Is Rotten Tomatoes Destroying Hollywood? 

Making better movies might save Hollywood.

No lazy ideas and bad writing is killing Hollywood

The problem is with the stupid people that believe that if you don't give a movie a 10/10 the movie is shit, the people that only look at the score and doesn't bother to read at least one fucking review until said review has less than 140 characters that feed this thumbs up tumbs down bullshit mentality, the people that believes that Rotten Tomatoes is one critic. The fundamental problem is Hollywood doing shitty movies, but a lot of stupid people are not doing RT any favors either, for me (someone that follows a lot of critics, and loves to talk movies) RT it's a powerful tool.

No. It's destroying bad movies.

As long as the reviews are honest and come from a genuine place, RT is saving the consumers from awful content that Hollywood keeps greenlighting.

Sequels, pointlessly franchised series, remakes and cash grabs are destroying Hollywood.

Rotten tomatoes should make movie producers and directors accountable. Movie tickets are expensive as fuck. As the viewing experience costs roughly 30 dollars a person if you include concessions. So if someone is gonna spend that much they better make sure it's a good Movie, first. And rotten tomatoes does a great job of telling people what movies are good vs. Bad.

OH NO! Terrible products are being designated as terrible? WHAT? How dare critics get in the way of billionaire studio who are trying to scam audiences into paying money for a terrible movie, instead of spending their money on a good movie.

Plot twist: Rotten Tomatoes is owned by ticket seller Fandango & movie studio Warner Bros. Pretty sure their owners want to sell movie tickets.

"Raw Deal" was awesome! It had one of Arnold's best lines ever: "You should not drink, and bake." Pure gold!

The problem with RT is that nobody knows how the percentage even works

It's an interesting conversation. I have seen movies with low tomato scores or negative reviews, mainly because there was something about the film I wanted to see. "After Earth", "Valeron and the City of a Thousand Planets" and "Passengers". Love different kinds of science fiction. Not great films, but each had moments I loved and would eventually buy the DVD for (or will buy when released) . So yes, Hollywood's complaint is ridiculous. Great to see you again Ben...it's been awhile.

Great discussion guys. Ben mentioned A.O. Scott, the NY Times film critic. The Times had never used a rating or scoring system for their reviews - you had to read the review and decide for yourself what the critic's opinion was of the film. But I have noticed that the Times is now using a "Critic's Pick" checkmark to determine whether to count the review as Fresh or Rotten on Rotten Tomatoes. That's certainly a testament to the power of RT.

This was an insightful conversation - Ben, Alonso, and Matt have great rapport with one another

Transformers 5 has 15% and still made half a billion dollars. Emoji is like 7% and made 170 million dollars on a 50 million dollars budget. Meanwhile, Scott Pilgrim is 81% and Dredd is 78% and no one saw them. If critics did "hold the power", the latter two would have made hundreds of millions.

Critics be wrong is not the problem, critics banding together and coping each other's negative reviews os the problem with RT

I completely loved this segment. The tomatometer definitely helps me make a snap decision if I'm going to rent or see a movie. I have limited time and I try to see things that I know or at least in the ballpark or something that I might like. However, I do know that I'm a fanboy on certain topics and those movies would drive me to see those anyway. I also believe that Studios still green like shit more often than they would like. Also, there are other factors that go into that maybe they greenlit an awesome idea but it just wasn't possible to execute it for the millions of factors that go into creating a movie. And now they're stuck with it and they're trying to find some way to salvage it. The tomatometer makes it harder for them to hide it.

I give this youtube video about an 8.0. Production values were good, enthusiasm was good, but not enough Lemire or giant jars of water on the table. Gotta give the people what they want.

Thanks for the great discussion guys. As someone who sees 20-25 movies a year in the theater my choices are influenced by the Rotten Tomatoes score ( and WTF reviews also). I would probably have seen Baywatch in the absence of harsh criticism. The premise sounded like it might be fun and funny, and the cast was good. So thanks to RT and WTF for steering me to other films. But the studios and Brett Ratner in particular, should make better movies instead of complaining about the effect of truthful negative reviews and the aggregation of them on RT.

