Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Is Rotten Tomatoes Killing the Movie Industry? No, Bad Movies Are

philly.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 216 posts

Re: Is Rotten Tomatoes Killing the Movie Industry? No, Bad Movies Are

#81

Post by mikepurvis »

Animats wrote: post #19

The movie industry doesn't seem to be able to figure out if a movie will be a dud up front. Most of the dud movies are broken at the script and actor selection phase. Maybe productions need to do a staged reading in front of an audience as a test before going into production. Perhaps with slides and sketches from the storyboard for the action. The CG people have their act together. When was the last time a big-budget…

Counterpoint: My wife and I mostly liked the Beauty and the Beast remake. The script changes and new songs relative to the animated original were all great and very welcome, and the casting was great, but our biggest issue with it was the ridiculous CGI/mocap beast. Using practical effects would have sold the emotional scenes way better.

I mean, how many terrific Chewbacca interactions would have been missed out on if there hadn't been the on-set interplay between the actors? Either way, it proves that hairy beast characters are perfectly manageable with a big tall guy in a suit.

Re: Is Rotten Tomatoes Killing the Movie Industry? No, Bad Movies Are

#82

Post by alister »

Talking about gaming the ratings and user reviews on sites likes IMDB, I surprised by how often it doesn't happen.

The Matrix at this moment has 1,336,956 user votes and 3739 user reviews -- and that's to be expected.

But I regularly come across movies on IMDB that have less than 10 votes and no user reviews at all. Or a single user review that happens to be negative. These are movies less than 10-15 years old and with budgets of at least $1 million.

It's totally puzzling why the director, producers, actors, friends of the cast, or anyone else connected with the movie didn't bother to add a user review. Someone had enough passion to make the movie, spend all that money, work on it for months or years, and they haven't heard of IMDB?

Re: Is Rotten Tomatoes Killing the Movie Industry? No, Bad Movies Are

#83

Post by nacho2sweet »

It is $14-$19.50 to see a movie where I live (probably closer to $30-40 after popcorn), I am not going to take a chance with my money on a middling movie when I can just pirate an HD copy in a month now. I will take a chance with my time however.

Everything is being made for international audiences now. Everything has to try and be one of the 30 movies a year let into the Chinese market. Plots and messages are dumbed down the lowest denominator now. I can't wait to see what movies are like now that Disney is using face scanning technology on audiences... It is a horrible time for art.

Re: Is Rotten Tomatoes Killing the Movie Industry? No, Bad Movies Are

#84

Post by MBCook »

Sir_Substance wrote: post #69
slg wrote: post #49

These type of articles never explore the potential results of the Rotten Tomatoes voting system. As the article mentions the RT rating is not a measure of how good a movie is, it is a measure of the percentage of people who viewed the movie positively. A 100% doesn't mean a movie is perfect or even particularly good, it means no one thought it was bad. A movie designed to do well on a RT score needs to please everyon…

>If you ask people why they don't go to the movies more they will often cite the idea that there is nothing new they haven't seen before I have literally never heard someone say this >(besides the complaints you hear about prices) Yup, there it is. But also, to watch a movie in the cinema I often have to sit in uncomfortably off-center chairs. I can't adjust the volume if I think it's too loud, I can't pause the movi…

The way things are setup is also designed to make me feel like I’m being ripped off.

Go to see a brand new very popular movie. They know high ticket prices scare people away, so I can easily get tickets for $9/each (no 3D) for most films. That’s perfectly fair.

A small bottle of water is $6. A small popcorn is like $10.

So the total cost is about $25 but most of that is hidden in two cheap/basic snacks.

How about just charging me the real price for the ticket and fair snack prices? Charge $25 for a pack with a ticket and some snacks.

A low upfront price and high snacks feels like bait-and-switch.

But it works so they keep it up. And I feel ripped off every time I go because of the psychology of their pricing model.

Re: Is Rotten Tomatoes Killing the Movie Industry? No, Bad Movies Are

#85

Post by Aunche »

SadWebDeveloper wrote: post #44

The day the movie industry allows me to legally stream a "just released movie" straight to my 4k tv (or my phone), that day, they will have the same or more revenue as before. Until that happen, i would definitely check the ratings/reviews before spending solid amount of money and time on "going" to the cinema.

The movie industry never want that. If you go to a movie theater with your friends, everyone has to buy their own ticket. However, if you can share a movie, a lot of people can split the cost of a single viewing.

