst movies I have ever forced myself to sit through. In his attempt to make an art movie he made the story unwatchably bad. The only redeeming bit was HAL's monotone delivery, and the special affects which were amazing for the time. By the same measure I suppose we should heap accolades on Michael Bay.

Re:I have an idea

[serviscope_minor]

Think about those classics from the 80s. They were innocent family movies that a FAMILY COULD GO TO!

Robocop!

Fixed that for you

[Anonymous Coward]

Movie goers Are Blaming Rotten Studios For Making Movies No One Wants To See

I can imagine a scenario

[TsuruchiBrian]

I can imagine a scenario where Hollywood starts making lots of really good quality films, and half the reviews on rotten tomatoes are still bad because of higher expectations caused by all the great new films and relative grading (i.e. on a curve).

I can also imagine in this situation that people will be willing to go see more movies, because they find that they thoroughly enjoy even the movies that got mediocre scores on rotten tomatoes.

How about that Hollywood? Make better movies. I get that the public doesn't seem to like the actual good movies you produce, but they apparently don't like the bad ones either anymore. At least good movies no one watches have the implicit virtue of being good, there is no more excuse for making bad movies if people don't like them anymore.

It's a good thing for everyone if people don't like bad movies any more. Hollywood doesn't have to make them and we don't have to watch them.

You know who is behind this post.

[Anonymous Coward]

(((They))) sure know how to blame anyone but (((themselves))).

Re:You know who is behind this post.

[Anonymous Coward]

This is the most accurate statement about Trump voters I've seen in a long time.

Same as last one

[bill_mcgonigle]

32% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

The previous Pirates movie also got 32% and grossed over a billion dollars.

http://screenrant.com/worst-re...

Re:Same as last one

[CanEHdian]

The previous Pirates movie also got 32% and grossed over a billion dollars.

Indeed. Those people that went and spent their money are now saying "fool me once..."

Hollywood is never satisied

[Anonymous Coward]

Last time it was Piracy, now it's websites. How about the fact most people don't want to go to the cinema anymore. Just go straight to Netflix and DVD and turn the land from cinemas into affordable housiing.

Movie Theaters

[Anonymous Coward]

Going to the cinema is a shit show. They have multiple types of seating you can buy, terrible food/snacks, and lousy service. Why the fuck do I want to pay for that experience? Rhetorical, because I don't want to pay. They don't enforce rules like having your mongrel children behave themselves, not talking on or using a cell phone, and shutting the fuck up when the movie starts.

At least at cinemark here the above is true.

I love going to see movies at the cinema but hate the experience so much now I just wait for them to be released on disc or streaming.

I never trust Rotten Tomatoes

[liquid_schwartz]

Ever since I wasted a couple hours of my life watching Manchester By The Sea. That movie was terrible and I was hoping the whole time that the ending would redeem it and make it worthwhile based on the super high rating that it had on Rotten Tomatoes. Instead it had the weakest ending I think I've ever seen.

Re:I never trust Rotten Tomatoes

[Anonymous Coward]

That film had chick flick written all over it. Plus any film that advertises how many critics love it, before it's been released, is a sure sign I will hate it.

Re:I never trust Rotten Tomatoes

[nuckfuts]

Agreed! I can't even count the number of times I've watched a movie because of very high critic ratings on RT, only to wonder afterward - Why the hell did that movie get such high ratings?

RT critics also seem to heap disproportionate praise on documentaries. I've learned to be very wary of movies with really high ratings from the critics and relatively low audience reviews.

So which is which?

[Cyberpunk Reality]

I never really though of the Pirates franchise as "raunchy R-rated comedy", but surely a movie based on a prime-time TV show wouldn't fit that definition either, right? (And that couldn't possibly have anything to do with poor box office.)

Innumeracy, man

[Woeful Countenance]

It's a plague, but it's also a choice. "... Pirates 5 and Baywatch respectively earning 32% and 19% Rotten." Assuming there are two possible ratings, this implies that 100% - 19% = 81% gave Baywatch a Fresh rating.

" ... 70% of Baywatch viewers on Rotten Tomatoes said they liked it." Sounds like the proportion of "critics" who liked it is higher than the proportion of the general population who liked it. So what's the problem?

Re:Innumeracy, man

[Anonymous Coward]

you assume incorrectly

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotten_tomatoes#Tomatometer_critic_aggregate_score

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Myopia sure is fun.

[Anonymous Coward]

If people trust reviewers more than you, then clearly they don't WANT whatever you think they want with your "mainstream" films anymore. Otherwise they wouldn't care what others say, they would just go see your stupid T&A explosionfests for the air conditioning.

Riiiiiggggghhhhhtttt

[sgt_doom]

Yup, definitely time for Hollywood (or Bollywood or wherever they are making their trash nowadays) to do a remake of Tequila Sunrise (just joking). . . .

What about TripAdvisor

[caffeinefiend]

It's like hotels blaming TripAdvisor for bad reviews leading to reduced business. Of course it has an impact because consumers have become, in general, more discerning about what they consume.

Evidence?

[aussersterne]

I don't see (in that article) any evidence for the case that reviews are actually a part of the problem here.

