5 ms·

Not really surprising, this is just confirmation of what's been apparent for a while - Audience score is an accurate estimate of the movie, and the tomatometer

Not really surprising, this is just confirmation of what's been apparent for a while - Audience score is an accurate estimate of the movie, and the tomatometer (the critic score) basically just reflects the political correctness / marketing budget of the movie.

Frannyies 3y ago
For me the critic score is a 'is this valuable as a cultural enrichment of movies' vs 'do people like it'. What you do with information is than your decision. Best case you know and trust your critics because you align to a certain degree with their experience and movie taste. For example "now you see me" is a shit movie. Magic in a movie doesn't work and the main hidden character basically breaks the whole movie but apparently the audience loved it.
- willcipriano 3y ago
  > is this valuable as a cultural enrichment of movies The Last Jedi is apparently the cultural enrichment film of the decade. https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/star_wars_the_last_jedi https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/star_wars_the_last_jedi
  - rrrrrrrrrrrryan 3y ago
    Rotten tomatoes scores aren't an average of a bunch of vectors, they're an aggregation of binary data points. Each individual review is distilled down to "good" (100%) or "rotten" (0%), then they're all averaged up. A better way to view the critic score is, "X% of film critics think this film is worth watching." And the audience score is: "Y% of moviegoers who leave movie reviews on Rotten Tomatoes think this film is worth watching." This is why Toy Story can get 99% (it's a crowd pleaser), and why daring, impactful films can sometimes get lower scores (they can be polarizing).
    - smsm42 3y ago
      Worth watching for whom though? The critics have no idea what my tastes are. But I am pretty sure they are different from a film critic - I don't even know anyone who is a film critic or who knows anyone who is a film critic (and is not afraid to admit it). And from all evidence available, those critics by now are mostly into the business of shilling for studios, virtue signalling and sniffing their own farts. Why would I care what this bunch thinks is worth watching? If they want to watch it, let them, but it has nothing to do with me.
      - rrrrrrrrrrrryan 3y ago
        If you're not terribly interested in the opinions of critics, then a website that attempts to aggregate critical opinions probably isn't for you.
kemayo 3y ago
I don't think either is inherently accurate, honestly. Sometimes a low audience score is reliable, and sometimes it just means some niche crowd has gotten worked up about a particular movie and is review-bombing it.
- mcpackieh 3y ago
  More often, that's just a narrative invented / promulgated by people who won't/can't admit that their movie stinks. Instead of admitting they failed, they go looking for excuses. If you search social media you can find instances of wackjobs saying anything about anybody, so worthless anecdotal evidence for any review-bombing narrative is always easy to find. If your movie had lots of black people, say that it failed because audiences/reviewers are racist (and ignore the existence of movies with similar casts that were very well received). If your movie has lots of women, say that the audiences are sexist. If your movie mostly has white dudes in it, then fall back on some generic insult like... > *“The studios didn’t invent Rotten Tomatoes, and most of them don’t like it,” says the filmmaker Paul Schrader. “But the system is broken. Audiences are dumber. Normal people don’t go through reviews like they used to. Rotten Tomatoes is something the studios can game. So they do.” ...calling the audiences dumb. There are plenty of smart movies that manage to find smart audiences, but for some reason those smart audiences just don't exist when considering his movie. He can't admit to himself that he doesn't make very good movies, so he prefers to think that everybody else is stupid. Blaming audiences is a coping mechanism for bad artists.
devindotcom 3y ago
I don't think this reflects reality - many movies with enormous marketing budgets and which probably fit this "political correctness" definition routinely rate poorly on RT. I actually find the audience score is more likely to be "politicized" with review bombing by anonymous people who disagree with a film's message.
mitchdoogle 3y ago
I always look at critic score like quality of the film (acting, editing, etc), and audience score as entertainment value. I look for films that have 80+ in one and 70+ in both.
mmanfrin 3y ago
> reflects the political correctness Lost me here.
- brazzledazzle 3y ago
  Probably because they have an axe to grind and can’t stop themselves from souring every discussion by turning it toward politics. I see this happening more and more on HN and I hate it because this is one of the places I like to go when I need a break from the constant culture war bullshit.
  - edgyquant 3y ago
    Or probably because it’s the truth and you have a political axe to grind against anyone who points out this very obvious truth.
