Proving once and for all that movies are better than ever—and everything is fine—a movie marketing consultant has released a new dataset this week, claiming that scores on internet review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes have been climbing, slowly but steadily, for the last 10 years or so. According to consultant David A. Gross—who provided a chart of his findings to Deadline—that sudden series of small jumps comes after they’d stayed stable for the roughly 10 years before that, moving from an average of 46.6 “Fresh” in 2010 to 57.2 percent last year.
So, what’s up? A cynic might suggest that the recent upswing could be tracked somehow back to the site’s purchase by Fandango, which has an obvious vested interest in goosing ticket sales. They only bought the company in 2016, though, well after the rise began, and have (as far as we can tell) relatively few ways of influencing a movie’s score. Deadline notes that a major uptick between 2017 and 2018—jumping from 54.3 to 57.2 Fresh—probably stems from a deliberate effort to expand the pool of critics the site draws from, leading to more diverse voices having an impact on a movie’s score. And then there’s always this dim possibility: Maybe movies in 2018 really were just better than films from 2010?
Because there’s literally nothing we’d rather do on a Friday night than dig through big sets of movie review data, we actually conducted an unofficial little survey of whether our own tastes have suffered a similar drift over the last decade or so. As it turns out, though, our ratings have actually gotten slightly harsher, if anything; The A.V. Club reviewed 349 movies in 2010, labeling 185 of them “Fresh” by Rotten Tomatoes’ metrics, which gauge anything we give a B- or better as a recommendation. In 2018, meanwhile, we reviewed 366 movies, and dubbed 191 of them worthy of the big red ‘mato. That’s a 53 percent rating in 2010—well above the RT average, interestingly enough—and a 52.1 last year, now lagging behind the current boom being reported on by Gross. (Also, it’s kind of weird that both years played host to middling Predator movies and films about Mark “Marwen” Hogancamp, although we did like 2010's documentary Marwencol a whole lot more than the recent Robert Zemeckis film.)
In any case, it suggests that, at least by our standards, the average quality of films hasn’t really changed much during the period in question. (To be fair, though, we didn’t look at average grades, just “freshness,” because we didn’t want to be doing this on Saturday morning, too. So it’s hard to say if there were more As than Bs, or C+s vs. C-s, in any given year.) That specific metric matters, though, because like it or not, the Tomatometer matters; studios believe wholeheartedly that the aggregator’s rating influences ticket sales, to the point that they sometimes deliberately try to game the system by doing things like limiting early critic access to only the most favorably inclined of minds (or to nobody at all, if they’ve got a real stinker on their hands).
There’s no definitive answer as to why that score might have been drifting up since 2010. Ultimately, it’s a measurement of both a), what critics are saying about movies, and b), which reviewers the site itself deigns to ask. There’s all sorts of extra data that would make this easier to suss out, things like “Are specific reviewers becoming more favorable, or are favorable reviewers being added to the pool?” and “How much of the uptick comes from adding voices more comfortable evaluating movies aimed at minority markets?” We don’t have that data in front of us, unfortunately. But you can be damn sure the studios are desperate to get their hands on it, if they aren’t already gleefully devouring it in their latest efforts to figure out how this newest system of Hollywood dominance works.
67 Comments
Why does a movie have to get 60% to be considered Fresh instead of just 50%?
Technically a D is a passing grade? I mean a D doesn’t seem like anything to be proud of ever, but it means you did F(ail). So it’s I guess … I don’t know. Ratings are weird.
I was under the impression that RT ratings were based on a thumbs up/thumbs down critical evaluation, which would make 50% the logical Fresh barrier to me.
There are two parts to the rotten tomatoes score. There is the percentage, which is the “thumbs up/thumbs down” version, but since different reviewers use different scales – letter grades here, 4 star scale, 5 star scale, 1 – 10 rating, et cetera – they have somewhat arbitrarily set the bar for each particular scale on their own. So, like it says above, for AVClub reviews if a movie gets a B- or better it gets a red tomato, if it is a C+ or worse it gets a green asterisk.The second component is just as important but frequently ignored. They normalize all thsoe scales on to a 10 point scale and give it a score from 1 – 10. So If Beale Street Could Talk gets ratings that mean 95% like it with an average score of 8.7 out of 10. Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse gets 97%/8.8 and Bumblebee gets 92%/7.0. If you just look at the percentages it appears that people like the three about the same, but the aggregate score average tells you that people like the first two a whole lot more, even though they find Bumblebee to be good enough.
