Rotten Tomatoes as critic aggregator, score influences, studio tampering 1 1

[Bosco685]

Over the past few years, people have been taking a harder look at the influence of RT on audience attendance, studio advertising and even RT using score reveals as marketing for its own services (more than just an aggregator).

Rotten Tomatoes' SEE IT/SKIP IT - no longer just an aggregator?

With the recent situation of Rotten Tomatoes having to alter its Audience Anticipation Rating due to tampering with Captain Marvel's score, people are talking about how other tampering can occur through this 'just a review aggregator service'.

A Change for Rotten Tomatoes Ahead of Captain Marvel

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Then, on February 25, Rotten Tomatoes announced a series of changes, the most significant of which is that fans can only rate or review a movie once it’s come out.

Not only can film reviewers purposely vote a movie negative to influence the RT 100% FRESH score as a dissenting voice for selfish or stance reasons...

Film critic admits he purposefully lowered a perfect Rotten Tomatoes score

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In other words, Smithey’s rotten review doesn’t seem to be indicative of what he actually thought of the movie, but rather what he thought about the hype it was getting. He didn’t think it deserved to be the best-reviewed movie on Rotten Tomatoes, and then decided to manipulate the system to take the achievement away from the film.

But also studios can use film access as a weapon to force positive reviews and even articles about their productions and other products. Including Disney that blocked LA Times critics from pre-reviews due to a labor relations article published by the paper, which Disney wanted taken down.

Disney lifts ban on L.A. Times film critics

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Walt Disney Co. has reversed its decision to exclude Los Angeles Times critics from press screenings of its films.

 

“We’ve had productive discussions with the newly installed leadership at the Los Angeles Times regarding our specific concerns, and as a result, we’ve agreed to restore access to advance screenings for their film critics,” Disney said in a statement sent to The Times on Tuesday.

Now, as part of its weekly film and TV review SYFY Wire's 'Who Won the Week' Dany Roth (SYFY Wire TV & Film Reviewer) delves into how RT is manipulated by various influences. Including RT itself in expecting certain reviews from critics or eliminating them from the aggregation. If you listen to that portion of the podcast (49:08), they cover how RT was being attacked by outside influences to impact the Audience Anticipation Score.

Who Won the Week Episode 169: OSCARS 2019, CAPTAIN MARVEL VS. ROTTEN TOMATOES, TRAILER ROUNDUP

This is coming directly from a reviewer on the RT Critics List, meaning they are approved to be part of the RT aggregation for any TV or film result.

Dany Roth's reviews only count toward the Tomatometer when published at the following Tomatometer-approved publication(s): Syfy Wire

Edited March 7, 2019 by Bosco685

[Bosco685]

Into the Spider-Verse also had a situation with a single film critic (Movie Nation) out of 87 total posting a negative review to break the 100% FRESH score.

Though in the end out of 344 reviewers, 10 other critics gave the film a negative critique taking it down to 97%. But at that early release stage at least Sony could still note it had been recognized by RT as 99% FRESH.

Edited March 7, 2019 by Bosco685

[Bosco685]

There was even a situation back in 2018 where the Gotti film studio identified critics that were noted on RT as providing a negative review, and started to attack them directly. Along with working with marketing to boost the audience score as a counterpunch to the critic scores.

Is MoviePass Manipulating User Reviews on Rotten Tomatoes to Get Butts in Seats?

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Not wasting any time in finding someone to blame for their misfortunes at the box office, Gotti’s marketing team quickly took to attacking the critics who panned their movie, calling them out of touch and unable to identify what audiences really want. They backed up this accusation by pointing towards the very same platform that seems to have caused all the trouble in the first place: Rotten Tomatoes.

 

Once again, that Tomatometer rating rests firmly at a 0%. That’s 0 fresh reviews, compared to 26 rotten, with an average rating clocking in at a miserable 2.4/10. The critic's consensus byline simply (and hilariously) reads: “Fugheddaboudit.” The marketing team zeroed in on another statistic, however, and that is the Tomatometer's stark contrast to the “audience score." The rating which signifies any random user's affinity towards a film is at an unusually high 74%.