    - mmanfrin 3y ago
      Most of your recent comments are all 'culture war politics' related. That you'd accuse anyone else of grinding a political axe belies and lack of self awareness.
      - edgyquant 3y ago
        No they arent. When culture war things hit the top I may respond but most of mine are definitely not. Also it’s a gross habit to go looking at peoples comment history looking to win an argument in a thread, address the comment or buzz off.
    - brazzledazzle 3y ago
      It doesn’t matter what my political views are. The fact of the matter is that there are spaces online for this type of discourse and HN isn’t one of them. There are good reasons for that. This is made abundantly clear here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - 3y ago
munk-a 3y ago
I think your statement is quite a bit more correct if you just remove the "political correctness" option. Critic scores are based on marketing budgets - award shows in particular are funded by immense amounts of prestige lobbying.
- baryphonic 3y ago
  I'm not sure I agree, but it would be worth studying empirically. The film Strange World, for instance, bombed, but has a 72% on RT and is certainly politically correct. It was quite poorly marketed.[0] While studios aren't in the habit of sharing marketing budgets, we can safely say the marketing expenditure was low. This is a single datapoint, but my hypothesis is that political correctness does indeed account for a measurable (beyond noise) portion of a RT score. Marketing spend probably matters more, and genuinely excellent non-PC films (say, Oppenheimer) can succeed without PC, but PC does contribute. [0]https://fandomwire.com/theyve-been-barely-advertising-it-until-last-week-disney-faces-backlash-for-negligible-marketing-for-strange-world-first-disney-animated-movie-with-lgbtq-lead/ https://fandomwire.com/theyve-been-barely-advertising-it-unt...
  - ryandrake 3y ago
    What even makes one movie politically correct and another one not? The phrase has been watered down to the point where I think it now just means "vaguely liked by one political team and disliked by the other." So instead of using a meaningless euphemism, OP should articulate what exact themes, stories, or characters they think lead to a good critic score?
    - cyrialize 3y ago
      I agree, I feel like it's being used similar to "woke" and "anti-woke".
    - phpisthebest 3y ago
      Simple "politically correct" films put the political narrative ahead of all things including historical accuracy, established canon, accuracy to other media (books, games, etc), scientific accuracy, or even good story telling. They focus first on their political objectives, their political views, and what political issues they wish to advocate for above all else This has been an increasing trope in modern film and shows. "The narrative" is now even a meme... The other coded phrase for a "politically correct" film is "re-imagined for a modern audience"
gobdovan 3y ago
I like the take of Nassim Taleb on a tangent idea - restaurants in New York that get awards from other restaurant owners have no better change of surviving than the ones not winning awards from peers or critics. You need an external validation, such as real customers. Also, people that rate movies online may not be representative of the entire movie-watcher population, so that may be, in some cases, also not a very accurate measurement, unless you yourself are a typical movie rater. In the gaming world, Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare got the most disliked trailer ever on YouTube, and still sold more than 13m copies. Somewhat similarly, logic-devoid, low-quality children movies can get as many dislikes as parents want, children will still watch them.
- dghlsakjg 3y ago
  I'm sure Taleb has more to say, but I would say that whether a restaurant survives has a loose correlation to the quality of the food. Especially in NYC. There are plenty of thriving restaurants that will serve you garbage food with bad service (Anything in Times Square). The point is that commercial success in a variety of industries is a result of a variety of factors, product quality is frequently not the most relevant. That is: a restaurant owner can correctly say that another restaurant has excellent food and service without that being an endorsement of the restaurant's ability to survive as a business.
  - gobdovan 3y ago
    You're perfectly right, I'm conflating quality with business success. I would disagree with the loose correlation point. Although it's just one component of a restaurant's broader strategy for success, quality is undoubtedly crucial. While in Times Square, I would doubt you would blindly choose any restaurant without considering food and service quality. Also, I would say that while a restaurant owner can correctly evaluate another, it's not necessary implied that specifically an award winner has proven that the unbiased opinions of others put them in this position.
nimbius 3y ago
