Do Movie Ratings on 'Rotten Tomatoes' Really Affect a Movie's Box Office? (theringer.com) 101
Either Rotten Tomatoes was destroying the film industry, or it didn't matter much at all, writes The Ringer, noting competing storylines about the influence of the film review-aggregating web site.
But they've now performed a statistical deep dive to try to answer the question, and concluded that "The truth likely lies in the middle: Rotten Tomatoes wasn't tanking the industry or single-handedly exposing that Baywatch was bad, but it wasn't irrelevant, either." In fact, our analysis reveals that Rotten Tomatoes scores are reliably correlated with box office performance, especially for certain genres. But the aggregator's influence may have been on the wane before the coronavirus struck, and it may matter less than ever in the present uncertain circumstances...
Our first finding is that the average Rotten Tomatoes critic score has increased over time. Maybe movies have improved — or at least grown closer to critics' liking — or maybe the rise reflects changes in the makeup of Rotten Tomatoes' pool of reviewers... Whatever the reason(s) for the increasing scores, there's no evidence of greater negativity that could be turning off ticket buyers (which probably doesn't displease Fandango). The site bestows a "Fresh" rating on any movie with a 60 percent score or higher, and the average movie now clears that threshold....
Action movie earnings are the least closely associated with review scores, maybe because when people just want to see stuff blow up, they're willing to lower their standards in certain respects. Comedies and horror movies — particularly the latter — are far more consistent with the critical consensus. A perfectly scored action movie's earnings might double its budget, but a perfectly scored comedy can quadruple its budget, while a perfectly scored horror flick can beat its budget by 10 or 20 times...
The mystery of most interest to studio execs is whether Rotten Tomatoes has strengthened the relationship between the critical consensus and box office performance, which also existed in the pre-internet age. The evidence suggests that the studios were a tad too intimidated in 2017... However, there are some signs that increased attention to the critical consensus may have affected whether movies' earnings got out to fast or slow starts, even if it didn't dramatically lower or raise their final ticket tallies.
But they've now performed a statistical deep dive to try to answer the question, and concluded that "The truth likely lies in the middle: Rotten Tomatoes wasn't tanking the industry or single-handedly exposing that Baywatch was bad, but it wasn't irrelevant, either." In fact, our analysis reveals that Rotten Tomatoes scores are reliably correlated with box office performance, especially for certain genres. But the aggregator's influence may have been on the wane before the coronavirus struck, and it may matter less than ever in the present uncertain circumstances...
Our first finding is that the average Rotten Tomatoes critic score has increased over time. Maybe movies have improved — or at least grown closer to critics' liking — or maybe the rise reflects changes in the makeup of Rotten Tomatoes' pool of reviewers... Whatever the reason(s) for the increasing scores, there's no evidence of greater negativity that could be turning off ticket buyers (which probably doesn't displease Fandango). The site bestows a "Fresh" rating on any movie with a 60 percent score or higher, and the average movie now clears that threshold....
Action movie earnings are the least closely associated with review scores, maybe because when people just want to see stuff blow up, they're willing to lower their standards in certain respects. Comedies and horror movies — particularly the latter — are far more consistent with the critical consensus. A perfectly scored action movie's earnings might double its budget, but a perfectly scored comedy can quadruple its budget, while a perfectly scored horror flick can beat its budget by 10 or 20 times...
The mystery of most interest to studio execs is whether Rotten Tomatoes has strengthened the relationship between the critical consensus and box office performance, which also existed in the pre-internet age. The evidence suggests that the studios were a tad too intimidated in 2017... However, there are some signs that increased attention to the critical consensus may have affected whether movies' earnings got out to fast or slow starts, even if it didn't dramatically lower or raise their final ticket tallies.
People are sheep (Score:2)
If Rotten Tomatoes can artificially affect a movie's box office performance, it means people are sheep, nothing less, nothing more.
And if RT didn't exist, something else would have had the same effect.
I for one never look at reviews. I look at trailers, decide whether I want to watch the movie or not based on my OWN experience, then watch it (or not), then (rarely) give it a rating (through word-of-mouth) if I did watch it, or skip it completely if I didn't. If I liked the movie a lot, I recommend it to peo
Re:People are sheep (Score:4)
Not really. Let's say you want to see a movie. You have 3 choices. Nobody you know has seen them yet, but you can only see one tonight, so which shall it be?
If rotten tomatoes has historically been fairly closely in agreement with your own reviews, it stands to reason it probably will be again. So why not go see the one that has the best rating?
