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

[Bosco685]

This is interesting.

When her review was posted on 9/20/19, the overall rating was FRESH/POSITIVE. Now it has been changed to ROTTEN/NEGATIVE, with a 7.0/10 rating.

 

And she was definitely a FRESH with the original post.

On 9/20/2019 at 7:30 AM, Bosco685 said:

Joker sitting at 75% right now with the latest FRESH critic review.

But what's weird is that latest review is from a black film critic site that noted all this is with Joker is yet another 'crazy white man killing people film' but she notes it as FRESH and gives it a 7.0/10 overall rating.

Critics are weird.

 

Edited September 26, 2019 by Bosco685

[theCapraAegagrus]

Joker isn't a hero...

[Bosco685]

1 minute ago, theCapraAegagrus said:

Joker isn't a hero...

Shhhhh. She's on a roll, and trying to make a point.

 

[theCapraAegagrus]

1 minute ago, Bosco685 said:

Shhhhh. She's on a rag, and trying to make a point.

Fixed that for ya...

[Bosco685]

 

Quote

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.

Something feels familiar with this potential situation. Though in this case, it is a major Disney film which is just experiencing mixed reviews. And which Disney is looking to have wrap up this run massively in a multiple-billion dollar year for the company.

[drotto]

4 minutes ago, Bosco685 said:

 

Something feels familiar with this potential situation. Though in this case, it is a major Disney film which is just experiencing mixed reviews. And which Disney is looking to have wrap up this run massively in a multiple-billion dollar year for the company.

What is not lining up is Metacritic has the audience score in the low 50's.  With the positives vs. negatives almost equal, and only about 10% giving it mixed.

There are only a few possibilities.

1. The sites just have a different audience base so different scores.

2. One and or the other is getting review bombed on the positive or negative side.

3. One site is manipulating scores.

[Bosco685]

1 minute ago, drotto said:

What is not lining up is Metacritic has the audience score in the low 50's.  With the positives vs. negatives almost equal, and only about 10% giving it mixed.

There are only a few possibilities.

1. The sites just have a different audience base so different scores.

2. One and or the other is getting review bombed on the positive or negative side.

3. One site is manipulating scores.

I'm guessing because I am just a movie fan like anyone else. But this very much feels like a counter-punch to the critics to ensure they don't experience a Solo result.

[drotto]

3 minutes ago, Bosco685 said:

I'm guessing because I am just a movie fan like anyone else. But this very much feels like a counter-punch to the critics to ensure they don't experience a Solo result.

Just looked Metacritic has an audience score of 5.1. It may sound conspiratorial,  but something seems fishy.  In theory the sites should be close. They are very close for critic score.

Edited December 20, 2019 by drotto

[Bosco685]

19 minutes ago, drotto said:

Just looked Metacritic has an audience score of 5.1. It may sound conspiratorial,  but something seems fishy.  In theory the sites should be close. They are very close for critic score.

Wow!

[drotto]

5 minutes ago, Bosco685 said:

Wow!

Yeah.  Logic seems to dictate that when we have 4 scores and one is a clear outlier,  the outlier is likely the one that is wrong. 

 

This is a divisive film. But now I am not sure the camps are the same.  I think they have mixed.  Former TLJ haters ate now aligned with TLJ lovers, but for different reasons. 

 

I have seen a few reviews say, they have attempted to make a movie for everyone, or at least not anger anyone.  In the process they have made a movie for nobody.

[RedRaven]

I assumed everyone realized Rotten-Tomatoes was compromised once Fandango bought them.

[Bosco685]

2 minutes ago, RedRaven said:

I assumed everyone realized Rotten-Tomatoes was compromised once Fandango bought them.

Agreed. And a former senior Disney executive leading Fandango.