the sites owned entirely by Warner and NBCUniversal so...im sure the hot dog factory gives glowing reviews of their new hotdogs.. Vulture ran an article on September 2023 that raised criticisms including the fact that since the acquisition by Fandango in 2016, the rules have changed in ways that happen to favor the biggest movies. The article cited publicity company Bunker 15 as an example of how scores can be boosted by recruiting obscure, often self-published reviewers to write positively, or selectively hiding negative reviews, using the example of 2018's Ophelia.
- edgyquant 3y ago
  Weird then how they typically praise every Disney movie but have given several WB movies terrible rating.
- nvm0n2 3y ago
  Don't think it's to do with ownership. Google reviews have the same problem. There are tons of 1 star reviews that praise movies with what sounds like critic or AI written text. Try searching for barbie movie for an example. Click more reviews and filter by 1 star. The third says: "Barbie," director and co-writer Greta Gerwig’s summer splash, is a dazzling achievement, both technically and in tone. It’s a visual feast that succeeds as both a gleeful escape and a battle cry. So crammed with impeccable attention to detail is "Barbie” that you couldn’t possibly catch it all in a single sitting; you’d have to devote an entire viewing just to the accessories, for example. It even says ADVERTISEMENT in capital letters but below the fold where you have to expand the whole review to see it. Despite that this review directly contradicts its star rating, 774 "people" have marked it as helpful. Scroll down a bit further and there is another, "If this was an item on the McDonald’s menu, it would be everyone’s favourite - the Oreo McFlurry. Hands down, I don’t think I could name a better film. The acting was superb!" which supposedly nearly a thousand people found helpful. This one doesn't say anywhere that it's an ad. When I first noticed this, almost all the top 1 star reviews were ads. Real users have been correcting it and the top two reviews are now real. The second review says "Update: if you notice google is showing mostly 5 star reviews when there is almost an equal number of 1 stars to 5 stars hence why the average is 3 stars." and the 5th post says "I noticed a few giving spectaculars about the movie but rating it as one star, maybe to drown out the real reviews?" so irate users have been noticing the manipulation too. It's really very embarrassing for Google. It's gone now but originally when you searched for this movie there was a special pink sparkle effect. So they're paying engineers to write special code just for this movie whilst ignoring obvious fake reviews, claiming they were meta-reviewed by thousands of people and they still haven't cleaned this up even weeks later.
AbrahamParangi 3y ago
IMO audience score is more of a proxy for movie quality minus movie expectations. A lot of niche genre films do okay because 1: the only people who watch them are enthusiasts and 2: nobody goes in with high expectations to begin with. If everyone watched them and reviewed them they'd do much worse. For a mainstream example, take Fast X. It's an objectively stupid movie with a great audience score - because it's exactly what it says on the tin! Nobody is confused about what they're watching. Nobody thinks they're going to get terrific drama or romance or suspense. They're going to get the 9th sequel to a comedy action movie about dudes driving cars.
- slg 3y ago
  Yeah, the audience score is in no way an accurate measure of quality because it is provided by a self-selected group of people who both paid for the movie and went online to rate it. The end result is that a lot of movies viewed as failures will have high audience ratings as long as they can reach some small passionate audience. Just looking at some current movies: Blue Beetle: 78% critics, 92% audience Gran Turismo: 63%, 98% Elemental: 74%, 93% Meg 2: 29% 73% Haunted Mansion 38%, 84% Indiana Jones: 69%, 88% Little Mermaid 67%, 94% Those audience scores are not "more accurate" in any way. People who are forced to see these movies like them less than people who chose to see it. There also really isn't anything currently that fits into "the political correctness / marketing budget of the movie" claim of OP. It seems like they are just buying into cultural war nonsense. The closest I can find is Barbie and its critic score is 5% higher than the audience score, so not much of a gap.
  - AbrahamParangi 3y ago
    The one useful aspect is that if you only care about the scores of movies you were already interested in, the audience score actually is quite accurate. If you already know "I am the sort of person who might pay to watch the little mermaid" then you can have good confidence you'll like it based on the audience score.
  - ericmcer 3y ago
    The ratings for those movies are so far away from how I felt about them (they all landed < 30% for me) it actually gives me an idea for a site. You rate movies. The consensus ratings you see are based on people who have rated movies similarly to you overall.
rfwhyte 3y ago
Audience score is functionally useless though, as there are entire industries devoted to manipulating it, and the sites know this and do nothing to stop it.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