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If rotten tomatoes has historically been fairly closely in agreement with your own reviews....
But it's not that simple. Rotten Tomatoes, like just about every rating system from Amazon to Yelp, rates on a single aggregate scale. One that will agree with absolutely no one.
My favorite example is the movie A Million Ways To Die In The West. I actually enjoyed this movie for it's crude silliness. I thought it should've rated much higher than its three star rating (back when Netflix did ratings that way). I went to investigate individual reviews on Rotten Tomatoes and found that all of the reviews w
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A trailer lasts for two minutes tops. So you spend, say, 10 minutes watching trailers on your phone and decide. How hard can it be?
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So you would rather trust a trailer put together by experts in finding the only good 120 seconds out of a 90ish minute movie rather than looking at reviews from people who actually saw the whole thing and who you generally agree with?
Of course, if historically Rotten Tomatoes hasn't matched your tastes so well, you might have to resort to that.
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No, I would rather analyze a trailer than look at an aggregated score. As for the reviews themselves, it has become so difficult to dig for and pick the objective ones, that I don't bother anymore. Self-reliance first.
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A trailer lasts for two minutes tops. So you spend, say, 10 minutes watching trailers on your phone and decide. How hard can it be?
That's not the problem with trailers. The problem is that every movie will have two minutes of good content, hence the trailer is not representative of the movie.
See this for example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sR5MlWTAtRg [youtube.com]
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Yeah, that example... I loved both movies. The trailers too.
I thought it was obvious when I said "I for one" - should have been crystal clear that it wasn't a thing for everyone.
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That's not the problem with trailers. The problem is that every movie will have two minutes of good content, hence the trailer is not representative of the movie.
Amen. Trailers are nothing more than attention grabbers (anymore, anyways) or advertisement-like mixes of nothing but Good(tm) and Awesome(tm) and Must-Have(tm). Lemme throw another (tm) in there. Yes, yes, that trailer of a trailer is great... but not quite perfect. Hmm.. *changes order of ADD-grabbing highlight segments and throws another (tm) on it*. There. Perfect. Heh.
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Not really. Let's say you want to see a movie. You have 3 choices. Nobody you know has seen them yet, but you can only see one tonight, so which shall it be?
If rotten tomatoes has historically been fairly closely in agreement with your own reviews, it stands to reason it probably will be again. So why not go see the one that has the best rating?
Indeed. I believe you are spot on.
What about the inverse?
You want to see a movie but you have no choices. Lots of people know this because they're in the same boat. What shall you see? Probably something you've already seen that you know will satisfy your desire and make you feel you have obtained your goal in the end. Good enough, right?
If movies start coming back out again and things go back to your initial statement in behavioral nature, things should go back to what people were satisfied with in th
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A friend's opinion weighs a lot more than an aggregated rating from 10K strangers.
Oh, yeah, not talking about friends as in "you and X are now friends on Facebook", but true friends, whom you've known for a long time, in person.
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Trailers are the worst possible way to find out if a movie's any good or not. They're about as much use as the book reviews that are printed on the back of books in the bookshops.
As for RT... explain one thing to me: How come the "Top DVD and streaming" section usually shows next week's movies, ie. movies that haven't been released on DVD or streaming yet. How does that work?
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Trailers are the worst possible way to find out if a movie's any good or not.
No, they're not. I can give two examples of many where the trailers were enough to know the movie would suck.
First, John Carter. Having read the entire Edgar Rice Burroughs series, the trailer told me it had no relation to the original story other than the guy was named John Carter, he was on Mars and there was a princess involved. I told someone at work the movie would be lucky to last until the end of the month (it opened at t
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Trailers are the worst possible way to find out if a movie's any good or not.
No, they're not. I can give two examples of many where the trailers were enough to know the movie would suck.
OK, I'll concede that. Trailers can tell you if it sucks but not if it's going to be good.
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Trailers are the worst possible way to find out if a movie's any good or not.
No, they're not. I can give two examples of many where the trailers were enough to know the movie would suck.
OK, I'll concede that. Trailers can tell you if it sucks but not if it's going to be good.
I never though of it that way. That's actually much more efficient to me. Thanks for pointing it out!
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Trailers all the best bits of the movie, often the rest is utter shite. Reviews, dive deep into the critics reviews, most people do not bother, when there is a spread in the critic reviews from 5 to 2 or 3, well, the movie is utter shite and not worth watching, shitfluencers pocketing money generating the 5 and more honest reviewers doing to 2 to 3 the average 4 a complete lie fabricated PR=B$ doing the buying of reviews but it allows you to ignore shitfluencers.