 

 

Dan Murrel of ScreenJunkies tweeted out his own suspicions this morning, noticing, “On Rotten Tomatoes, the movie Gotti has a quite unique score of 0% BUT it has a really good 77% audience score; looking at it, it has over 6,900 user reviews which is an insane number for a movie that opened to a miserable $1.7 million on 500 screens.” 

So thank goodness the Audience Anticipation Score is gone prior to a film coming out. But the studios still have a way to influence the Audience Score once a film is released.

[▫️]

I find the RT site entertaining. It has absolutely no effect whatsoever on my decision whether I’m going to see a movie in the theater. I will go see a movie I know to be bad if I have an interest in seeing it. I often use this story but one of my favorite movies is Escape from New York. All of my friends who saw Escape from LA told me it was terrible. And I paid to see it anyway because I wanted to.

I probably agree with the RT scores 6 or 7 times out of 10 so it’s not a terrible gauge but I decide - not reviews. My review is the only one that counts.

[▫️]

45 minutes ago, Bosco685 said:

But the studios still have a way to influence the Audience Score once a film is released.

I was just thinking about that after seeing this. Meh from the critics but 100% from the audience. 

[1950's war comics]

there is so much fake news these days

[Bosco685]

9 minutes ago, Oddball said:

I was just thinking about that after seeing this. Meh from the critics but 100% from the audience. 

Nice!

To me just as apparent as the Gotti 0% to 77% in that 488 audience members gave this a 100% positive score? Though with Gotti it involved 6,900 (+) user accounts, which was excessive when you look at other films.

[Gatsby77]

I've said this before and I'll say it again.

The "Audience Scores" on Rotten Tomatoes are worse-than-useless because they are open to endless manipulation by parties lobbying for or against a film w/ little true verification.

The two movies posted above are exquisite examples:

1) Anyone who has seen Gotti would understand it was garbage. And there's zero chance that a film with a domestic lifetime gross of under $4.5 million inspired 6,900 viewers to post their thoughts about it online.

2) Triple Frontier has 488 audience reviews?

Fat chance. It won't be released until next week.

Vs. the critics reviews where they come from verifiable named critics from named (and well-known) outlets.

The reality is Rotten Tomatoes -- like Wikipedia -- does an exceptional job of aggregating the thoughts of the 230 or so major U.S. critics, including those from the top 50 outlets (Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Rolling Stone, etc.).

Sure - they may be as many as 10-20 bad apples, but overall, these professional journalists -- the bulk of whom have studied film theory and/or literature, are qualified to do their jobs and seeing the bulk of their reviews in one place is an incredibly valuable service.

Edited March 7, 2019 by Gatsby77

[Bosco685]

3 minutes ago, Gatsby77 said:

Sure - they may be as many as 10-20 bad apples, but overall, these professional journalists -- the bulk of whom have studied film theory and/or literature, are qualified to do their jobs and seeing the bulk of their reviews in one place is an incredibly valuable service.

If by 'Bad Apples' you also mean how studios can pressure critics by denying their pre-release access, I'd say you are right. But with the LA Times situation, Disney revealed some of its techniques in certain cases.

Are most reviewers trying to do their job in a professional way? I believe they do. But those that also vote negative just to be that one voice against a perfect score is far from perfect. That would definitely be a solid 'bad apple'.

[drotto]

I have noticed a few things with how the tomatometer (tm) works. For movies that are generally well reviewed it tends to falsely inflate their score above what RT calls their Average Rating (ar). 

As a general observation.  Movies with tm score over 70%, the tm will usually be higher then the ar. So generally positive movies get a positive bump.  Movies in the tm range of 70 to 30 seem to have their tm tracking fairly close to the ar score. So the tm seems accurate.  Movies below 30 get the opposite affects.  Here the ar tends to track above the tm score, so the tm is falsely deflated.

