Speaking from personal experience as a critic, it’s definitely gamed by PR. Have been approached to ensure positive reviews get counted and even been haggled with to flip a rotten to a fresh. It’s a good reminder of why Metacritic is a vastly superior barometer of a movie’s critical standing, but I cannot deny that RT has a great internal team working on it that does a lot to expand the voices that get recognition for opining about film (even if it’s cynically co-opted for other purposes).
Great post which is very relevant to the film reviewing I do. Just yesterday I received an email from a PR person wanting me to review a particular film. I asked when and where it was playing and received a vague response that listed a couple of cities in California along with Boise, Idaho. She then asked if I was a Rotten Tomato credited critic. I'm not, but I'm sure she's looking for reviews that give the film a "fresh" score. This begs the question, how do they determine if something is "fresh" or "rotten?" I'd assume that if I give a film three out of four stars it would be considered "fresh" but what about a rating below that? I've been suspicious of Rotten Tomatoes for a while and will go to Metacritic if I really want to see how a film is being reviewed. The critics there seem more legitimate. Thanks again for all of your great research.
3. About a month or two ago, my 17-year-old son swore off Rotten Tomatoes forever upon learning that MEGAN has a higher critic's score than Shawshank Redemption. It comes up more often in conversation than it probably should in normal family homes.
One confounding factor that you don't seem to be including in the analysis is cultural shifts among critics. We've seen a period of intense political polarization and heavy-handed political messaging in many projects, with many media reviewers considering themselves to carry important partisan roles in that culture war, and an obligation to promote the correct sorts of media.
There's a long string of RT-memes of products receiving great reviewer scores with terrible viewer scores and vice-versa, and whenever see an outrageous schism in those scores, just looking at what side the reviewers are on will tell you the perceived political alignment of the product.
Some simple examples would be Dave Chapelle getting near 100% audience score, with terrible reviewer scores, or Hannah Gadsby getting 100% reviewer score with 26% audience score.
And it goes on for a lot of media. The deluge of less appreciated Marvel and Star Wars content coincides heavily with the types of messaging that have many critics feeling that supporting it is mandatory. E.g. The Acolyte was an unmitigated disaster but despite an audience rating of 19% has a critic rating of 79%. Meanwhile Ahsoka was a much better show, but where the audience rating is 45 percentage points higher, the critic rating has minimal differentiation at only 6 percentage points of difference between the disastrously bad show with "correct" messaging and the quite decent show with "correct" messaging.
These dynamics seem to be a massive factor in their own right, to the extent that the most accurate analysis might actually be to account for them in particular and try to analyze much of the remaining system in isolation.
You complain about “outdated” platforms but then complain certain sites “don’t work” on your mobile browser? Substack and Rotten tomatoes don’t work on MY browser and they have zero customer service. These so called “outdated platforms are keeping the net alive and it’s your attitude that’s the problem.
Speaking from personal experience as a critic, it’s definitely gamed by PR. Have been approached to ensure positive reviews get counted and even been haggled with to flip a rotten to a fresh. It’s a good reminder of why Metacritic is a vastly superior barometer of a movie’s critical standing, but I cannot deny that RT has a great internal team working on it that does a lot to expand the voices that get recognition for opining about film (even if it’s cynically co-opted for other purposes).
Great post which is very relevant to the film reviewing I do. Just yesterday I received an email from a PR person wanting me to review a particular film. I asked when and where it was playing and received a vague response that listed a couple of cities in California along with Boise, Idaho. She then asked if I was a Rotten Tomato credited critic. I'm not, but I'm sure she's looking for reviews that give the film a "fresh" score. This begs the question, how do they determine if something is "fresh" or "rotten?" I'd assume that if I give a film three out of four stars it would be considered "fresh" but what about a rating below that? I've been suspicious of Rotten Tomatoes for a while and will go to Metacritic if I really want to see how a film is being reviewed. The critics there seem more legitimate. Thanks again for all of your great research.
1. Love this.
2. Love Dobrenko.
3. About a month or two ago, my 17-year-old son swore off Rotten Tomatoes forever upon learning that MEGAN has a higher critic's score than Shawshank Redemption. It comes up more often in conversation than it probably should in normal family homes.
One confounding factor that you don't seem to be including in the analysis is cultural shifts among critics. We've seen a period of intense political polarization and heavy-handed political messaging in many projects, with many media reviewers considering themselves to carry important partisan roles in that culture war, and an obligation to promote the correct sorts of media.
There's a long string of RT-memes of products receiving great reviewer scores with terrible viewer scores and vice-versa, and whenever see an outrageous schism in those scores, just looking at what side the reviewers are on will tell you the perceived political alignment of the product.
Some simple examples would be Dave Chapelle getting near 100% audience score, with terrible reviewer scores, or Hannah Gadsby getting 100% reviewer score with 26% audience score.
And it goes on for a lot of media. The deluge of less appreciated Marvel and Star Wars content coincides heavily with the types of messaging that have many critics feeling that supporting it is mandatory. E.g. The Acolyte was an unmitigated disaster but despite an audience rating of 19% has a critic rating of 79%. Meanwhile Ahsoka was a much better show, but where the audience rating is 45 percentage points higher, the critic rating has minimal differentiation at only 6 percentage points of difference between the disastrously bad show with "correct" messaging and the quite decent show with "correct" messaging.
These dynamics seem to be a massive factor in their own right, to the extent that the most accurate analysis might actually be to account for them in particular and try to analyze much of the remaining system in isolation.
You complain about “outdated” platforms but then complain certain sites “don’t work” on your mobile browser? Substack and Rotten tomatoes don’t work on MY browser and they have zero customer service. These so called “outdated platforms are keeping the net alive and it’s your attitude that’s the problem.