Why We're Not Bothered By the New Changes to Rotten Tomatoes

By Dustin Rowles | Film | August 21, 2024 |

By Dustin Rowles | Film | August 21, 2024 |

Rotten Tomatoes announced today that they are rolling out a new audience score, likely designed to curb review spamming and sell more Fandango tickets (RT’s sister company is Fandango) and further diminish the value of critics’ reviews.

They have unveiled a “Verified Hot” badge, which will go to any movie that ranks over 90 percent among moviegoers. The catch is that only reviews from those who purchased tickets through Fandango will count, which at least limits the ability of toxic fans to tank the audience score of a Star Wars film because some woke monster decided to cast a female in a leading role.

The first films to receive the “Verified Hot Tomato” badge are Deadpool & Wolverine, Twisters, Bad Boys: Ride or Die, Fly Me to the Moon, and It Ends With Us.

As someone who runs a website that publishes movie reviews (and often writes them), I suspect I am supposed to feel outraged by this in some way. But after giving it my considered opinion, I decided that I don’t really care.

There was a time when movie reviews were designed to tell potential moviegoers whether they should see a movie or not. That’s certainly still one purpose. But over the years, I have found that most moviegoing decisions for big studio movies aren’t based on individual reviews but on trailers, marketing, social media, the cast, and vibes. However, moviegoers will often return to those reviews after they’ve seen a movie to see if it aligns with their opinion. A lot of people also read reviews of movies they have no intention of watching to see if they reinforce their preexisting beliefs (“This review confirms my decision not to see this movie” is a very popular comment!) Many people read reviews because they want to know what happens in the movie they have no intention of seeing, and there is an audience of folks who read movie reviews because they like to read movie reviews, whether they see the film or not.

This is why we rarely rush to publish a review before a movie’s release. In fact, a review is read much more widely on this site if it’s published on the Monday after the film’s release than on the Friday of its release — more people have seen it, and therefore there are more people to talk about it. It also receives more page views if it’s published on the Friday of a movie’s release than if it’s published a week or more ahead of its release. That’s just click science!

Besides, if people want to trust a “Verified Hot Tomato” audience meter that gives Fly Me to the Moon a rating over 90 percent, go for it! It’s their two hours. If they want to spend it watching one of the dullest movies of the year because Fandango ticket buyers tried to rationalize their unwise purchase decision by overrating a shitty romantic drama, go for it!

Rotten Tomatoes also made another change, and this one is designed to prevent studios from manipulating a RT score by giving only a handful of (effusive) critics access to a screening ahead of the film’s release, thus assuring a higher Tomatometer score. That practice has been made slightly more difficult. From The Hollywood Reporter:

If a movie debuts at a film festival or is projected to have a box office of $60 million or less, then it will need to have 10 reviews for a score; if it has a projected box office of $60 million to $120 million, it will require 20 reviews; and if the projected box office is greater than $120 million, it will need 40 reviews.

This is a smart move, but it also underlines the problem with Rotten Tomatoes in the first place: It’s too easy to manipulate. More than that, however, is the fact that studios often reward fawning, effusive critics with swag, access, movie poster quotes, and even advertising. As a result, critics these days — with all due respect — are much less discerning than they used to be: Fly Me to the Moon, for instance, has a fresh rating on the Tomatometer. I cannot stress this enough: It is a bad movie. That’s often why I doubt a movie is good unless it has higher than 80 percent on RT, and why I like to think, anyway, that you can more easily trust us if we give a positive review to a film because we tend to be more critical than the average person reviewing films on TikTok.