Slashdot Mirror
DC Fans Angry Over Rotten Tomatoes 'Justice League' Ratings (wired.com)
Rotten Tomatoes launched a new movie-review series called See It/Skip It last week -- but it just made some people hate the site even more. An anonymous reader quotes Wired:
Rotten Tomatoes, the review-aggregator-slash-Hollywood-agitator, had irked DC fans by withholding its Justice League score until Thursday night's See It/Skip It premiere -- even though a wave of reviews for the film had already been posted online. The move was ostensibly a ploy to get viewers to tune in for the show, yet others saw a greater villainy at work: Was Rotten Tomatoes, which is owned in part by Warner Bros., actually trying to shield the studio from an inevitably bad grade that could help kill its opening weekend?
The See It/Skip It pushback -- which involved a lot of Tweet-screaming -- was a reminder of just how controversial Justice League had become... With Justice League having earned a less-than-expected $96 million in its opening weekend, the lowest ever for a DCEU title, the movie will likely be seen as a Flash-point moment for DC movies as a whole. Considering how some DC obsessives have reacted to the films' bad reviews -- there have been death threats in the past -- the conspiracy theory is actually a somewhat measured response... But there's another reason for all the pre-release pressure on Justice League: With the exception of this summer's Wonder Woman, the previous DC entries have all earned disappointingly low scores on Rotten Tomatoes... For some fans, the low scores felt like a referendum not only on [director Zack] Snyder's work, but the DC Extended Universe franchise as a whole -- so much so, a few defenders even began to speculate as to whether Rotten Tomatoes was manipulating the DCEU data (or, at the very least, grading the reviews on a much steeper curve than the Marvel films). Such theories filled message boards and Quora discussions, and there was even a Change.org petition to shut the site down that collected more than 23,000 signatures... Dangling the [Justice League] verdict in front of fans, and putting off the inevitable, felt like a misuse of power.
"They just want to focus on the negative," one DC fan told the Chicago Tribune. Meanwhile, the film's director has endorsed a Change.org petition calling for the release of his original edit of the film.
Justice League cost nearly a third of a billion dollars to produce. On Thanksgiving Day, it earned less money than Disney-Pixar's film Coco.
The See It/Skip It pushback -- which involved a lot of Tweet-screaming -- was a reminder of just how controversial Justice League had become... With Justice League having earned a less-than-expected $96 million in its opening weekend, the lowest ever for a DCEU title, the movie will likely be seen as a Flash-point moment for DC movies as a whole. Considering how some DC obsessives have reacted to the films' bad reviews -- there have been death threats in the past -- the conspiracy theory is actually a somewhat measured response... But there's another reason for all the pre-release pressure on Justice League: With the exception of this summer's Wonder Woman, the previous DC entries have all earned disappointingly low scores on Rotten Tomatoes... For some fans, the low scores felt like a referendum not only on [director Zack] Snyder's work, but the DC Extended Universe franchise as a whole -- so much so, a few defenders even began to speculate as to whether Rotten Tomatoes was manipulating the DCEU data (or, at the very least, grading the reviews on a much steeper curve than the Marvel films). Such theories filled message boards and Quora discussions, and there was even a Change.org petition to shut the site down that collected more than 23,000 signatures... Dangling the [Justice League] verdict in front of fans, and putting off the inevitable, felt like a misuse of power.
"They just want to focus on the negative," one DC fan told the Chicago Tribune. Meanwhile, the film's director has endorsed a Change.org petition calling for the release of his original edit of the film.
Justice League cost nearly a third of a billion dollars to produce. On Thanksgiving Day, it earned less money than Disney-Pixar's film Coco.
It has only become an issue for Hollywood in more recent years. The problem is not Rotten Tomatoes, but the quality of films Hollywood is producing.
There is very little worth seeing. Half the films seem to be superhero films, which many people have no interest in. The other half are remakes, reboots or generally trash.
First of all, I just have to say: First world problems on this one...
Second of all, people have to realize that critic reviews have, almost since the time of Shakespeare, been overly critical of media that is primarily audience targeted and for lack of a better term fun to experience. Critics want edgy, ground breaking artistic media because for the most part they watch way too many movies and are burnt out and cynical. The rest of us who watch maybe 25 movies a year are for the most part just looking for a good time. The best barometer I have found to figure out if I will enjoy a movie or not is the Amazon reviews score and reading the top positive and top negative. There is always the risk of a spoiler, but it is a far better barometer because normal people are giving their impressions. As traditional media and newspapers die, so too should the movie critic industry. It is an antiquated system that is neither useful nor necessary in the modern era.
If you disagree, please post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like
Maybe the fact that DC movies in general are getting unexpectedly low ratings and box office results. Which is all fine in my book, I hope that at some point the studios will return to regular old fashioned blockbuster movies to pass the summer (or winter), instead of the current overload of superhero garbage.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Desler opined:
I’ve seen both BvS and JL movies and thy were shit so the low ratings were entirely expected. As to the second half, BvS made nearly $900 million. How much more were you expecting it to make?
Yep. And so was the 300 sequel. And every other Zach Snyder movie since 300.
The reason that 300 was such an artistic and box-office success, and every Zach Snyder movie since has been neither, is easy to explain:
300 was a panel-by-panel recreation of Frank Miller's graphic novel. The script (which Miller wrote) was great because it was written by a master storyteller, and because Miller, not Snyder, had editorial control of it. The visuals in the movie exactly re-created the visuals in the graphic novel. Put the two facts together, and you have your answer.
It's the exact same reason that Sin City was such a triumph - although Zach Snyder isn't fit to carry Robert Rodriguez's viewfinder - Frank Miller had creative control of the script, and was intimately involved in crafting the visuals, as well.
By contrast, nothing Snyder has done since then has had a master storyteller's guidance - leaving only his own meager talents as a visualist and utter vacuum as a scriptwriter to power his movies.
(FWIW - Frank Miller is a horrible human being: racist, sexist, reactionary, and mean-spirited. None of that in any way diminishes his talent as a storyteller, or his fist as an artist. Those are both genius level. In other news, Pablo Picasso was an asshole - and a genius. the Universe is unfair. Get a hat.)
(PPS - 300, in both its incarnations, was riddled with cultural, costuming, and historical errors. The Spartans, for instance, were pederasts, just as were all the Hellenic Greek citystate cultures. In the Spartan instance, pederastic relationships continuing until the junior partner was married - which was never permitted until a man reached his 25th birtday - were normal. In most other Greek citystates, continuing such a relationship after the junior partner's beard began to grow was considered prima facie evidence of homosexuality, and thus condemned as abnormal and immoral - in every other citystate except Thebes, that is. Miller's errors with regard to Persian culture, costume, and customs were even more egregious, purposefully racist, and deplorable. I'd certainly be outraged, if I were Persian. Again, though, none of that keeps the graphic novel and the movie from being superb pieces of visual and expositional entertainment, well worthy of the plaudits - and money - they earned. Perspecitve, people ... )
Check out my novel.