Rotten Tomatoes is not Consumer Friendly
The number one source I use to determine if I am going to watch a movie is word of mouth. If a buddy of mine tells me that the movie they just saw was good, I will consider watching it. Rotten Tomatoes is supposed to be structured like one massive pool of word of mouth recommendations. It is supposed to be a way for the laymen to see the collective conclusion of other laymen and qualified critics to determine if a movie is worth seeing. I keep repeating ‘supposed to be’ because I don’t think that Rotten Tomatoes is a very good rating system for people to use to decide if they should watch a movie. In fact, I believe it is a very weak rating system.
Why I do believe this? Well, a couple of reasons. The first (and I think most people have already noticed this themselves) is that Rotten Tomatoes has an extreme disconnect between its ‘critics’ and the ‘audience.’ At the time of writing this, Rambo: Last Blood, has a 27% rating by critics and an 83% rating by the audience. That’s a 56% discrepancy. Star Wars: The Last Jedi has a 91% rating by critics and a 44% by the audience. That’s a 47% discrepancy. Captain Marvel has a 78% rating by critics and a 54% rating by the audience. A 24% discrepancy. These are just a few examples that reveal the inconsistencies of Rotten Tomatoes.
The inconsistencies of Rotten Tomatoes point to a broader issue in art which is that rating systems favor the tastes and preferences of ‘critics.’ Not only rating systems, but also stories in general, are tailored more towards critics and movie reviewers. Often times in my college writing classes I felt like the works we read and the papers that my classmates wrote were written solely for writers. The main characters were always aspiring writers, the themes were always about the artistic process, and the setting was always a studio apartment in a major city. The target audience was never the reader or the layman but the highly critical writer. The same is true for Rotten Tomatoes.
Rotten Tomatoes also gives out too many 90% and 80%. Basically, every Pixar movie has a 90% or higher on Rotten Tomatoes. Pretty much every western animated movie nowadays has at least an 85%. When I pulled up the movies opening this week, 7 out of the 11 movies that had already received ratings had received 80% or higher. To quote a famous edgelord, Syndrome: “And when everyone is super, no one will be.” Rotten Tomatoes is handing out too many gold medals. If 100% is perfect, which is operating off of the premise that there is such thing as a universally perfect movie, then a 90% should still be a nearly flawless movie. Obviously, this is not practical as many 90% movies are just average and are normally skipped over by most Americans (think every Oscar-winning movie since the 2000s).
If my greatest qualm with Rotten Tomatoes was packaged into a single statement, it would be that Rotten Tomatoes is not consumer-friendly. Essentially, the rating system given by Rotten Tomatoes doesn’t make the movie selection process easier or more convenient for the average consumer. I use word of mouth of my closest friends because they give me direct answers that I don’t need to read into or interpret.
“Is this movie worth seeing?”
“No.”
“OK cool. Thanks.”
Simple.
I believe that a straightforward scale of three would be the most consumer-friendly movie rating system. Pass, Wait for Home Release or See it in Theaters. That way, if a consumer or layman had any interest in seeing a movie, they could look at this rating system, make a decision, and then not have to waste their time and money.