[MetalPSI]

Most things online are BS

[Bosco685]

[FoggyNelson]

13 hours ago, IkewithMike said:

Most things online are BS

I don’t trust any reviews or movie critics , they are all payed to give mostly positive reviews, 

Ebert only gave zero stars out of four stars to about one quarter of one percent of the movies he reviewed

i could not trust Ebert

[Bosco685]

39 minutes ago, FoggyNelson said:

I don’t trust any reviews or movie critics , they are all payed to give mostly positive reviews, 

Ebert only gave zero stars out of four stars to about one quarter of one percent of the movies he reviewed

i could not trust Ebert

I have to agree. One way or another, they get incentives.

Even with Chris Stuckmann, who most times I am aligned with, he posts product details at certain points in his review videos. Including advertising for video media retailers.

 

[Bosco685]

42 minutes ago, szav said:

I assume Disney made a 20 million dollar investment in the form of 400 or so $50,000 bribes to movie reviewers to kickstart their billion dollar franchise.  

There's clearly something wrong with Rotten tomatoes, I don't know how else to explain things like...the Witcher gets 58% critic score and 93% audience, and the new Watchmen series gets 95% critic score and 53% audience...I'm not sure how there can be such wide gulfs both ways without some shenanigans being at the heart of it.

[Bosco685]

Speaking of film propaganda, an interesting article that summarized how Rotten Tomatoes operates prior to the 2019 audience score changes to address concerns with Captain Marvel score manipulation.

Rotten Tomatoes, explained

But something interesting they point out I hadn't reflected on before is the binary decisioning it conveys (Positive or Rotten) for something as complex as film and TV storytelling. Like it is an either-or criteria.

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Why do critics often get frustrated by the Tomatometer?

The biggest reason many critics find Rotten Tomatoes frustrating is that most people’s opinions about movies can’t be boiled down to a simple thumbs up or down. And most critics feel that Rotten Tomatoes, in particular, oversimplifies criticism, to the detriment of critics, the audience, and the movies themselves.

 

In some cases, a film really is almost universally considered to be excellent, or to be a complete catastrophe. But critics usually come away from a movie with a mixed view. Some things work, and others don’t. The actors are great, but the screenplay is lacking. The filmmaking is subpar, but the story is imaginative. Some critics use a four- or five-star rating, sometimes with half-stars included, to help quantify mixed opinions as mostly negative or mostly positive.

 

The important point here is that no critic who takes their job seriously is going to have a simple yes-or-no system for most movies. Critics watch a film, think about it, and write a review that doesn't just judge the movie but analyzes, contextualizes, and ruminates over it. The fear among many critics (including myself) is that people who rely largely on Rotten Tomatoes aren't interested in the nuances of a film, and aren't particularly interested in reading criticism, either.

 

But maybe the bigger reason critics are worried about the influence of review aggregators is that they seem to imply there's a “right” way to evaluate a movie, based on most people's opinions. We worry that audience members who have different reactions will feel as if their opinion is somehow wrong, rather than seeing the diversity of opinions as an invitation to read and understand how and why people react to art differently.

What I didn't realize was how recent the introduction of a Tomatometer.

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In February 2016, Rotten Tomatoes — the site that aggregates movie and TV critics’ opinions and tabulates a score that’s “fresh” or “rotten” — took on an elevated level of importance. That’s when Rotten Tomatoes (along with its parent company Flixster) was acquired by Fandango, the website that sells advance movie tickets for many major cinema chains.

 

People had been using Rotten Tomatoes to find movie reviews since it launched in 2000, but after Fandango acquired the site, it began posting “Tomatometer” scores next to movie ticket listings. Since then, studio execs have started to feel as if Rotten Tomatoes matters more than it used to — and in some cases, they’ve rejiggered their marketing strategies accordingly.

 

[Bosco685]

Article on how studios work with and against Rotten Tomatoes on marketing their films for maximum box office results.

THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER: Studios Fight Back Against Withering Rotten Tomatoes Scores

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The power of the "Tomatometer" has reached a tipping point as critics screenings inch closer and closer to openings and movies try to avoid the dreaded green splat.

 

The Emoji Movie's $24.5 million domestic opening during the July 28 to 30 weekend accomplished what no other movie has been able to do during a tough summer season at the box office — survive an abysmal Rotten Tomatoes score (7 percent) and open in line with prerelease tracking.

