How Rotten Tomatoes became Hollywood's most influential — and feared — website

[guest4955]

LA TIMES 2017/07/21

http://www.latimes.com/business/hollywood/la-fi-ct-rotten-tomatoes-20170721-htmlstory.html

....Launched nearly two decades ago by a trio of UC Berkeley buddies, Rotten Tomatoes has become an increasingly influential — and feared -- player in the film and television industry. Its scores can help determine whether movies sink or swim.

“It’s like the Good Housekeeping seal of approval for movies,” said Donna Gigliotti, producer of “Hidden Figures” and “Silver Linings Playbook” (both movies received a high 92% Tomatometer score). “For a picture that doesn’t have a brand name and doesn’t have movie stars, Rotten Tomatoes scores can enhance the box office.”

As people are bombarded with more and more entertainment options, quality has become a determining factor for a movie’s success. And moviegoers use Rotten Tomatoes to select films the same way they turn to Yelp to determine what restaurants they visit.

“When you have that currency that says you have 100 people that agree the movie is great or horrible, you don't need more information than that,” said Rob Moore, former vice chairman at Paramount Pictures. “That's how they're picking restaurants and that's how they're picking movies.”

The trend has been a boon to Rotten Tomatoes. Thirty-six percent of U.S. moviegoers check the site’s reviews often before seeing a film, compared with 28% in 2014, according to box office tracking firm National Research Group. Nearly half of moviegoers aged 25 to 44 are regulars. The site scored 13.6 million U.S. visitors in May, up 32% from a year ago, according to data firm comScore....

[guest4955]

[guest4955]

Do you use it? What's good/bad about it?

[guest4955]

I actually prefer Metacritic.com, which only surveys the Top 50 or so film critics.

RT surveys some obscure blogs and podcasts. Supporters, however, note that one or two marginal blogs probably don’t have much impact on the final score.

[guest4955]

I guess RT is the present day successor of Siskel & Ebert.

Their thumbs could make or break a movie.

Studios always quoted them in ads:

[guest4955]

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/studios-fight-back-withering-rotten-tomatoes-scores-1025575

[CJ138]

I do not use RT. I am still sold by trailers, or word of mouth.

[erik1925]

I do not use RT. I am still sold by trailers, or word of mouth.

Right on, Conor. 

[eatbrie]

I use it all the time, and I'm very rarely disappointed.  It helps me chose what I will see in theaters vs what I will see at home.  I see about one movie a week in theaters and it usually costs $200-250 (between movie, dinner for 2 and nanny) so I don't want to take risks.

If studios are so scared of Rotten Tomatoes, here's an idea... make better movies.

T

[crowzilla]

Mel has to be so happy, after 6 attempts he finally got a reply in this thread.

T, have you thought about getting www.moviepass.com?
starting saving money on those movies - would probably save you $100 on tickets alone every month if you see one a week.

[50s]

This thread deserves a green splat

[guest4955]

Mel has to be so happy, after 6 attempts he finally got a reply in this thread.

Actually starting threads is like playing baseball. You will strike out or ground out 70% of the time. Some of my threads have been going strong after 8 years, but many died a quick death. You just never know....

[CJ138]

I appreciate those on this forum who think of new threads to post.  Particularly, those that are movie related. Without that kind of effort, this forum would be dead.   

[erik1925]

I appreciate those on this forum who think of new threads to post.  Particularly, those that are movie related. Without that kind of effort, this forum would be dead.

Any and all new threads are the life blood of this (or any) forum.

[mcfree]

I am another one who has no interest in RT.   I also use my gut & word of mouth.

[erik1925]

I am another one who has no interest in RT.   I also use my gut & word of mouth.

Nothing better than that, Michael. 

[guest4955]

Rotten Tomatoes isn’t killing Hollywood. Hollywood is killing Hollywood.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/pb/news/act-four/wp/2017/09/13/rotten-tomatoes-isnt-killing-hollywood-hollywood-is-killing-hollywood/

Moviemakers registering complaints about the power of the critical corps is nothing new, of course. In “Complete History of American Film Criticism,” Jerry Roberts highlighted the growing power of Rogert Ebert and Gene Siskel in the 1980s and the angst that caused with filmmakers. “Hand in hand with success was a power unprecedented in film criticism,” Roberts wrote. “‘Siskel and Ebert go, “Horrible picture,” and I’m telling you, [they] can definitely kill a movie,” Eddie Murphy said in 1987. Conversely, the duo is credited with “saving” small films that were lagging at the box office. Tom Sherak, a top executive at Twentieth Century-Fox, once called a thumbs-up from Siskel and Ebert “the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval for movies.”