I don't need to read a single review to know whether I want to see more PoC (seen too much, over it) or Baywatch (over it 20 years ago).

Using existing IP to churn out film after film is not a safe bet. At some point, audience interest saturation will be reached. Very little could convince me to go and see most of the retreads out there these days. I've already seen most of them half a dozen times over the course of my lifetime. Why would I pay again to see the same thing?

Who in their right mind?

[wisnoskij]

Who in their right mind listens to to Rotten Tomato ratings? Every year is is like dozen black and white french films that get 100% along with a few Hollywood films that are equally as horrible. What gets high rating on Rotten Tomatoes appears to about .1% of the moving going audience. Anyone who pays attention to reviews knows that a Rotten Tomato is in no way indicative of your viewing pleasure.

Re:Who in their right mind?

[WrongMonkey]

Here are the actual highest rated movies on Rotten Tomatoes for the last few years: https://www.rottentomatoes.com...

So many pretentious art movies! Like Mad Max:Fury Road, Star Wars: Episode VII, and The Lego Movie.

Re:Who in their right mind?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry you like dumb entertainment.

Re:Who in their right mind?

[wisnoskij]

No, those lists are based on popularity not RT score.
Here is the list of best movies in 2016 according to RT:
The Monkey King 2, Trapped, The Bad Kids, Chicken People, For the Love of Spock, A Beautiful Planet, O.J.: Made in America, Te3n, Raman Raghav 2.0, Shelley, Everything Is Copy, Justin Timberlake + The Tennessee Kids, Tower, The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Mäki, Bright Lights: Starring Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds, The Last Laugh, Window Horses, Pink, Things to Come, My Life as a Courgette, 100 Years, Wakefield, Chocolat, Harmonium, Angkor Awakens: A Portrait Of Cambodia, Alive and Kicking, Sky Ladder: The Art of Cai Guo-Qiang, Transpecos, Betting on Zero, Operator, Olympic Pride, American Prejudice, The Tunnel, Disturbing the Peace, The 24 Hour War, Orange Sunshine, Esteros, The C Word, Don't Kill It, Dreamcatcher

I like plenty of movies that were badly rated

[HalAtWork]

So I don't put much stock into rotten tomatoes. I've looked up movies that I love and many have crap ratings even though I was entertained. To me if it receives a low rating I just consider it more niche and with less wide appeal. That doesn't necessarily make it a bad movie.

I've also hated plenty of movies with high ratings.

If rotten tomatoes does have an effect maybe they should blame this on something more fundamental such as lack of critical thinking and independent thinking.

Rotten Tomatoes didn't stop DC Comics

[PackMan97]

28% rotten Batman v Superman had horrible critical response and netted $330 US boxoffice $873 million worldwide.

25% rotten Suicide Squad earned $325 million in the US and $725 million worldwide.

The truth is that audiences will go see your movie if they want to regardless of the critics. Pirates has been on a steady decline since the first movie and no one really cares any longer and a raunchy adult comedy spin on Baywatch completely ignores why it was so popular in the first place.

Prior art...

[sweet 'n sour]

"They say the movie-review site, which forces critics to assign either a rotten or fresh tomato to each title when submitting reviews, regardless of the nuances of their critiques, poisoned viewers against the films before they were released."

I agree with Hollywood. This new way of forcing reviewers to choose good or bad gets two thumbs down from me.

The studios have a point.

[Ichijo]

An ideal rating system would have a flat histogram across all movies and across all critics, but Rotten Tomatoes' is not flat (see the second graph on that page) and so it's just downright clumsy. It's amazing that it works at all!

And when a critic likes or dislikes two similar movies, I want to see which one he or she likes more, but the fresh/rotten criteria prevents that. Even a 5-star rating system doesn't have enough precision much of the time.

This is why movies should be rated not in isolation but against each other. To rate a movie, you would have to say it is better or worse than another one of the same genre. Software would use these ratings to organize the movies from least to most liked using Condorcet or a similar method, and assign each movie a percentile ranking in order to create a perfectly flat histogram.

Pirates 5 was a dreadful movie

[Anonymous Coward]

It completely deserves it's rating. And yes, I did see it. It really is bad. It's not even good for a popcorn movie because most of the jokes don't work, the acting is uninspired and Captain Sparrow has all the charisma of a dishrag in this latest movie.

Should...

[David Gould]

Should we blame the Internet?
Or blame society?
Or should we blame competition from TV?

Prior to Rotten Tomatoes, newspaper critics

[Maxo-Texas]

And it was safest to say that

* If critics like a non-art film, go see it.
* If they hate it, probably go see it.

Now that we have Rotten Tomatoes..

* If the audience loves it, go see it unless you are an arty-farty type.
* If critics like a non-art film, go see it.
* If they hate it, probably go see it.

----

One thing I see now tho is that critics have added a layer of social justice warrior to their critical thinking. And I say that as a 20 year liberal voter.

If the movie/show has some aspect they dislike on a social justice warrior level, then everything about the movie/show becomes bad (directing, acting, cinematography, etc. etc.). They are NOT being neutral film critics so I can't trust them even to be typical film critics.

