Tom Ponders: Is Rotten Tomatoes Useful?

When I'm not working on my blog, I'm balancing the starts of a music career, school, and two part time jobs. At one of my jobs, a video game sales guy at Toys R Us, I have a close friend who I half-jokingly half-seriously refer to as "my friend with the worst taste in movies". Seriously, our tastes could not clash more. If I like it, chances are he'll hate it. If he likes it, chances are I think it's horrible. If he wants to see it, chances are it's at the bottom of my list. If I want to see it, he says he'll wait to see it on DVD.

One day we were talking about perceived quality from a critical standpoint vs. an audience stand point. One film we both dislike, Fast Five, has a high rating on Rotten Tomatoes. When I mentioned this, he became angry. "Rotten Tomatoes is owned by Sony, the company who distributed Fast Five!" he declared. "That's why it has a high score! They just want to have a good rank for their own movies!"

It turned out his facts weren't quite straight on that, but that's not the point. I actually began to wonder, is Rotten Tomatoes owned by a film studio? Do they have control over content like that? Are they really so disingenuous with scores as to favor themselves?

What did I learn?

What Is Rotten Tomatoes?

Senh Duong loved Jackie Chan. He loved Jackie Chan so much that he wanted to collect every review that he could find on every Jackie Chan movie ever made. That's where his idea started. He wanted to make a website where someone could easily find reviews for a film from a number of American Critics. In 1998, the site was launched with its first review for the film "Your Friend And Neighbors", holding a 77% score on the site. It was an immediate success, sparking the idea to team up with classmates and make it a full time website. By 2000, that was a reality. Rotten Tomatoes has always had that goal - to get as many reviews for a film as possible within particular categories, summarize them into a general consensus, and assign it a few numbers to help rank films easier. 

In 2004, the site was purchased by IGN, its first owner other than the creator himself. In 2010, the site was sold to Flixter, then an independent company. Flixter went on to produce it's now popular mobile application. Then, in 2011, Flixter was purchased by Warner Brothers, who currently owns both Flixter and Rotten Tomatoes. 

Rotten Tomatoes is a very simple idea. Staff members for the site collect reviews from authors that are members of particular writing groups - certain guilds and associations. These are NOT to be confused with the site's critics. Rotten Tomatoes actually uses USER reviews as its site critics. At one point, I was a member of these critics. I have since stopped writing, as sending readers to my blog was apparently against the rules. To become one of these critics, a "Super Reviewer" as they call it, your reviews must obtain a certain amount of "likes", at which point you receive a nomination, your work is reviewed, and receive the status. Then, there are Top Critics. These are notable critics, usually for a notable news paper. Michael Phillips, A.O. Scott, Peter Travers all qualify for this. 

Once the reviews are collected, they are simply checked positive or negative. There is no scale. If it's a hateful review, a disappointed review, a sad review, it's negative. If it's praising the film, or simply showing a bit of appreciation, it's positive. Finally, a percentage is found. If a film has under a 60% approval rating, it is considered Rotten. If it has 75% or higher with at least 40 reviews and five Top Critic reviews, it becomes "Certified Fresh" (unless, the score drops below 70 at any point). This also means that if a film has 20 write ups and all of them are positive, it won't be "Fresh" due to an insufficient number of reviews.

In addition, Rotten Tomatoes has a general "User Score". This is where the average user can rank a film on a scale from one to five. A three and a half or above is considered a positive review, anything lower is negative. This number then forms the Audience Score. This is the most unpredictable, and surprisingly least accurate number. Although it certainly does have its use. We'll get to why in a bit.

So now that we understand how the site works, what about the ownership?

Warner Brothers

It makes sense to distrust the company owning Rotten Tomatoes when they make the movies themselves. But from the model we looked at, is it really possible that they could push the negative reviews aside and see that their films are all positively reviewed? 

Well, that's easy enough. What were some movies recently from Warner Bro's, produced or simply distributed, and what were their scores?

We're The Millers - 42%
The Conjuring - 86%
Pacific Rim - 71%
Man of Steel - 56% (BUT IT WAS TERRIBLE GODDAMNIT)
The Hangover: Part III - 19%
The Great Gatsby - 49%
The Incredible Burt Wonderstone - 36%
42 - 77%
Jack The Giant Slayer - 52%
Beautiful Creatures - 46%
Bullet to the Head - 46%
Gangster Squad - 32%
The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey - 65%
Cloud Atlas - 66%
Argo - 96%
Trouble With The Curve - 52%
The Apparition - 4%
The Campaign - 65%
The Dark Knight Rises - 88%
Magic Mike - 80%
Rock of Ages - 41%
Chernobyl Diaries - 21%
Dark Shadows - 38%
The Lucky One - 20%
Wrath of the Titans - 25%

I think that's enough to suffice. It's pretty obvious that these numbers are all over the place, we see a high of 96% for Argo, all the way down to 4% for The Apparition. In fact, the acquisition of Flixter to Warner Brothers' was made in May of 2011. What came out that month? 

