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

The Story Behind the Worst Movie on IMDb

fivethirtyeight.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 141 posts

Re: The Story Behind the Worst Movie on IMDb

#51

Post by pilsetnieks »

brie22 wrote: post #43

538 is using the wrong metrics. For a movie to be truly, truly, sublimely bad, that badness needs to be recognized - people in some cases will want to watch it for its incredible badness. This means that there are going to be a disproportionate number of both 1 and 10 votes. And the winner based on this is - The Room. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0368226/ratings?ref_=tt_ov_rt

That is nothing compared to "Manos: The Hands of Fate" (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0060666/ratings?ref_=tt_ov_rt)

Unexpectedly, however, "Plan 9 from Outer Space" is rated much more evenly for a film that's been considered to be the worst of all time.

Re: The Story Behind the Worst Movie on IMDb

#52

Post by leephillips »

brie22 wrote: post #43

538 is using the wrong metrics. For a movie to be truly, truly, sublimely bad, that badness needs to be recognized - people in some cases will want to watch it for its incredible badness. This means that there are going to be a disproportionate number of both 1 and 10 votes. And the winner based on this is - The Room. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0368226/ratings?ref_=tt_ov_rt

That is fascinating. I've never seen The Room, but I sure want to now.

It's fascinating because of some similarities to the truly worst movie in history, The Tango Lesson[0]: each movie has one person as writer, director, and star, and (apparently) focuses self-indulgently on the abortive romantic entanglements of the author, who is utterly unaware that nobody else could possibly care.

The Tango Lesson falls through the bottom of the badness scale into a realm where it can't even be enjoyed for its unredeemable awfulness. Everyone I was with thought it was dreadful, and what was left of the audience shuffled out shaking their heads.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120275/

Re: The Story Behind the Worst Movie on IMDb

#53

Post by drzaiusapelord »

mkmk wrote: post #17

It's not that the rating is inaccurate... it's that a huge population of people that don't usually rate movies on IMDB has suddenly entered the rating pool. Maybe the solution is to have country-specific ratings, so that my ratings are averaged with the ratings of my peers, rather than the ratings of people in entirely different cultures.

The rating is completely inaccurate. The ratings have nothing to do with the movie or its merits, but from a perceived slight that a bunch of bloggers and nationalists were offended at.

Re: The Story Behind the Worst Movie on IMDb

#54

Post by ronaldx »

canvia wrote: post #45
edanm wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have any interesting examples that you've found?

The Avengers was particularly egregious. It was in the top 250 movies of all time for opening weekend. A huge % of ticket sales occur in the opening weekend. There is not a doubt in my mind that these ratings are thoroughly manipulated by the corrupt studios. At least IMDB now shows the metacritic score which is more accurate. A lot of Disney/Marvel movies seem to follow this trend. If I had unlimited time and money…

I believe your observation is correct, that movies are over-rated at first, but I doubt this is wholly - nor even mainly - corruption.

People who are motivated to see a movie early are the same people who are likely to enjoy that movie. This makes it natural for movies to get rated very highly when they are first released. That's just natural.

If you forced people to photograph their ticket stub, I believe this could make the problem worse: mainly people who particularly loved the movie (or thought it was significantly worthy of comment) would be motivated enough to do that. You'll just collect the IMdB's 10s and 1s.

I know many people use the IMdB for their own record-keeping. These people would stop doing that if there was an administrative barrier that made it less convenient than a paper equivalent, e.g. writing in an address book. I strongly believe this makes their votes neutral/genuine compared to other survey methods.

Re: The Story Behind the Worst Movie on IMDb

#55

Post by scott_s »

brie22 wrote: post #43

538 is using the wrong metrics. For a movie to be truly, truly, sublimely bad, that badness needs to be recognized - people in some cases will want to watch it for its incredible badness. This means that there are going to be a disproportionate number of both 1 and 10 votes. And the winner based on this is - The Room. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0368226/ratings?ref_=tt_ov_rt

They're not actually interested in talking about "the worst movie in history." That's just a hook to talk about what they really want to talk about: crowdsourced ratings are subject to organized groups with an agenda.

