zlacker

[return to "The Decomposition of Rotten Tomatoes"]
◧
1. ernest+d93[view] [source] 2023-09-07 19:52:08
>>tortil+(OP)
Rotten tomatoes is actually very useful if you know the magic formula:

* If tomatometer & audience score are within 5% of each other, you can trust the ratings to give you a decent indiciation of movie quality.

* If tomatometer is more than 15%+ higher than audience score, it means it's an artsy fartsy movie that critics like and movies don't.

* If audience score is 15%+ higher than tomatometer, it's a fun movie even if it's not oscar worthy. (https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/old_school is a perfect example)

◧◩
2. pauldd+8d3[view] [source] 2023-09-07 20:10:44
>>ernest+d93
Okay, let's give that a whirl

---

The Last Jedi

Tomatometer 91% Audience 41%: Artsy Fartsy

[Really?]

---

The Greatest Showman

Tomatometer 56% Audience 86%: Fun, not oscar worthy

[Won Oscar for Best Original Song]

---

EDIT: Truthfully, it was the release of these two films (both Dec 2017) that caused the Tomatormeter and I to part ways. Simply indefensible, IMO.

◧◩◪
3. bmelto+wf3[view] [source] 2023-09-07 20:25:11
>>pauldd+8d3
For me, it was after they invited a new batch of reviewers who ended up bumping Citizen Kane from RT's "best movie all time" down a bunch of slots to such an extent that it was outranked by Paddington 2

I still use the ratings (because they're built into Plex) but mostly as a novelty, and sometimes as a puzzlement. Increasingly, you see scores like 5% tomato, 95% audience (or vice versa!) that I'm sure mean _something_ but rarely anything to me.

◧◩◪◨
4. enrage+Nl3[view] [source] 2023-09-07 20:55:26
>>bmelto+wf3
I think this is mostly just a misunderstanding of what the RT score means. The scoring falls apart at the edges because its a measure of recommendability*, not a precision measure of quality.

Exceptionally good movies (which Paddington 2 is btw) will trend heavily toward 100% and any drop from 100% are from outlier reviewers. Citizen Kane has 1/131 negative reviews and Paddington 2 has 2/253 negative reviews.

If you want a rating of quality you can always just click on the score and see that paddington 2 has an 8.7 aggregate compared to Citizen Kane's 9.9.

* what percent of viewers will not regret watching the movie. That makes this a combination metric of quality and variance. A low variance 7/10 will beat a high variance 8/10 in RT score

[go to top]