zlacker

Yeah, the audience score is in no way an accurate measure of quality because it is provided by a self-selected group of people who both paid for the movie and went online to rate it. The end result is that a lot of movies viewed as failures will have high audience ratings as long as they can reach some small passionate audience. Just looking at some current movies:

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.

>>slg+(OP)
The one useful aspect is that if you only care about the scores of movies you were already interested in, the audience score actually is quite accurate. If you already know "I am the sort of person who might pay to watch the little mermaid" then you can have good confidence you'll like it based on the audience score.

>>slg+(OP)
The ratings for those movies are so far away from how I felt about them (they all landed < 30% for me) it actually gives me an idea for a site.

You rate movies. The consensus ratings you see are based on people who have rated movies similarly to you overall.