 

As for the review bombing.  I am convinced it happens in both directions.  So haters do bomb, and in some cases (which I believe are less common) people will falsely inflate score. The difficulty on RT is there has been a lot of debate on how scores are actually counted.  

 

Second, for bombing to be an effective tactic thousands of people (or maybe bots) need to do it. So pulling out real negative reviews from fake one is virtually impossible. I do not think there is a solution, but I am not convinced pulling people's ability to express themselves is a good solution either. The timing with RT pulling the want to see and the release of CM reads as suspicious. 

[▫️]

13 minutes ago, Gatsby77 said:

Triple Frontier has 488 audience reviews?

Fat chance. It won't be released until next week.

It’s in theaters now.

[Bosco685]

19 minutes ago, drotto said:

Second, for bombing to be an effective tactic thousands of people (or maybe bots) need to do it. So pulling out real negative reviews from fake one is virtually impossible. I do not think there is a solution, but I am not convinced pulling people's ability to express themselves is a good solution either. The timing with RT pulling the want to see and the release of CM reads as suspicious. 

It really is a tough spot as anything dependent on contributions from outside sources (reviewers, audience members) would require even more verification and risk controls to ensure their votes are fair and accurate.

That critics giving a film a positive review, but then voting negative with RT to throw off a perfect score should have led to some penalty of some sorts to discourage such actions. But you hope something extreme like that is rare.

Edited March 7, 2019 by Bosco685

[valiantman]

"Mixed reviews" is just as important to me as "99% Positive" because there are a ton of people who go into movies with expectations, get a fantastic movie of a different type, and then give it a negative review for not being their expectation.

[drotto]

Honestly, Metacritic is a much more accurate rating system.  And with average to good movies the MC score is almost universally less than the Tomatometer score.  The MC score does however track closely with the averaging rating score.

[Gatsby77]

25 minutes ago, Oddball said:

It’s in theaters now.

Where?

I live in Washington, DC. It's not opening here until next week.

[Bosco685]

1 minute ago, Oddball said:

Early limited release in 14 states so far. 

I checked IMDb. You are right in that it came out yesterday.

USA	6 March 2019	(limited)
Spain	7 March 2019	(limited)
Belgium	13 March 2019	(internet)
Germany	13 March 2019	(internet)
Spain	13 March 2019	(internet)
France	13 March 2019	(internet)

[Gatsby77]

2 minutes ago, Oddball said:

Early limited release in 14 states so far. 

I stand corrected.

Still suspicious that of nearly 500 anonymous people who supposedly saw it last night, not one thought it was a bad film -- that 100% ranking thus far is 50% higher than the average given by the named film critics.

[drotto]

13 minutes ago, Gatsby77 said:

I stand corrected.

Still suspicious that of nearly 500 anonymous people who supposedly saw it last night, not one thought it was a bad film -- that 100% ranking thus far is 50% higher than the average given by the named film critics.

It has also been released in a few other countries.  I know it is out in Australia.

[drotto]

Dispite the claims of bombing now centered around the IMDb audience score, the current score of a 6.1 seems consistant with Metacritic at a 65, and the RT average score of 6.91.  I think for CM there is currently bombing on both sides and for the most part they seem to be cancelling each other out.

[Bosco685]

2 minutes ago, drotto said:

Dispite the claims of bombing now centered around the IMDb audience score, the current score of a 6.1 seems consistant with Metacritic at a 65, and the RT average score of 6.91.  I think for CM there is currently bombing on both sides and for the most part they seem to be cancelling each other out.

It's a fair point, as Disney Marking and MCU fans are going to take action along with these people that have a problem with Disney (they did the same thing with The Last Jedi and Infinity War) working to make Captain Marvel fail.

You hope in the end the actions from both sides flush out evenly.