Real Moviegoers Don't Care About Rotten Tomatoes

In a recent essay published on the Hollywood Reporter, Martin Scorsese inveighs against two conjoined trends -- the widespread reporting of box-office results and the grading of movies by consumers on CinemaScore and by critics on Rotten Tomatoes -- and blames it for "a tone that is hostile to serious filmmakers." In particular, he contends that this hostile environment is worsening "as film criticism written by passionately engaged people with actual knowledge of film history has gradually faded from the scene." Richard Brody, a movie critic at the New Yorker, thinks Scorsese is missing the mark. He writes: I think that film criticism is, over all, better than ever, because, with its new Internet-centrism, it's more democratic than ever and many of the critics who write largely online are more film-curious than ever. Anyone who is active on so-called Film Twitter -- who sees links by critics, mainly younger critics, to his or her work -- can't help but be impressed by the knowledge, the curiosity, and the sensibility of many of them. Their tastes tend to be broader and more daring than those of many senior critics on more established publications. And, even if readers of the wider press aren't reading these more obscure critics, the critics whom general readers read are often reading those young critics (and if they're not, it shows). This is, of course, not universally so, any more than it ever was. The Internet is democratic in all directions -- it's also available to writers of lesser knowledge, duller taste, and dubious agendas, and it may be their work that's advertised most loudly -- but the younger generation of critics is present online and there for the finding. [...] What Scorsese doesn't exactly say, but what, I think, marks a generation gap in movie thinking that his essay reflects, is the appearance of an increasing divide between artistically ambitious films and Hollywood films -- the gap between the top box-office films and the award winners. For filmmakers ready to work on lower budgets, the gap is irrelevant. The filmmakers whose conceptions tend toward the spectacular are the ones whose styles may, literally, be cramped by shrinking budgets -- filmmakers such as Scorsese and Wes Anderson, whose work has both an original and elaborate sense of style and a grand historical reach.

Comments

Get over it

[ranton]

Moviegoers have plenty of things to do with their time and many of them don't want to waste their time on crappy movies. For me nearly every movie with a very bad rotten tomato score (below 30%) is not worth going to the theater. I may rent it later but it isn't going to get $30-$40 from me. On top of that, there are plenty of movies which could be interesting but I'll wait for the reviews before going to the theater. Right now movies like Jumanji, Blade Runner, and Ready Player One are in that category for me. If they can get 70%+ scores I'll take another look, but otherwise I'll wait for the rental.

Bad rotten tomato scores are kind of like a resume with a lot of misspelled words when you have 1000 resumes to go through. It's a good initial filter criteria.

I read Rotten Tomatoes

[gurps_npc]

I do refuse to go to movies with low scores, and more importantly, I use it to discover movies with a high score that I was unaware of.

It's how I find Indie films to watch.

Maybe I'm part of the elite.

Or maybe the shmucks that dislike rotten tomatoes have no idea what they are talking about.

Scorsese is wrong

[Brett Buck]

Scorsese is generally wrong. People go to movies to see something entertaining, not (for the most part) study how well it was constructed. Nearly no one cares about the 'art of film" or whatever other pompous nonsense they talk to each other about. Critics who base their reviews and evaluation on what grade someone might get at film school are completely missing the boat. That's why no one pays any attention to them.

      Scorsese has made plenty of movies people wanted to see, but you have to wonder if that was accidental, given his thought process. Or maybe he has lost sight of the end goal, 2 hours of entertainment (as opposed to an exercise of technical prowess).

      If he wants to make movies for other film school grad or NY critics, then fine, but don't whine about the fact that most people don't care about it. From a artistic standpoint, "Star Wars" is a piece of crap, with terrible acting, cliche' plot that would have fit about as well in a B Western, and an entirely predictable ending. Oh, and it was not too far from a scene-by-scene remake of "The Hidden Fortress", so also not original. But people liked it because it has cool (astonishing for the time) effects and a lot of spaceships blowing each other up. People go to watch "Weekend at Bernie's" because its stupid but funny. No one cares it he shot a scene day-for-night or uses the same framing techniques as Kurosawa in Yojimbo.

        If someone want to go to study the artistic value of a movie, fine, no on is stopping them. And no one (except the people who want to make money by providing entertainment for entertainments sake) is preventing anyone from making those movies. But it is foolish to expect that such self-indulgence made for other film buffs is going to get a high rating or make money from the general public. Rotten Tomatoes is telling you what people actually want to see, crappy or not from perspective of the overblown craft of moviemaking.

Re:Releasing Shitty Movies

[bobbied]

This.

(((Hollywood))) hasn't had an original idea in decades.

Well.... I think that's a bit unfair. They just haven't been very good at taking original ideas they find and making them into movies folks want to see. The problem, and what's not original are the old tired formulas that Hollywood uses to take an idea and turn it into entertainment.

They are victims of their past successes, drinking their own Kool-Aid, and not taking chances. Basically, the MBA's have taken over to maximize profit.