 

One possible secret weapon? Sony wouldn't let reviews post until midday on July 27, hours before the pic began playing in previews before rolling out everywhere. Sony, like every studio, is looking for their own basket of rotten eggs to throw at review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes in hopes of combating a bad "Tomatometer" score. That means screening some titles later and later for critics.

 

"The Emoji Movie was built for people under 18, who gave it an A- CinemaScore, so we wanted to give the movie its best chance," says Josh Greenstein, Sony Pictures president of worldwide marketing and distribution. "What other wide release with a score under 8 percent has opened north of $20 million? I don't think there is one."

 

At a tipping point now, Rotten Tomatoes' influence began to grow exponentially after it and parent company Flixster were acquired in February 2016 by leading movie ticketing website Fandango, a unit of Comcast's NBCUniversal. (Warner Bros. holds a minority stake in the merged companies.) This summer, a slew of event films earning a rotten score were beached domestically — Baywatch (19 percent) and Transformers: The Last Knight (15 percent) among them — while tentpoles earning scores north of 90 percent did better than expected, including Wonder Woman, Spider-Man: Homecoming and Dunkirk.

 

Studios — all too eager to advertise a good score, a practice that didn't begin until summer 2016 — are now scrambling to understand what happens when their titles garner the infamous green splat.

 

After buying Rotten Tomatoes, Fandango began featuring Tomatometer scores for every movie on its ticketing site, a practice likened to a restaurant promoting a Yelp rating. (MovieTickets.com intentionally doesn't feature any reviews scores on its site so as to not influence a consumer, according to insiders.) More recently, some studios were taken aback when AMC Theatres, the country's largest chain, adopted the same practice on its own ticketing website. AMC's site now only features a score if it is fresh, defined as anything 60 percent and above. The mega circuit declined comment.

 

Box-office analyst Jeff Bock of Exhibitor Relations says including the Rotten Tomato score on Fandango's ticket site is counterintuitive. "Rotten Tomatoes is a great resource, but can be damaging to the bottom line for films that people are on the fence about. And Fandango, at its core, is about selling as many tickets as possible," he says.

 

But Rotten Tomatoes vp Jeff Voris says it is "a disservice to focus just on the score. There are many levels of information." And Fandango counters that it used to feature Metacritic before it acquired Rotten Tomatoes, although the former doesn't have the same influence.

Hollywood studios have commissioned a number of studies on the subject in recent months. National Research Group found that seven out of 10 people said they would be less interested in seeing a movie if the Rotten Tomatoes score was 0 to 25. And social media research firm Fizziology, which tracks every major Hollywood release, discovered that a Rotten Tomatoes score has the most influence on moviegoers 25 and younger.

 

"The Tomatometer has evolved into a truth serum of sorts to help moviegoers decode whether the promise of the campaign lives up to the reality of the film," says NRG CEO Jon Penn.

 

Adds Fizziology president Ben Carlson, "Things have reached a crescendo this summer. We see entire audience segments talking about a movie for months and then, all of a sudden, the conversation completely dries up and goes away when the Rotten Tomatoes score comes out. People are using the score as a pass/fail. Hollywood has always talked about a movie being "review proof." But it may not be Rotten Tomatoes proof."

 

One reason The Emoji Movie may have overcome such a terrible score is because it's a family film. Sony's The Dark Tower, the final event film of the summer, which opens Aug. 4, will again test whether it helps to delay reviews until Wednesday night or even Thursday. Critics won't see the movie until the evening of Wednesday, Aug. 2 (the review embargo is also that night). Universal delayed reviews of The Mummy (17 percent) until the Wednesday morning before the film's release and it didn't help much at the box office. And Warner Bros. didn't screen The House at all for reviewers. The House, earning a 17 percent rotten score, bombed with $8.7 million.

 

ComScore's Paul Dergarabedian has his own advice: "The best way for studios to combat the 'Rotten Tomatoes Effect' is to make better movies, plain and simple."