Re: The Story Behind the Worst Movie on IMDb

#56

Post by JoeAltmaier »

ronaldx wrote: post #54
canvia wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Avengers was particularly egregious. It was in the top 250 movies of all time for opening weekend. A huge % of ticket sales occur in the opening weekend. There is not a doubt in my mind that these ratings are thoroughly manipulated by the corrupt studios. At least IMDB now shows the metacritic score which is more accurate. A lot of Disney/Marvel movies seem to follow this trend. If I had unlimited time and money…

I believe your observation is correct, that movies are over-rated at first, but I doubt this is wholly - nor even mainly - corruption. People who are motivated to see a movie early are the same people who are likely to enjoy that movie. This makes it natural for movies to get rated very highly when they are first released. That's just natural. If you forced people to photograph their ticket stub, I believe this could…

But some 10's and 1's are lazy indignant people. Putting an obstacle in the way of registering a rating could filter out lots of noise. Leaving people who deliberately, intentionally review movies. Those ratings would be of an entire different class.

Re: The Story Behind the Worst Movie on IMDb

#57

Post by what_ever »

nkozyra wrote: post #50

I feel like there's an assumption that this data is erroneous for this reason - I think that any reason in which a person gives a negative rating toward a film is valid, be it politically motivated or otherwise. FiveThirtyEight has had a rough start so far so I may be more inclined to seek more nuance than I normally would as they've tended to be extraordinarily simplistic (Silver himself notwithstanding) to date.

But most of the people who has given the rating have not seen the movie. They are giving the lowest rating just to put their point forward. This is not a documentary to put the truth on the screen (I am not sure how much of the movie is fiction).

I think the author calls data erroneous as the rating does not represent the actual quality of the movie - a thing which IMDB wants to achieve. He doesn't call it erroneous for actual errors in the process of collecting ratings.

I think, as you said, you are just inclined to seek more nuances.

Re: The Story Behind the Worst Movie on IMDb

#58

Post by drzaiusapelord »

ronaldx wrote: post #12
gjjhjjjhhh wrote: post #4

Who would pay attention to ratings from a single unreliable source. For me the best place are meta sites that gather from many related sizes.

I prefer the IMdB's ratings system over, say, meta-site Rotten Tomatoes. At Rotten Tomatoes they rated Seth Rogen-vehicle "Neighbors" as 100%, last I checked. Meaning only: no reviewer at that point had said it was awful. And yet, I saw it and it was awful. At IMdB, I can see that it rates as 7.6/10.0, and also that teenager voters loved it (9.0/10.0), where older viewers hated it (5.0/10.0). Far more useful informat…

A lot of movies don't get a pre-release screening for critics (or they do for limited amount of critics, usually small timers that can be influenced with gifts or free tickets), thats why you'll sometimes see RT give a skewed rating until the release day.

The release for that movie is the 9th, so its not out yet outside of limited distribution. Wait until all the reviews come in this weekend for a more complete score.

Re: The Story Behind the Worst Movie on IMDb

#59

Post by bowlofpetunias »

IMDB ratings are bull. Lots of great movies, often even classics, rate around 6 on IMDB because the general public considers them "boring".

The only movies that escape from the IMDB average are a) decent movies that are loved by the masses, b) great movies the masses don't watch (being in black and white or not in English alone pretty much guarantees 2 bonus points) and c) movies everyone agrees on are total crap.

Re: The Story Behind the Worst Movie on IMDb

#60

Post by bronbron »

brie22 wrote: post #43

538 is using the wrong metrics. For a movie to be truly, truly, sublimely bad, that badness needs to be recognized - people in some cases will want to watch it for its incredible badness. This means that there are going to be a disproportionate number of both 1 and 10 votes. And the winner based on this is - The Room. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0368226/ratings?ref_=tt_ov_rt

I don't think that's always true - there are certainly movies that are "so bad they're good" (and thus become the fodder of MST3K/RiffTrax). But, there are movies that are just straight-up bad and can never be redeemed even by the likes of MST3K. For example, the Paris Hilton movie the author briefly discusses.

There are certainly films that are "so bad they're good", but then there are just bad films.

Post reply on HN