Yeah I don't bother with the 5s except in the
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It's a difficult decision to make:
"Do I include the most expensive scene into the trailer or not; does it make the others alongside it in the trailer support the fact that nothing is as great, or does it capture enough attention that nothing else matters?"
I guess the answer depends on the personality of the one making the decision....? In personal opinion, I ignore trailers as much as I ignore advertising because I know it's profit-driven bullcrap, so I'm leaning toward not giving out the best piece for fr
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Exactly. Trailers are rarely faithful representations of the movie. And besides, if someone is influenced by a studio trailer then they can hardly whine that others are influenced by other more impartial sources of information.
Faithful - excellent word choice!
Ads. You decide based on ads. And call them sheep (Score:3)
> for one never look at reviews. I look at trailers
You understand "trailers" are just ads, right?
You ignore the opinions of third-parties who have actually seen the movie, instead choosing bases on ads. Because apparently you trust the studios to tell you if the movie is good, rather than audiences.
You ignore the relatively unbiased reactions of ordinary movie-goers, instead deciding how to spend your time and money based on ads. And you call other people sheep.
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You understand "trailers" are just ads, right?
You ignore the opinions of third-parties who have actually seen the movie, instead choosing bases on ads. Because apparently you trust the studios to tell you if the movie is good, rather than audiences.
You ignore the relatively unbiased reactions of ordinary movie-goers, instead deciding how to spend your time and money based on ads. And you call other people sheep.
1. I can see through a trailer's rosy filter. In retrospect, that might not be common. So I stand corrected, watching a trailer might not be enough for others. I also forgot to mention that I also look up the plot/synopsis/storyline (usually on IMDB), but pay little to no attention to ratings.
2. Yes, third parties who watched the movie are of little importance to me, because most reviews are inherently subjective and would not match my opinion at all.
3. The reactions of movie goers are, as mentioned above,
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> for one never look at reviews. I look at trailers
You understand "trailers" are just ads, right?
You ignore the opinions of third-parties who have actually seen the movie, instead choosing bases on ads. Because apparently you trust the studios to tell you if the movie is good, rather than audiences.
You ignore the relatively unbiased reactions of ordinary movie-goers, instead deciding how to spend your time and money based on ads. And you call other people sheep.
These days, you never know who has been "bought out" (sorry, poor grammatical representation of worthless sacks of crap that can have words nicely direct-deposited into their mouth). Sorry to start off on a poor tone, but.. screw them.
Having said that, your info is pretty good except my level of trust in people is so low that even opinions of the [ordinary movie-goers, in this case] behind data sets is akin to noise. Direct word of mouth (note: MOUTH, not online comment where others might be looking) is k
Re: People are sheep (Score:2)
Except the movies where the best 2 bits ARE the trailer! The amount of crap put out today is staggering.
Plus I would rather see what the average Joe thought rather than a critic picking it to pieces
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Don't even get me started with critics. They are even worse.
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If Rotten Tomatoes can artificially affect a movie's box office performance, it means people are sheep, nothing less, nothing more. And if RT didn't exist, something else would have had the same effect. I for one never look at reviews. I look at trailers, decide whether I want to watch the movie or not based on my OWN experience, then watch it (or not), then (rarely) give it a rating (through word-of-mouth) if I did watch it, or skip it completely if I didn't. If I liked the movie a lot, I recommend it to people I know who like the movie genre, if I didn't like it I will give them my opinion on it.
Avoiding a movie only because so-and-so decided it sucks is herd behavior.
Really? I go there to check out the two kinds of ratings. The audience score to see whether the movie is worth watching and the critics score mostly for amusement to see how much the professional critics whine about it. Generally the audience is much more honest about whether a movie is worth watching or not than professional critics. Professional critics have too much of cultural and political/ideological baggage. I've seen enough trailers to know that a good trailer can easily be made for a totally sucky
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trailer commercial*
What animal would we have to assign to people who intentionally expose themselves to ads?
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People can not be experts on everything.
We don't have enough time during the day to make informed decisions on everything that crosses our minds.
Many of our decision are made up from advise from others. When making a big purchase you try to get others reviews. You try to figure out which review is a trusted source or just from marketing, fan-boys or just from blind haters. But still we gravitate to what we think is a trusted source. Because for most things even big decisions we do not have the resources
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I am sorry, my previous message might have come across as overgeneralizing.