A lot of people have a fundamental misunderstanding of what the Tomatometer score represents and (no offense) you calling 60% a D represents that. All the score represents if how many critics gave it a thumbs up and a thumbs up just means it’s better than the average movie. There is a separate score which averages the actual scores which matches what Metacritic shows.
This is not really surprising. There has never been so much group think among reviewers to the point there are at least a dozen movies a year you already know if they will be a 30 percent or 80 percent after the discussion of the first trailer. There are more blockbusters and more websites that need to keep the studies happy to keep the junkets coming. And Disney has never had so much marketshare and the half grade+ bonus they get for every film.
I honestly think the whole Disney gets a bonus narrative is a made up thing by people who simply don’t like Disney that much. In reality, Disney has had plenty of movies that RT has been unkind to – such as the last Pirates of the Caribbean movie, A Wrinkle in Time, and the Nutcracker movie.IMO a lot of their franchise movies do well enough on RT purely because they appeal to people’s sense of nostalgia and / or cater to expectations. And since all the Tomatometer is is an aggregation of thumbs up or down opinions, that often is enough.
I don’t think the paid shill or Disney bonus theory is quite right, but I do think Disney products are just far safer and homogenized.
They have the odd flop like any other studio, other times they get it extremely right, but for the most part it’s just their quality control process that ensures a certain degree of base competence that everyone in the audience can agree on.
I’ve stopped watching Marvel films in the cinema and there’s maybe three or four of them I will willingly go out of my way to watch again, but there’s very little I can objectively fault any of them for and sometimes a collective “yeah it’s alright I guess” is all you need for a 90% Rotten Tomatoes score. They’ll never truly reach any artistic heights, but they won’t hit any of the lows either.
Logan and Into The Spider-Verse are magnitudes better films than each and every one of MCU entries, but I would much rather spin the wheel and have to sit through a random Marvel movie than take my chances with their respective franchises.
Yea exactly. The only thing I disagree with is lumping Into the Spider-Verse in with the rest of Sony’s live action Spider-Man movies. I would consider the former the start of a new franchise vs connected to the others (in the same way I don’t feel that DC’s animated movies are part of the DCEU).
Yet Spiderman: Into the Spider-Verse can’t get 100%.
Because there’s so many shitty movies critics are prone to carry on about marginally decent ones. That’s the reason.
Critics don’t really represent viewers. From watching all of everything their perspectives get skewed maybe. It’s kind of a gauge for us viewers, but not really the end all be all. This site wrote “there’s too much TV”, but for me personally since I don’t have to watch it- there’s so many choices, maybe a little overwhelming, but it’s cool there’s a bunch of stuff I like. Also people that are viewers that put their opinions down on RT aren’t necessarily representation.
I think that’s true. I reminds me of RLM pointing out that The Orville has a terrible critic’s score on RT, but a sky-high user score.
I feel like TV shows are different than movies in that regard. Lots of people watch movies they don’t end up enjoying, but not nearly as many are going to stick with a TV show they don’t like past the pilot. If you’ve seen season 2, episode 2 of The Orville and you’re not a critic, you’re almost assuredly a fan who feels invested in the show and its success.
User scores don’t mean shit either. A show or movie with a passionate (re: loud) fanbase can stay things either way.
I have never considered giving a user review. I don’t think I’m unique. I’ll comment here for discussions, but I just don’t think my rating of something is important enough to document.
And things about more contentious topics like women led and minority led things can fall victim to the IMDB user rating effect kind of thing. Audience scores don’t tell me really whether I’ll like it unless I see people with similar taste to me praise it. And then sometimes we’ll disagree. But I’ll use go by (1) critical reviews and then (2) praise by people who I know share my taste in movies.
Good to hear. I happen to love the Orville, and no critic or anyone else’s opinion is gonna change that. But more generally, what music, movies, etc. that you like is so subjective. Reviews can be a guide, but it’s only that. (But damn there’s so much stuff and so little time. I resent every second watching garbage.)
Except it’s now 63% fresh according to critics, and Season 2 is 100% based on nine critics’ reviews.You’re right about Season 1, though, which was 27% for critics and 94% for audiences.
The Orville *is* terrible it just has good production and there aren’t any other really good Star Trek options- Discovery is a mess too.
I’m down with the too much TV complaint even though I’m not a reviewer. I don’t have to watch everything, but it feels good to be part of the cultural conversation and at least sample all the “important” shows. That’s basically impossible now. I definitely don’t want to go back to the days of being limited to three networks, but three streaming services and a bunch of niche cable channels all producing prestigey shows now is crazy.