The Tomatometer is something like a hyperpowered version of Ebert and Siskel’s patented thumbs up/thumbs down rating system. The site arguably has an even greater reach than the duo from Chicago: Barnes notes that Rotten Tomatoes drew 13.6 million unique visitors in May, while Roberts wrote that Siskel and Ebert drew “between eight and eleven million viewers a week” at their peak. Certainly this fully operational film criticism station has the power to destroy the hopes and dreams of wide-eyed dreamers working studios who just want to provide audiences with a modicum of entertainment in the form of fivequels to “Transformers” and “Pirates of the Caribbean,” right?

[guest4955]

Studios Fight Back Against Withering Rotten Tomatoes Scores

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/studios-fight-back-withering-rotten-tomatoes-scores-1025575



The power of the "Tomatometer" has reached a tipping point as critics screenings inch closer and closer to openings and movies try to avoid the dreaded green splat....

[Studios are fighting back.] Adds Fizziology president Ben Carlson, "Things have reached a crescendo this summer. We see entire audience segments talking about a movie for months and then, all of a sudden, the conversation completely dries up and goes away when the Rotten Tomatoes score comes out. People are using the score as a pass/fail. Hollywood has always talked about a movie being "review proof." But it may not be Rotten Tomatoes proof."

One reason The Emoji Movie may have overcome such a terrible score is because it's a family film. Sony's The Dark Tower, the final event film of the summer, which opens Aug. 4, will again test whether it helps to delay reviews until Wednesday night or even Thursday. Critics won't see the movie until the evening of Wednesday, Aug. 2 (the review embargo is also that night). Universal delayed reviews of The Mummy (17 percent) until the Wednesday morning before the film's release and it didn't help much at the box office. And Warner Bros. didn't screen The House at all for reviewers. The House, earning a 17 percent rotten score, bombed with $8.7 million.

ComScore's Paul Dergarabedian has his own advice: "The best way for studios to combat the 'Rotten Tomatoes Effect' is to make better movies, plain and simple."

[guest4955]

Well the MP was cool IMO...

[eatbrie]

ComScore's Paul Dergarabedian has his own advice: "The best way for studios to combat the 'Rotten Tomatoes Effect' is to make better movies, plain and simple."

I know Paul and he couldn't be more right.  There is no other discussion than that.

T

[Crazy Vick]

I'll watch it just for that girl, who doesn't look flat in any way whatsoever, well except maybe her personality in real life

[guest4955]

http://www.slashfilm.com/martin-scorsese-rotten-tomatoes-essay-film-criticism/

Martin Scorsese Pens Essay Calling Rotten Tomatoes ‘Hostile to Serious Filmmakers’

The animosity between the film industry and internet “aggregators” has been simmering since the summer, but it’s just kicked up a notch with the introduction of legendary director Martin Scorsese into the fray.

Scorsese penned an excoriating essay against Rotten Tomatoes, Cinemascore, and other digital aggregation sites, calling them “hostile to serious filmmakers,” and a bane on the film criticism community. It’s another entry in the ongoing debate over the influence Rotten Tomatoes has over film studios and the box office.

The Oscar-winning director wrote an essay in The Hollywood Reporter in response to the poor Cinemascore rating mother! received and “the severe judgments” of the film from the audience.

“Like everyone else, I’ve received my share of positive and negative reviews. The negative ones obviously aren’t much fun, but they come with the territory. However, I will say that in the past, when some critics had problems with one of my pictures, they would generally respond in a thoughtful manner, with actual positions that they felt obliged to argue. Over the past 20 years or so, many things have changed in cinema.”


Scorsese argued that entertainment journalism has become too fixated on box office reporting, fed by the rise of platforms like Rotten Tomatoes or market research firms like Cinemascore, which he says has diminished the movie-going experience. Scorsese lambasted “aggregators” like “Rotten Tomatoes” for having “absolutely nothing to do with real film criticism.” He continued:

“They have everything to do with the movie business and absolutely nothing to do with either the creation or the intelligent viewing of film. The filmmaker is reduced to a content manufacturer and the viewer to an unadventurous consumer.”

The ubiquity of these platforms, Scorsese says has led to the demise of “film criticism written by passionately engaged people with actual knowledge of film history” and an increase of “people who seem to take pleasure in seeing films and filmmakers rejected, dismissed, and in some cases ripped to shreds.”

[eatbrie]

Spoken like a true 75 year old man.  The era of Les Cahiers du Cinéma, Bazin, Truffaut, Rivette and Godard, is O.V.E.R., Marty.  Get on with the program and welcome to 2018.

T

[guest4955]

So RT has launched a 'Net TV show. First, to their credit they hired two minority critics to review lily-white cast movies. second, they're no Siskel & Ebert, but they're not kissing up to the studios, ex. they ripped MOTOE:

Good/bad?

[eatbrie]

Two questions: Why should I care about what Coley and Oduolowu think?  The aggregator, I get, but these two?  I guess I'm not the audience for this.

T