The problem I wanted to convey was that many people would read reviews but not analyze them. They would decide a piece of art (movie, music, etc) is good or bad because so-and-so said so. They never think about whether so-and-so is an expert or not. They never consider whether so-and-so just happens to like a different style of that art and therefore automatically considers another style, genre, type as being crap. They never conside
Answer: yes. (Score:2, Interesting)
Ratings on Rotten Tomatoes is a factor because some people use it to determine if a movie is worth watching.
The remaining question is: is Rotten Tomatoes a significant factor. Answering this question would requires using the scientific method in which the people involved are not willing to participate.
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It's fake news. (Score:4, Interesting)
They should call it "BOTten tomatoes," given it's very high vulnerability to bots. I was watching with interest when star wars the last jedi came out, and there was very strong evidence that bots were being used to hold the score above 80%. I read about analysis done of the comments that showed repetition and simple insipidity in the positive comments which came in consistently timed to counteract the negative comments. I can't find links about this now but admittedly I didn't look very hard. My memories are good enough evidence for me.
I see now that the audience score has tumbled. Is this because Disney has stopped bothering with their positive-rating bot farm? They have made their money so clearly they don't need it anymore. Or maybe a bunch of hater trolls have just built more bot farms since then, to pull the ratings down. The explanation that seems the most reasonable will depend on whether or not you are on the love-it or hate-it side of the fanbase.
In EITHER case, it is clear that rotten tomatoes hasn't done nearly enough to protect against bots, for the audience score.
I remember reading that the critical review score (which are never bots since they are all professional reviewers) is also skewed to the positive side by Disney's practice of denying reviewers access to pre-release movies if those reviewers give negative reviews. I don't know if this is true, but it sure seems to explain many Disney movies that got glowing reviews from the professional reviewers and utter garbage from the audience reviews.
I guess that was a lot of words to say that I personally don't trust Rotten Tomatoes to be giving me any kind of honest summary of opinions, neither from the professional nor the audience reviewers.
Re: Answer: yes. (Score:2)
The issue I have with RT is that I think most movies are pure garbage, but the RT scores for so many things are in the 90s that you still have to be careful.
You know what they say about correlation... (Score:5, Insightful)
> In fact, our analysis reveals that Rotten Tomatoes scores are reliably correlated with box office performance
Correlation does not imply causation. Perhaps RT scores influence box office performance, or perhaps the box office performance is the result of the quality of the film, which is reflected in the RT scores. Or perhaps neither is the case.
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I really can't think of how you would actually prove causality. The whole question is how seeing a RT score interacts with all the other inputs you usually get about a movie, broadly speaking 'word of mouth.' Ther
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Fine, I'll write it another way: "You can't draw conclusions from correlations, since they can also be explained by the opposite relationship."
I can believe it (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: I can believe it (Score:3)
I never read reviews until after I watch something, and then normally if I particularly liked it.
I realize this is probably not the way reviews are supposed to work, but I find it scratches that itch if wanting to talk about something really enjoyed.
Some movies I liked didn't rank so well. Had I read reviews ahead of time I may not have givin it a chance.
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Some movies I liked didn't rank so well. Had I read reviews ahead of time I may not have givin it a chance.
That's one way of looking at it. OTOH, how many movies have you wasted your time and money on but might have avoided if you'd looked at the reviews? I find that by looking at Rotten Tomatoes scores I'm far less likely to end up wishing I'd done something else with my evening.
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Depends on the review. Many "reviews" of TV episodes, are more followups than reviews anyone would use to judge an episode before seeing it. Which makes sense considering the audience of TV episodes. I am seeing the same spread to film "reviews" too though. There is definitely a market for that, I just wish we would call them something other than reviews though.
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Depends if it was review bombed or not. Plenty of decent movies get bombed over some stupid thing.
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If it's for something outside of the movie, such as "it differs from the book", then it does not matter to me.
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Last Jedi is a great example, possibly the best Star Wars movie ever made. It set things up for a fantastic ending to the trilogy that was completely wasted by Rise of Skywalker.
So how helpful are the reviews on IMDB? Rating is 7.0 at the moment. The top recommended review isn't a review, it's just a rant about how Rian Johnson and Disney ruined everything, i.e. a bomb. If IMDB promoted reviews that actually critiqued the film, that actually mentioned aspects of it rather than just saying Disney killed Star
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I can see you came to that movie with an open mind so perhaps I can offer a different perspective.
