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:

[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:

[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.

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

[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.

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!

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.

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?

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.

People who start the comment in the subject box ar

[Anonymous Coward]

e retards.

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: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: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!

Fixed that for you

[Anonymous Coward]

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

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.

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.