John Carpenter's The Thing is a good example of criticisms not assessing a film's overall storyline by nitpicking at grotesque scenes, seemingly unrelatable characters, and a conclusion that offers no resolve. Sometimes an assessment should take the time to delve into what is presented and refrain from giving an immediate response.

$15 for a shitty movie in a theater, or $15 for HBOGO and 70 hours of Game Of Thrones. Easy choice

Lots of people aren't even using RT properly but to be fair RT relies on the catchy tomato meter when the more nuanced average score gives a better impression of reviewers thoughts. Positive and negative scores have a lot of variations. Most people look at the TM score then make their call based on that. How many people are reading 4 or 5 full reviews?

I'm with Alonso on finding reviewers you like. I have never once looked at ratings on Rotten Tomatoes because it doesn't tell you anything; it's a number. I watch the What the Flick team, Chris Stuckman, and Jeremy Jahns to decide whether to see a movie I'm on the fence about.

The film festival method discussed at 8:59- I wonder if it would have helped the movie A Cure for Wellness.

I wish Ben was on all the time. One of my favorite hosts/critics/commentators

Rotten Tomatoes isn't ruining cinema, the internet is ruining cinema; it spreads reception of a film to a broader and broader audience every day, everyone feels the need to state their own opinion and threaten to kill someone who doesn't agree with them, it's making a critic's job easier to promote their work, it's increasing interactions between celebrities and studio higher ups with their audiences and the critics, it's providing us with alternatives to cinema so we can save our 10 bucks and spend it elsewhere, it's warning us what to see and what not to see, and above all social media infests every movement of our lives that we can't avoid it, even so far as people taking flash photos in the cinema for Snapchat. I'm almost fearful of going to the cinema these days in that the last example will ruin my experience and also I have to save/spend my money wisely because I'm cash strapped so I will listen to a critic to see what I definitely should/should not see.

My only problem is that the "aggregate" used in the tomato meter is not a real number because it's impossible to use that number as it's always from different people. They pick and choose which critics appear on what movie reviews, it's weird.

Videos like these are why Whattheflick is one of my all time favorite channels. They're fantastic!

Great discussion, guys.

I like taking the average between critics and audiences and grading a scale based on certain factors like genre.

The only thing I know is that I still buy every movie I am even remotely interested in on Blu Ray and for like the last 5 years it's been declining by 50% from year to year.. no idea what's going on. Maybe they're just concentrating on a few blockbusters but there go weeks and weeks without a new release to buy and just 3 years ago you could order 2 a week at least

They should slightly change it from postive or negative based on overall review to postive and negative to average rating

"The blood-stained hand points a finger" lol - exactly!

i am a big fan of reading and watching professional reviews, because i like people who know 50X more than i do about the cinema and television voice their opinions in an eloquent way. reviews definitely have tremendous impact on whether i'm ever gonna give a certain film or show a watch. i can't see a single problem with that. i also very rarely disagree with the general consensus. i call it research. you look for something you think might interest you, you find out if it's well-made or not, you get it( or not) based on the previous action's results.

They said the same thing about Siskel and Ebert. There was a time that those two names and their two thumbs were "killing" the movie industry.

I only see movie reviews either after I see a movie, or if I have no intention of seeing said movie at all.

It's undeniable that Tomato Scores hurt/help ticket sales, but not by a whole lot. As for the question is it destroying Hollywood? Hell no!. If anything, because bad reviews hurt ticket sales somewhat, it pushes studios to actually try making good movies.

Personally I prefer to just hear critics explain their points, like on this channel. After that I read reviews between 5 and 8 stars on IMDB from regular people to see what they point out as flaws, then I combine that with the premise of the film/trailer and just go from there. It's never failed me yet. Perhaps the issue is people just have been burned by movies with a lot of hype and don't want to risk their money, which I understand. For me, I heard great things about "IT" but I felt lukewarm in the end, but that's just part of the game of hunting for what really becomes memorable subjectively.

There is is a commercial on TV right now saying that Broad City has a higher Rotten Tomatoes rating than Game of Thrones. This is a condemnation of Rotten Tomatoes.

When I was younger I had weird taste in movies (and video games) so when I went to RT (or gamestop) for reviews and end up watching their high rated ones, I end up not liking the movie/game and find it boring. I've learned to just look for the plot/trailer myself and hope they have a decent director/producer and I usually love it. Even if they have bad ratings on these critic sites.

