9 ms·
Rotten tomatoes is actually very useful if you know the magic formula: * If tomatometer & audience score are within 5% of each other, you can trust the ratings
by ernestipark 3y ago
Rotten tomatoes is actually very useful if you know the magic formula:
* If tomatometer & audience score are within 5% of each other, you can trust the ratings to give you a decent indiciation of movie quality.
* If tomatometer is more than 15%+ higher than audience score, it means it's an artsy fartsy movie that critics like and movies don't.
* If audience score is 15%+ higher than tomatometer, it's a fun movie even if it's not oscar worthy. (https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/old_school https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/old_school is a perfect example)
- keepamovin 3y agoWho founded Rotten Tomat? Are they on HN? I like your test, but I recently watched "Platonic" series and loved it. But Tomat says 93%, Plebs only concede 74% -- I declare it is not Art house. https://www.rottentomatoes.com/tv/platonic/s01 https://www.rottentomatoes.com/tv/platonic/s01
- PeterStuer 3y agoThe post 2014 version reads: "If tomatometer is more than 15%+ higher than audience score, it means the film is critically 'on message'"
- mpweiher 3y ago> artsy fartsy movie that critics like and movies don't Or woke. Critics love woke, at least officially. Audiences not so much. I suspect critics also do not actually like those movies in private.
- gadders 3y agoThat doesn't matter. They're important and have a message. Sadly not everyone in the world has the same bien pensant beliefs as the critics.
- alexandre_m 3y agoThey don't have a message. They're PR work.
- munchler 3y agoThese days IMDb user reviews are the most reliable source. It’s easy to scan a few dozen to see what most people think and discard outliers if you want. The wisdom of crowds is unmatched.
- alonsonic 3y agoI don't agree. Let's begin by making clear that art is subjective so what I'm stating depends on personal taste. I believe IMBD can help you identify the "most popular" movie. But it's up to you to decide if that's a good indicator for quality. To give you an example, look at the top 10 songs in Spotify worldwide and tell me if those songs are the "best" songs the art form can provide. After going deep on an art form, being music, painting, sculpting or film making, you start to develop a taste and an appetite for more complex expressions. What would you prefer, votes of 10 people that have watched over 1000 films or votes of 1000 people that have watched 10 films?
- HDThoreaun 3y agoIMDB rankings are not popularity contests like the billboard/spotify charts. If you want the comparable website for music checkout rateyourmusic.
- nmfisher 3y agoIMDb reviews are reliable…as long as you wait a few months after something is released. Pre-release/release reviews are clearly manipulated.
- gniv 3y agoI thought this too until I saw how even popular shows can be manipulated. The TV show "King the Land" is a Korean drama that aired on cable in Korea this summer and was released at the same time on Netflix worldwide. It was very popular in Korea [1] and many Asian countries. But if you look at IMDB [2] it has a 4.2 rating, with 116 thousand votes of 1/10. Similar Korean shows typically have ratings in the 7-9 range. The reason for the low rating is a controversy over a minor character in the show. I don't know how this mass voting was organized, but it seems to have worked in affecting the IMDB score (and similarly on RT). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_the_Land#Viewership https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_the_Land#Viewership [2] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt26693803/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt26693803/
- paulddraper 3y agoOkay, let's give that a whirl --- The Last Jedi Tomatometer 91% Audience 41%: Artsy Fartsy [Really?] --- The Greatest Showman Tomatometer 56% Audience 86%: Fun, not oscar worthy [Won Oscar for Best Original Song] --- EDIT: Truthfully, it was the release of these two films (both Dec 2017) that caused the Tomatormeter and I to part ways. Simply indefensible, IMO.
- alonsonic 3y agoTLJ: from a technical film POV this movie was actually great. Strong cinematography, interesting twists in the script and overall good acting and pacing. The issue is that it was a very bad "star wars" movie. A lot of fans felt it didn't do the traditional Star Wars characters and story justice. I agree with both critics and fans. TGS: It didn't win an oscar for best song, it was nominated. Regardless of that, best song is not usually considered a top category in the Oscar's from a film critic POV. That would be best movie, director, script, actor/actress.