And typical film critics don't like a well made film that's targeted at the mass market. They suffer from having seen 5x as many films as everyone else too so they are pretty jaded/burned out in my opinion. Especially for films targeted at young people. Because the critics have already seen the film 50 times before they ever saw this particular instance of a young persons film for this year. They forget that for young people, it may only be the 5th or 6th time having seen it so it's still fresh to young people.

JJ Abrams would be laughed out of Hollywood...

[Anonymous Coward]

...25 years ago. His movies all have serious flaws in them. It's unbelievable he's as successful as he is, both critically and financially. It's also laughable that anyone compared him to Spielberg ever.

And yet his movies are basically the same as as the successful superhero movies released every year. Big on flash, low on substance.

Yes, but for different reasons.

[Maltheus]

For me, it's all of the inflated reviews that are killing the movies for me. There was a time when you could trust the RT reviews (within reason). But some of the worst movies I've seen, in recent years, were all in the high 90s on RT. All the hype, marketing and junkets had led me to wait a year or so before finally watching a movie. By then, things have settled down, and you can get a true idea for how you'll like a movie, from user comments (and rarely ever, professional reviews).

Dick pic

[Macdude]

Baywatch lost me as a potential viewer when the ad for it includes a scene of The Rock taking a dick-pic of a corpse...

Make better movies Hollywood.

STFU & MAKE BETTER MOVIES

[Anonymous Coward]

Whining about how difficult it is to sell crappy movies garners zero sympathy.

All these no talent movie producers, churning out grist from the same ol' cliche mill are cry babies who should take up other careers, like digging ditches, because that's what they're doing metaphorically anyway.

Zombies, superheroes and time travel are the topics of people who neither care nor have the ability to create anything original or even entertaining.

Fvck them all. Hope all their movies bomb, their companies fail and some people with actual talent can take their place.

pigphvckrz

Rotten Tomatoes? Rotten Idea.

[Anonymous Coward]

Other people's opinions are of no concern to me when it comes to movie selections thankyouverymuch.

No

[Anonymous Coward]

More rightly they should be blaming astroturfing on movie sites, which someone (likely the movie studios) is paying for. Young children with smartphones leaving comments for things they can't understand is probably also an issue. I always look for reviews in the middle, they seem to be the only semblance of honesty on any of the big film/media sites. Still, to an extent we created this mess ourselves by not being responsible with technology, I guess we have to sleep in the bed we've made or get off our asses and pay more attention.

Silly Plots

[DougReed]

I get tired of movies (and TV shows) with silly improbable plots. All of the technobabble that doesn't even make sense to non-technical people. Plots that NOBODY would do. The good guy with an AK-47 disabling a computer system by inserting a USB stick in some hole in a completely improbable place instead of just putting a round or two in the main CPU. The hero runs all over the place trying to fix something they should just ignore, or the bad guy is coming and they get OUT of their car and hide! The good guys ALWAYS kill 10 bad guys who can't hit the side of a barn with a rocket launcher and then run and hide behind something without picking up the AK-47 the bad guy was carrying and looking at the sidekick saying "I only have one bullet left!"

I used to go to the movies far more than I do now because most of the movies are just SO BAD! The comedies are usually 9th grade humor... An entire comedy with 2 actually good jokes and the rest just make you roll your eyes. Even the good shows! Tom Cruise cast as Jack Reacher, who is supposed to be a bear of a man. Jason Bourne wasn't even a hit man in the books! And these are the good ones!

On TV, when they come up with something interesting, they drive it into the ground. A Chicago police drama is popular, so we get Chicago fire fighters, and emergency people and where will it end? Chicago Janitors! Coming this fall!!! They clean places you would never go!

Must be Rotten Tomato's fault indeed.

Re:Silly Plots

[SuiteSisterMary]

It's not like silly plots, action hero good guys, incompetent bad guys, and so on, are excusive to TV shows or movies. Ever read the Iliad and The Odyssey? The Epic of Gilgamesh?

RT critics scores are not perfect or unbiased

[bettodavis]

I have discovered that the RT critics and I have different tastes in movies. Either because of political leaning, education and personal background, the kind of things they enjoy and the kind of things I enjoy at the movie theater are not a perfect intersection.

Also, they tend to treat movies differently, according to the perceived level of popularity of the movie previous to release.

For big franchises with a lot of zealous fans, they avoid the more biting critiques, knowing they could be stung by the public backlash.

But they love the hate bandwagons, for movies with a previous story of public rejection or controversy.

And don't get me started with the political pandering stuff, which makes them shower some movies in flattery and bitterly criticize others not aligned with their personal political leaning.

Nowadays I prefer sites with viewer's scores besides of the critics'. If the critics' and the viewers' scores align, then I'm in.

Re:RT critics scores are not perfect or unbiased

[OrangeTide]

There is a lot of mob politics in anonymous rating systems. Consumers are often unqualified to evaluate the artistic merits of a piece, or to provide unbiased feedback or reviews. Judging something subjective, such as film, is pretty difficult to do fairly and in a way that provides value.

