Do people really trust ratings for things? It seems like we are so far removed from those number meaning anything useful I’ve long been ignoring them.
I’m with you on this. It may be useful to get an idea of probably bad, probably good, but not as a function of quality, since they can easily score amazing a trash movie and write shit about actually high-quality movies.
But, essentially, the score doesn’t say anything, more so when masses are involved. Legions of fans of some actor will, for example, score perfect a movie starring them.
Do people really trust ratings for things?
It’s generally in the ballpark. Universally panned films rank lower than universally loved films. Cult classics tend to score better than average but rarely break into the 8-9 out of 10 range. It’s good to check the “Critics Score” against the “Popular Score”, as a big spread tends to say something about the nature of the film (High C:P suggests Oscar Bait, low C:P suggests it’s either very niche or very crass or very ideological).
The scores contain useful information about the nature and quality of the film. They just don’t tell you whether you will like the film.
I’ll also throw in that I’ve heard more than a few movie reviews that have changed my opinion on a movie I’ve already seen (typically one I’ve seen forever ago that I just remember fondly or disparagingly). Return of the Jedi was my favorite Star Wars movie for years, but I’ve definitely come around on it being the worst of the OT. At the same time, my opinion of The Transformers Movie came up quite a bit after hearing a few reviews raving about the art design, the musical score, and the voice acting. Same with Princess Bride, which I’d mentally written off as some stupid low-budget made-for-TV schlock until I got into college and had friends screening it enthusiastically.
If you’re just cruising for “decent movie to end the weekend” on, surfing through the Criterion Collection will yield a bunch of gems.
I don’t trust IMDB after Amazon bought it. Maybe a company that makes movies shouldn’t be in charge of rating them? Conflict of interest maybe?
We don’t have to agree always. There where movies I liked, and people where saying otherwise.
Over time I learned to distinguish marketing hype from “it’s actually a good movie/show” hype. The ratings are mostly meaningless. Highest grossing movies are usually shit and get good ratings because most people like watching something they are already familiar with or because they fall for the hype and just like something because everyone likes it. Same with “bad” movies. People will give low ratings to movies they don’t understand or are too original for them. I learned to pick up movies and shows that are mentioned organically from time to time and ignore the ones everyone starts talking about suddenly. One thing indicates there’s actually something interesting there, the other just good marketing.
I can’t think of many examples so my comment is worthless, but for years I had this experience with Rotten Tomatoes and hated the site/community for it. Some of the most artistic and impactful films I had seen would get a 30% or something, and I’d be like how?!
I guess one more recent example that I do have was The Northman while it was still playing in theatres. It scored well enough on Rotten Tomatoes over time, but initial reviews were trash and I was hard-pressed to find a single person online who enjoyed it. Just endless shitting all over it. Comments sections full of folks calling it the worst/dumbest thing they’ve ever wasted their money on.
My wife and I went into it blind and were honestly blown away. It was like John Wick with Norse mythology. From the very beginning where Willem Dafoe is howling and going into a crazy shamanistic fire trance to the big otherworldly climax at the end, we were floored by how fucking cool that movie was. A genuine piece of art. Got us both playing Valheim again soon after.
Not sure what changed, but despite the 90% Tomatometer, the 64% Popcornmeter still shows that audiences were fairly divided. But that spread was way worse a few years ago. The part that perplexed me most is that most people’s criticisms of the movie could just as easily be applied to Mad Max: Fury Road (which I ironically thought was hot garbage).
Fuck ratings and reviews. I’ve watched terribly rated movies that are gold, and award winning films that are absolute dumpster fire.
Too many times other people insist on inserting their opinion when it is not requested. A lot will also just go with the tide as well. If others are giving good reviews, then they will do the same.
I prefer to read a summary of the plot and give it a watch to form my own opinion.
I grew up listening to ICP so I have a lot of practice discounting other people’s opinions on things that I enjoy. Also if you’re seeking out interesting, challenging, non mainstream fare, opinions are inherently going to be mixed and reviews are going to have a lot of idiots who don’t get the piece of art, saying the art is bad.