- 0x457 3y agoTLJ was review bombed (movie sucked tho). Critics gave a good score out of fear imo. It's just an outlier for that rule. Oscar worthy - best picture, best actor, etc. Best original song isn't a top tier category. That year also had weak competition. The Greatest Showman was nominated in a single category, and it lost to Coco. I don't know where you got that it won. Coco got nominated in two categories, one of which was important, and won both. Coco also within 3% difference on rotten tomatoes.
- paulddraper 3y agoI'm sorry, you are correct. Nominated not won
- bmelton 3y agoFor me, it was after they invited a new batch of reviewers who ended up bumping Citizen Kane from RT's "best movie all time" down a bunch of slots to such an extent that it was outranked by Paddington 2 I still use the ratings (because they're built into Plex) but mostly as a novelty, and sometimes as a puzzlement. Increasingly, you see scores like 5% tomato, 95% audience (or vice versa!) that I'm sure mean _something_ but rarely anything to me.
- 0x457 3y agoYou also need to understand how rating works there in general. 80% fresh means that 80% of reviews are "positive" it's not 8/10 how some people like to think.
- slg 3y agoIt is surprising how many people here don't know that. A 100% movie is not the best movie of all time, it is just a movie that no one disliked. I would much rather watch a movie that has a 50% on RT and a 70 on Metacritic than a movie that has 100% on RT and a 70 on Metacritic. I might not like that 50% movie, but those ratings show some people really love it. The 100% movie's ratings show that everyone kinda likes it, but few people feel strongly about it meaning it is probably not a very interesting watch.
- darkerside 3y ago> few people feel strongly about it It doesn't imply that at all
- 3abiton 3y agoAverages? 50% with 70 (wild variance) vs 100% with small variance, both same mean
- slg 3y agoExactly. If all the reviews are between 51-100 and the mean is 70, there probably aren’t going to be a lot or 90+ ratings. But if half the reviews are below 50 and the mean is still 70, that implies a higher number of 90+ ratings to drag the mean up.
- dvt 3y agoWeird top post considering the context of the article here is Rotten Tomatoes reviews literally being bought. Might need to include bribery in your formula.
- lolinder 3y agoYeah, I think their "artsy fartsy" category needs to be split. If the reviewers are consistently positive while everyone else is negative, it tends to be in one of these categories: * Overly artsy * Overly political. Reviewers feel the need to give it a positive review because they agree with the message, while the audience will split because they're not as homogenous politically. * Outraged fans. Reviewers aren't typically fans of a given franchise and so won't notice if it ruins something that would irritate a fan. The Last Jedi is in this category. * Bribery.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- LeonardoTolstoy 3y agoThere is another half of the "overly political" bit and well but where the audience is at fault for the discrepancy. Basically: an out group decides to make a point with bad reviews. Doesn't happen as much anymore since they require proof of ticket purchase to review, but it still will on occasion. And it happened enough previously that they specifically had to put the proof of purchase condition in place.
- banannaise 3y agoThis completely ignores both the primary subject of the article (astroturfed "critic" reviews) and another phenomenon mentioned (review brigading, particularly one-star reviews from right-wing trolls).
- dylan604 3y agoThe Last Temptation of Christ was my first experience with the right-wing/religious uproar about a movie was as a teen still keeping peace with the parental units by attending mom's church. At the time, I really had no interest in seeing the movie, but not because the preacher man said not to. Just wasn't my thing. However, it was very eye opening on the weaponization of the pulpit and only accelerated my move away from church.
- martin1975 3y agoThat's been my 'magic formula' for RT ratings as well :).
- croes 3y agoFast X Critics 56% Audience 84% That movie wasn't fun. It was the first part in the series where hoped the bad guy wins. In the previous films the nonsense physics was at least entertaining.
- brokencode 3y agoLow audience vs critic reviews can also indicate review bombing. This often happens on films or TV shows targeted by rightwing media for being too “woke”. The show that always sticks in my mind as an example is HBO’s Watchmen, which has 96% with critics and 56% with the audience.
- takeda 3y agoIt works the other way look up Sound of Freedom 60% critics, 99% (not long ago it was 100%) audience. You can't make it any more obvious.
- brokencode 3y agoYup, Sound of Freedom was pushed very heavily by rightwing media. There were daily articles on news sites like Breitbart about how it was the best movie of the year and how biased critics were trying to destroy it. About how readers should watch it to help support a conservative alternative to Hollywood.
- mikrotikker 3y agoAnd vice versa for leftwing media for being too "offensive". And example would be Dave Chapelles specials.