I hope so. Anyone who helps humanity get rid of that pestilence has my respect.

Box office-wise, rising ticket prices ($15+ at AMC here) might just have something to do with it. One theater outing pays a month's HBO, etc. Would anyone be surprised to see $25 ticket prices this year? Captain Marvel is currently 21.99 for Dolby. ( No wonder AMC Van Ness had to close last month ...)

A big problem is that it seems that a lot of people don't understand how the Tomatometer works. I've seen/heard plenty of people think it's a defacto score and they don't understand that a score of 10% isn't a 1 out of 10, and could actually equate to most critics giving the film a 4 or 5 out of 10. There are plenty of watchable, perfectly average films that have crappy Tomato numbers

Did not read the referenced article, but one word destroys its headline thesis, Transformers (its existence and its continuation).

Patty Jenkins is officially directing Wonder Woman 2!! Yaaaay!

I mean if a movie has a 20% on Rotten Tomatoes, my opinion or not, if a movie has that bad of reviews I'm not going to see it

I don't know that he's totally wrong but it's not just RT, it's the readily available opinion of a movie from various sources that is part of the problem as well. I remember in the 90's if you wanted to see a movie you either went and saw it or you waited a week or two until some reviews started to come out about the movie. I think this is why the movie star has dissipated as well because no longer can you say "Tom Cruise is in my movie" and the world goes to see it like you once could. Because we have so much more access to this information about the movies we want to see, no longer are people taking a movie at face value like they used to. The problem with RT is now people see a number and assume the best or worst rather than just deciding for themselves.

I had my thoughts on this format last year.

All movies should be ranked on a three-point scale: 3 points = go spend $10 at a movie theater to watch this movie; 2 points = worth renting if you want to kill a couple hours; 1 point = if it happens to be playing on HBO and you have nothing better to do, go ahead; and 0 points = beware! you'll never get those 2 hours back.

This summer was a lesson in Hollywood's current reliance on sequels, reboots to make money. In release order over the summer: Guardians 2, King Arthur: Legend of the Sword, Alien Covenant, Pirates 5, Cars 3, Baywatch, Diary of a Wimpy Kid 2 or 3 whatever who cares, the Mummy, Transformers 5 or 6 whatever who cares, Despicable Me 3, Spiderman Homecoming, War for the Planet of the Apes, Annabelle Creation, and the Nut Job 2. All of these are sequels or reboots. Some sequels work of course, but this is mostly due to the fact that no previous sequel has been made so there is less fatigue. However, even the best of sequels generally get worse reviews than their previous films. (Guardians 2 was arguably better than the original yet still critics gave it worse reviews than the original due primarily to fatigue.) We are all getting bored as movie goers. We like an occasional sequel but we don't want nothing but sequels. And reboots can be all right but are almost never better than the original no matter how old it is. WE NEED ORIGINAL MATERIAL.

Came for the clickbait, stayed for the conversation.

I'm in favor of "soft to the touch."

I think three factors are hurting Hollywood. The fact that the majority of the movies they make now are for 20 year old straight guys, ignoring everyone else, social media has replaced movie critics for spreading the news about a good or crappy movie, and TV is doing a better job of producing good material. If Hollywood could produce a script that wasn't a) a superhero movie b) an action or horror movie c) wasn't a sequel or remake or d) cast good actors rather than attractive actors, they might actually get people going to movies again. Also, people who pirate movies is another big issue. If Hollywood can't adapt, they will disappear.

I rarely go to see movies that score under 60% anymore, not to be pretentious but the Tomatoemetre is often accurate.

there should be a rating system for movies. a different one for every genre

The only times when critics pan a movie that audiences like is in the case of movies that go on to be cult classics. Movies disliked by most, but with a few die-hard fans. For example, I loved Cloud Atlas, but it didn't get the best reviews since its unusual story structure confused a lot of people. In a case like that movie, you could argue that on a logical level, it's story wasn't that great, but I think it definitely had a strong emotional core that overshadows that.