The trilogy was headed towards Rise of Skywalker, and as we know that movie was pretty bad. If Snoke hadn't died it would have been him at the end, basically remake RotJ. And even worse it would have had an elderly Luke Skywalker bouncing around like the CGI Yoda from the prequels.
Last Jedi ended the Jedi saga and did away with the simple good/evil dichotomy. When you think about it most of the problems faced i
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If the Holdo Manoeuvre bother you then you must hate the rest of it. Gravity and sound in space. Why did they bother with the trench in A New Hope, in fact why not just launch stealth missiles at it, in fact why don't they paint their ships black? How did the primitive Ewoks take down the Empire's elite forces? What exactly was Luke's plan to save Leia and Han? Why didn't they rescue Anakin's mother? Why does Obi-wan fight like an old man who has never held a sword before? Why does the Empire send in AT-ATs
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The only reason it even has a 7? House Of Mouse owns RT now and they won't let any flick in a franchise they paid 4 BILLION dollars for be rated at 3 until they recoup their investment.
This is what gets me the most about the Star Wars sequel trilogy. They're not just bad Star Wars movies, they're bad movies, in any genre. And that's fairly mind-boggling. Disney has been absolutely militant about demanding every movie they produce be focus-grouped, polished, optimized, and aimed squarely at one thing: making truckloads of money. Which ordinarily results in at least an objectively decent product. It may not be inspired or groundbreaking, but it usually won't be obviously bad storytelli
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I mean, none of them are particularly great movies so the bar isn't really that high. My take is I think the whole new trilogy suffers from is that they don't seem to really know what story they want to tell and that clear lack of planning shows in its execution. So as a consequence, it ends up with a lot of interesting ideas in places and I think that much of the original trilogy characters/nostalgia are used as a crutch to get/keep people invested in this series. As a precursor, I'll also say that I think
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Solo was terrible! I agree that they didn't seem to have a proper plan for the new trilogy though.
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It's nowhere as bad as the reviews I saw were for it. But I viewed it with the mindset it was a parody of Star Wars and it was pretty fun that way because there wasn't any other way to watch it.
But you didn't expound on your statement of set up for a fantastic ending as I am intrigued in your idea of how one might have taken the ending to Last Jedi and made it fantastic.
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Okay, so in TLJ it stopped being just two families at war, or Jedi vs. Sith. The Rebellion became about more than just opposing the Empire/First Order. Just because there were no Jedi around to train them doesn't mean there were no more force sensitive kids out there.
It would have been a post-Jedi world, in which the Force is not something they "own". It's not wrapped up in their religion any more, and the light/dark side dichotomy is over. Rey could actually have brought balance to the force as an individu
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but if a movie doesn't get at least a 7 on IMDB, it's not worth my time
So you only go for the most generic of pop manufactured trash then...
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How many? I mean I find plenty of movie by popularity formula trash in the top 100 list. But how many movies have you seen over your lifetime (I'm assuming you go through the list sequentially), so what's your minimum cut-off?
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Agree overall, except for comedies the ratings bar is a bit lower, over 6 can still be a great comedy, however you have to check out at least the trailer and see if it is your kind of comedy. Different kinds of humour so comedies that cater to one type take a beating by people who like another type. Some times even all-around well liked comedies like "What about Bob?" can be below 7 (It had 6.9 a few months ago when I showed it to my partner, 7.0 now).
But, yeah, otherwise I agree, the IMDB score is a good i
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Interesting question (Score:4, Funny)
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Good question. Back in the olden says, more than 50, 60, 70 days ago, we used to have these things called Movie Theaters or Cinemas where large groups of people would congregate to see a movie projected onto a large screen. Alas, then the coronavirus hit, and now we can't watch movies like that any more.
Now we get to watch people try to make movies out of their own lives and "creative" thoughts on this thing called YouTube and sometimes FaceBook. And those movies are so much better than the theater garbage that I... hold on... that I... Oh my.. *PUUUUKE*
I'm anti-social so I avoid theaters but, honestly, I haven't post-watched or heard of anything in my style of liking come out since the early 21st century. I'm not a Star Wars fan and lost interest in Star Trek in the same early 21st century, so...
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It's a large, durable Petri dish.