Frannyies 3y ago

For me the critic score is a 'is this valuable as a cultural enrichment of movies' vs 'do people like it'. What you do with information is than your decision. Best case you know and trust your critics because you align to a certain degree with their experience and movie taste. For example "now you see me" is a shit movie. Magic in a movie doesn't work and the main hidden character basically breaks the whole movie but apparently the audience loved it.

willcipriano 3y ago
> is this valuable as a cultural enrichment of movies The Last Jedi is apparently the cultural enrichment film of the decade. https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/star_wars_the_last_jedi https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/star_wars_the_last_jedi
- rrrrrrrrrrrryan 3y ago
  Rotten tomatoes scores aren't an average of a bunch of vectors, they're an aggregation of binary data points. Each individual review is distilled down to "good" (100%) or "rotten" (0%), then they're all averaged up. A better way to view the critic score is, "X% of film critics think this film is worth watching." And the audience score is: "Y% of moviegoers who leave movie reviews on Rotten Tomatoes think this film is worth watching." This is why Toy Story can get 99% (it's a crowd pleaser), and why daring, impactful films can sometimes get lower scores (they can be polarizing).
  - smsm42 3y ago
    Worth watching for whom though? The critics have no idea what my tastes are. But I am pretty sure they are different from a film critic - I don't even know anyone who is a film critic or who knows anyone who is a film critic (and is not afraid to admit it). And from all evidence available, those critics by now are mostly into the business of shilling for studios, virtue signalling and sniffing their own farts. Why would I care what this bunch thinks is worth watching? If they want to watch it, let them, but it has nothing to do with me.
    - rrrrrrrrrrrryan 3y ago
      If you're not terribly interested in the opinions of critics, then a website that attempts to aggregate critical opinions probably isn't for you.

kemayo 3y ago

I don't think either is inherently accurate, honestly. Sometimes a low audience score is reliable, and sometimes it just means some niche crowd has gotten worked up about a particular movie and is review-bombing it.

mcpackieh 3y ago
More often, that's just a narrative invented / promulgated by people who won't/can't admit that their movie stinks. Instead of admitting they failed, they go looking for excuses. If you search social media you can find instances of wackjobs saying anything about anybody, so worthless anecdotal evidence for any review-bombing narrative is always easy to find. If your movie had lots of black people, say that it failed because audiences/reviewers are racist (and ignore the existence of movies with similar casts that were very well received). If your movie has lots of women, say that the audiences are sexist. If your movie mostly has white dudes in it, then fall back on some generic insult like... > *“The studios didn’t invent Rotten Tomatoes, and most of them don’t like it,” says the filmmaker Paul Schrader. “But the system is broken. Audiences are dumber. Normal people don’t go through reviews like they used to. Rotten Tomatoes is something the studios can game. So they do.” ...calling the audiences dumb. There are plenty of smart movies that manage to find smart audiences, but for some reason those smart audiences just don't exist when considering his movie. He can't admit to himself that he doesn't make very good movies, so he prefers to think that everybody else is stupid. Blaming audiences is a coping mechanism for bad artists.

devindotcom 3y ago

I don't think this reflects reality - many movies with enormous marketing budgets and which probably fit this "political correctness" definition routinely rate poorly on RT. I actually find the audience score is more likely to be "politicized" with review bombing by anonymous people who disagree with a film's message.

mitchdoogle 3y ago

I always look at critic score like quality of the film (acting, editing, etc), and audience score as entertainment value. I look for films that have 80+ in one and 70+ in both.

mmanfrin 3y ago

> reflects the political correctness Lost me here.

