Is Rotten Tomatoes Killing the Movie Industry? No, Bad Movies Are • Hacker News Board

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

#131

Post by CyberDildonics » Sat, Sep 23, 2017, 12:37 AM UTC

jknoepfler wrote: post #73

Although RT tends to produce false positives for me, it is a reasonably reliable filter. If Hollywood is suffering, I'd look to the quality of its product. For example, marvel civil war is a false positive (for me). When I watch it, I can't get past the clipped, contrived dialogue, close-ups on faces, ham-fisted plots, inconceivably stupid action, schizophrenic scene changes, plastic cgi, and awkward obviously demogr…

Rotten Tomatoes is owned by a Time Warner and Comcast, they're ratings now end up wildly biased. That's why there are so many decent movies that end up being '93%' etc.

MetaCritic is owned by CBS

Looks like this controversial for some reason.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotten_Tomatoes

"since January 2010 has been owned by Flixster, which was, in turn, acquired in 2011 by Warner Bros. In February 2016, Rotten Tomatoes and its parent site Flixster were sold to Comcast's Fandango. Warner Bros. retained a minority stake in the merged entities"

Rotten Tomatoes now uses 'Top Critics' to compile their overall score instead of 'All Critics'. This distinction didn't originally exist.

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

#132

Post by coldcode » Sat, Sep 23, 2017, 12:39 AM UTC

I prefer to watch Cinema Sins on youtube, its more entertaining than the movies it describes.

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

#133

Post by LeoNatan25 » Sat, Sep 23, 2017, 12:44 AM UTC

I fear the conclusion here does not stand the test of reality either, sadly, as many quality films have gone overlooked by audiences despite fantastic word of mouth and reviews. Is big part of it the terrible taste of the audience? I'm sure. Is there a new trend of the same audience to spend less on cinema? Yes, but it may not be due to the low quality output (hasn't stopped them before). I think television—including Netflix, Hulu, etc.—is the culprit. There is just so much quality television being produced, that people don't want to leave the house. Much more convenient, cheaper, etc. Let's hope this quality television brushes on the taste of the audience and it demands similar rise in quality from films.

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

#134

Post by chipotle_coyote » Sat, Sep 23, 2017, 12:47 AM UTC

CyberDildonics wrote: post #131

jknoepfler wrote: post #73

Although RT tends to produce false positives for me, it is a reasonably reliable filter. If Hollywood is suffering, I'd look to the quality of its product. For example, marvel civil war is a false positive (for me). When I watch it, I can't get past the clipped, contrived dialogue, close-ups on faces, ham-fisted plots, inconceivably stupid action, schizophrenic scene changes, plastic cgi, and awkward obviously demogr…

Rotten Tomatoes is owned by a Time Warner and Comcast, they're ratings now end up wildly biased. That's why there are so many decent movies that end up being '93%' etc. MetaCritic is owned by CBS Looks like this controversial for some reason. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotten_Tomatoes "since January 2010 has been owned by Flixster, which was, in turn, acquired in 2011 by Warner Bros. In February 2016, Rotten Tomat…

As the Wikipedians say, [citation needed]. Yes, Rotten Tomatoes is owned by Fandango, but they appear to be using essentially the same methodology that they always have: look at a bunch of reviews of a given movie, decide that review is "fresh" or "rotten" (which is done objectively based on the reviewers' own star/numerical ratings as much as possible, from what I can see), and tell you how many reviews they've aggregated were "fresh." What bias are you asserting? Are you saying they give Warner Brothers and Universal movies better ratings than competitors? Can you cite plausible examples? Through what devious mechanism are they subverting their aggregation system?

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

#135

Post by LeoNatan25 » Sat, Sep 23, 2017, 12:49 AM UTC

EdwardCoffin wrote: post #120

It seems to me that people are a lot harsher on movies now, less willing or able to suspend disbelief [1]. I see scathing assessments of sequels, but with examples of the imagined problems being problems that have reasonably close equivalents in their predecessors which no one had a problem with when those were released. Here's a concrete example: probably the most commonly cited 'problem' I hear about Prometheus is…

Suspension of disbelief only works when the world presented is believable and the story interesting. I find myself able to suspend belief on Nolan films, for example, because of their engrossing story and style.