- flangola7 3y agoWhat movies have that happened to?
- mikrotikker 3y agoSorry i added an edit. An example would be Dave Chapelle special.
- flangola7 3y agoThat was over justified problems of transphobia, and not nearly the same scale of reaction. I also wouldn't really call a compilation of stand up sessions to be a movie, though that is neither here nor there. I can't actually think of any films that attracted the same foaming at the mouth as you see by conservatives.
- winternett 3y agoIf a service becomes untrustworthy, it should be unseated as a credible source, so that it can be replaced by something else that is more credible. Lots of good businesses and ideas wither and die because of the populist sentiment of only supporting monopolies consumers often have have online. We ritually act online as if trying to create workarounds for obviously corruptible services will make things better, but it simply doesn't. It only serves to keep rewarding companies that have sold us out, including the process of normalizing the sale and security compromise of our user data. Supporting bad apps and companies after breaches of trust only works to reward them and undermine reliability overall for ethical services and companies. Workarounds also enable companies to breach trust more and more over time as well... Class action lawsuits are also no consolation, as they only cost a fraction of the illicit gains a company makes on being willfully corrupt, and they mostly reward law firms, not victims. I hope we change this workaround narrative, and start holding bad business accountable for it's schemes instead of embracing it as normalized behavior. LET THEM FAIL. :/
- _the_inflator 3y agoVery close call for Goonies with discrepancy of 14: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/goonies https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/goonies I opt for the audience in this case.
- fasterik 3y agoI don't necessarily disagree with this as a rule of thumb, but I thought it would be fun to come up with a few counter-examples. Most of these I would consider "artsy-fartsy" or "artsy-fartsy lite" movies that are popular with audiences but less so with critics. Lost Highway (1997) - 68% Tomatometer - 87% Audience Score Fight Club (1999) - 79% Tomatometer - 96% Audience Score American Psycho (2000) - 68% Tomatometer - 85% Audience Score Requiem for a Dream (2000) - 78% Tomatometer - 93% Audience Score Dancer in the Dark (2000) - 69% Tomatometer - 91% Audience Score Oldboy (2003) - 82% Tomatometer - 94% Audience Score The Prestige (2006) - 77% Tomatometer - 92% Audience Score Joker (2019) - 69% Tomatometer - 88% Audience Score
- alonsonic 3y agoYou went for very old movies which skews your analysis. A lot of the old movies you picked are famous and popular in movie pop culture. Audience scoring this in RT probably went out of their way to watch these films, they are not as organic as recent scores as you have a larger number audience scores created by movie lovers. If you find examples post 2015 when RT became a mainstream scoring system that would be great. Only movie that's current in your list is "The Joker" which among critics is considered to be a copycat of other critically acclaimed films (taxi driver, the comedian). This is a film that tried hard to look artsy fartsy but was not.
- fasterik 3y agoYou're right, I explicitly went out of my way to find movies that are widely considered to be classics, but were not loved by critics. It's not an "analysis" of any kind, as I made clear in my post. I think the critics are wrong about Joker. The fact that it's an homage to Taxi Driver and King of Comedy is completely intentional, to the point of casting Robert De Niro as the talk show host. I don't consider that a detraction from the film at all. Many critics also interpreted it as some kind of political document, which is totally off the mark. One of the big problems with criticism in the 21st century is that people have lost the ability to tell the difference between portraying something and endorsing it.
- 3y ago
- dude187 3y agoEven better example in the "You might also like" list in Grandma's Boy: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/grandmas_boy https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/grandmas_boy 15% tomatometer, 85% audience score. Sure it's a dumb stoner comedy, but it's an _amazing_ one. Being "dumb" is half the fun, but of course that translates into "more gross than comedic" and "lazy and unrewarding"
- NL807 3y agoI would be inclined interpret it like this: * Tomatometer ≫ Audience, there is artificial bias on the critics side, perhaps due to political reasons, or perhaps due social conforming by film critics within a clique, or reviews are being paid for by the film industry. * Tomatometer ≪ Audience, probably more fun, or less serious film, or may have politically confronting themes that critics don't like to praise. * Tomatometer ≈ Audience, rating is probably a good indicator of film quality.
- alonsonic 3y ago"Politically confronting themes" sounds like is very relative to your own political leaning. Probably more in line with the idea that film critics have an inherent type of political inclination being a small, creative niche.