On a side note, a lot of people missed the chance to watch a show called Review, which is too damn good: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Review_(TV_series) go watch it.
Now you might respond that there’s so much corruption in the world and you, as an individual, can’t do much to stop it all. That’s probably true! However, the power and the great benefit of living in a free, democratic society (I’m assuming you live in a western or otherwise free country, otherwise you may have bigger concerns than review payola on Rotten Tomatoes) is that individuals are free to act and to hold people accountable when they abuse their power. Maybe this issue isn’t that important to you and that’s fine, but maybe some other issue actually is really important to you.
What I’m getting at with this long-winded post is simple: try directing your efforts toward one thing you care about and see if you can make a difference, even in one small way. It can go a long way to help you feel more effective and engaged in society!
The Last Jedi is apparently the cultural enrichment film of the decade.
This is a single datapoint, but my hypothesis is that political correctness does indeed account for a measurable (beyond noise) portion of a RT score. Marketing spend probably matters more, and genuinely excellent non-PC films (say, Oppenheimer) can succeed without PC, but PC does contribute.
[0]https://fandomwire.com/theyve-been-barely-advertising-it-unt...
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-features/osca...
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/tv/orville/s01 (critics: 31%, audience: 93%)
vs
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/tv/star_trek_discovery/s01 (critics: 82%, audience: 49%)
(S02 of The Orville got very few but great reviews from the critics, it hadn't really changed much IMO.)
(especially nationalistic ones please)
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Edit: unfortunately your account has been breaking the site guidelines so badly and so frequently that I think we have to ban it. We simply can't have users posting things like >>37381905 .
If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
>There was no campaign speech to elect Biden in the latest Captain America
This is just a stupid statement
>I don't recall anything overtly political in most modern movies.
Snow White, Indian Jones 5, Just about Every Marvel Movie Past infinity War, 2 of the 3 Star Wars Films in the new Trilogy, The Little Mermaid... Shall I go on?
It is more pronounced in TV Shows however, She Hulk, Season 2 and 3 of Witcher, Rings of Power, etc etc etc
>So what exact "narratives" is everyone complaining about?
For starters [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xPE7-PRL0M8
This that just just the tip of the ice berg...
* 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)
The _Actors Who Love History But Not Accuracy_ list. Mel Gibson holding #1, but look out: Costner is on the rise!
Well, maybe one more caveat: user expectations as they relate to the genre or company. One thing I noticed while browsing the hidden gems list* -- which have games with extremely high ratings -- is that there's a LOT of hidden object games on there. I think there's one cat series that appears like three or four times. And some more conventional genres like RTSes or action RPG's are hardly present at all.
I think this is due to expectations: people don't expect a lot out of a hidden object game, they're generally very simple, and a small indie title can easily meet those low expectations. Whereas a genre that has included many big budget titles, people have higher expectations, even larger, highly experienced dev teams have a hard time pleasing everyone.
I opt for the audience in this case.
15% tomatometer, 85% audience score.
Sure it's a dumb stoner comedy, but it's an _amazing_ one. Being "dumb" is half the fun, but of course that translates into "more gross than comedic" and "lazy and unrewarding"
It's a pity keywords aren't in those datasets. Still, it's nice that this still exists. https://developer.imdb.com/non-commercial-datasets/
I like your test, but I recently watched "Platonic" series and loved it. But Tomat says 93%, Plebs only concede 74% -- I declare it is not Art house.
For non-contemporary movies I trust the Sight&Sound poll [1]. Yes, it's mostly artsy-fartsy movies. I love them.
Sure, that can also be gamed, but very much less so: if you are voting you can pick only your top 10 movies ever, and then the next poll is in ten years. It's very difficult to push marketing on it.
I can of course see two points of failure still:
1. Since it's Sight&Sound who picks the voters, they could choose only voters that fits their "ideology". I don't see what this ideology could be. Also, most directors are very well-known, and they wouldn't vote for Marvel Movie #19 since the votes are public [2].
2. A lot of voters could make a deal among themselves to all pick a certain movie. This is in part mitigated by the large numbers of voters, but of course it can happen.
Paul Schrader gave a lot of shit online because the #1 movie in the 2022 edition was "Jeanne Dielman". He sees that as "Distorted Woke Reappraisal" [3].
I think he's full of shit, and the S&S Poll is the most credible snapshot of (art?) movies made every 10 years.
[1] https://www.bfi.org.uk/sight-and-sound/greatest-films-all-ti...
[2] https://www.bfi.org.uk/sight-and-sound/greatest-films-all-ti...
[3] https://www.indiewire.com/features/general/paul-schrader-sig...
The TV show "King the Land" is a Korean drama that aired on cable in Korea this summer and was released at the same time on Netflix worldwide. It was very popular in Korea [1] and many Asian countries. But if you look at IMDB [2] it has a 4.2 rating, with 116 thousand votes of 1/10. Similar Korean shows typically have ratings in the 7-9 range. The reason for the low rating is a controversy over a minor character in the show. I don't know how this mass voting was organized, but it seems to have worked in affecting the IMDB score (and similarly on RT).
The problem is curation. I don't want to poll just about anyone. I only want to poll a selected list.
Selected how?
We can go by "seriousness", respect and proven knowledge, like the S&S Poll or the ASC for best cinematography [1].
Or, as you said, trust someone (or a group of people) because I like what they like.
[1] https://theasc.com/news/asc-unveils-list-of-100-milestone-fi...
Just for example:
https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/lousy-listing-on-sight-a... https://www.worldofreel.com/blog/2022/12/b9nt3og3xtalyb227h3... https://www.worldofreel.com/blog/jb7gl4mobhpnsn03tc6tek9fzko...
The S&S poll results were very controversial and I don't really want to come across as saying the list was good or bad, or that any film should or should not have been ranked as it was (I'm at a point in my life where I think the whole idea of making lists is flawed and elitist regardless of how the polling is done), but Schrader wasn't the only one complaining about the process. In fact some people were predicting controversy before the list was even revealed because of how the process was unfolding. Having the person who is responsible for the voting pool go into it with the objective of "setting the canon on fire" — rather than obtaining a more voting pool more representative of the cinema community worldwide per se — I think is fairly opening themselves up for criticism.
More broadly, I think even if you accept the S&S poll as fine (which maybe it is), the controversy kind of points to ways in which the process could be gamed. I think that's true regardless of whether you think the poll was better this year or in the past: if it was better this year, it says a lot about how it was implicitly gamed in the past, and if it was problematic this year, I think it says something about how it was gamed that way.
Maybe Goodhart's law is inevitable.
In fairness, I knew the moment JJ Abrams got the role that the sequel trilogy was doomed. It's a lot more his fault than Johnson's, and a lot of the criticisms TLJ got were a consequence of the previous movie. If SW was to modernize, it needed to find new grounds, and JJ could never do it.
I was never a big fan, but I still regret to inform everyone that Disney is going to Zombify the franchise and milk the Zombie cow forever. This video is the future of Star Wars:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8zY9z7IP-1Q
(Yes, it's about the Simpsons, but all Zombie TV looks the same at the limit)