What you do with information is than your decision.
Best case you know and trust your critics because you align to a certain degree with their experience and movie taste.
For example "now you see me" is a shit movie. Magic in a movie doesn't work and the main hidden character basically breaks the whole movie but apparently the audience loved it.
Also, people that rate movies online may not be representative of the entire movie-watcher population, so that may be, in some cases, also not a very accurate measurement, unless you yourself are a typical movie rater.
In the gaming world, Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare got the most disliked trailer ever on YouTube, and still sold more than 13m copies. Somewhat similarly, logic-devoid, low-quality children movies can get as many dislikes as parents want, children will still watch them.
The Last Jedi is apparently the cultural enrichment film of the decade.
Vulture ran an article on September 2023 that raised criticisms including the fact that since the acquisition by Fandango in 2016, the rules have changed in ways that happen to favor the biggest movies. The article cited publicity company Bunker 15 as an example of how scores can be boosted by recruiting obscure, often self-published reviewers to write positively, or selectively hiding negative reviews, using the example of 2018's Ophelia.
For a mainstream example, take Fast X. It's an objectively stupid movie with a great audience score - because it's exactly what it says on the tin! Nobody is confused about what they're watching. Nobody thinks they're going to get terrific drama or romance or suspense. They're going to get the 9th sequel to a comedy action movie about dudes driving cars.
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...
A better way to view the critic score is, "X% of film critics think this film is worth watching."
And the audience score is: "Y% of moviegoers who leave movie reviews on Rotten Tomatoes think this film is worth watching."
This is why Toy Story can get 99% (it's a crowd pleaser), and why daring, impactful films can sometimes get lower scores (they can be polarizing).
Try searching for barbie movie for an example. Click more reviews and filter by 1 star. The third says:
"Barbie," director and co-writer Greta Gerwig’s summer splash, is a dazzling achievement, both technically and in tone. It’s a visual feast that succeeds as both a gleeful escape and a battle cry. So crammed with impeccable attention to detail is "Barbie” that you couldn’t possibly catch it all in a single sitting; you’d have to devote an entire viewing just to the accessories, for example.
It even says ADVERTISEMENT in capital letters but below the fold where you have to expand the whole review to see it. Despite that this review directly contradicts its star rating, 774 "people" have marked it as helpful.
Scroll down a bit further and there is another, "If this was an item on the McDonald’s menu, it would be everyone’s favourite - the Oreo McFlurry. Hands down, I don’t think I could name a better film. The acting was superb!" which supposedly nearly a thousand people found helpful. This one doesn't say anywhere that it's an ad.
When I first noticed this, almost all the top 1 star reviews were ads. Real users have been correcting it and the top two reviews are now real. The second review says "Update: if you notice google is showing mostly 5 star reviews when there is almost an equal number of 1 stars to 5 stars hence why the average is 3 stars." and the 5th post says "I noticed a few giving spectaculars about the movie but rating it as one star, maybe to drown out the real reviews?" so irate users have been noticing the manipulation too.
It's really very embarrassing for Google. It's gone now but originally when you searched for this movie there was a special pink sparkle effect. So they're paying engineers to write special code just for this movie whilst ignoring obvious fake reviews, claiming they were meta-reviewed by thousands of people and they still haven't cleaned this up even weeks later.
The point is that commercial success in a variety of industries is a result of a variety of factors, product quality is frequently not the most relevant.
That is: a restaurant owner can correctly say that another restaurant has excellent food and service without that being an endorsement of the restaurant's ability to survive as a business.
Blue Beetle: 78% critics, 92% audience
Gran Turismo: 63%, 98%
Elemental: 74%, 93%
Meg 2: 29% 73%
Haunted Mansion 38%, 84%
Indiana Jones: 69%, 88%
Little Mermaid 67%, 94%
Those audience scores are not "more accurate" in any way. People who are forced to see these movies like them less than people who chose to see it.