Something Borrowed - 15%
The Hangover Part II - 24%

And then in June we saw Green Lantern earn an abysmal 26%. No, not until Horrible Bosses earned a 69% did we see a Warner Bros project receive a decent score. I think this is pretty decent proof that Warner Bros doesn't edit their scores. In fact, citing my last article, you would know they wouldn't need to - critics don't affect a films income at all. 

What About Audience Scores?

If there's any number to take the least seriously from the site, it's the audience score. But why is this? Am I implying that a critic has a more intelligent say in a films quality? No, definitely not. An audience decides what a classic will be. However, there is one truth many people don't realize about audience scores. Let me reveal it to you with the following question:

How often do you fill out an audience score?

If your answer was what I think it was, it's not often. In fact, many people don't fill out audience scores at all. Who does then? There are three types of people who do. I am the minority. I am someone who constantly ranks every movie that I see. We are not a large group of people. No, the rest of the audience score is controlled by one group of people who absolutely loved the movie, and the other group of people who absolutely hated the movie. So what do you get? A lot of super one sided arguments bashing down each other. Not to mention that to fill out a rank on Rotten Tomatoes, you need to have an account set up. Many people don't do this, instead choosing to look at the scores and walk away. I find that Metacritic has a more accurate audience rating.

But really, you shouldn't listen to those anyway. You should go see what you want to see. 

That's right. I said it. Don't let a critic change your mind. It's great that critics are around to help you, to let you know we didn't like a movie so maybe you should go see another movie instead. But that doesn't mean that we should tell you that the movie you've been dying to see is so bad that you'll hate it. That might not be the case.

And THAT is where the flaw is with Rotten Tomatoes. Not in its execution, but in its interpretation.

How To Use Rotten Tomatoes

I took an Earth Science class my senior year of college. If there was one thing that was hammered into our heads, it was the following statement - "Correlation does not imply causation." What does it mean? It means, in science, that just because there is a correlation does not mean that that is the direct cause. For example, just because many terrorists in the past have been of a particular ethnic descent does not mean that every terrorist will be of the same descent. Simple, right? So what does this have to do with Rotten Tomatoes?

People look at a score on Rotten Tomatoes and see it as a judgement of quality. I did the same thing for a long time. We think the lower the score, the worse the movie. And if we look generally speaking, this might be true. But lets recall a particular truth about how reviews are collected. They are simply called Fresh or Rotten. There is no rank. A review expressing a bit of disappointment and a review damning the film to the eternal fires of hell are both on the same level. 

Now imagine you have a film with 5% incredibly glowing reviews, with 95% of the reviews expressing that the film was silly and a bit boring. But now, put that in perspective with a film averaging lets say 25%, where a fourth of the reviews say that the film was passable as popcorn entertainment and the additional 75% of the critics write absolutely scathing reviews. These are two completely different films. And for me personally, it shows. In fact my lowest ranked film of the year so far is Man of Steel, a film averaging at 56%. My second least favorite is The Incredible Burt Wonderstone, at 36%.

So what does this mean? It means that, as with all reviews, Rotten Tomatoes should be interpreted with a grain of salt. But that's not all. We have to also bear in mind that Ranks bear no specifics on quality of the film, but rather the general acceptance of the film. So it's less of a rank, and more of a helpful tool with probability. If the score is lower, it's fair to say that the chances of liking a movie are also lower. But again, and I cannot emphasize this enough, a low score on Rotten Tomatoes does not necessarily mean that the movie is bad. In fact, I always argue that when a film is ranked in the 50's or 60's, the opinions are split enough that you might as well walk in with no expectations.

More importantly, a low score doesn't mean you won't like it. In fact, there are plenty of films that I liked that are ranked "rotten" this year on Rotten Tomatoes. Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters and Great Gatsby even have ranks above 4. 

So What's The Point?

Just like any other film critic, the point isn't to tell you what to see. It's to be a tool to help you pick. If you see a trailer that gets your really excited, you should go see the movie. If you see a trailer for a film you know you're going to hate, you should just skip it. But Rotten Tomatoes is a great tool for the times you have a few bucks to blow on a movie, or are looking for a fun night out with your friends, and don't know what to see. What movie has the highest probability of being liked? Even though it's not a guaranteed win, it's definitely helpful to know what movies people are talking about positively the most.

How do I use Rotten Tomatoes? I use it a bit differently than other people. There are so many movies that come out in a weekend, especially during August, that I know I can't see everything (I'm not made of money). So when I need to pick, if I see a movie with an incredibly low rank and I don't think anyone would miss a review for it, I'll skip that before anything else. For example, this week we see The Butler, Jobs, Kick-Ass 2, and Paranoia. Even though three of those are doing badly, I know my audience will care far more about the Jobs film and Kick-Ass 2. Paranoia is definitely not the winning film this week. Therefore, I'll skip it.

I hope this helps you understand how Rotten Tomatoes more effectively. And I hope it gets rid of the notion that the lower the score the worse the movie. It's a great collection of reviews and a number assigned to show positive feedback, nothing more. And that makes for a nice help when deciding what to see.