3 ms·

Fandango, Rotten Tomatoes, IMDB and Metacritic are owned by content distributors/creators, Fandango and Rotten Tomatoes are owned by Comcast/Time Warner, Amazon

Fandango, Rotten Tomatoes, IMDB and Metacritic are owned by content distributors/creators, Fandango and Rotten Tomatoes are owned by Comcast/Time Warner, Amazon owns IMDB while CBS owns Meta-critic. It's no coincidence the accuracy of ratings sites have deteriorated over the past few years, one of the most glaring violations of trust has been Rotten Tomatoes pre-certifying movies as "Fresh" and keeping it so despite aggregated reviews which would contradict a "Fresh" rating. And the even more troubling trend of "Sponsored" movies like Step receiving the certification. It should come as no surprise the number of newly released Certified Fresh Films is increasing despite the quality of films at the box office decreasing

baddox 9y ago
What do you mean by "pre-certifying movies as 'Fresh'"? They're pretty clear about the definition of "Certified Fresh": > Movies and TV shows are Certified Fresh with a steady Tomatometer of 75% or higher after a set amount of reviews (80 for wide-release movies, 40 for limited-release movies, 20 for TV shows), including 5 reviews from Top Critics. https://www.rottentomatoes.com/browse/cf-dvd-streaming-all/ https://www.rottentomatoes.com/browse/cf-dvd-streaming-all/
- ZoeZoeBee 9y ago
  They can claim to use that algorithm, however in practice as of the last few years, that claim is extremely suspect as we have no way to determine whether or not RottenTomatoes cherry picked its reviews for the films. Two glaring examples of "certified fresh" films loathed by audiences and top critics are Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skulls and the new Ghostbusters. Both have Audience scores in the low 50s and top critics scores in the low 60s, but "All Critics" scores are overwhelmingly positive enough to boost the score to just over 75% making them "Certified Fresh". As far as "pre-certified" fresh, Rotten Tomatoes has taken upon themselves to sell Sponsored content and of those I've seen, Step and The Tick, as of right now, when the subject becomes Sponsored a wave of positive reviews is sure to follow. https://www.rottentomatoes.com/browse/upcoming?minTomato=0&maxTomato=100&genres=1;2;4;5;6;8;9;10;11;13;18;14&sortBy=release https://www.rottentomatoes.com/browse/upcoming?minTomato=0&m...
  - baddox 9y ago
    > Two glaring examples of "certified fresh" films loathed by audiences and top critics are Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skulls and the new Ghostbusters. Both have Audience scores in the low 50s and top critics scores in the low 60s, but "All Critics" scores are overwhelmingly positive enough to boost the score to just over 75% making them "Certified Fresh". Then what makes you think they cherry-picked their reviews? The Indiana Jones film has 260 reviews, and Ghostbusters has 325, both of which seem to be in the normal ballpark for huge wide releases. Indiana Jones is still at 77%, so it would still qualify as Certified Fresh today, while Ghostbusters is at 73%, just barely below the threshold. I'm not seeing any reason to suspect foul play, and I don't understand why you would be upset. Audience scores and Top Critics are great pieces of information, but they're not how the Tomatometer or the Certified Fresh label work.
    - ZoeZoeBee 9y ago
      Because baddox that is what they literally do >Every day, a half-dozen Rotten Tomatoes staffers scour the web to find every review of every movie, collecting from major news outlets and well-known critics. They read each review and determine whether it is mostly positive or mostly negative. >About half of the critics who appear on Rotten Tomatoes — often the more obscure set — submit their reviews, along with the ratings, to the site themselves. As reviews are indexed, Rotten Tomatoes calculates the score. http://www.timescolonist.com/entertainment/movies/rotten-tomatoes-freshens-up-1.21669904 http://www.timescolonist.com/entertainment/movies/rotten-tom... The notion they cherry picked reviews comes from the more than standard deviation away from Audience and Top Critic Reviews. As far as your last statement, it does not appear you actually understand how a review is determined to be Fresh or Not for the Tomatometer
      - baddox 9y ago
        You're conflating two very different concepts: the source of reviews, and the algorithm for calculating the Certified Fresh status. Obviously RottenTomatoes aggregates reviews from the Internet. That is the entire point, but that doesn't match the usual definition of "cherry-picking." To convince me that they cherry-pick reviews to achieve a desired Tomatometer or Certified Fresh result, I would need some evidence. The difference between Tomatometer, audience scores, and top critics is not sufficient evidence of foul play, because it's exactly what I would expect from a fair process.
O1111OOO 9y ago
Sadly... so much of what we get these days is manipulated. Can hardly wait for how big business plans to tweak "AI" to further muddy the info we receive./s I usually first go to Wikipedia and get a summary of the critical reviews, length of film, some other stats. Head over to IMDB for a synopsis of the film (wikipedia doesn't do summary very well, focusing instead on entire plot). Maybe skim over a couple of user reviews (both positive and negative). If it looks interesting, I'll head over to Youtube and watch the trailer. It's always the trailer that decides for me. Having watched plenty of films over the years, I pick up a tremendous amount of info from a 2-3 minute trailer.
- albertgoeswoof 9y ago
  You might as well watch the movie instead of doing all that then :-)
  - O1111OOO 9y ago
    Honestly, it takes all of 5 minutes:) Saves me from throwing time and money away.