Review systems that ask individuals to rate something based on how they personally liked it, then averaging thousands of those together gives you one easy metric that has almost zero value.

If we were to rate fruit, I might rate a watermelon as 1 stars, while another would give it a 5 stars. Does that means watermelons are 3.0 on average? That doesn't seem right to me. There is certainly some interesting things you can do with the statistics to work out if something is very polarizing (are the reviews consistent or is there a big spread). And I think I'd rather have the mode and median rather than mean when it comes to reviews. It's be nice to know that half the people gave something >4 or that most people gave it a 1.

In the end much of what we appreciate in films is subjective and a more nuanced review that isn't boiled down into a single metric. Instead we should seek out well written reviewers that evaluates a film and compares it to others of the same genre. This may provide potential viewers with a better idea if the film is of interest to them. If we eliminate the business model of presenting to a more niche interest, then the only business will be to make films that blandly appeal to everyone and score highest on average with a simple one dimensional rating. I think I would stop going to theaters if every film was the same, wouldn't you?

Re:RT critics scores are not perfect or unbiased

[Anonymous Coward]

Some people prefer a boring rehash of the heroes journey over some artistic piece of shit.
Average ratings work because if a movie averages 3.4 stars out of 5 over a thousand people chances are it's good enough that you will enjoy it.
It's not supposed to give you a nuanced critique of the movie, and those aren't really interesting to anyone other than film makers who want to understand why a movie bombed.

They have a point

[hawguy]

They have a point, the Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer critic score is "31%" for Pirates of the Carribean with an average critic score of 4.7/10, while the audience score (percentage of users that rated it 3.5 or higher) is 71% with an average rating of 3.8/5 (equivalent to 7.6/10)

Since most people aren't critics, it seems that they'd be better served by the Audience Score rather than the more critical Tomatometer which is the score that's more heavily promoted on the site.

RT breaks the studios' old formulas

[twasserman]

For many years, studios would pour fortunes into promoting movies via newspaper and TV ads. Today, young people, who are the primary moviegoers, are less likely to read newspapers or watch TV shows at their scheduled times, if at all. So now, studio marketing increasingly focuses on the Web, with trailers, coupons, interviews, and more. I can find movies that interest me, and check the RT score for movies when they come out. The studios, of course, want you to buy tix in advance so that you won't be influenced by bad reviews. The studios know that poor reviews are likely to discourage potential buyers from going, and weigh more heavily than positive reviews.

I use the RT score as a useful indicator, not always the final word. If a collective score is 40 or below, I probably won't waste my time on that movie. If it's 70 or above, then I know that the overall opinion is favorable and my interest will be confirmed. (That warned me away from last year's Passengers, and sent me to see this year's Colossal.) In the 40-70 gray zone, I'll probably save my money and wait a few months until I can stream it or rent the DVD from Redbox. But this isn't the behavior that the studios want, so RT and Metacritic make useful scapegoats. We all have many options for entertainment and spare time activities, so we're not going to waste our time and money on bad flicks.

Incidentally, while the studios are moaning about the negative impact of collective wisdom on the Web, they should also be joyous about the greatly expanded worldwide market for their marketing messages. In the past, American movies were released overseas long after their runs here, fewer of them were subtitled/dubbed for international markets, and international grosses were small. Today, international releases are synchronized with the domestic one. Sequels like Furious 8 and Pirates 5 earn much more money internationally than domestically, since they feature international stars who are basically review-proof. Studios release movies straight to DVD or to streaming; there's no reason they couldn't release movies straight to international markets without a domestic release. Pirates 6 anyone?

Movie tax

[OrangeTide]

We should all pay a special movie tax to the government, even if we don't see any films. Then redistribute that money to Hollywood, even if they make bad films. Because we as a society should bend over backwards to support failing business models that cannot adapt to change.

Cons: we pay an unnecessary tax.
Pros: we don't have to actually waste our time watching the bad films.

Re:Movie tax

[Anonymous Coward]

Methinks the entertainment industry (IE) already has this in some places: a tax on any recordable media such as tape, CD, etc (and maybe equipment "licensing" fees for the products) that goes directly into their coffers. Also, why are not these privileged artisans paying taxes on their - um - "intellectual" property, an oxymoron judging from the offerings of late. I have to pay rental fees in the guise of property taxes to the government to say I own something, so why shouldn't the IE have to do the same to be allowed the ability to file nuisance lawsuits about dancin' babies?

Don't forget that the IE decries all technology affecting their business model such as DAT recorders, VHS recorders, and even PCs and tries to get it banned by legislation, court order, or "prevention" baked into consumer products such as region limits or feature disabling. Look up an old version of Security Now to see what Microsoft did to appease the IE with Windows Vista and likely one reason why it is hated so much. The model they seem to be fixated on is something like paying a fee to the company who made the stop sign every time you see one.

That said, until movies and music comes along to satisfy *MY* taste, I can wait as i discover and enjoy older movies such as "Bringing Up Baby" or "Citizen Kane". I don't have to watch anything I don't want to see or listen to something unappealing. Want my money? Give me a decent product, not the constant drone of whine, excuse, blame, and innuendo.