brazzledazzle 3y ago
Probably because they have an axe to grind and can’t stop themselves from souring every discussion by turning it toward politics. I see this happening more and more on HN and I hate it because this is one of the places I like to go when I need a break from the constant culture war bullshit.
- edgyquant 3y ago
  Or probably because it’s the truth and you have a political axe to grind against anyone who points out this very obvious truth.
  - mmanfrin 3y ago
    Most of your recent comments are all 'culture war politics' related. That you'd accuse anyone else of grinding a political axe belies and lack of self awareness.
    - edgyquant 3y ago
      No they arent. When culture war things hit the top I may respond but most of mine are definitely not. Also it’s a gross habit to go looking at peoples comment history looking to win an argument in a thread, address the comment or buzz off.
  - brazzledazzle 3y ago
    It doesn’t matter what my political views are. The fact of the matter is that there are spaces online for this type of discourse and HN isn’t one of them. There are good reasons for that. This is made abundantly clear here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- 3y ago

munk-a 3y ago

I think your statement is quite a bit more correct if you just remove the "political correctness" option. Critic scores are based on marketing budgets - award shows in particular are funded by immense amounts of prestige lobbying.

baryphonic 3y ago
I'm not sure I agree, but it would be worth studying empirically. The film Strange World, for instance, bombed, but has a 72% on RT and is certainly politically correct. It was quite poorly marketed.[0] While studios aren't in the habit of sharing marketing budgets, we can safely say the marketing expenditure was low. This is a single datapoint, but my hypothesis is that political correctness does indeed account for a measurable (beyond noise) portion of a RT score. Marketing spend probably matters more, and genuinely excellent non-PC films (say, Oppenheimer) can succeed without PC, but PC does contribute. [0]https://fandomwire.com/theyve-been-barely-advertising-it-until-last-week-disney-faces-backlash-for-negligible-marketing-for-strange-world-first-disney-animated-movie-with-lgbtq-lead/ https://fandomwire.com/theyve-been-barely-advertising-it-unt...
- ryandrake 3y ago
  What even makes one movie politically correct and another one not? The phrase has been watered down to the point where I think it now just means "vaguely liked by one political team and disliked by the other." So instead of using a meaningless euphemism, OP should articulate what exact themes, stories, or characters they think lead to a good critic score?
  - cyrialize 3y ago
    I agree, I feel like it's being used similar to "woke" and "anti-woke".
  - phpisthebest 3y ago
    Simple "politically correct" films put the political narrative ahead of all things including historical accuracy, established canon, accuracy to other media (books, games, etc), scientific accuracy, or even good story telling. They focus first on their political objectives, their political views, and what political issues they wish to advocate for above all else This has been an increasing trope in modern film and shows. "The narrative" is now even a meme... The other coded phrase for a "politically correct" film is "re-imagined for a modern audience"

gobdovan 3y ago

I like the take of Nassim Taleb on a tangent idea - restaurants in New York that get awards from other restaurant owners have no better change of surviving than the ones not winning awards from peers or critics. You need an external validation, such as real customers. Also, people that rate movies online may not be representative of the entire movie-watcher population, so that may be, in some cases, also not a very accurate measurement, unless you yourself are a typical movie rater. In the gaming world, Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare got the most disliked trailer ever on YouTube, and still sold more than 13m copies. Somewhat similarly, logic-devoid, low-quality children movies can get as many dislikes as parents want, children will still watch them.

dghlsakjg 3y ago
I'm sure Taleb has more to say, but I would say that whether a restaurant survives has a loose correlation to the quality of the food. Especially in NYC. There are plenty of thriving restaurants that will serve you garbage food with bad service (Anything in Times Square). The point is that commercial success in a variety of industries is a result of a variety of factors, product quality is frequently not the most relevant. That is: a restaurant owner can correctly say that another restaurant has excellent food and service without that being an endorsement of the restaurant's ability to survive as a business.
- gobdovan 3y ago
  You're perfectly right, I'm conflating quality with business success. I would disagree with the loose correlation point. Although it's just one component of a restaurant's broader strategy for success, quality is undoubtedly crucial. While in Times Square, I would doubt you would blindly choose any restaurant without considering food and service quality. Also, I would say that while a restaurant owner can correctly evaluate another, it's not necessary implied that specifically an award winner has proven that the unbiased opinions of others put them in this position.

nimbius 3y ago

the sites owned entirely by Warner and NBCUniversal so...im sure the hot dog factory gives glowing reviews of their new hotdogs.. Vulture ran an article on September 2023 that raised criticisms including the fact that since the acquisition by Fandango in 2016, the rules have changed in ways that happen to favor the biggest movies. The article cited publicity company Bunker 15 as an example of how scores can be boosted by recruiting obscure, often self-published reviewers to write positively, or selectively hiding negative reviews, using the example of 2018's Ophelia.

