I've noticed this phenomenon in many systems. People glom onto the only entity bothering to do benchmarks/reviews/ratings/whatever, or at least the only popular one, even if the system is totally bogus. Because where else are you gonna go?
In this case I think rotten tomatoes has done a reasonable job of pleasing a lot of people. Separating out audience and critics allows producers to point to their well received movies, regular people can know if they will enjoy it, people who love controversial movies can accuse others of review bombing... everyone gets to have their own version of events and rotten tomatoes gets to be the source everyone points to.
Still, they should improve the ratings algorithm.
It would be a benefit to the audience and critics, just not a benefit to the company or movie studios I guess.
People glom onto the only entity bothering to do benchmarks/reviews/ratings/whatever, or at least the only popular one, even if the system is totally bogus.
I don't get any of this, really. MetaCritic and IMDB are also huge, and use alternate weighting systems, I believe. You can also just google the movie and underneath the 'big three reviewers,' there'll be a bunch more quality review sites, like NYT, The Guardian, Ebert's site and so forth.
So for anyone who wants to get a spectrum of opinions, it's really not that hard. Not unlike how one should get reliable news.
A third of U.S. adults say they check Rotten Tomatoes before going to the multiplex
Ah, so that's the power. I don't know what the rest of the world uses, but I've always found RT to have a shit interface --> never used it to make a decision. In fact, most streaming sites use IMDB (which is only a little more reliable than RT). RT's score can always be reliably discarded.
I don't use it myself. I may check out the IMDb score when I add a film to my watchlist but for anything appearing in the cinema I usually know if I'll see it from the synopsis or trailer. I try and see every genre film and ones getting awards buzz, then anything else that looks interesting or the friend I go with fancies (The Holdovers was his pick and a good one). So I try and watch a film with minimal information and expectations.
i usually go to RT after i watch a movie to see if anyone else agreed with my opinion on it. critics agreed with me on The Last Jedi. audience did not lol
Worth the read, including the linked 538 article about Fandango. Thanks for sharing!
IMDb is biased towards production of their owners (Amazon). I prefer tmdb.org
I've not noticed any great bias myself and don't really let the rating impact my decisions. However, if I am going to move off IMDb (and I have gone all in there) then it's likely to be to a federated service.
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