RT ratings aren't always fair to comedies

[guacamole]

To be fair, RT often slaps poor ratings on comedies that the fans of the genre still find to be entertaining and worth of watching.

Waaaaa Alert!

[sudden.zero]

Waaaa, we can't come up with anything new so we keep regurgitating the same crap over and over again, or spit out remake after remake! What do you expect to happen Hollywood? Eventually consumers are going to get tired of watching Pirates of the Caribbean XVI, or the latest remake of some classic movie! Oh, and don't get me started on Transformers XXXI or whatever number this next stupid Michael Bay flop is. Of the last three movies I watched, two were from Marvel Studio, and the third was a Quentin Tarantino movie (Hateful Eight which I saw in 70mm the way it was intended!) The sad part is eventually The Last Movie Frontier (Comics) will run out, and then Hollywood will run dry. You can't pick Stan Lee's brain forever...I mean eventually the poor bloke is going to die! Long story short my advice to you Hollywood is: Hire some new fucking writers who's ideas don't involve remaking cult classics or making another squeal, and if you can't do that then PISS OFF! We can find other ways to entertain ourselves...books perhaps...love the smell of a good, leather-bound, book!

Money Back Option

[Anonymous Coward]

If they want to do away with reviews...then they damn well better offer money back when I walk out feeling i've wasted 2 hours of my life.

DMCA 2.0 will ban bad reviews!

[Joe_Dragon]

DMCA 2.0 will ban bad reviews!

wait a minute...

[roc97007]

So, there isn't the slightest possibility that (a) the movie really was crap, (b) the cost of making it was overblown, (c) prices to see it in-theater are outrageously high, and (d) more and more often, one's home system, which isn't being managed by bored, narcissistic teens, provides a better experience?

Or are they saying that they know that all the above is true, and their business model depends on people not knowing going in that they're about to have an expensive, lousy experience? Because that's what TFA seems to be saying.

(From TFA:)

> Brett Ratner, who directed such classics as Rush Hour and X-Men: The Last Stand, has called Rotten Tomatoes “the worst thing that we have in today’s movie culture.”

I remember The Last Stand. Clearly the worst of the X-men franchise, and one I really wish I hadn't wasted money in a theater to see. I would submit that this is a bit disingenuous.

> Over the weekend, some studio insiders talked about withholding critic screenings until the premiere or scrapping them entirely to prevent damage to future releases

In the past, refusing to screen for critics has been a sure sign that a production is in trouble, and that the studio hopes to make a few bucks off the turkey in the first weekend, before people realize how wretched it is. Good advice has been to steer away from films where the producers have made this decision. I guess they're saying that the new business model is to produce only turkeys and to depend on first weekend take from deluded moviegoers. $$PROFIT$$

Besides, there had already been a Baywatch movie. It was The SpongeBob SquarePants movie, released in 2004.

Creativity Void

[QuadEddie]

Oh shit, what are studios going to do when their 4x baked reboot of recycled bullshit doesn't sell? Answer: go to international markets because they haven't quite got the same reheated mess served to them. They'll continually branch out to find people who are brain-dead enough to watch the same formulaic tripe. Why are people being selective? I can't answer for everywhere, but at least in California, the ticket prices are $15 even around matinee times (and of course concessions are still 4.25x normal pricing). What family is going to spend $60+ here on Baywatch?

Rotten Tomatoes Is Losing Its Touch on Reality

[Notabadguy]

I've been an avid user of RottenTomatoes since its inception - and I'd like to think that I've saved a lot of money over the years as my wife and I are both avid movie-goers - we use it to dodge some real turds.

But over the last couple of years, I'm increasingly starting to feel like RottenTomatoes is losing its relevance. It used to be that audience reviews were within a few percentage points of critic reviews. Now...its like critics go out of their way to dislike anything that isn't an indie-film documentary, and don't write reviews that align with anything the movie-going public might think.

Baywatch is a prime example. 17% critic review, 70% audience review. What kind of bullshit is that? What value is a critic, or an aggregate site like RottenTomatoes if the work they are doing doesn't reflect what a movie-goer might think of the film?

Re:Rotten Tomatoes Is Losing Its Touch on Reality

[JMZero]

This makes sense as a function of RT getting information from more users and more critics.

When the site was smaller, user reviews came from people who were super into movies, and thus thought more like movie critics. Now it's a broader group of people who are more casual consumers, who think less like movie critics. On the other side, I think they're also casting a broader net on critics. This means a lower percentage of "big market populist" reviews that are trying to meet the needs of broad audiences, and more small market, niche audience "movie buff" reviewers.

Yeah - it's not a surprise that their tastes have diverged, but I don't know how you solve for that without changing their whole concept. Which maybe isn't a bad idea - limiting data to fresh/rotten for each review is going to produce very swingy results. I prefer something like metacritic; even if they can't perfectly translate every review score, I think it still ends up being a more useful score.

Re:Rotten Tomatoes Is Losing Its Touch on Reality

[Anonymous Coward]

How much of that audience rating is from movie-goers who like silly comedies and stuff from the '90s but thought Baywatch looked really bad and saw nothing in the reviews to justify giving it a chance? None of it. You're only getting the opinion of the part of the "movie-going public" that thought it was worth spending money on that movie, which isn't necessarily a representative sample. At least critics have to watch movies that are clearly going to be terrible.

