Consider This from NPR - Rotten Tomatoes Changed The Role Of Film Critics. But Is That A Good Thing?

Episode Date: September 15, 2023

If you're over a certain age and you love movies, when you think "movie critic", you probably picture Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert and their popular TV shows. Their iconic "thumbs up" or "thumbs down" move made it clear what each of them thought about a film. In some ways, the movie review website Rotten Tomatoes is the opposite of Siskel and Ebert. Their viewers depended on the insights of two individuals that they trusted, and felt they knew.Rotten Tomatoes aggregates and averages reviews from lots of critics to assign a movie a number ranking, and declare it "fresh" or "rotten". Since its launch 25 years ago, it's become the the go to site for lots of potential movie goers, offering everything they need to decide whether or not a movie is worth seeing. But for a while now, there have been complaints about the way the site ranks films. And concerns that those rankings unfairly influence whether a movie succeeds or bombs.Host Scott Detrow talks to Lane Brown, who took the site to task in a recent article on Vulture, and film critic Jamie Broadnax, editor-in-chief of the culture site, Black Girl Nerds.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

This message comes from Indiana University. Indiana University performs breakthrough research every year, making discoveries that improve human health, combat climate change, and move society forward. More at iu.edu forward. Right now, members of the actors and and screenwriters' unions are still on strike, walking picket lines in Hollywood. But that doesn't stop movie studios from pushing the content they already have out to the public. And that's how you get ads like these. Oppenheimer is magnificent.

The New York Times calls it staggering. Critics and audiences agree. Bottoms is a hit. It's the best-reviewed comedy is a hit. It's the best reviewed comedy of the year. It's pretty insane. And if you're trying to decide what movie to see, and sometimes that's a hard choice because ticket prices can be $20 or more, a film's biggest selling point might be this. Audiences and critics cannot believe what they're seeing with a 96% on Rotten Tomatoes. The Phantom of the Open is the crowd-pleasing, feel-good film that will leave you cheering.

And it's certified fresh from Rotten Tomatoes. Since its launch 25 years ago, the review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes has become the be-all, end-all for many people deciding whether or not to see a movie. If you told a friend they had to see Oppenheimer, to help convince them, maybe you mentioned it had a 93% on Rotten Tomatoes. It was fresh. Other movies, like The Nun 2, lurking at just 47%, maybe not so much. Like any form of traditional media, I think the role of the critic has changed as the power of the critic has changed.

Eric Deggans is NPR's TV critic. He got into the profession during the days when one critic could sway public opinion. And he says those days are gone. You know, at least when you're talking about sort of marquee-name critics, the Roger Evers, the Gene Siskels, you know, the folks who could determine

the fate of a movie with a single review or at least a clutch of reviews, that isn't the case anymore. Consider this. People use Rotten Tomatoes to get a consensus on whether or not to watch a movie or TV show. But there are flaws in the system. By combining and averaging reviews, it may be devaluing the voices it brings together. From NPR, I'm Scott Detrow. It's Friday, September 15th. This message comes from NPR sponsor Organic Valley, a co-op of small organic family farms.

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definitely a point when you cared a lot about gene siskel and roger ebert now what are these three very different films have in common each has played a key role in the development of two film critics their names siskel and ebert i'm gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune. And I'm Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times. They both started out doing movie reviews for newspapers, but it was their TV shows, Sneak Previews and At the Movies, where the two Chicago critics developed the style of

smart, yet accessible discussions about film that became their trademark. I think the thing that set Siskel and Ebert apart was that they were from the minute you saw them on TV and from the minute you heard them argue one another they either reminded you of yourself or they reminded you of someone you knew.