They may believe Rotten Tomatoes is the enemy, but here's the thing. Some movies have been critically acclaimed and done poorly at the box office while other movies that were poorly received did amazing at the box office. The word of the mouth does not always affect the box office performance. Sometimes it is the marketing, sometimes it is the subject matter. Different factors play a role how well a movie will perform.

11:00 What do you mean in a parallel world? I've seen those stories where people blamed Twitter for a movie failing.

I have seen a number of films on RT that have very different critics review score to the audience review score, the current best example is The Dark Tower which has a Tomatometer rating of 16% but audience rating of 54% (so critics are saying it is terrible where the audience are saying it's hit and miss), so there is a case that the critics are being overly harsh on certain films. I would say you just need to take bad reviews with a pinch of salt, watch the trailers and make an informed decision as to whether you think you might like it or not. Some people are just waiting for average movies to come out on Amazon/Netflix for free before watching it. Side note cinemas in my area have recently slashed their prices from £9.75 to £4.99, doesn't take a genius to work out why.

If a movie is in my wheel house that I want to see, the critics will never dissuade me. I sort of use the critics to give direction on the movies that are outside of the genres I would usually watch. And I pay attention to who the critic is. And, did their criticism focus on something that would bother me? And audience reviews are as important as critics reviews. Sometimes that might make me miss a really good movie. But, more often it saves me 10 bucks.

I love scifi and superhero and things based on my childhood. If i pay $13, i prioritize that unless i learn it is bad with my own eyes. I only Transformers not the sequels. I think a lot of folks do that.

Ben would ban motorcycles?! I would like him to unpack that and defend his stance.

7:14 hahaha. Ben's comment about "Mankiewicz and Lyons". Dead.

Do more videos like this...and have Ben more often.

Not that it's any of my business but what happened with Matt and RT? I first saw Matt on Shmoes Know several years ago and he was on RT then. I've always enjoy Matt and Alonso, even though I don't agree with them sometimes. They always make great points.

When Roger Ebert was alive I would always check in on his reviews FIRST before seeing a film. And because I trusted his expertise, perspectives, arguments--especially regarding black films--if gave a thumbs up, then I would see a film in the theater, although there were a few instances when I disagreed with his reviews. Bottom line, if you trust the reviewing source, you will or not see a film.

I like the tomato meter but I also have my favorite critics which I either read or watch their reviews. I have to drive 50 km to the nearest theater so I want my moneys worth when I go.

His game is Jerry Lundegaard, not Eric. He sold me a primo Cutlass.

Matt has lost alot of weight. Proud

If anything, Rotten Tomatoes probably positively inflates scores. A movie that all the critics think is at least decent will get a high number; even if no one actually thinks it's great.

Did Matt go on vacation to Volcano Bay? I recognize his tiki tumbler.

Matt's loving this

The rating system is dumb. It should be average ratings, not percentage of "fresh" ratings.

If you're "meh" on a yes or no question, why not withhold your vote? I mean if they had a middle choice it would be pointless anyway.

It's like they said, you can't hide a bad movie. I grew up in the era of dial-up when the internet wasn't too useful, and guess what, we still had the Sunday newspaper tell us which movies were bad or not. In a way it's worse, as so many studios now are pumping in for a massive opening weekend where they can get their money back worldwide (not even US anymore), even if it drops like a rock the next weekend because it was shit... Honestly, it's just the same news scaled up, a little faster and a little shinier.

I almost NEVER agree with "Rotten Tomatoes"! It is very rare that they get it right.

'Mankiewicz and Lyons' fucking killed me

Rotten Tomatoes stopped making sense to me when Ben Travers gave Fargo a B and his review was deemed rotten. I thought I understood. Now I give up.

Hollywood didn't need Rotten Tomoatoes to destroy itself. If anything, it's saving what's left of it. By having an easy system that people can check, movies might actually have to have genuine quality.

60% can't be considered an arbitrary number; it is a common definition for a Supermajority.

The Tomatometer Score is simply the percent chance the average critic recommends the movie. Having a 90% score doesn't mean all of the critics gave the movie rave reviews. It means 90% of them like it enough to recommend it. Sometimes, this means the vast majority gave the film a 7 out of 10.