There also really isn't anything currently that fits into "the political correctness / marketing budget of the movie" claim of OP. It seems like they are just buying into cultural war nonsense. The closest I can find is Barbie and its critic score is 5% higher than the audience score, so not much of a gap.
Which is kind of inevitable because how else would you choose who becomes a critic other than choosing someone whose idea of quality is at least somewhat close to those of the artists, producers and other critics.
My favourite way of judging movie quality is checking what kind of movie goers hate it and why.
It is critic-career suicide to give negative ratings to any girl-power movie, no matter how bad or artistically bankrupt. At the same time, any movie that gets republicans excited (even if it isn't political) will struggle to be certified-fresh on the platform.
> anti-woke”/anti-pc comments
If that's the sentiment, then that's the sentiment. I know it sounds like we've had an influx of new angry redditors. But, a lot of old school HN folks have fundamental disagreements with the woke/pc tent.
I agree that HN should try to avoid culture wars. But not when it is the crux of the very thread we're on.
You rate movies. The consensus ratings you see are based on people who have rated movies similarly to you overall.
They focus first on their political objectives, their political views, and what political issues they wish to advocate for above all else
This has been an increasing trope in modern film and shows.
"The narrative" is now even a meme... The other coded phrase for a "politically correct" film is "re-imagined for a modern audience"
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.)
High Audience Score: HA High Critics Score: HC
HA + HC: Great movie to watch
HA + no HC: An entertainment movie but don’t expect a masterpiece
No HA + HC: Avoid unless you have obscure tastes or if you are pretentious
No HA + No HC: Probably garbage
At a high level what I really want is two ratings: Global rating and does this deliver what it promised. A greasy spoon is objectively not a good restaurant but it scratches an itch and you have certain relatively low expectations of it so in the context of greasy spoons generally I might rate the restaurant 5 stars even if globally I'd give it two stars.
As you say with Fast X: objectively it is not a good movie but it absolutely delivers what it promised. People who like that movie series will be pleased with it so in that context it deserves a positive rating.
As a follow-on I want to tell the system about the things I like + the things I hate. Then I want the system to give more weight to ratings from others who both like and hate the same things. I honestly don't care if critics or audiences liked the movie... I want to know if people who in some way think like me enjoyed it.
EDIT: Ugh, looks like replier reached for personal attacks, so this thread has sadly derailed into flamewar :( Hitting the eject button.
-Pretentious watchers hating on summer blockbuster movies
-Political things and review bombs
About your specific example Steam comes to mind, they have a great review timeline feature that allows to filter out review bombs.
>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...
That's a list of movies, not an identification of political content in movies.
One feature that would be nice would be a filter to filter out reviewers based on certain criteria
-only one review
-only has reviews on certain films
-account life is less than specific threshold
That DB query is probably too expensive to run on a free site though. An app that scrapes the RT reviews and filters out based on this criteria has been on my list of things to build.
The art world is a _thing_, with tastes that can vary quite a bit from mid-brow average consumers. Its sensitive in its own way to "PC" and lobbying, but is distinct to a degree (albeit entangled, naturally).
I would disagree with the loose correlation point. Although it's just one component of a restaurant's broader strategy for success, quality is undoubtedly crucial. While in Times Square, I would doubt you would blindly choose any restaurant without considering food and service quality.
Also, I would say that while a restaurant owner can correctly evaluate another, it's not necessary implied that specifically an award winner has proven that the unbiased opinions of others put them in this position.
Recent history has shown us that any narrative can be termed “political” if it helps one side drive a narrative.
Just look at the faux outrage over induction ovens and banning beers. Completely fabricated nonsense used to drive a narrative. This is the true trope.
Oh come on, this is exactly what I’m talking about. No critic worth their salt is afraid to criticize a movie if it’s bad or mediocre.