I see so much stuff that looks interesting, but I can only swing so many subscriptions. I wouldn’t wanna go back to the three network thing either, but at least if you heard about something you could watch it. Of course, you had to watch at a specific time, and if you missed it you just missed it. Or if you were in the bathroom longer than the commercial there was no pausing or rewinding. Or if two things were on at the same time, too bad. Er, uh at least that’s what my grandpa says.
For example First Reformed.
Lowered expectations.
I noticed this a few years ago, when the number of critics expanded to include a lot of fanzine and genre-specific reviewers. But if a reader only wants the traditional options, the site still has a “Top Critic” filter. (Or, there’s always Metacritic.) My problem with Rotten Tomatoes is their insistence on writing a score and a “Critics Consensus” blurb before the majority of reviews are in. There have been times the “Consensus” had to be rewritten after a score swung from fresh to rotten (or vice versa) after opening weekend. Meanwhile, the film’s advertising got to announce a fresh rating before the final swing.
Metacritic isn’t really a great option, though.
That issue seems pretty specific to albums.
Isn’t a low AV Club average more dependant on what proportion of reviews are done by AA Dowd?
AA is so ironically named.
In fact, he’s got a really big rack.
you just made me LOL at work. nice.
It makes more sense if you pronounce it correctly: “Eh eh.”
Isn’t another part of this the idea that, with the rise of metacritic and RT, it’s harder for films that bomb with critics to do well at the box office? Which might encourage studios to take fewer punts on ‘bad’ films that might find an audience getting theatrical release, so taking some of the chaff out of circulation before it can be reviewed, and increasing the quality of the pool. Anecdotally, I feel like my local multiplexes have had more indie films, playing for longer, than they used to. Which would fit with fewer forgettable, shit-tier, midbudget sunk cost examplars taking up screens.
it’s because you’re all fucking shills
It shouldn’t be that difficult to control for the influx of new reviewers: only use data from people who reviewed films in both years. Or, to go an extra step, check whether each of those reviewers gave a higher fraction of positive reviews in one year compared to another.
Oh. Have I been waiting for this. Increasing percentages say absolutely NOTHING. Why is this even a topic under review? WHY?This is the WHAT: If a movie is a John Wick movie, critics fall all over themselves loving the raw violence, ( see also Joe). If a film features a female doing female things, the film gets nothing – unless that film is Ex Machina or anything with loads of tits and ass; but the tits and/or ass has to suffer the consequences of having tits and asses. If a vigina-haver embarrasses a man in any way, the Tomatoes have no time for you, bitch.
Is this a joke? If I’m understanding you correctly, you seem to have described the exact opposite of how that kind of thing would work (if it happened at all).
Huh?And also, what?
This is a fucking moronic claim.
Fury Road, Three Billboards, Shape Of Water, Colossal, Arrival, Wonder Woman, Ladybird, Room, I Tonya, Annihilation. And that’s off the top of my head and for strictly female-led films.
My first thought was that simple self-selection would be at least a contributing factor to this trend. I’m guessing the increase in ratings roughly tracks to the overall popularity of RT and similar sources of ratings. The more likely people are to use RT to look up a movie’s rating or get a recommendation before viewing, the more likely people are to see a movie that is aligned with their taste and that they will like and, thus, then rate higher.
People want to be seen as “fun”, it attracts readers and keeps them coming back, and if you’re a critic, enthusiasm for mediocre trash is the lowest-energy way to achieve it
The tomato scores are rising because the juice control all media.(I’m not sure if there’s a graceful way to say my intention is to mock alt-right fuckhead trolls and their baseless slurs, while simultaneously admitting I wanted to make a dumb pun. It can be two things. This one was at least 60% for the pun.)
60%? It’s “fresh”.
Yall have already posted an article debunking this one, perhaps you should take this one down.
Films like The Deer Hunter used to win Best Picture. Now it’s sex with a fish-man. Is this really the best movies can do? Scores are getting higher every year because standards are dropping every year.
I feel like I missed out on all the Troy McClure jokes when The Shape of Water came out, so I’ll just leave this picture from the Shedd Aquarium:
I’m pretty sure people fighting in Vietnam didn’t spend their time playing Russian Roulette as in The Deer Hunter. It’s a pretty silly movie if you take it literally. Yes, yes, you can say that was just a metaphor for the pointless conflict, but that’s the same thing with The Shape of Water – you don’t have to interpret it literally about fish-man and a human woman but as a metaphor for any romance that mainstream society is intolerant of.
Aren’t fanboys more likely to want to seek out positive reviews of movies they’re already going to like before having seen them? I feel like a lot of sites are more inclined to cater to fanboys to boost their own traffic numbers which in turn leads to an uptick in RT numbers …
…Although you could argue that negative reviews probably drive even more traffic from those same fanboys.
