Is Rotten Tomatoes Still Reliable? A Statistical Analysis (statsignificant.com)
- Reference: 0178780498
- News link: https://entertainment.slashdot.org/story/25/08/20/1436205/is-rotten-tomatoes-still-reliable-a-statistical-analysis
- Source link: https://www.statsignificant.com/p/is-rotten-tomatoes-still-reliable
Fandango, America's largest movie-ticketing platform, is partially owned by NBCUniversal and Warner Bros. Discovery. In 2023 Vulture reported PR firms court reviewers from smaller outlets to secure higher Tomatometer scores before film releases.
[1] https://www.statsignificant.com/p/is-rotten-tomatoes-still-reliable
Has Rotten Tomatoes– (Score:2)
Ever been a reliable source of statistical analysis?
Re: (Score:2)
This is one of those recurring things in America where even things that already suck ass are proving themselves perfectly able to get worse to sell out what little value they have for pennies of extra profit.
Still? (Score:2)
I'm still trying to figure out if a lot of rotten tomatoes is good or bad.
"Goodhart's Law" in action (Score:4, Interesting)
Goodhart's law states that "when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure." This leads us to the exact problem described above: A Rotten Tomatoes score can be useful for audiences determining whether to see a movie. Studios know this, and thus will juke the stats by whatever means necessary to increase that score, which means that the RT score is no longer useful.
Reviewers are not reliable, period (Score:2)
Look at how bad the "reviews" are for War of the Worlds. A movie of that quality doesn't deserve such hate
Re: (Score:2)
> I don't really understand the point of movie reviews. If i see a trailer and think "hmm i wonder if thats good?" ill watch it and figure out if i like it
> if i see a trailer and think "i think i might like that" ill watch it and figure out if i like it
> what other scenarios are there?
You see numerous negative reviews for a movie you thought looked interesting and realize that you were just buying into a marketing push and skip the movie that had initially looked good.
Most folks don't like having their time wasted by a crap movie, reviews are a helpful (although not infallible) aid in avoiding that.
Re: (Score:2)
Roger Ebert was always a good indicator for movies. He was honest and never held back. Read his legendary review of the steaming turd known as Milk Money [1]https://www.rogerebert.com/rev... [rogerebert.com]
[1] https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/milk-money-1994
Corporate meddling for years (Score:2)
A while back, RT tried different techniques to appease their corporate overlords.
The most egregious I recall was when they tried to introduce manufactured, positive reviews well ahead of the general release window. They did this to trick early bird types that would be looking for an RT score and maybe not come back to check for updates. Bad movies would have an 80%+ score until a few days before when the real reviews would blast the movie and drop it into rotten territory. That was kind of obvious to regula
Imdb feels like it's been going this way (Score:2)
for a while.
I don't think online reviews should be trusted anymore. Advertisers have found all the tricks to make ratings look one way or another.
It really sucks because I just want good legitimate information, but everywhere I find we're just bombarded with sponsored content. This trend of 'influencers' is a perfect example.
This is a cultural problem, not just a RT one (Score:2)
In the last fifteen years, critics have leaned more and more heavily into telling people what they ought to like, as opposed to how likely they are to like something.
Things like the Mario movie, that are enjoyable and escapist tend to get panned by the critics. Conversely, a movie like The Last Jedi that turned a formerly enjoyable, escapist series on its head (the 8th part of a 9 part series isn't the time to do that) has a critic rating of 95% versus an audience rating in the 40s, because the critics stra
It never was reliable (Score:3)
It still baffles me that RottenTomatoes ever became regarded with any degree of respectability. Their whole system is a statistical nightmare. I remember shortly after the site came out, reading reviews that included both positive and negative features, rendered into binary classification as either "fresh" or "rotten" despite what the reviewer said. Even overall positive reviews being rated as "rotten", for example, or vice versa. It's a shit show. (Presumably the site rose to prominence simply because it somehow outcompeted other review aggregators)
Samples (Score:2)
IMHO Equally as bad is the sample set. Either you shape your sample set to include, maybe, a few dozen very reliable sources, or you hoover up hundreds of sources, and the wheat and chaff will be separated out statistically.
There seems to be a mishmash of both approaches. You get reviews from Variety, The New York Times and The Miami Herald mixed in with reviews from BuzzFeed NYC Movie Guru.
Re: (Score:3)
There seems to be a mishmash of both approaches. You get reviews from Variety, The New York Times and The Miami Herald mixed in with reviews from BuzzFeed NYC Movie Guru.
I'd rather get reviews from "regular people" and not "professional reviewers" with a silver spoon up their nose. I can't recall ever agreeing with any movie review from a place like the NYT.