With your example of Prometheus, no, the flick is not bad because of that scene, but the scene is an indication of the overall laziness of the plot. All the nit-picking, as you put it, is because there is nothing else to hold on to, which is not true of Alien at least (I don't particularly like Aliens).

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

#136

Post by LeoNatan25 » Sat, Sep 23, 2017, 12:51 AM UTC

CyberDildonics wrote: post #131

jknoepfler wrote: post #73

Although RT tends to produce false positives for me, it is a reasonably reliable filter. If Hollywood is suffering, I'd look to the quality of its product. For example, marvel civil war is a false positive (for me). When I watch it, I can't get past the clipped, contrived dialogue, close-ups on faces, ham-fisted plots, inconceivably stupid action, schizophrenic scene changes, plastic cgi, and awkward obviously demogr…

Rotten Tomatoes is owned by a Time Warner and Comcast, they're ratings now end up wildly biased. That's why there are so many decent movies that end up being '93%' etc. MetaCritic is owned by CBS Looks like this controversial for some reason. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotten_Tomatoes "since January 2010 has been owned by Flixster, which was, in turn, acquired in 2011 by Warner Bros. In February 2016, Rotten Tomat…

Spreading FUD with no proof. This has not been the case at all from my experience.

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

#137

Post by LeoNatan25 » Sat, Sep 23, 2017, 12:53 AM UTC

alexasmyths wrote: post #127

Rotten Tomatoes is a bad system because it's binary - ie thumbs up/down. Which means a 'consistently good' film can get almost all thumbs up - even if it's not that-that good. Whereas an unevenly good films, with pangs of genius can get not so many thumbs up. It tends to skew way up or down. Metacritic I think is much better.

Why would you stop at the binary initial impression, though? All the information you need is one click away.

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

#138

Post by Boothroid » Sat, Sep 23, 2017, 12:55 AM UTC

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…

You forgot kick ass female lead, implausibly beating up men twice her size using minimal muscle mass :|

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

#139

Post by Boothroid » Sat, Sep 23, 2017, 1:03 AM UTC

EdwardCoffin wrote: post #120

It seems to me that people are a lot harsher on movies now, less willing or able to suspend disbelief [1]. I see scathing assessments of sequels, but with examples of the imagined problems being problems that have reasonably close equivalents in their predecessors which no one had a problem with when those were released. Here's a concrete example: probably the most commonly cited 'problem' I hear about Prometheus is…

Prometheus lacks charm, whereas Alien/s both have it in spades. Think about the group scenes in either Alien or Aliens - I can probably reel off a few classic lines from the banter right now. Does the same go for Prometheus? No - it just doesn't have the originality or charm.

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

#140

Post by Steko » Sat, Sep 23, 2017, 1:17 AM UTC

paganel wrote: post #89

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…

> 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.

That seems like a big takeaway from one false negative. And I agree on Booty Call, I've long put it as one of my funniest movies from the 90's. That's said I didn't watch it in the theater and if the wife and I had gone I'm not sure she would have called it a good 30-40 bucks.

There are probably 3 issues here, critic blind spots (because the median critic is probably over 40 and has some cultural lenses that are hard to shake), the lack of information you can convey with one bit of data (which is an overall goodness bit not a "funniness" bit for comedies), and perhaps the sample size (this movie has only 12 reviews on RT and half are from no-names, more reviews might not change this score though it matters for some others).

FWIW Roger Ebert loved Booty Call and gave it 3 stars so, going beyond the one bit of fresh/rotten, it can lead you to critics that like movies you do and you can follow those personally.

And RT does pretty good at giving you good movies in general - their best comedies of the 90's rightly include Toy Story 1 & 2, Groundhog Day and The Player all of which are purchase worthy.