I now vaguely remember hearing that Fandango bought RT, but I didn’t really think the ramifications through at the time: a company that sells movie tickets, owning a site that reviews movies, is a clear conflict of interest, and to the degree that RT’s scores were at all reliable, they can basically be ignored now.
…except as the article points out, RT doesn’t produce the scores, they just aggregate and post them.
It’s inflation, dummies
interesting that the whole internet hates critics, are critics.
I figured it was because film critics are bland and films are getting blander.
Seems obvious to me. Less adult movies, less attempts at serious commentary on religion, politics, etc. that end up backfiring in polarizing/controversial ways and get 67% because they immediately alienate a third of people watching them. When everything is a comic book movie, franchise movie, or jump-scare horror, it’s a lot easier to succeed by the Ebert rule of “did this thing set out to accomplish what it was aiming for.” Rotten Tomatoes isn’t a measure of quality but instead of broad appeal and the industry has been optimizing almost solely for broad appeal since 9/11 ruined everything
Less adult movies, less attempts at serious commentary on religion, politics, etc. that end up backfiring in polarizing/controversial ways and get 67% because they immediately alienate a third of people watching them. But often those movies can still be profitable, the Rotten Tomatoes score notwithstanding, because they have that 33% audience basically built-in. Also, not trying to be a jerk, but I like linking this clip:
Yeah, absolutely. It’s surprising (but not surprising) to look at last year’s ten highest-grossing movies, and find that nine of the ten were sequels/additions to a cinematic universe… and the tenth was that entirely unnecessary Grinch remake. Expanding it out to the top 20, fourteen were sequeals/additions to a cinematic universe, three (Grinch, A Star Is Born, and Halloween) were remakes, leaving only three movies that were brand-new concepts – Bohemian Rhapsody, A Quiet Place, and Crazy Rich Asians. But, generally speaking, the movies were “fine.” Compare that to, say, 1993, exactly twenty-five years earlier. The top twenty that year featured only two movies that could be considered sequels, additions to a cinematic universe, or remakes – the third-ranked The Fugitive (telling the same story as the 1960s television series of the same name), and the 20th ranked Sister Act 2. The list does have an all-time classic (Schindler’s List), a beloved films with creative concepts (the Nightmare Before Christmas, Groundhog Day), a few movies that are still considered classics of their respective genres (The Fugitive, Sleepless in Seattle, Jurassic Park), a few that were respected at the time but largely forgotten today (Philadelphia, In the Line of Fire, Dave), and… a LOT of forgettable and quite mediocre films (The Firm, The Pelican Brief, Cliffhanger, Grumpy Old Men, Cool Runnings, Rising Sun), and outright turds (Demolition Man, Indecent Proposal, the very-poorly aged Mrs. Doubtfire, Sister Act 2).I think the floor may be higher today than it was in ‘93, hence the seemingly higher scores, but studios seem to be a lot more risk-averse, and would rather back a competent and safe money-maker, rather than backing a more creative effort that won’t be as profitable.
The Pelican Brief is a classic! How dare you
Cuz you critic bitches are too scared of getting dragged on Twitter by the motherfucking disgusting ass nerds and racist fascist gamers, the woke wannabe film writers, and the fucking sexually promiscuous alcoholic twitter gays for saying that bad shit like Black Panther, Avengers, or A Star is Born actually sucks ass. I do not know how to explain your love for the movie Boyhood tho. Every critic who said that the movie Boyhood was a good movie deserves to be in prison. If you vote for me in the Democratic primaries, I will make that happen.
I don’t believe Rotten Tomatoes has a a big of a pull as they think on box office. Otherwise, where were all the ticket sales for Into the Spider-Verse?
It’s because fawning schmucks who call themselves “critics” like writing positive things in hopes of being picked up for a blurb.
How many times have you seen an idiot proclaim a flick is an “instant classic”? That’s why.
Meh. I stopped paying attention to Rotten Tomatoes ratings when movies started advertising their ratings as badges. When the industry starts getting too cozy with its “independent reviewers,” my cynic senses start tingling.
One thing I’ve noticed is that a TV show’s RT rating always skyrockets in season two. It’s not because it’s that much better but because the critics who didn’t like it in the first place aren’t sticking around to review it again.
I don’t care about anything in the articles as much as I care about the awesome picture that came with it.
Why am I having such a hard time believing AVC reviews 300+ movies a year? I am not doubting the numbers, but I would have guessed much much lower.
I prefer Metacritic.
I remember the early days of RT, posting on the forums to hash out theories of what Mulholland Drive was all about. It is so vastly different now then it was then.