Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang.[5][6][7][8] Although the name "Rotten Tomatoes" connects to the practice of audiences throwing rotten tomatoes in disapproval of a poor stage performance, the direct inspiration for the name from Duong, Lee, and Wang came from an equivalent scene in the 1992 Canadian film Léolo.[9]
Type of site
Film and television review aggregator and user community
United States
- Warner Bros. Discovery (25%)
- NBCUniversal (75%)
Senh Duong
Senh Duong
Patrick Y. Lee
Stephen Wang
Yes
Optional
August 12, 1998
Since January 2010, Rotten Tomatoes has been owned by Flixster, which was in turn acquired by Warner Bros. in 2011. In February 2016, Rotten Tomatoes and its parent site Flixster were sold to Comcast's Fandango ticketing company.[10] Warner Bros. retained a minority stake in the merged entities, including Fandango.[1]
The site is influential among moviegoers, a third of whom say they consult it before going to the cinema in the U.S.[11] It has been criticized for oversimplifying reviews by flattening them into a fresh vs. rotten dichotomy.[12][13] It has also been criticized for being easy for studios to manipulate by limiting early screenings to critics inclined to be favorable, among other tactics.[12]
Features[edit]
Critics' aggregate score[edit]
Rotten Tomatoes staff first collect online reviews from writers who are certified members of various writing guilds or film critic-associations. To be accepted as a critic on the website, a critic's original reviews must garner a specific number of "likes" from users. Those classified as "Top Critics" generally write for major newspapers. The critics upload their reviews to the movie page on the website, and need to mark their review "fresh" if it is generally favorable or "rotten" otherwise. It is necessary for the critic to do so as some reviews are qualitative and do not grant a numeric score, making it impossible for the system to be automatic.[36]
The website keeps track of all the reviews counted for each film and calculates the percentage of positive reviews. If the positive reviews make up 60% or more, the film is considered "fresh". If the positive reviews are less than 60%, the film is considered "rotten". An average score on a 0 to 10 scale is also calculated. With each review, a short excerpt of the review is quoted that also serves a hyperlink to the complete review essay for anyone interested to read the critic's full thoughts on the subject.
"Top Critics", such as Roger Ebert, Desson Thomson, Stephen Hunter, Owen Gleiberman, Lisa Schwarzbaum, Peter Travers and Michael Phillips are identified in a sub-listing that calculates their reviews separately. Their opinions are also included in the general rating. When there are sufficient reviews, the staff creates and posts a consensus statement to express the general reasons for the collective opinion of the film.
This rating is indicated by an equivalent icon at the film listing, to give the reader a one-glance look at the general critical opinion about the work. The "Certified Fresh" seal is reserved for movies that satisfy two criteria: a "Tomatometer" of 75% or better and at least 80 reviews (40 for limited release movies) from "Tomatometer" critics (including 5 Top Critics). Films earning this status will keep it unless the positive critical percentage drops below 70%.[37] Films with 100% positive ratings that lack the required number of reviews may not receive the "Certified Fresh" seal.
Influence[edit]
Major Hollywood studios have come to see Rotten Tomatoes as a potential threat to their marketing. In 2017, several blockbuster films like Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales, Baywatch and The Mummy were projected to open with gross receipts of $90 million, $50 million and $45 million, respectively, but ended up debuting with $62.6 million, $23.1 million and $31.6 million. Rotten Tomatoes, which scored the films at 30%, 19% and 16%, respectively, was blamed for undermining them. That same summer, films like Wonder Woman and Spider-Man: Homecoming (both 92%) received high scores and opened at or exceeded expectations with their $100+ million trackings.[46][47][48]
As result of this concern, 20th Century Fox commissioned a 2015 study, titled "Rotten Tomatoes and Box Office", that stated the website combined with social media was going to be an increasingly serious complication for the film business: "The power of Rotten Tomatoes and fast-breaking word of mouth will only get stronger. Many Millennials and even Gen X-ers now vet every purchase through the Internet, whether it's restaurants, video games, make-up, consumer electronics or movies. As they get older and comprise an even larger share of total moviegoers, this behavior is unlikely to change".[49] Other studios have commissioned a number of studies on the subject, with them finding that 7/10 people said they would be less interested in seeing a film if the Rotten Tomatoes score was below 25%, and that the site has the most influence on people 25 and younger.[48]
The scores have reached a level of online ubiquity which film companies have found threatening. For instance, the scores are regularly posted in Google search results for films so reviewed. Furthermore, the scores are prominently featured in Fandango's popular ticket purchasing website, on its mobile app, on popular streaming services like Peacock, and on Flixster, which led to complaints that "rotten" scores damaged films' performances.[50]
Others have argued that filmmakers and studios have only themselves to blame if Rotten Tomatoes produces a bad score, as this only reflects a poor reception among film critics. As one independent film distributor marketing executive noted, "To me, it's a ridiculous argument that Rotten Tomatoes is the problem ... make a good movie!".[51] ComScore's Paul Dergarabedian had similar comments, saying: "The best way for studios to combat the 'Rotten Tomatoes Effect' is to make better movies, plain and simple".[48]