I remember just recently the “woke” Marvel Eternals getting plenty of sniffy reviews because it was a boring endevour. Ditto for the Ghost Busters remake, Disney live actions etc.
The only thing is that the critics write actual reviews, they don’t just say “I hate the new Little Mermaid because they made Ariel black” like all the anti-woke mouthbreathers on the internet.
This is an analogy or what I mean by "political correctness" (or related concepts like "wokeness" and "social justice warrior"). Great art communicates truth about the human condition in a beautiful way. This is, of course, open to interpretation, yet somehow many people agree that, for example, The Godfather is a great film. Why? I believe the film shows us some truth about the human condition (particularly our ability to descend into evil) through a gripping story with excellent characters, visuals, dialogue, plotting, etc.
When we substitute an arbitrary checklist of criteria a film must meet that have nothing to do with communicating truth about the human condition in a beautiful way, we are engaging in "political correctness," and we have ceased to value art but instead propaganda. For instance, if we were to use the new Academy standards for Oscar-nominated movies, the Godfather would fail – the cast is almost all white, has no LGBT and IIRC includes the n-word. Amadeus, another excellent film (one of the most praised in Oscar history) would certainly fail, since the cast is all white and almost entirely male, as we would expect from a film set in 18th century Vienna. This does not mean great art cannot have diverse casts, LGBT characters or a lack of "problematic" content. For a recent example, the excellent show Andor ticks almost all of the DEI checkboxes – LGBT character(s), diverse cast –, but it also has smart writing, interesting characters, sensible plots, beautiful visuals and a compelling story. As long as the former are subordinated to the latter, a work remains art and not "politically correct" propaganda. At the same time, Oppenheimer ticks almost none of the DEI checkboxes and yet is arguably one of the best films of this century.
> So instead of using a meaningless euphemism, OP should articulate what exact themes, stories, or characters they think lead to a good critic score?
I think this comment betrays exactly what I'm critiquing. Great art can't be shoved in a box like this. Mediocre art has identifiable flaws - maybe it's visually bland or maybe the dialogue is poor or the characters act in inexplicable ways. These all detract from the beauty and truth of the work.
Or to put it more clearly: the way you feel about ycombinator comments here is very similar to how some people feel about e.g. LOTR or any other piece of media they otherwise treasure. I should think you might empathize with their position more if your politics weren't so opposed.
> *“The studios didn’t invent Rotten Tomatoes, and most of them don’t like it,” says the filmmaker Paul Schrader. “But the system is broken. Audiences are dumber. Normal people don’t go through reviews like they used to. Rotten Tomatoes is something the studios can game. So they do.”
...calling the audiences dumb. There are plenty of smart movies that manage to find smart audiences, but for some reason those smart audiences just don't exist when considering his movie. He can't admit to himself that he doesn't make very good movies, so he prefers to think that everybody else is stupid. Blaming audiences is a coping mechanism for bad artists.
I'm not sure what FOSS has to do with any of this, so I'll leave that be. For The Godfather, obviously what counts as Great Art is subjective. I think the idea of greatness can change as the public's norms/values change over time. A lot of people look back at classic movies from the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s and say "Yea that was a great movie for its time, but measured using today's moral yardstick--yow! Some of that stuff is actually not so good."
If The Godfather was made today, who could say whether the cast and crew would be more diverse? It probably would be, at least the crew. Would that make it any better or worse a film? There's no way to know. Maybe the creative leadership positions, financiers, and distribution companies would be more diverse. Would that make it a better or worse movie? Would The Godfather somehow not have been able to show truth about the human condition if its executive producer was black?
Times have changed. "Ticking DEI checkboxes" as you put it, should not be difficult--or even something a studio has to consciously think about. If you're a business or studio and are up all night sweating bullets about "Oh lord how am I going to tick DEI checkboxes," you're doing something fundamentally very, very, very wrong in your business. Your point about Andor supports this: A studio can easily do this (respect the norms of today) and still make a great movie!