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Is Rotten Tomatoes Destroying Hollywood

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caliph95

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https://youtu.be/6wmHFmnBVG4

This is from What The Flick who are bunch of different movie reviewers who will collaborate to make YouTube reviews.

Seeing how we had this discussion on Gaf before mostly as a response from executives and producers o thought might be interesting to hear from reviewers take on it. This is a response to the New York Times piece.

Also to note Matt Atchity was the editor in chief.
 
I would imagine the usual stream of poor movies and the increasing convenience of home entertainment is doing damage, and the latter more than the former.
 
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I don't know what it is exactly, there are alot of factors but if it forces hollywood to stop making shitty movies and take more chances on new properties then I'm all for it.
 
I dislike Rotten Tomatoes holding a grip over public influence...but I don't think it's destroying Hollywood. I think Hollywood is destroying Hollywood. Capitalism is destroying Hollywood.
 
Hollywood already uses test audiences for big releases so it's not as if critics are killing invaluable works of art or anything.
 
It's quite possible that RT is destroying bad movies.

It's certainly not destroying Hollywood, though. If anything, it's making movies better.
 
nothing is 'destroying' hollywood, hollywood is just trying to adapt against something they have little direct control over (other than to make better movies)
 
Yes, but in a good way. Hollywoods gotta actually start trying again or shits gonna fail hard.

And this is coming from someone who loves most movies that come out, i even liked Rings, Blair Witch, and Alien Covenant
 
I mean I think its worth considering if what Rotten Tomatoes calls bad movies are actually bad? Like everyone's knee jerk reaction to this has been "duh stop making bad movies" but in the past negative reviews of movies I liked would still inform me about why the author didn't like them in a way that an aggregate score doesn't?

I forget who said it, but Rotten Tomatoes doesn't measure quality, but consistency. Movies that get high scores aren't nessecarily the best, just those that please the greatest number of people. Polarizing films get dinged.
 
If 'Hollywood' means movies like Transformers and Guy Richie King Arthur and Valerian and the... *Googles it* ...City of a Thousand Planets disappear then nothing of value was lost.
 
"People aren't watching our shitty movies, but the good ones they seem to like paying money for."
"Well, the way forward is clear then."
"And that is?"
"We must crush the review aggregators."
"...what if we just make better mo—"
"I can have you killed and buried under this office"
"Crush the Aggregates, yes sir."

That said: "Hollywood's" output is pretty damned good. The idea that the film industry is suffering a drought of inspiration or originality is largely overstated, often by an audience who typically only turns up for one kind of movie anyway.
 
If Hollywood can get destroyed by a review aggregate site, it's nothing but a house of cards than can be blown over by the gentlest breeze. Let it die.
 
No.

IT just came out in a dead month to good reviews and excellent word of mouth and now doing amazingly at the box office.

Just make good films.
 
No, it makes people make better decisions on what movies to watch. You think I'm giving up $15 to watch Mark Wahlberg shill bud light in the middle of two dinobots aggressively fucking? FOH
 
No, it's just an aggregate of reviews that were always out there. And the ratings really aren't wrong. One can look at a score, even after viewing a film, and pretty much concede on how good or bad it was given the score. There are going to be some disagreements because it's art and people like different things - but overall it's fair and accurate.

Hollywood stopped taking big risks a long time ago. It's understandable, because that's all someone's money getting flushed down the drain when a shitty movie is made. But there would never be a Star Wars with today's Hollywood. No Matrix. Hell, there wouldn't be a Lord of the Rings trilogy greenlit with a massive budget and three films filming at once. And that was, what, barely twenty years ago? Hollywood changed pretty quickly.
 
If Hollywood thinks that Rotten Tomatoes is destroying their industry then they have their head so far up their own ass as the fault of the blame lies with them releasing movies that simply weren't that good to watch and the reviews reflected that and the market reacted accordingly and spent their money on movies that were worth watching.
 
Orb said:
Yes, but in a good way. Hollywoods gotta actually start trying again or shits gonna fail hard.

And this is coming from someone who loves most movies that come out, i even liked Rings, Blair Witch, and Alien Covenant
Click to expand...
Alien Covenant was generally well received critically but divisive with the audience. I wouldn't put a movie like that alongside Rings.
 
Movies that score 98% are usually consistently pretty good. Movies that score 12% consistently very aren't. Movies that score 48% can be incredibly divisive films that half of critics love and half of critics hate (or, yes, all critics are tepid on) and a big audience might enjoy, but have a negative "rotten" classification. It doesn't handle films who's reactions don't neatly fit onto a bell curve very well
 
Aah, now the film industry gets to have its own internal wars over its preferred equivalent to Metacritic.

Yes. And that's fine. Common industry methods and procedures result in crap movies, or movies that don't live up to their potential. Make movies that go beyond these traps and formulas and they'll be better received, thus no need to give a crap about RT if your movie is an actual quality product. If the film industry can't withstand a website that collects reviews from around the internet, it can die in its current worm. If a studio has to sit and wait and worry what their RT score will be, then they made a piece of shit.
 
The one aspect of rotten tomatoes that I do agree is shitty and unfair is the little blurb at the top that tries to sum up the reviews.
 
Farsi said:
I don't know what it is exactly, there are alot of factors but if it forces hollywood to stop making shitty movies and take more chances on new properties then I'm all for it.
Click to expand...

Here's the thing, nobody sets out to make the shittiest movie they can. The idea of a movie being good or bad used to be subjective, and audiences used to make up their own minds after having seen a film. This doesn't happen anymore. Studio makes a movie, Rotten Tomatoes doles out a score, and that number is now considered to be holy writ among audiences. The only thing that's going to result from this system is Hollywood is going to pour all of their money into coming up with the perfect formula to get a Fresh rating, and every movie is going to be the same safe critic pandering circle jerk.
 
RT rating system is awfully dumb from a statistical perspective (averaging a yes / no indicator completely favors movies which are not taking any risk)- but I don't think they are as important as Hollywood likes to blame them for. Of all the people I know I feel I'm the only one caring what kind of reviews a movie gets. The rare people that do will usually follow one paper and see their opinion (New Yorker / NYT)
 
Snaku said:
Here's the thing, nobody sets out to make the shittiest movie they can. The idea of a movie being good or bad used to be subjective, and audiences used to make up their own minds after having seen a film. This doesn't happen anymore. Studio makes a movie, Rotten Tomatoes doles out a score, and that number is now considered to be holy writ among audiences. The only thing that's going to result from this system is Hollywood is going to pour all of their money into coming up with the perfect formula to get a Fresh rating, and every movie is going to be the same safe critic pandering circle jerk.
Click to expand...

So, the Disney/Marvel formula?
 
harriet the spy said:
RT rating system is awfully dumb from a statistical perspective (averaging a yes / no indicator completely favors movies which are not taking any risk)- but I don't think they are as important as Hollywood likes to blame them for. Of all the people I know I feel I'm the only one caring what kind of reviews a movie gets. The rare people that do will usually follow one paper and see their opinion (New Yorker / NYT)
Click to expand...

But what percentage of tickets are purchased online these days?

Those online sites generally have a rotten tomatoes score right next to the movie title or otherwise prominently displayed. If anything I think GAF underestimates how much they have an affect on ticket sales. This isn't about people reading reviews.
 
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