 

[Bosco685]

Interesting article from The New York Times on how Hollywood sees Rotten Tomatoes as both a friend and a foe. Depending on the results. And the methods being used by studios to combat what they see as a possible threat, when the results due to ugly.

Attacked by Rotten Tomatoes

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Hollywood had a horrible summer.

 

Ready for the truly alarming part? Hollywood is blaming a website: Rotten Tomatoes.

 

“I think it’s the destruction of our business,” Brett Ratner, the director, producer and film financier, said at a film festival this year.

 

Some studio executives privately concede that a few recent movies — just a few — were simply bad. Flawed marketing may have played a role in a couple of other instances, they acknowledged, along with competition from Netflix and Amazon.

 

Studio executives’ complaints about Rotten Tomatoes include the way its Tomatometer hacks off critical nuance, the site’s seemingly loose definition of who qualifies as a critic and the spread of Tomatometer scores across the web. Last year, scores started appearing on Fandango, the online movie ticket-selling site, leading to grousing that a rotten score next to the purchase button was the same as posting this message: You are an insufficiently_thoughtful_person if you pay to see this movie.

 

‘Incredibly Layered’ Process

 

For the studios, the question of how individual reviews get classified as fresh or rotten is also a point of contention. Only about half of critics self-submit reviews and classifications to the site. Rotten Tomatoes staffers comb the web and pull the other half themselves. They then assign positive or negative grades.

 

“We have a well-defined process,” said Mr. Voris, the vice president of Rotten Tomatoes. “Our curators audit each other’s work. If there is any question about how a review should be classified, we have three curators separate and do independent reads. If there still isn’t agreement, we call the journalist.”

 

Staff members also fact-check what critics have self-submitted. In one recent instance, a review of “Alien: Covenant” that was submitted as fresh seemed rotten. The site reversed the categorization after contacting the critic for clarification.

 

Hollywood Fights Back

 

Most importantly, studios are panicking because movie-going is no longer a habit for most Americans. Because of climbing prices and competition from other forms of entertainment, a trip to the multiplex has become a special event. In particular, more movie fans are ignoring low- and mid-budget films when they are in theaters: Ehh, let’s wait until they show up on Netflix. Studios are trying to battle Rotten Tomatoes on multiple fronts.

 

Marketers have discovered that early positive reviews can produce a bandwagon effect later, as some critics, especially those at less prestigious outlets, seek to go with the flow instead of against it. Studios have also started screening films early for pockets of critics. In some cases, studios create spreadsheets of which critics to invite to early screenings — often at festivals — based on questions such as who liked what in the past and who gives positive reviews more often than not. It is notable that “Leatherface,” a horror movie scheduled for release in late October, already has a very positive Tomatometer score of 86 based on seven reviews. (Rotten Tomatoes requires a minimum of five reviews before calculating a score.) The seven reviews came after an August screening at a London festival called FrightFest that was attended by reviewers from sites like Dread Central and HeyUGuys, which bills itself as an outlet for “love letters to cinema.”

 

Another way to undercut Rotten Tomatoes involves restricting reviews until the last possible minute. Sony set a review embargo of opening day for “The Emoji Movie,” which left the Tomatometer blank until after many advance tickets had been sold and families had made weekend plans. “The Emoji Movie,” which ultimately received a Tomatometer score of 8, squeezed out decent opening-weekend ticket sales of $24.5 million.

 

If Rotten Tomatoes is a monster, the studios helped create it. As much as they fear and loathe low scores, they love high ones. Sony recently ended its trailer for “Baby Driver,” a heist thriller, by flashing the Rotten Tomatoes logo and “100 percent,” the film’s Tomatometer score at the time. (It later slipped to 94.) Annapurna did the same thing for “Detroit” in television ads. (Not that it helped; that drama flopped.)

 

And Rotten Tomatoes is getting stronger. The site is working to build its Tomatometer scores for TV shows into a more formidable force. Also in development are a half-dozen video series, including one built around a cheeky event created by Ms. Drake, the senior movie editor, called Your Opinion Sucks.