We're coming up on 20 years since the launch of Rotten Tomatoes and it's been in the news a fair bit in recent times. So, does Rotten Tomatoes really matter? Does it impact at all on box office returns? Or is it just a place to go out of interest/morbid curiosity?
Admit it, you've all been there. Patiently awaiting the reviews of that movie you've been looking forward to for fucking months. I do it all the time!!! Right now I'm monitoring Alien: Covenant sitting pretty on an RT score of 75% at the time of writing and a couple of weeks ago I was desperately hoping for a high score for Guardians of the Galaxy 2, also sitting pretty on 81%. But before we go any further, an explanation of rotten tomatoes is probably prudent just in case you live under a rock... or Achill Island.
Click on this link: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/jaws as you can see Jaws has a rotten tomatoes score of 97%. The average rating is 9.2 out of 10 and out of 74 reviews 72 are "fresh" while 2 assholes gave it a "rotten" review. There's a few things to absorb here. 97% is an aggregate score of the reviews collected by the site. While that is a fantastic result, what you need to note is the average rating (under the tomato) Jaws gets a 9.2/10 which is staggering. There are many fresh movies that get by on an average score of 6.5/10. So that'll get you a fresh result but 6.5 ain't a 9.2 is it... here's a good example: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/phantasm_remastered_2016 Also worth looking at is the audience response. Some movies get absolutely lambasted by critics but are much more warmly received by audiences. Last years Batman V Superman (more on this later) took a critical mauling (28%) with an average score of 4.9/10 but fared better with audiences (63%) with an average score of 3.6/5: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/batman_v_superman_dawn_of_justice
Moving on. The first time I can remember any major controversies with RT was back in 2012 when it had a comment section open to the public. Christopher Nolan's Rise of the Dark Knight was imminent and the first swell of reviews were positive but, as generally happens, not everyone loved the movie. The first reviewer to dare to post anything even slightly negative, Marshall Fine, was bombarded with comments that ranged from mother's basement nerd rage to death threats. RT did the only thing they could do. They shut down the comments section. Frankly, it's worrying that people who hadn't even seen the movie felt the need to threaten this guy and it's not like he bashed the movie. He just, quite rightly, pointed out that it was the weakest of the trilogy and found some of it "nonsensical".
I could lash out at nerd rage all day but for the purposes of this blog, the question I want answered is, did rotten tomatoes collection of reviews and subsequent aggregate score (87%) have any bearing on the box office of the movie? Well let's see how much it made: http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=batman3.htm at just shy of $1.1bn which is a slight increase over the previous instalment which holds a higher rating, you'd have to think it didn't. If the movie had received a slew of negative reviews would it have mattered? That's open to opinion. But a movie as successful as this only makes that kind of money if a lot of people go to see it more than once. Clearly this was a well liked movie and people did go back.
Now let's look at another hugely anticipated movie, also a third part, that wasn't so warmly received. The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies. This movie sits on a rotten score of 59% which is just 1% shy of a fresh score. With an average score of 6.3/10 the critics just weren't that into it. How did it fare at the box office? http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=hobbit3.htm As you can see $956m is more than enough to compensate for lukewarm reviews and the audience response was much warmer than the critical one. Again, you'd have to say that RT had little or no bearing on the general public.
So what is all the fuss about? Well back in March 2016, Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice flew into our screens and despite a decent early buzz, it was absolutely battered by critics. A couple of months ago Brett Ratner (pictured below with The Rock and Eddie Murphy) was speaking at the Sun Valley Film Festival where he described Rotten Tomatoes as “The worst thing that we have in today’s movie culture". He went on: “I think it’s the destruction of our business. I have such respect and admiration for film criticism. When I was growing up film criticism was a real art. And there was intellect that went into that. And you would read Pauline’s Kael’s reviews, or some others, and that doesn’t exist anymore. Now it’s about a number. A compounded number of how many positives vs. negatives. Now it’s about, ‘What’s your Rotten Tomatoes score?’ And that’s sad, because the Rotten Tomatoes score was so low on Batman v Superman I think it put a cloud over a movie that was incredibly successful.”
Whatever you think about Ratner's movies, there is no doubting the man is a giant of the industry and his words matter. The problem he faces here is rotten tomatoes only post opinions by other people. RT itself doesn't have an opinion in its review section. So attacking the site's reviews means you're attacking opinions. So when Ratner says film criticism was a real art but RT is the destruction of the business, it could be argued that he's attacking the very thing he purports to admire. Or to put it another way: numbers don't make shit up, people do!
So is it accurate? Or does Ratner have a point? Well, let's do a little experiment. Think of a movie that you know to be brilliant and adored the world over. For the purposes of this blog I will pick The Godfather. I think we can all agree that meets the criteria. So what is the RT score? https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/godfather Now think of a movie you know to be utter dreck. I will run with Transformers 2. So what is the RT score? https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/transformers_revenge_of_the_fallen Now think of a movie that you fucking adore but you know is a terrible movie. I'm gonna go with Friday the 13th part 2. What's the score? https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/friday_the_13th_part_2 As far as I'm concerned those three results are absolutely spot on.
Another superb acid test as to the validity of RT that you can do in your own time? The movies of M. Night Shyamalan. I mean, it's pretty fucking spot on even if I enjoy some of the ones that were panned...
Bottom line, if film makers are worried about a fucking movie review site it's a good thing. Because your movies will get reviewed, there will be an aggregate score and if your movie is terrible the score will reflect this. If you want to avoid this, MAKE BETTER MOVIES!!! Brett Ratner is responsible for the Rush Hour trilogy...
Cheers,
G.
