Rotten Tomatoes Payola

[The Dog 44,058]

https://www.vulture.com/article/rotten-tomatoes-movie-rating.html

[Rudiger 1,163]

Rotten indeed.

[mchookem 16,336]

that certainly explains some of the reviews lol

[Deej 76,800]

I choose the movies I watch by Surly Tomatoes scores. 

[DougO 5,250]

Rotten Tomatoes has always sucked ass. A bunch of smug hack critics and a bunch of fanboy cultists.

[Rimbo 25,941]

I still use the Joe Bob's metric. How many titties

[ztejas 43,455]

I knew they were paying critics as soon as the scores settled for this one. 

[Gil Bang 25,960]

that fucking latest Adam Sandler Bat Mitzvah is the biggest piece of fucking shit this side of a Christopher Nolan movie, and it's ratings were stupid high.  I knew something was up. 

[hayden_horn 11,362]

while I'm not surprised, at all, it constantly amazes me when people or companies do this shit. you're rotten tomatoes, you have carved out a pretty significant piece of consumer mindshare based on honest reviews and you throw it all away for...? what?  more, i guess. it's always more. 

['stache 21,816]

Least surprising revelation if all time. Safe to assume that every online rating tool is manipulated BS. I don’t pay any mind to them at all.

Edited September 7, 2023 by 'stache

[atomheartbevo 89,681]

13 hours ago, DougO said:

Rotten Tomatoes has always sucked ass. A bunch of smug hack critics and a bunch of fanboy cultists.

12 hours ago, Rimbo said:

I still use the Joe Bob's metric. How many titties

Wait, you all don't rely on Harry Knowles/Ain't it Cool News?

 

I actually had to go look and see if he was still alive and see if the site was still up, and the answer is "kind of".

[52-80 19,161]

Uh isn’t it already common convention that audience score is more reliable than critic score. 

For a single-source review, ive long found crankycritic.com to be very well aligned with my own. I also like his system where the rating corresponds to how much hes willing to pay to see the movie. 

[ztejas 43,455]

5 minutes ago, 'stache said:

Safe to assume that every online eating tool is manipulated BS.

I don't think so. A lot of publications certainly have agendas but I would think overall very few reviews are paid for. 

[atomheartbevo 89,681]

7 minutes ago, hayden_horn said:

while I'm not surprised, at all, it constantly amazes me when people or companies do this shit. you're rotten tomatoes, you have carved out a pretty significant piece of consumer mindshare based on honest reviews and you throw it all away for...? what?  more, i guess. it's always more. 

Well, they make no money from it - it's the reviewers.

But RT has had this problem for many years, once clickbait titles became the norm, and once it became fairly easy (if you put the time in) to get listed as a critic that they'd follow/use.

The article points out that we don't have any more Siskel and Eberts.  Well, we literally don't have any more Siskel and Eberts because they are dead, but I mean like nationally-known film critics.  It's a wonder some movie site hasn't hired a group of movie critics that are informed and articulate across a wide range of genres, and just rely on them and build their brand up (maybe somebody has).  Instead, we get Rotten Tomatoes which relies on a bunch of critics that nobody bothers to look into (hence the critics getting paid off) and YouTube movie reviews/reactions, which are all about the eyeballs so they automatically say stuff meant to get a rise out of people.

[atomheartbevo 89,681]

1 minute ago, ztejas said:

I don't think so. A lot of publications certainly have agendas but I would think overall very few reviews are paid for. 

They are getting paid by advertisers, which means in many cases, writing for the clicks so that the lights stay on and the hosting bills get paid.

[ztejas 43,455]

6 minutes ago, atomheartbevo said:

They are getting paid by advertisers, which means in many cases, writing for the clicks so that the lights stay on and the hosting bills get paid.

That's not the same thing though. You can write a bomb for a popular movie and generate clicks.

Obviously the article is about studios hiring a PR firm to inflate scores for some movies. My assertion is that most movie, music etc. reviews are not being paid for. 

That said - my go to for movies is IMDB audience score. For music I'm sometimes interested in what people have had to say but it almost never influences what I actually listen to. 

[Pig Bellmont 8,719]

So wait - the scandal is that they’re manipulating the critics’ scores but not the audience scores? Does anyone really pay attention to RT critics?

[Michael Knight 12,981]

You can't pay attention to audience scores, most people are morons

Edited September 7, 2023 by Michael Knight

[SimonBolivar 10,958]

1 hour ago, 52-80 said:

Uh isn’t it already common convention that audience score is more reliable than critic score. 

No, the audience sucks ass too.

[Gene Parmesan 4,007]

1 hour ago, ztejas said:

That's not the same thing though. You can write a bomb for a popular movie and generate clicks.

Obviously the article is about studios hiring a PR firm to inflate scores for some movies. My assertion is that most movie, music etc. reviews are not being paid for. 

That said - my go to for movies is IMDB audience score. For music I'm sometimes interested in what people have had to say but it almost never influences what I actually listen to. 

The displayed IMDB ratings score is weighted.  Some users are worth more than others.  Plenty of room for shenanigans there as well.

[ztejas 43,455]

1 minute ago, Gene Parmesan said:

The displayed IMDB ratings score is weighted.  Some users are worth more than others.  Plenty of room for shenanigans there as well.

Maybe that's a good thing. I typically find it a pretty good litmus test.

Granted - I typically know when a movie is going to be under or overrated on IMDB and adjust accordingly. 