Re:Rotten Tomatoes Is Losing Its Touch on Reality

[Anonymous Coward]

Baywatch? Critic: "This is crap." Audience; "TITS!"

Re:Rotten Tomatoes Is Losing Its Touch on Reality

[Anonymous Coward]

critics want all movies to be good.

you want to waste 60 minutes.

the skew, is in what you're willing to accept.

that divide you think is indicative of a failure of the critics?

is commentary on the quality of movies coming out.

you'll watch a turd. a critic, won't.

Re:Rotten Tomatoes Is Losing Its Touch on Reality

[TJ_Phazerhacki]

Its like critics go out of their way to dislike anything that isn't an indie-film documentary - RT currently has Captain Underpants and Guardians 2 at 80%+. If either of those is a documentary, I would rather live in their world than ours.

Should be grateful..

[boulat]

The movie studios should be grateful that RT isnt killing movies people should not see, like Alien: Covenant.

For some yet unknown to me reason that dumpster fire received 71% freshness as of this writing

The other side to that is

[rsilvergun]

a movie has to be perfect or it gets buried. Lots of folks will turn off their brain when they watch a movie. I used to do it when I was a kid. When the crummy parts came up I ignored them and only paid attention to the good stuff. There's tons of movies I grew up with that I loved as a kid for just that reason. Sometimes it wasn't just crummy parts. As an 8 year old boy I didn't care about romantic sub-plots :).

There's bound to be some stuff in a movie that isn't for everyone (which is a nicer way of saying "It's not for you"). That doesn't mean you can't enjoy a good chunk of the movie. And for a lot of folks going to the movies is a night out. It's not just for the movie. Now, as I've gotten older I've gotten a lot more critical and if something disinterests me I drop it in a heartbeat, but I'm a nerd and a bit off so I'm the last person you should look to when marketing a film :P

Don't forget China

[rsilvergun]

there's gonna be tons of changes to any modern blockbuster to mesh with the Chinese market. Some of the people all of the time or all of the people some of the time...

Torrents... No it's Rotten Tomatoes now.

[Anonymous Coward]

Last few yrs it's been torrents that were the cause now that people aren't downloading as much, they need a new excuse.... Rotten Tomatoes

How about you stop making sh* movies. Or the same sh* over and over just with a different smell... sh* is sh* no matter what it smells like.

Critics should consider the intended audience

[Anonymous Coward]

Movie reviews should be more like car reviews. In car magazines, sports cars are evaluated differently than pickup trucks. It makes no sense to evaluate the typical Meryl Streep movie in the same way you'd evaluate The Lego Batman Movie. The same idea should apply to Oscars, Golden Globes, etc.

Critics rating vs. Viewers

[berchca]

It only makes sense that viewer ratings would be much higher than the critics, because those who go see the movie will already have a pretty fair idea if or if not it's their kind of movie--especially since those of us who were on the fence can always read the RT review to avoid seeing a movie we'll hate.

I would argue that this high split between critical and viewer ratings helps to prove that RT is doing what it is meant to.

Now if we could just get that for books...

Two issues, critics and Rotten Tomatoes

[gurps_npc]

They are not the same thing.

Movie Critics as a whole tend to ignore/poorly rate certain types of movies (comedies, action) while excessively praising certain other types. (Documentaries, drama). This is a separate issue than Rotten Tomatoes. I would agree that the movie critics need to fix how they grade movies. Among other things, they should be forced to bell curve, WITHIN categories. That is they should rate action movies only in comparison to other action movies, and give the best one of the year a 5 star rating, even if they did not like it as much as the documentary about how horrible murder is.

Rotten Tomatoes is another, separate issue. It is a great informational site, and they are complaining about it being GOOD at it's job, rather than bad it's job. They are in no way to blame for the scores the critics give and should not be blamed if movies do poorly because no one wants to see a piece of crap.

Oh no! People are posting their opinions! Online!!

[Anonymous Coward]

You'll buy tickets to what we tell you, and you'll like it! Or we'll sue you... or something...

Not exactly a new trend

[Thad Boyd]

I do think there's a problem with our tendency to dumb down complex, subjective reviews into simplified, equally subjective scores.

But what the hell do they think "thumbs up"/"thumbs down" was when Siskel and Ebert were doing it?

Simplifying a critic's review down to a simple "I liked it"/"I didn't like it" isn't new. The only thing that's new is that now we're aggregating those reactions from dozens of critics instead of just two.

(And yeah I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say that if you could somehow magic Rotten Tomatoes out of existence, the result would not be Pirates of the Carribean 5 and Baywatch: The Movie instantly becoming massive successes.)

Meh

[The Grim Reefer]

I usually look at the reviews, but they don't tend to make up my mind about a movie I want to see. I suppose I give them a little more credence when it's in regards to a movie my daughter wants me to take her to that I think looks like it's going to be bad though.

