Look, I’ll be the first to admit that renowned review roundup site Rotten Tomatoes is my first point of call when a new movie comes out. If it’s scored under 60% – therefore earning a ‘rotten’ rating, I’ll probably not bother with it unless a mate tells me it’s good or worth it. Sure, it hacks away some of the subtlety of film criticism, and isn’t a personal barometer of value… but am I really gonna fork out twenty bucks on a movie with a 41% rating?
So, evidently, I’m part of the problem. There’s a big report in the New York Times today which suggests movie studios are increasingly pissed off about Rotten Tomatoes – to the point where they think that it’s largely responsible for a collapse in movie ticket sales.
It includes some reasonably compelling evidence via some analyst’s claims about recent films.
Kersplat: “King Arthur: Legend of the Sword” got a Tomatometer score of 28 — anything under 60 is marked rotten — and audiences stayed away. After costing Warner Bros. at least $175 million to make, the movie took in $39 million at the domestic box office. In total.
The piece also alleges that the alleged damage has become much greater now that Rotten Tomatoes scores are displayed on the website of Fandango, a ticket purchasing service.
Studio executives’ complaints about Rotten Tomatoes include the way its Tomatometer hacks off critical nuance, the site’s seemingly loose definition of who qualifies as a critic and the spread of Tomatometer scores across the web. Last year, scores started appearing on Fandango, the online movie ticket-selling site, leading to grousing that a rotten score next to the purchase button was the same as posting this message: You are an idiot if you pay to see this movie.
Of course, there’s not a great deal of reflection in the piece from movie studios about the fact that nobody watched their movies because they, well, sucked. But it’s interesting nonetheless.
The piece also highlights examples which run against the grain – like The Emoji Movie, which has made bucketloads of cash but got absolutely rinsed on Rotten Tomatoes.
The whole thing is absolutely worth a read. My advice to the Hollywood studios would be… make better movies.
