For years now, Rotten Tomatoes has been part of my daily routine, checking to see critical consensuses on movies both old and new. For many, it’s a go-to source to see what movies are worth watching. Sometimes, whether a film is “fresh” or “rotten” will determine what I’ll see in the theatres. (And boy oh boy, if a film’s certified fresh, forget about it! That’s cinematic gold right there.)
About a week ago, my dad and I were talking about the films of Robert Zemeckis. One thing led to another, and I was checking good ol’ trustworthy Rotten Tomatoes to see what score Back to the Future had. It was at this moment where I noticed how nonsensical the site’s rating methods were.
Let me break down the scoring for Back to the Future for you: Amongst all critics, the film has a 96% and amongst “Top Critics” it has a score of 87%. And that’s fine, it’s a great movie. I have no qualms with Doc Brown. But once you look a little deeper (and by deeper, I mean just look right underneath the official score), you’ll notice there are some holes in RT’s logic. While the Tomatometer’s (stupid name, by the way) official score is near perfect, the average rating for Back to the Future is an 8.7 out of 10. First of all, why have the average rating be out of 10 instead of 100? Just add another decimal place and make it fit in the context of the Tomatometer score. Ugh, whatever.
Anyway back to the point. If BttF’s average score is basically an 87, why not give the film an official score of 87?! It’s a more accurate representation of the critical consensus, using a mean rather than a ratio to come up with a more truthful score. Even the audience score, which is touted as a 95%, is actually a 3.8 out of 5, which comes to a 76%. This is by far Rotten Tomatoes’s biggest flaw. How it computes critic ratings is ridiculously extreme and creates a network of misinformation.
Let’s say a critic reviews a movie that they enjoyed, but had a bunch of flaws. They didn’t hate the movie, but it wasn’t perfect. Their final score for the film is a letter grade, a C-. In the critic’s eyes, that’s not an awful review, just an okay one. But in the eyes of Rotten Tomatoes, this C- is seen as a “rotten”. There are two huge problems with this: 1.) The translation of letter grades to numerical grades has time and again been something that results in inaccurate representation of a critic’s views. 2.) The way Rotten Tomatoes categorizes reviews is so black and white. It’s a system that totally poopoos middle of the road reviews. A movie’s worth is determined on whether it gets a score of 60% or higher. As a wise man once said, “Only [Rotten Tomatoes] deals in absolutes.”
As mentioned earlier, the main problem with the site’s scoring is that it’s a ratio rather than an average of scores. Still using Back to the Future as an example, the film has 74 “fresh” and 3 “rotten” reviews. So, with 74 out of 77 reviews being positive, the film’s final score is 96%. The scoring doesn’t take into account what these critics have to say about the movie they’re reviewing; all that matters is the final score. Half of the reviews could be in the 70s, but they all count towards a near perfect ratio.
And that’s the other huge problem with Rotten Tomatoes and the biggest effect it’s had on how people read (or in most cases, don’t read) film criticism. A four page review on a morally complex movie is scrolled through in a couple of seconds, only for that brief glimpse at the end to see the amount of stars or thumbs up or hearts or whatever someone gives it. Rotten Tomatoes not only has a bullshit formula when it comes to rating movies, but it’s created a toxic atmosphere for critics, both professional and aspiring. Reviews are now expected to fit in the Rotten Tomatoes dichotomy: EPIC or garbage. Best film ever or the worst. And it’s such an important part to the lives of many moviegoers that its influence won’t be waning any time soon.
About a week ago, my dad and I were talking about the films of Robert Zemeckis. One thing led to another, and I was checking good ol’ trustworthy Rotten Tomatoes to see what score Back to the Future had. It was at this moment where I noticed how nonsensical the site’s rating methods were.
Let me break down the scoring for Back to the Future for you: Amongst all critics, the film has a 96% and amongst “Top Critics” it has a score of 87%. And that’s fine, it’s a great movie. I have no qualms with Doc Brown. But once you look a little deeper (and by deeper, I mean just look right underneath the official score), you’ll notice there are some holes in RT’s logic. While the Tomatometer’s (stupid name, by the way) official score is near perfect, the average rating for Back to the Future is an 8.7 out of 10. First of all, why have the average rating be out of 10 instead of 100? Just add another decimal place and make it fit in the context of the Tomatometer score. Ugh, whatever.
Anyway back to the point. If BttF’s average score is basically an 87, why not give the film an official score of 87?! It’s a more accurate representation of the critical consensus, using a mean rather than a ratio to come up with a more truthful score. Even the audience score, which is touted as a 95%, is actually a 3.8 out of 5, which comes to a 76%. This is by far Rotten Tomatoes’s biggest flaw. How it computes critic ratings is ridiculously extreme and creates a network of misinformation.
Let’s say a critic reviews a movie that they enjoyed, but had a bunch of flaws. They didn’t hate the movie, but it wasn’t perfect. Their final score for the film is a letter grade, a C-. In the critic’s eyes, that’s not an awful review, just an okay one. But in the eyes of Rotten Tomatoes, this C- is seen as a “rotten”. There are two huge problems with this: 1.) The translation of letter grades to numerical grades has time and again been something that results in inaccurate representation of a critic’s views. 2.) The way Rotten Tomatoes categorizes reviews is so black and white. It’s a system that totally poopoos middle of the road reviews. A movie’s worth is determined on whether it gets a score of 60% or higher. As a wise man once said, “Only [Rotten Tomatoes] deals in absolutes.”
As mentioned earlier, the main problem with the site’s scoring is that it’s a ratio rather than an average of scores. Still using Back to the Future as an example, the film has 74 “fresh” and 3 “rotten” reviews. So, with 74 out of 77 reviews being positive, the film’s final score is 96%. The scoring doesn’t take into account what these critics have to say about the movie they’re reviewing; all that matters is the final score. Half of the reviews could be in the 70s, but they all count towards a near perfect ratio.
And that’s the other huge problem with Rotten Tomatoes and the biggest effect it’s had on how people read (or in most cases, don’t read) film criticism. A four page review on a morally complex movie is scrolled through in a couple of seconds, only for that brief glimpse at the end to see the amount of stars or thumbs up or hearts or whatever someone gives it. Rotten Tomatoes not only has a bullshit formula when it comes to rating movies, but it’s created a toxic atmosphere for critics, both professional and aspiring. Reviews are now expected to fit in the Rotten Tomatoes dichotomy: EPIC or garbage. Best film ever or the worst. And it’s such an important part to the lives of many moviegoers that its influence won’t be waning any time soon.