baddox 9y ago

What do you mean by "pre-certifying movies as 'Fresh'"? They're pretty clear about the definition of "Certified Fresh": > Movies and TV shows are Certified Fresh with a steady Tomatometer of 75% or higher after a set amount of reviews (80 for wide-release movies, 40 for limited-release movies, 20 for TV shows), including 5 reviews from Top Critics. https://www.rottentomatoes.com/browse/cf-dvd-streaming-all/ https://www.rottentomatoes.com/browse/cf-dvd-streaming-all/

ZoeZoeBee 9y ago
They can claim to use that algorithm, however in practice as of the last few years, that claim is extremely suspect as we have no way to determine whether or not RottenTomatoes cherry picked its reviews for the films. Two glaring examples of "certified fresh" films loathed by audiences and top critics are Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skulls and the new Ghostbusters. Both have Audience scores in the low 50s and top critics scores in the low 60s, but "All Critics" scores are overwhelmingly positive enough to boost the score to just over 75% making them "Certified Fresh". As far as "pre-certified" fresh, Rotten Tomatoes has taken upon themselves to sell Sponsored content and of those I've seen, Step and The Tick, as of right now, when the subject becomes Sponsored a wave of positive reviews is sure to follow. https://www.rottentomatoes.com/browse/upcoming?minTomato=0&maxTomato=100&genres=1;2;4;5;6;8;9;10;11;13;18;14&sortBy=release https://www.rottentomatoes.com/browse/upcoming?minTomato=0&m...
- baddox 9y ago
  > Two glaring examples of "certified fresh" films loathed by audiences and top critics are Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skulls and the new Ghostbusters. Both have Audience scores in the low 50s and top critics scores in the low 60s, but "All Critics" scores are overwhelmingly positive enough to boost the score to just over 75% making them "Certified Fresh". Then what makes you think they cherry-picked their reviews? The Indiana Jones film has 260 reviews, and Ghostbusters has 325, both of which seem to be in the normal ballpark for huge wide releases. Indiana Jones is still at 77%, so it would still qualify as Certified Fresh today, while Ghostbusters is at 73%, just barely below the threshold. I'm not seeing any reason to suspect foul play, and I don't understand why you would be upset. Audience scores and Top Critics are great pieces of information, but they're not how the Tomatometer or the Certified Fresh label work.
  - ZoeZoeBee 9y ago
    Because baddox that is what they literally do >Every day, a half-dozen Rotten Tomatoes staffers scour the web to find every review of every movie, collecting from major news outlets and well-known critics. They read each review and determine whether it is mostly positive or mostly negative. >About half of the critics who appear on Rotten Tomatoes — often the more obscure set — submit their reviews, along with the ratings, to the site themselves. As reviews are indexed, Rotten Tomatoes calculates the score. http://www.timescolonist.com/entertainment/movies/rotten-tomatoes-freshens-up-1.21669904 http://www.timescolonist.com/entertainment/movies/rotten-tom... The notion they cherry picked reviews comes from the more than standard deviation away from Audience and Top Critic Reviews. As far as your last statement, it does not appear you actually understand how a review is determined to be Fresh or Not for the Tomatometer
    - baddox 9y ago
      You're conflating two very different concepts: the source of reviews, and the algorithm for calculating the Certified Fresh status. Obviously RottenTomatoes aggregates reviews from the Internet. That is the entire point, but that doesn't match the usual definition of "cherry-picking." To convince me that they cherry-pick reviews to achieve a desired Tomatometer or Certified Fresh result, I would need some evidence. The difference between Tomatometer, audience scores, and top critics is not sufficient evidence of foul play, because it's exactly what I would expect from a fair process.

O1111OOO 9y ago

Sadly... so much of what we get these days is manipulated. Can hardly wait for how big business plans to tweak "AI" to further muddy the info we receive./s I usually first go to Wikipedia and get a summary of the critical reviews, length of film, some other stats. Head over to IMDB for a synopsis of the film (wikipedia doesn't do summary very well, focusing instead on entire plot). Maybe skim over a couple of user reviews (both positive and negative). If it looks interesting, I'll head over to Youtube and watch the trailer. It's always the trailer that decides for me. Having watched plenty of films over the years, I pick up a tremendous amount of info from a 2-3 minute trailer.

albertgoeswoof 9y ago
You might as well watch the movie instead of doing all that then :-)
- O1111OOO 9y ago
  Honestly, it takes all of 5 minutes:) Saves me from throwing time and money away.