I mean, sometimes I watch them and it's kind of like watching two versions of my dad argue with one another about machines. Roger, my rebuttal of this film is you're wrapping yourself in the flag of children and I'm saying go see The Black Stallion instead. There's a film with little dialogue. I'm not wrapping yourself in the flag of children and i'm saying go see the black stallion instead there's a film with little much better i'm not wrapping myself in the flag of children you're wrapping yourself in the flag of the sophisticated film no boredom at all no boredom

brian raftery is a journalist and podcaster based in los angeles his podcast gene and roger examined their legacy how they changed film, and how thumbs up or thumbs down became a part of the culture. I do think that Siskel and Ebert, by being so kind of accessible in their own ways, made you feel like you were maybe a little bit smarter about movies than you gave yourself credit for. And also, they covered everything. They were very egalitarian. They did not just cover sort of highbrow cinema. They covered junk, and sometimes they really championed junk.

Raftery has thought a lot about what Siskel and Ebert would make of Rotbrow cinema. They covered junk, and sometimes they really championed junk. Raftery has thought a lot about what Siskel and Ebert would make of Rotten Tomatoes. I think the actual mechanics of Rotten Tomatoes and assigning a movie a number would probably drive Siskel and or Ebert kind of crazy, but I do think that even they would appreciate the idea that a lot of different people are getting to chime in now about movies from different regions, from different vantage points, from different cultural backgrounds. That only, you know, I'm all for, I'm all for as many movie conversations as, you know, the world and the internet can hold at one point. To dig deeper into how Rotten Tomatoes has affected film criticism, studios, and audiences,

I spoke to Lane Brown, who kicked off another one of those conversations on the internet with a recent article for Vulture entitled The Decomposition of Rotten Tomatoes. I also talked to Jamie Brodnax, the editor-in-chief of the culture site Black Girl Nerds. I started the conversation with both of them by asking Brown what he thinks is wrong in the way Rotten Tomatoes makes decisions about what's good or bad, and how it presents that information. There are two main problems in my mind with the way the site works. And so the first one is, to calculate a movie's score, it uses a really simple, really reductive formula.

Every review for a movie is classified as either rotten or fresh or positive or negative. And then to get a movie's overall score, the site just divides the number of positive reviews by the number of reviews. And so there's no attempt at all to distinguish between slightly positive and very positive reviews. And so a movie can get 100% based on just okay reviews. And so a mediocre movie can do really well on Rotten Tomatoes. And a movie that is great but a little challenging might lose points because it's not a total across-the-board crowd-pleaser. And so you'll find movies like Paddington 2 will have a 99% Rotten Tomatoes, which is six points higher than Raging Bull, which seems slightly incorrect, I would say.

So that's the first problem. Another big problem with the site is that movies get a score after only a handful of reviews have been published. Sometimes this view is five. And a movie's first score usually seems to set the tone for the way that movie is received. And so studios have figured out how to game this. And to get a high initial score, they'll just make sure that the critics who see their movies first are the ones most likely to get positive reviews. And so for a superhero movie, there's a whole universe of websites that, you know, now only write about superhero movies and tend to be kinder to them than say,

you know, the snobs that write for other outlets. Yeah. And so you'll often see a movie debut with a really high score because the studios have corked the bat and then that score will fall by a lot once more critics have weighed in. Just selectively having certain people review and publish those reviews at certain times.

I'm specifically remembering this one. I forget who did it. This review of The Flash. This is the greatest superhero movie of all time that gets out there way before I saw it. I can assure you it was not. Facts. Jamie, there's a bunch of things

I want to ask you about as a critic with this. Have you found yourself trying to navigate as a critic, the world that, that, that, that lane writes about of the ways that, that the site has swayed studio behavior of when and how they're trying to introduce certain critics to movies and,

and, and, and, and get reviews published at certain times. Um, how can I answer this without getting in trouble with the studios? Rotten Tomatoes has become bigger than what initially the site was built upon. It was mostly just about film nerds giving their opinions about films and whether it was, you know, hot or not.

Like, it kind of was a riff off of what Siskel and Ebert did with Thumbs Up, Thumbs Down, with Fresh and Rotten. And now it has become this huge sort of marketing tool for a lot of studios. So, you know, I understand the importance for them to want to get the reviews on the site. But that being said, and hopefully I'm answering your question, I understand the importance for them to want to get the reviews on the site. But that being said, and hopefully I'm answering your question, I just want to make sure that what we put on for Black Girl Nerds, our reviews are always filled with integrity, are always true to what the critic actually is seeing and wants to put out there into the world about how they feel about the film, regardless of our relationship with the studio. Studios are now trying to time premieres to try and game the system here.