I have that problem with steam sometimes. Some games are rated “overwhelmingly positive”, but are aimed at a young adult audience, younger than me. Some games are then also fun for me, others are not. It would be great to know what people of my age think about a game, rather than just its target group.
We need two ratings, how objectively good the movie is and how much you enjoyed it. Currently most user reviews are a mix of both and critic reviews are often very biased or financially motivated.
Isn’t that the idea behind the critic/audience scores on rottentomatoes?
The idea, but the execution doesn’t work. People are inherently emotionally charged, which is fine, but we won’t get honest scores from it.
Most people don’t have the ability or understand how to separate those 2 concepts. Asking too much from normal people that are just watching some entertainment.
Yea, it will never happen. Personally, I watch stuff based on recommendations from people directly, rather than looking at reviews anyway.
IMDb is charitable and fairly reasonable and accurate compared to Rotten Tomatoes.
Rotten Tomatoes is a review aggregator. They don’t decide what score the movie will have. The critics submit their reviews and the score is the percentage of critics who’s own score is at or above 60%. It also shows the average rating. I think having hese two metrics is a great way to actually see if a movie is worth watching.
I also check out IMDb scores but it shows that it’s mostly generated by regular users. And the average user doesn’t know jack about cinema. Just looking at the top 250 : how is Shawshank the best movie of all time ? It’s a great movie, but come on… just in general there are so many average movies that rank way too high while actual masterpieces are under the 100th position. It’s not a ranking of the best movies OAT, it’s a ranking of the most agreeable movies OAT.
Edit : The score is calculated on if a review is positive or negative. It does not specify what score is considered a positive review, I guess it is up to the critic submitting it. They also removed last year the average calculator which is sad…
Shawshank was an innocent bystander in the battle between batman and godfather fans (doesn’t explain why it was that high up in the first place though)
Most people don’t understand how Rotten Tomato’s grades movies.
If the score is 91%, that doesn’t mean the average viewer gave the movie a score of 91%, it means that 91% of the people who rated the movie, rated it >60%
Here’s another way of thinking about it:
If a movie is rated by three people, 62%, 72%, 67%, then the movie will receive a RT score of 100%.
That means that Rotten Tomatoes rating system even shittier than I had thought it was.
It’s not shitty, its just not intuitive.
Hudson Hawk, widely panned, is fun; just refuses to take itself seriously.
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iMDB: 5.7/10
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RT: 30/100
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Metacritic:17/100
I don’t care. That’s what I think of any film rating system. It’s a report, but not the experience itself.
See also: the Southland Tales, The One (2001), Lost Souls (2000). All are, objectively, bad films. And yet… I remember them to be re-watchable.
This write-up is on a site for and app and ends up shilling for that app, but it makes some useful points, confirmed by my years of poking around:
Trust Metacritic most for prestige drama, arthouse cinema, and Oscar contenders.
Trust IMDb most for genre films.
Use the Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer as a quick pass/fail for critical reception.
Use the Rotten Tomatoes Audience Score cautiously.
Full disclosure: I don’t have the app, don’t want the app, and don’t care about the app. Also, I skimmed the article in 2 minutes while watching my kids bounce on a trampoline.
I just skimmed it too and it reeks of slop…
Yeah, true.
But, when slop confirms my bias, surely that makes it valid.
/s
Thanks for calling it out. Welcome to the next stage of the 21st century. I call it, “Ashes, ashes. We all fall down.”
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A lot of criticism here for numerical scores, but consider the popularity of tier list ranking videos. Maybe we should be ranking movies relative to one another. Not sure how that works as a UI though.
I guess you would need a variety of metrics for each movie, and then you would present them side by side like websites comparing computers/cars/phones do. So for example every movie would get an overall satisfaction score, but also a score for acting, music, how funny, how moving, thought provoking, accurate, aesthetics, and so on.
Scores are a comparative rating though? Like what’s different between “S-tier” and “9.0-10.0”?
I’ll be the contrarian and say IMDb ratings are pretty accurate for me. The two exceptions are super inflated Cinema™ ratings and middling ratings for comedies. A 9.3/10 silent era movie gets too much credit for having functional lighting while a 6/10 comedy gets panned for its shallow character development.
Filtered.