edgyquant 3y ago
Weird then how they typically praise every Disney movie but have given several WB movies terrible rating.
nvm0n2 3y ago
Don't think it's to do with ownership. Google reviews have the same problem. There are tons of 1 star reviews that praise movies with what sounds like critic or AI written text. Try searching for barbie movie for an example. Click more reviews and filter by 1 star. The third says: "Barbie," director and co-writer Greta Gerwig’s summer splash, is a dazzling achievement, both technically and in tone. It’s a visual feast that succeeds as both a gleeful escape and a battle cry. So crammed with impeccable attention to detail is "Barbie” that you couldn’t possibly catch it all in a single sitting; you’d have to devote an entire viewing just to the accessories, for example. It even says ADVERTISEMENT in capital letters but below the fold where you have to expand the whole review to see it. Despite that this review directly contradicts its star rating, 774 "people" have marked it as helpful. Scroll down a bit further and there is another, "If this was an item on the McDonald’s menu, it would be everyone’s favourite - the Oreo McFlurry. Hands down, I don’t think I could name a better film. The acting was superb!" which supposedly nearly a thousand people found helpful. This one doesn't say anywhere that it's an ad. When I first noticed this, almost all the top 1 star reviews were ads. Real users have been correcting it and the top two reviews are now real. The second review says "Update: if you notice google is showing mostly 5 star reviews when there is almost an equal number of 1 stars to 5 stars hence why the average is 3 stars." and the 5th post says "I noticed a few giving spectaculars about the movie but rating it as one star, maybe to drown out the real reviews?" so irate users have been noticing the manipulation too. It's really very embarrassing for Google. It's gone now but originally when you searched for this movie there was a special pink sparkle effect. So they're paying engineers to write special code just for this movie whilst ignoring obvious fake reviews, claiming they were meta-reviewed by thousands of people and they still haven't cleaned this up even weeks later.

AbrahamParangi 3y ago

IMO audience score is more of a proxy for movie quality minus movie expectations. A lot of niche genre films do okay because 1: the only people who watch them are enthusiasts and 2: nobody goes in with high expectations to begin with. If everyone watched them and reviewed them they'd do much worse. For a mainstream example, take Fast X. It's an objectively stupid movie with a great audience score - because it's exactly what it says on the tin! Nobody is confused about what they're watching. Nobody thinks they're going to get terrific drama or romance or suspense. They're going to get the 9th sequel to a comedy action movie about dudes driving cars.

slg 3y ago
Yeah, the audience score is in no way an accurate measure of quality because it is provided by a self-selected group of people who both paid for the movie and went online to rate it. The end result is that a lot of movies viewed as failures will have high audience ratings as long as they can reach some small passionate audience. Just looking at some current movies: Blue Beetle: 78% critics, 92% audience Gran Turismo: 63%, 98% Elemental: 74%, 93% Meg 2: 29% 73% Haunted Mansion 38%, 84% Indiana Jones: 69%, 88% Little Mermaid 67%, 94% Those audience scores are not "more accurate" in any way. People who are forced to see these movies like them less than people who chose to see it. There also really isn't anything currently that fits into "the political correctness / marketing budget of the movie" claim of OP. It seems like they are just buying into cultural war nonsense. The closest I can find is Barbie and its critic score is 5% higher than the audience score, so not much of a gap.
- AbrahamParangi 3y ago
  The one useful aspect is that if you only care about the scores of movies you were already interested in, the audience score actually is quite accurate. If you already know "I am the sort of person who might pay to watch the little mermaid" then you can have good confidence you'll like it based on the audience score.
- ericmcer 3y ago
  The ratings for those movies are so far away from how I felt about them (they all landed < 30% for me) it actually gives me an idea for a site. You rate movies. The consensus ratings you see are based on people who have rated movies similarly to you overall.

rfwhyte 3y ago

Audience score is functionally useless though, as there are entire industries devoted to manipulating it, and the sites know this and do nothing to stop it.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]