Brett Ratner is Chuck Schumer of Hollywood

I think critics can help or hurt smaller movies but I don't think they have an effect on blockbusters. People want to see them or they don't. It wasn't critics who killed Baywatch and the Emoji Movie--Audiences just didn't care. I don't think even at the height of their power Kael or Simon could hurt a blockbuster.

I agree with everything the crew says here and still the studios are correct and here's why. Ben at the beginning says their argument only works if a movie was actually good but RT aggregate critics all said it was bad. But come on, "good" and "bad" in in studio terms has NOTHING to do with good and bad in critical reception. They care about 1 thing, ticket sales. Not creating art, not even winning awards (except to help with the first thing). Just ticket sales and media sales afterwards! So Transformers or Despicable me 3 get a billion dollars? Studio GOOD MOVIE. The last Apes move? Critical and audiences loved it--those that saw it, but not enough did. So studio BAD movie. The fact of the matter is that RT is a tool that can be used by consumers to overcome marketing (where they care to do so) to be more discerning with their movie dollar and that is all you need to know about why studios dislike RT and are technically correct that it is attacking their industry. Who wants an informed consumer? They want people to just watch trailers, get excited and go. Keep up the disruption guys. You're getting to them!

Hey, Red Heat is a classic...kind of, well at least it's fun.

Hardly a balanced discussion when you're all so invested in RT

Remember that you can leave any film within twenty minutes, and they will give you a rain check.✌🏾

Yes it is. It's simple math. In all other areas of life, you always use the largest sample size, not the smallest sample size. But only rotten tomatoes is immune to this, apparently. The smaller sample size is magically more accurate than the larger sample size. Lol.

Rotten Tomatoes didn't invent social cues or group think but it is interesting to see how we all adjust our viewing habits to the aggregate. If at all. That said, the whole pithy "Hollywood is destorying Hollywood" line that everyone seems to enjoy I think misses a crucial point. Studios are regurgitating tired franchises, ideas and such for a reason. One of which you and I as general consumers of movies are not completely... uninvolved with. Voting with our hot takes online to then be bundled up in aggregate scores is one thing, voting with our actual dollars is another.

they are just blaming the wrong thing. it is the studio's business model that is the problem, they are the ones who push all for that first weekend. then 5-6months later, you can have it on dvd. then 2-3 weeks later on tv or netflix, why spend that money at the cinema, when i can wait a little and get it on netflix.

i still dont know if a tomato is good or bad.

Cinema has apparently been dying since the invention of sound.

I think that RT along with the Internet are helping people decide what movies they have to see. The "problem" that studios are claiming that exists is that RT is destroying their movies and that only is true when a movie is essentially bad. If it is "unconventional" there Will be still some good critic reviews or if It is just fine there will be some good audience reviews. I think bad movies are destroying Hollywood, not RT. Having said that, I agree with Alonso: if you want to know what movies to see and not to see, don't just look at RT's scores. Find a critic or a number of critics that you like and understand(in my case those are Stuckmann, Jahns and What the flick) and hear or read their reviews. then, according to what they said or wrote, go watch this movie or that movie.

Matt is head of programming, as in a software programmer?

These movie studios continuously spit out horrible movies & don't put any effort into making them good because they just want money out of it. So hopefully people continue putting their money toward good film projects so studios stop giving us terrible movies like Baywatch & The Emoji Movie

Rotten tomatoes is a consumer protection against dropping a bunch of $$$ on bad movies. Maybe if the studios made better movies, they would make more money.

I think it has become a joke in recent years. Back then Rotton Tomatoes rating was perfect for the great movies. Now you see movies like MCU in the 90% is a joke when they're not even that good to be put in the same rating as The Godfather, Good, Bad, and Ugly, The Terminator etc... MCU for me has made Rotton Tomatoes obsessed with MCU

Better previews and better movies will help the movie industry.

SO you all know that RT is flawed, that people only look at the Numbers, no one actually reads the full reviews. No one is saying all movies are great but you must admit that more people would give a movie a chance for themselves if it wasn't for the tomato score. I have personally been pleasantly surprised by many low scored RT movies.

Just look at "It" - a horror movie based on an old Stephen King novel. Best horror movie box office ever! That can only come from word-of-mouth. Rotten Tomatoes is a short cut to good word of mouth for most good films.