And one example that you had of this actually working out really poorly was the decision of Disney to premiere the latest Indiana Jones sequel at Cannes, which you could see the big fancy reception and you could see why they did that on one hand. But then you have a whole bunch of highbrow critics come out and say, yeah, this movie stunk. And those early reviews were very bad, and they seemed to hurt the movie's opening first few weeks. Yeah, it was funny. They have this big spectacle at the Cannes Film Festival. It's a five-minute standing ovation. Harrison Ford is weeping as they present him with this, you know, honorary Palme d'Or

for, you know, lifetime achievement. And, you know, in the olden days, that kind of spectacle might have actually sort of translated into sort of warm,

early buzz, but not in 2023. And so now, the only thing that really matters to come out of a film festival like this is that Rotten Tomatoes score.

And so, yeah, you show it to a bunch of snobby critics at Cannes, and, you know, it translates to a 33 that Rotten Tomatoes score. And so, yeah, you show it to a bunch of snobby critics at Cannes, and it translates to a 33% Rotten Tomatoes score, which sort of instantly sets the tone for that movie's reception. And they just have this low Rotten Tomatoes score sitting out there for a month before the movie arrives in theaters. And so a lot of people just didn't turn out in theaters. And so you have this movie that cost $300 million just because it had a bad word of mouth via that early Rotten Tomatoes score.

Jamie, I wanted to broaden this out to you. I think one reason why this Lane's article jumped out to me is that because this is a trend in the world of criticism, but it's a trend in so many other things right now, news, politics, many other things. And that's like the broader democratization of the world of movie critics, right? This is not an elite handful of people swaying opinion across America anymore. It's so much more of a broad pool. When you think about that trend, do you think that there's more good there or more bad there? Like, what do you make of where we are compared to 10 or 20 or 30 years ago when it comes to the world of movie criticism? I mean, I think it's a good thing. I want to be careful where we criticize or we're diminishing the work of small online creators,

people that don't have large platforms or work for trade publications, that somehow they're not seen as worthy of being a film critic, as someone who works for the New York Times or writes for the Guardian, because we as smaller bloggers and journalists really love and appreciate film just the same. And we're a part of accredited film organizations and guilds that we work hard to be a part of those and watch tons and tons of films throughout the year and vote on those films respectively. So I say all of that to say that it's important that the pool is wider. However,

you know, I do have concerns, and I think Lane's article touched on that, that there are critics out there that are willing to accept payment for having their articles put on Rotten Tomatoes. So I think it's probably the onus is on the platform to really vet harder who they're bringing into their pool of critics. To Jamie's point, I think it is important that Rotten Tomatoes vets a little bit more carefully than they have been. And I will tell you, one person who absolutely should not be a Rotten Tomatoes tomato meter approved critic is me. And yet, somehow, I never asked for this and didn't even realize that I was a tomato meter approved critic until about three days after I published my piece. But apparently I am. They added me to the site.

They turned a whole bunch of blog posts that I wrote 15 years ago into reviews. They weren't actual reviews. I'm not a critic. Never claimed to be a critic. Don't want to be a critic. The world is a worse place for having my stupid opinions in it. And yet, somehow, my vote is, you know, on Rent Tomatoes is exactly the same. I have just as much voting power as Jamie or any of the other critics on there.

And that just seems ridiculous to me. So I think it's certainly better that the pool is wider. There is more great criticism happening now than there has ever been. It's coming from all different places. But I do think Rotten Tomatoes, you know, the platform, the onus is on them, as Jamie said, to vet and make sure that everybody who's on there

should be on there. That was Lane Brown, a feature writer for New York Magazine and Vulture, and Jamie Brodnax, film critic and editor-in-chief at arts and culture site Black Girl Nerds. It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Scott Detrow.

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