Am I reading this correctly? *durable*? Oh, wait, I misread that as *endurable*. My mistake. Sorry! :)
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An interesting point was that Rotten Tomatoes seems to have less effect on action movies, which is the kind of movie I'm more likely to go to a theater to watch versus watching at home. This is because a giant screen with surround-sound and possibly good 3D enhances the experience, compared with an insightful drama or a cute romcom. I'm more likely to watch the insightful drama or cute romcom at home--I save some money and I don't really lose that much of the experience with a smaller screen and stereo so
No Kidding (Score:2)
when people just want to see stuff blow up, they're willing to lower their standards in certain respects.
The submitter really should have given proper attribution to Captain Obvious for that gem.
Always the oddball (Score:2)
I realize I'm not representative of the movie-going population, but if it is a movie that looks good enough that I'm planning on seeing it on the big screen, I go out of my way not to look at Rotten Tomatoes or IMDB. The reason being, I don't want the reviews to bias me.
However, if it isn't something I don't care that much about, I will look at reviews ahead of time here or there. Also, I am a pretty good judge of movies and I can pretty much tell if a movie is worthy of seeing it in a theater or waiting f
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Re: Always the oddball (Score:2)
Reviews on movies are fairly ridiculous. It's pretty clear that even professional reviewers are biased.
That's been my experience as well. Most movies are predictable garbage, but still end up scored like they were on the list of the top ten movies of all time.
Do people really check RT before going? (Score:2)
I never go anymore - its too expensive and a hassle. I just watch on streaming later, and by then if it sucks, I just exit it and go to another movie or tv show.
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No they do not (Score:2)
Today's critics are horrible. (Score:4, Insightful)
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Some movies are just Uncut Gems...
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I think it's lazy writing. It's a shame how many writers can write a good opening and middle part, but they don't know how to end a story. And then there's the recycling of ideas that the younger audience think is fresh, but it's already been done before.
That's the problem, isn't it? Everything has been done before. There's a reason why tropes are identifiable things. A writer's job today is to put the pieces together artfully, with interesting characters that have consistent motivations, plausible plotting, and a world that doesn't fall apart at the first touch. A lazy writer... doesn't.
Writing a story is like baking a cake. The process of cake-baking is extremely well understood. The ingredients that go into a cake are strictly limited, and if you s
I wait for CD to voice an opinion. (Score:2)
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This is really the better answer. Find a couple reviewers on Youtube and get a feel for what they like or don't like in comparison with your own tastes. That will give you a pretty good idea on future movies.
Rotten Tomatoes has repeatedly shown that their scores are completely untrustworthy. The 'critic' reviews they choose to post, the massive purges of user reviews, etc. I'd be a significant portion of their bottom line is paid for by studios buying reviews.
It hurt Star Wars (Score:1)
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No, but Star Wars hurt Star Wars. Or more precisely Disney's incredible mismanagement of the project hurt Star Wars. If they had chosen a SINGLE coherent crew of writers and a director to produce the full trilogy then it wouldn't have been such a clusterfuck.
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I find it odd that some TV shows and movies have critics and audience scores that are polar opposites. This seems to happen after a new production team completely messes up an existing franchise and annoys the fans. For example:
- Doctor who season 11 [rottentomatoes.com]
- Doctor who season 12 [rottentomatoes.com]
- Star Wars Last Jedi [rottentomatoes.com]
- Star Trek: Discovery Season 2 [rottentomatoes.com]
- Star Trek: Lower Decks [rottentomatoes.com]
One issue is that the reviewers only watch the first episode of a season, comment on the hope, and don't do more reviews as the season progresses.
Re: It hurt Star Wars (Score:2, Troll)
It's not odd.
The franchises are being destroyed by woke.
Most people hate that.
Critics are either bought or threatened resulting in self censorship, so they post exalted reviews of utter shite.
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This is the result of studios buying critics for shows they are actively destroying with political agendas that the audience doesn't want.
No, it doesn't (Score:4, Informative)
But I check it regularly just as IMDB, before illegally downloading a movie.
RT gives me some idea about what Netflix offers (Score:2)
Yes (Score:2)
Of course it influences box office (Score:2)
RT will happily run ads, post glowing shill (pre)views, social media "reaction" bullshit and positive headlines before the embargo lifts and you can read the actual reviews. And even after that the Tomatometer appears it is often mysteriously high, stacked by shill reviews. The meter only starts to reflect critical consensus after a few days and often drops significa
Sometimes (Score:2)
Only the audience rating is worth looking at. (Score:2)
If the critics hate it and the audience likes it, that's when I think it's worth checking out. My desire to see a film is almost always inversely proportional to how it's received by today's critics.