Critics and audiences have been wrong many times. I don't recall Blade Runner being a huge hit in the theaters, nor with the many critics in the US when it was released. The Shining (1980) didn't do well when it was first released, and critics were pretty hard on it too. I don't know about the critics, but The Wizard of Oz and It's a Wonderful Life bombed at the theater. Fight Club was another movie that I enjoyed, but bombed at the theater and I don't recall the critics being too kind. Office Space, Heathers, Citizen Kane, Brazil, and Dredd bombed. All movies which I really enjoyed. My daughter and I liked The Iron Giant and Mars Needs Moms, both of which bombed too.

One dimension

[Anonymous Coward]

There are many dimensions of a movie review, which do you capture in a single rating?

Was it enjoyable?
Was it quality film making?
Was it emotional?
Was it kid engaging?
Was it well acted?
Was it well directed?
Was it well filmed?

It works for me

[VAXcat]

My taste in movies correlates highly with the Rotten Tomato score - if a movie rates below 80%, I know I don't want to waste my time and money on it.

I don't need or use rotten tomatoes

[JohnFen]

I have a rule of thumb that has yet to fail me -- if the movie has a major marketing effort behind it, the movie is more likely than not to be bad and I'm very likely to give it a pass.

More like all the Trailers gave away the movie

[WillAffleckUW]

Seriously, stop giving out all the fun parts in the trailers for the movie.

Embargo

[xbytor]

It seems that the studios want a review embargo as existed in computer gaming (i.e. the most recent Assassins Creed release).

I don't care what a 16 year old girl thought

[FeelGood314]

I want to see reviews by people who like the same types of movies as me. The critics on RT are not representative of that. Equally, should I review a movie that my girl friend took me to when obviously I'm not in the demographic group that the movie is aimed at? IMDB breaks votes down by age and sex but I would like something more along the lines of scientific literacy or maybe group me with other people who have liked the same movies as me the way Netflix does it.

It's not the produce

[Jawnn]

...it's the product. You turn out unimaginative shit, and expect people to pay ever increasing amounts of money to sit in a theater where the management doesn't give a shit about "the experience" (Alamo Drafthouse and McMenamin's, you're off the hook for that part), and then you wonder why people stop paying? You might want to spend little more money on effective market research. And no, home theater isn't the cause either.

People who read bad reviews, and went anyway, ...

[Babel-17]

People who read bad reviews, and went anyway, liked the movie at a higher % than that of the reviewers. This is surprising because ...? I watch Bruce Willis and Milla Jovovich action films. I generally like them, as do the rest of the people in the audience. Is this shocking, even though some of their films were generally panned?

Baywatch

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder how they managed
to turn Baywatch into an R rated movie, plus it was the fanbase attraction to David Haselhoff that carried that one through the 90s.

I guess naming a mostly unrelated movie same as a popular 90s show was just a cheap way to try to bring in the bucks through nostolgia.

Two things

[Anonymous Coward]

First of all, critics have been panning great movies for decades. Never listen to critics.
Second of all, stop making shit movies, and people will see them.
If your movie is good people will watch it regardless of critics.

Quality Entertainment Value

[RhettLivingston]

I've long realized that the critics at RottenTomatoes are radically out of step with the average consumer. Like many, I watch a movie to escape. And, as the difference in the critic's scores and the audience's scores show clearly in the case of Baywatch for example (20% vs 70%), the elitist critics seem to have something different in mind from your average viewer.

I have long found the audience score to be a vastly more reliable guide to whether a movie is entertaining than the critic's score. And before the new systems existed, I found critic's scores to be more reliable as an inverse of entertainment value.

The difference today is that these scores are being used to determine what movies are advertised to you and are being placed everywhere you see the movies presented on line. They are really in-your-face instead of something you go to look for. That does bring them into the realm of possibly causing a self-realizing effect. I totally hate the idea of defending anything Hollywood, but I believe there is at least a smidgin of truth to their complaints here. And it is not unlike another argument we've had concerning the effect of exit polls on elections.

Wow just wow

[easyTree]

You couldn't buy better publicity - the movie industry itself not only rates the influence of Rotten Tomatoes highly but credits it with helping customers avoid poorly made films which they wouldn't have enjoyed. Wow.

That Futurama episode "Baywatch" movie...

[keith_nt4]

If anybody remembers, there was a Futurama episode ("A Fishful of Dollars") that mentioned Baywatch: Pamela Anderson is surprised to hear Fry hadn't heard of Baywatch: The Movie, her follow up comment included "the first movie shot entirely in slow motion" and "so he doesn't know I won the Oscar?".

I think I'd like to see that version of a Baywatch movie: entirely in slow motion and award winning. Couldn't be any worse than what we got.

How unrealistic. This would be like...

[Anonymous Coward]

The president blaming all the scientists for global warming. I mean the aggregate can't be right, can it.

"General audiences"

[Anonymous Coward]

"Pirates 5 and Baywatch aren't built for critics but rather general audiences"

Is this some round about way of saying that they've made films for idiots instead of people who think critically? I find the crap coming out of Hollywood these days quite disturbing, most of the time they are garbage films wrapped in special effects/starpower. I swear that a fifth grade English class could write a more compelling story than the scripts for most of them.

critic reviews?