Edited September 7, 2023 by ztejas

[Celery Man 20,962]

BULLSHIT

[bschoolprof 6,255]

The fart sniffers on RT convinced me years back that Black Panther was some cinematic masterpiece that I had to see. 

It was a paint-by-numbers comic book movie with black people. I am idoit.  

[Rimbo 25,941]

The nice thing about RottenTomatoes is that it distinguishes between the regular "Joe Schmuck with a blog" and actual professional "top" critics. I suspect that the payola went to the former group, not the latter.

But even then, I never judge by score alone.

Having been an avid reader of Ebert back in the day, and all too familiar with game reviewers (where payola is super common), even friends with the occasional pro/top game reviewer, the only way for me to know if I'll like a movie or not is to actually read a few reviews.

I'll often read a review and see, based on what they describe, that the sort of things they liked about it are the things I wouldn't enjoy, or the things they hated are exactly what I'd like.

What separates a guy like Ebert from the hoi-polloi of reviewers is that he'll do this conscientiously and consistently: He describes the movie in a way that YOU know whether you want to see it or not, regardless of whether or not HE enjoyed it.

tldr: Read the reviews, not the scores.

[Rimbo 25,941]

1 minute ago, bschoolprof said:

The fart sniffers on RT convinced me years back that Black Panther was some cinematic masterpiece that I had to see. 

It was a paint-by-numbers comic book movie with black people. I am idoit.  

It was a very well-executed comic book movie, though.

It's also one of those movies that, if you bother to look deeper, has some really great stuff in it. Such as:

 

[The Dog 44,058]

2 hours ago, hayden_horn said:

while I'm not surprised, at all, it constantly amazes me when people or companies do this shit. you're rotten tomatoes, you have carved out a pretty significant piece of consumer mindshare based on honest reviews and you throw it all away for...? what?  more, i guess. it's always more. 

It's not RT that's getting the payola but the reviewers. RT is just an aggregator. I don't know how they can "gatekeep" this because the reviewers getting paid to make positive reviews aren't going to out themselves. 

[gernblansten 3,197]

Gene is trash, you have to go with Vincent.

 

[BehoId, The Underminer! 11,669]

i think i saw two versions of this with indiana jones.  first they had crap scores come out in the first 20 or so then the inflation thereafter from a rush of positive ones, in line with what the article talks about.  and because they just do a binary thing where a review is just positive or negative, they rated reviews as positive which were basically saying it's just better than crystal skull.

[SimonBolivar 10,958]

13 minutes ago, bschoolprof said:

The fart sniffers on RT convinced me years back that Black Panther was some cinematic masterpiece that I had to see. 

It was a paint-by-numbers comic book movie with black people. I am idoit.  

Most of the alure was that it gave the Black community a major superhero to identify with at a time when comic book movies were the most popular movies being made.

[BehoId, The Underminer! 11,669]

6 minutes ago, The Dog said:

I don't know how they can "gatekeep" this because the reviewers getting paid to make positive reviews aren't going to out themselves. 

i do think rt does have a hand in shenanigans in deciding whether a review is positive or not.

[Gene Parmesan 4,007]

Isn't RT score just a yea or nay vote by critics?  If so, that's the worst way to look at a review.  There is no nuance or context.  

[ztejas 43,455]

5 minutes ago, SimonBolivar said:

Most of the alure was that it gave the Black community a major superhero to identify with at a time when comic book movies were the most popular movies being made.

 

 

[Celery Man 20,962]

6 minutes ago, Gene Parmesan said:

Isn't RT score just a yea or nay vote by critics?  If so, that's the worst way to look at a review.  There is no nuance or context.  

bad way to get a nuanced understanding of what the movie is and how you might feel about it, good but not perfect way to get a general picture of if it sucks or not

[RPM 26,322]

The next thing your going to tell me is Wikipedia isn't reliable.

[tx 3 putt 76,979]

This has been going for decades. Movie studios (back in the day) would host critics with a suite full of whores and booze. Bam, great review 

that ain’t it cool douche was on the take for years , when he wasn’t sexually assaulting females 

[tx 3 putt 76,979]

5 minutes ago, RPM said:

The next thing your going to tell me is Wikipedia isn't reliable.

 

[CurlyDumps 4,473]

2 hours ago, atomheartbevo said:

Wait, you all don't rely on Harry Knowles/Ain't it Cool News?

 

I actually had to go look and see if he was still alive and see if the site was still up, and the answer is "kind of".

I was a big AICN reader from like 1999 to... somewhere in the mid aughts.  You got me googling him. I didn't know (or forgot) was cancelled in 2017. This article doesn't surprise me at all. I saw Harry speak on campus once circa 00/01. He came off as an arrogant twat. I still remember this hilarious moment from that talk. He asked the audience, "how many of you want to start your own film site?" A smattering of hands went up. Then he barked something along the lines of, "Sorry! Too late. The market is too saturated." 

[Rimbo 25,941]

16 minutes ago, CurlyDumps said:

I was a big AICN reader from like 1999 to... somewhere in the mid aughts.  You got me googling him. I didn't know (or forgot) was cancelled in 2017. This article doesn't surprise me at all. I saw Harry speak on campus once circa 00/01. He came off as an arrogant twat. I still remember this hilarious moment from that talk. He asked the audience, "how many of you want to start your own film site?" A smattering of hands went up. Then he barked something along the lines of, "Sorry! Too late. The market is too saturated." 

"At one point he was attached to “John Carter,” which in 2012 became a box-office failure for Disney."

oh, that's just not fair