The new DC movie, Black Adam is set to hit theaters this weekend. While it’s most certainly guarantee to do big at the box office come Saturday, the reviews haven’t been very kind. As we speak, it is currently rated at a 55% on Rotten Tomatoes based off of 84 reviews. And just like every time a new big anticipated movie comes out and gets a negative critical reception, you have people going on and on again about how worthless critics are and that Rotten Tomatoes sucks because the movie they are looking forward to is getting bad reviews. This of course follows up about how a certain movie that folks don’t like got a higher Rotten Tomato score than a movie the general public hasn’t even seen it yet and is proof that the website is rigged.
Although it is not my place to tell you how to feel about Rotten Tomatoes as a whole, I do want to describe how the system ACTUALLY works and how people CONSTANTLY misinterpret it entirely. I’m not the hugest fan of that site but it actually can be resourceful and reliable if you use it the CORRECT way. What is the correct way you may ask? Well, allow me to explain.
ROTTEN TOMATOES DOES *NOT* REVIEW MOVIES!!!!!!!!!!!
Let’s get this out of the way, Rotten Tomatoes DOES NOT review or grade the movies themselves. All they do is take a collection of reviews from approved critics from the site and grade the percentage of it based on the amount of good reviews that are submitted. And just like Roger Ebert did when rating movies on a curve with a “thumbs up/thumps down” approach, Rotten Tomatoes uses a rotten or fresh rating to determine if the individual critic believes the movie they are reviewing is worth your time or not. All they do is report the numbers of positive and negative reviews and the overall percentage the movie received depends on the amount of fresh scores that is submitted through the system. Let’s all please stop with the notion that the website review movies at all when it doesn’t.
The Rating Percentage
The one thing that 99% folks always look at with Rotten Tomatoes is the overall rating percentage that is received. Again, this percentage is determined about how many fresh scores there are compared to negative scores that determines the exact percentage each film receives. However, just because a movie receive a high percentage does NOT mean critics think the movie itself is the next Citizen Kane or some game changing masterpiece.
When a movie receives a high percentage somewhere between 80 or 90%, that just strictly means that the majority of critics would recommend the movie, not that they think it’s the next best thing. A movie can get a 100% Rotten Tomatoes rating and still have an average critic score of a 6 or 7/10.
For example, Spider-Man: Far From Home might have a 90% rating but the average critic score for it is 7.4/10. That doesn’t mean that every single critic who gave that movie a positive rating think it’s amazing. They just thought the movie was good and enjoyable enough to warrant a fresh tomato. The exact rating percentage for a movie does not always match the average critic score for a movie. Speaking of which!
The Average Critic/User Reviewer Score
Here is the one aspect of the Rotten Tomatoes system that is always overlooked by the huge majority of folks that log on to the site to look up review scores. Either because they are too lazy to search it themselves or they just don’t know about it.
Whenever a movie has an official rating percentage for either critics or users, you are given the option to click on the exact score themselves. When you do that, the exact Tomatometer will appear. Not only does it give you the exact percentage among all critics who reviewed the movie AND top critics, but you are able to view the overall average critic score for the movie. Down below the display of the rating percentage and amount of reviews that have been submitted for the film, you can see the average rating that critics gave it along with how many total fresh and rotten ratings the movie received.
As it is stated directly from the site whenever you click on the notification from the Tomatomater, the meter itself is the percentage of approved Tomatometer critics who have given the movie a positive review. There’s the option to click between the Tomatometer from strictly the top critics or for all the critics. The meter doesn’t determine the average critics score from each individual review but the amount of critics who gave said movie a fresh rating.
When clicking on the score of the movie, you are also given the option to view the score from the audience with both verified audience AND all audience. When clicking on it, you are able to see the overall rating percentage AND the average scores from audiences themselves.
There is one distinct difference between the audience rating percentage and the critic rating percentage. The audience rating percentage is determined based off of the percentage of users who rated the movie a 3.5 stars or higher. If an audience user rates the movie a 3 stars or lower, then it is considered to be a rotten rating.
The difference between verified audience and all audience is that the verified audience members are the percentage of users who made a verified movie ticket purchase. The audience rating percentage that is shown is strictly based off of the verified audience rating as oppose to all audience. You are able to click on all audience to see the rating percentage that they gave it but it’s the verified audience rating percentage this is shown on the website.
For example, Lightyear has a 84% rating with verified audience with a 4.2 out 5 average rating. However, the rating with all audience is actually down to a 62% rating with a 3.3 out of 5 average rating.
In a nutshell, that is basically how the whole system operates. There are multiple different ways to view the average critics/users scores that doesn’t just resort to a fresh or rotten rating.
The Proper Way To Use Rotten Tomatoes
A part of me understands why most look at Rotten Tomatoes the way they do. Plenty of people are busy with their everyday lives and only have a limited amount of money to spent for going to the movies. It’s perfectly understandable to go to the website, what the overall rating percentage is for whatever movie you are wanting to see, and have that determine whether or not you should spend your time and money to go watch it. However, for those every day moviegoers who always go to the site to check movie ratings on a daily basis should really consider using in all the ways it was designed too.
Don’t just look at the overall rating percentage. Take a look at the critic and audiences actual review scores, read the individual reviews themselves and not just one random quote, see the difference between the top critics/audiences and all of them, and most importantly, follow the reviewers you trust the most and ignore the ones you don’t.
I can guarantee you there’s no hidden agenda from the majority of critics and audiences from the site, aside from Armond White, Doug Walker, Grace Randolph, and the obvious trolls who live to review bomb movies. All these people are doing is sitting down in a comfy theater or their own couch, watch a movie for two hours, and then inform everyone else if they think it’s any good. It doesn’t get more obvious than that.
I promise you Rotten Tomatoes isn’t worth all it’s controversy and discourse if you are just able to use the RIGHT way!
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