[Anonymous Coward]

I always ignore critic reviews. Audience reviews are always more reliable and honest.

Critics look at factors that regular movie-goer don't care about. Audiences look only at factors audiences care about.

As a member of the audience, why would I bother with the opinions of critics?

Moonlight

[lucaiaco]

Why does nobody mention Moonlight? The most boring movies nominated for the Oscar (probably ever), unanimously indicated as one of the best movies in the history, with a 100% rotten tomatoes score.

Spambot reviews are always the best!

[Shompol]

I never look at critic's scores, just whether the studio-hired review spambots liked it.

"Audience" reviews can be generated by a bot. Having a fixed set of critics is the only salvation.

I must be a windbag too

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't look at the audience score, I look at the critics' average.
And then one or two particular critics that I already known align with my tastes.
I can't afford to go see ALL the movies, and if I miss out now and then because of my method, too bad.
Can't win 'em all.
But RT has saved me loads of money and improved (and actually INCREASED) my cinema attendance.
Now, if the cinemas reduced their exhorbitant entry and snack prices, I might go see more movies.
But at 20 bucks a pop, not counting snacks, makes for an expensive night out, especially if I'm on a date.
RT rocks.
Hollywood ... no comment.

Delusions of grandeur.

[BadTuna]

It couldn’t be your shitty movie, driven by your Oscar worthy ego could it?

Money Back

[PeterMcAtomineyStrø]

Some years ago I was at film school, and we had a visit from 2 producers from Warner Bros. They proudly told how they could be certain of grossing $80million on a film, no matter how bad it was. The longer the trailer, the worse the film actually is. We, as budding film makers were absolutely disgusted and there was an impromptu walkout. As they so arrogantly reminded us "no one ever asks for their money back at the cinema". We should.

The blame

[McFortner]

Whatever you do, don't blame the low numbers on the fact that Hollywood is getting lazy and putting out more half-arsed, poorly written movies and TV shows with actors who are just phoning in their performances. Nope, must be PIRATES!

Let's talk about how Rotten Tomatoes is GREAT

[gosand]

So for a little context, I rarely go to the theater to see a movie. I have been two or three times in the last 3 years. I just really don't care for it, I don't need to go into why. If there is something that I really want to see, and the stars all align, I will go. I don't even remember what movies I saw in the theaters, except the most recent one (Logan).

So we use Netflix DVD, and that is where we watch "recent" movies. I could give two shits about "bragging rights" of seeing something when it first comes out. So we're 8-12 months behind on seeing movies, and we aren't missing anything. Except the utter disappointment of going to see a movie hoping it is great and it sucks.

I use RT to find movies to add to my DVD queue. There are some I will add regardless of reviews, but for the most part RT is pretty good. OK, so Batman vs Superman WAS as bad as the reviews, but we still got it.. and didn't even finish it. I've watched movies that I never thought I would because of the reviews on RT. Like Deadpool. I wasn't interested in it at all, but was surprised by the good reviews and we enjoyed it. There are LOTS of other movies that you've probably never heard of that get good reviews on RT. Many hidden gems in there. I like to go look at their top rated for the year, or of all time, go through the list, read the plots and reviews, and add them to my queue.

The movie studios are so outdated. After they run a movie in theaters and pump up their favorite blockbusters... it's off to DVD in case anyone ever wants to buy or rent it. Apart from a "now on DVD" blurb they don't promote GOOD movies that come out on DVD. I am willing to bet that they will actually come around and you'll see them embrace RT and sites like it, and use it to promote DVD sales. Of course, that will be in 10 years when the industry has moved on. As long as they hold the rights to their movies, they'll still make money. Just in ways that they can't foresee because their thinking is so ancient. Just like the music industry, who should have embraced MP3s in the late 90s/early 00s. But instead they fought and fought and fought against it. Just like the movie industry and VCRs. They fight against the love that people have for their products, and instead of seeing how to nurture that they seek control that they simply can't have.

First they came for IMDB...

[ShamblerBishop]

...and convinced Amazon to kill the IMDB message Boards (one of the most valuable sources of genuine information about movies on the entire Internet) - now they are going after all the other review sites, which threaten to inform potential customers, of the quality of their reheated shite du jour...

Those ratings are scary.

[RockDoctor]

blame Rotten Tomatoes, with Pirates 5 and Baywatch respectively earning 32% and 19% Rotten.

If Tit, Bum and Wet Swimsuit Watch (Transferred From Telly) is scoring considerably "fresher" than Pirates 5 (The Oceans 11 Pre-Pre-Pre-Pre-Prequel), then Pirates 5 must be an absolute stinker. No wonder they didn't pay the ransomware last week. Probably hoped it would snk without trace.

Then again, having seen interminable trailers and adverts for other Pirates films, maybe I shouldn't be surprised. Because Tit, Bum and Wet Swimsuit Watch does (probably) have tits and bums and really wet swimsuits. Even if the tits are floppy and over-injected with silicone.

Actually, I take it back slightly. The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists! was actually worth the entry fee. Maybe they should have carried on in that vein.