Some studios have suggested embargoing or cancelling early critic screenings in a response to poor reviews prior to a film's release affecting pre-sales and opening weekend numbers.[47] In July 2017, Sony embargoed critic reviews for The Emoji Movie until mid-day the Thursday before its release. The film ended up with a 9% rating (including 0% after the first 25 reviews), but still opened to $24 million, on par with projections. Josh Greenstein, Sony Pictures President of Worldwide Marketing and Distribution, said, "The Emoji Movie was built for people under 18 ... so we wanted to give the movie its best chance. What other wide release with a score under 8 percent has opened north of $20 million? I don't think there is one". Conversely, Warner Bros. also did not do critic pre-screenings for The House, which held a score of 16% until the day of its release, and opened to just $8.7 million; the lowest of star Will Ferrell's career.[48]
That marketing tactic can backfire, and drew the vocal disgust of influential critics such as Roger Ebert, who was prone to derisively condemn such moves, with gestures such as "The Wagging Finger of Shame", on At the Movies.[52] Furthermore, the very nature of withholding reviews can draw early conclusions from the public that the film is of poor quality because of that marketing tactic.[53]
On February 26, 2019, in response to issues surrounding coordinated "bombing" of user reviews for several films, most notably Captain Marvel and Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, prior to their release, the site announced that user reviews would no longer be accepted until a film is publicly released. The site also announced plans to introduce a system for "verified" reviews, and that the "Want to See" statistic would now be expressed as a number so that it would not be confused with the audience score.[54][55]
In April 2023, a 2017 film titled The Snowman, starring Michael Fassbender reached the No. 1 spot in America on Netflix's Current Top 10 Most Watched list, despite it holding a score on Rotten Tomatoes of 6%.[56]
Despite arguments on how Rotten Tomatoes scores impact the box office,[57] academic researchers so far have not found evidence that Rotten Tomatoes ratings affect box office performance.[58]
Criticism[edit]
Oversimplification[edit]
In January 2010, on the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the New York Film Critics Circle, its chairman Armond White cited Rotten Tomatoes in particular and film review aggregators in general as examples of how "the Internet takes revenge on individual expression". He said they work by "dumping reviewers onto one website and assigning spurious percentage-enthusiasm points to the discrete reviews". According to White, such websites "offer consensus as a substitute for assessment".[59] Landon Palmer, a film and media historian and an assistant professor in the Department of Journalism and Creative Media director in the College of Communication and Information Sciences at the University of Alabama[60] agreed with White, stating that "[Rotten Tomatoes applies a] problematic algorithm to pretty much all avenues of modern media art and entertainment".[61]
Director and producer Brett Ratner has criticized the website for "reducing hundreds of reviews culled from print and online sources into a popularized aggregate score", while expressing respect for traditional film critics.[62] Writer Max Landis, following his film Victor Frankenstein receiving an approval rating of 24% on the site, wrote that the site "breaks down entire reviews into just the word 'yes' or 'no', making criticism binary in a destructive arbitrary way".[63]
Other criticisms[edit]
American director Martin Scorsese wrote a column in The Hollywood Reporter criticizing both Rotten Tomatoes and CinemaScore for promoting the idea that films like Mother! had to be "instantly liked" to be successful.[64] Scorsese, in a dedication for the Roger Ebert Center for Film Studies at the University of Illinois later continued his criticism, voicing that Rotten Tomatoes and other review services "devalue cinema on streaming platforms to the level of content".[65]
In 2015, while promoting the film Suffragette (which has a 73% approval rating)[66] actress Meryl Streep accused Rotten Tomatoes of disproportionately representing the opinions of male film critics, resulting in a skewed ratio that adversely affected the commercial performances of female-driven films. "I submit to you that men and women are not the same, they like different things," she said. "Sometimes they like the same thing, but sometimes their tastes diverge. If the Tomatometer is slighted so completely to one set of tastes that drives box office in the United States, absolutely".[67] Critics took issue with the sentiment that someone's gender or ethnic background would dictate their response to art.[68]
Rotten Tomatoes deliberately withheld the critic score for Justice League based on early reviews until the premiere of its See It/Skip It episode on the Thursday before its release. Some critics viewed the move as a ploy to promote the web series, but some argued that the move was a deliberate conflict of interest on account of Warner Bros.' ownership of the film and Rotten Tomatoes, and the tepid critical reception of the DC Extended Universe films at the time.[69]
The New York Times aggregated statistics on the critical reception of audience scores versus critic scores, and noticed in almost every genre that "The public rates a movie more positively than do the critics. The only exceptions are black comedies and documentaries. Critics systematically rate films in these genres more highly than do Rotten Tomatoes users".[70] Slate magazine collected data in a similar survey that revealed a noticeable favor for movies released before the 1990s, that "may be explained by a bias toward reviewers reviewing, or Rotten Tomatoes scoring, only the best movies from bygone eras".[71]
Vulture ran an article in September 2023 that raised several criticisms, including the ease at which large companies are able to manipulate reviewer ratings. 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.[12]
WIRED published an article in February 2024 written by Christopher Null, a former film critic, that argued such methods are standard activities performed by all PR agencies. In particular, Null points out that sponsoring legitimate, honest reviews has a long history in other industries and is a "common tactic employed by indie titles to get visibility." .[72]