Re: Is Rotten Tomatoes Killing the Movie Industry? No, Bad Movies Are

#86

Post by Retric »

slg wrote: post #49

These type of articles never explore the potential results of the Rotten Tomatoes voting system. As the article mentions the RT rating is not a measure of how good a movie is, it is a measure of the percentage of people who viewed the movie positively. A 100% doesn't mean a movie is perfect or even particularly good, it means no one thought it was bad. A movie designed to do well on a RT score needs to please everyon…

Bland movies don't actually rate all that highly in practice.

Spiderman homecoming got a 92% from critics and 89% from fans because people got what they expected from the movie. The Hitman's Bodyguard on the other hand rated poorly 38%:71% because it failed to deliver.

And really, general ratings need to be in the context of the kind of person that might like the movie.

Re: Is Rotten Tomatoes Killing the Movie Industry? No, Bad Movies Are

#87

Post by Thriptic »

PopsiclePete wrote: post #48

Movies lately: * Generic Super-Hero Movie A. * Generic Super-Hero Movie B. Different title from A, yet actually identical plot and sometimes actors. * A new CG cartoon "for the whole family". They haven't had an original idea since Wall-E. * Generic block-buster action movie with robots and/or ninjas or ninja-robots, explosions, Chevrolet placement ads, and at least 2 pairs of extremely shapely female breasts. * Gene…

Don't forget the obligatory World War 2 epic XD

Re: Is Rotten Tomatoes Killing the Movie Industry? No, Bad Movies Are

#88

Post by MBCook »

irrational wrote: post #51
AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #10

We're due for another studio crash. Hopefully that will scale back some of the ridiculous budgets on these things and let some new blood break into the scene.

Wouldn't that make them even more risk adverse?

If they make fewer $200m movies and experiment more with $10m movies... would that be bad?

They are risk averse right now but they’re doing it by putting all their eggs in one or two baskets.

Re: Is Rotten Tomatoes Killing the Movie Industry? No, Bad Movies Are

#89

Post by paganel »

slg wrote: post #49

These type of articles never explore the potential results of the Rotten Tomatoes voting system. As the article mentions the RT rating is not a measure of how good a movie is, it is a measure of the percentage of people who viewed the movie positively. A 100% doesn't mean a movie is perfect or even particularly good, it means no one thought it was bad. A movie designed to do well on a RT score needs to please everyon…

> A movie designed to do well on a RT score needs to please everyone. The end result is something that tries to be bland, uninteresting, and inoffensive. As an avid movie goer, that is a horrible result. I would much rather see a movie that takes risks and fails than something with little ambition outside turning a profit.

I've just finished watching for the second time a non-bland and pretty-offensive (at least for today's sensibilities) 1997 comedy starring Jamie Foxx and Vivica Fox, among others. It's called "Booty Call". It has a 5.3 rating on IMDB (which is comparatively speaking pretty low) and only 25% on RT (which I guess is even lower). It doesn't matter, because this movie has made me laugh so hard that I literally had tears in the corners of my eyes and my stomach-muscles were beginning to hurt because of all the laughing. And remember, this was the second time when I was watching it, but I was still laughing my a.s off.

Now, I thought that maybe I'm the crazy one out, a stupid viewer who doesn't understand interesting and thought-provoking movies and who only laughs at "stupid" movies, but when I went to the movie's comment page on IMDB (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0118750/reference) I saw that I was not alone in this, all the top comments were giving the movie a rating between 8 and 10 and the commenters were mentioning how hard they had laughed while watching it.

The conclusion is that there is something definitely wrong with the way some movies are rated. I'm not sure if there exists a fix for that, apart from us, the "normal" viewers, just starting to ignore reviews and movie-critics and then watching movies with no preconceptions.

Re: Is Rotten Tomatoes Killing the Movie Industry? No, Bad Movies Are

#90

Post by gozur88 »

Hollywood movies are getting objectively worse, and there's a good reason for it. The market is global now - the North American box office is just a vehicle for pricing deals when the international rights are sold.

So they have to make movies that appeal to the global lowest common denominator. No witty or understated dialog. No cultural signifiers that might be missed by someone from another culture.

All the money and effort is going into flashy stuff that someone in Beijing will appreciate just as much as someone in Los Angeles. Thus all the superhero garbage and Michael Bay style action.

Post reply on HN