Endless Thread - Fresh, stale, or politics? The Melania doc's Rotten Tomatoes score, explained

Episode Date: February 20, 2026

Melania, a documentary about the first lady, has a 10 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes from critics, but a 90 percent score from audience members, an unusual discrepancy that raises the question, how did Rotten Tomatoes get those scores anyway? Show notes: The 'Melania' movie audience: Older white women (NPR) Melania’s Movie Shows Signs of Bulk Buying to Boost Box Office: Guru (The Daily Beast) You Can Thank 'Rush Hour' for Rotten Tomatoes (Vice) Rotten Tomatoes Owner Says ‘Melania’ 99% Audience Score Is Not ‘Bot Manipulation’: ‘Reviews Are Verified… Users Bought a Ticket to the Film’ (Variety) Credits: This episode was produced by Kalyani Saxena and Grace Tatter. It was co-hosted by Ben Brock Johnson and Kalyani Saxena, and edited by Meg Cramer. Mix and sound design by Paul Vaitkus.

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WBUR Podcasts, Boston. WBUR producer Kalyani Saksana. How you do? I do so good. So good. All right. I feel like this conversation, which is your sophomore appearance on Endless Thread,

congrats. This is right in your wheelhouse. Because you, your first endless thread conversation about 10 years ago now in like modern internet time was about Kamala Harris. Remember Kamala? I do. I have heard of her.

And you're right that this is in my little wheelhouse. I love when politics and internet culture have a small little love affair. So today we begin with Melania, another somewhat political topic, a person in politics, etc. So for whatever reason, the modern data brokered internet did not deliver me ads for the new documentary, Melania, which covers the story of her private life, leading up to President Donald Trump's inauguration in 2025. Okay, you didn't get the ads either. No, I actually heard about it from my dad, which is, he's like, did you hear about the Melania movie? And I was like, Melania movie? There's a movie about Melania?

And then, you know, we went from there. Fair. Okay, so I did not know this was a real movie also that was coming out in 2026. I did not find out from your dad. I found out when I saw the snark on Reddit. Okay, so this discussion of Melania on the internet kind of snowballs as these things are wont to do. The Daily Beast says that this documentary, which costs $75 million to make and apparently brought in $7 million in box office seats its opening weekend. Great ratio.

Well, not a great ratio, but a pretty good opening weekend for a documentary, actually, and this $7 million number, amongst some other things, were very surprising to people on Reddit, who maybe didn't know a single person who went to see the movie or saw reporting about mostly empty theaters and social media posts about empty theaters. There's a lot of skepticism that all of those ticket sales represented actual people going to see the movie. Like, were they part of some kind of push to make the movie seem more popular or successful than it was?

There were a lot of rumors flying around about this, everything from the military being pressured into going to see the movie to block ticket sale buying. And now there's been some reporting on those rumors. Tom Bruggeman covers box office news. He wrote in his newsletter about industry sources who said there were signs of block ticket sales. like when a person or a group buys a whole bunch of tickets that were then given away for free. And then there's this guy Matthew Belloni at the puck who then reported that AMC and Regal told him they did not see unusual ticket purchasing. And also that Amazon says it did not artificially boost ticket sales. So, you know, this is a little complicated.

But I think a lot of the speculation around fake ticket sales has to do with just like how much. money Amazon has been willing to spend on this movie in general. So the company paid, Amazon paid, Melania Trump's production company, $40 million for the rights to the movie. That is a lot of money to pay to a member of the president's family. It's also way more than anyone else wanted to pay for it. So that was kind of interesting. Then Amazon spent $35 million to market the movie. That is a lot of money to pay for a documentary. That's not your average documentary spending budget when it comes to marketing. And this is not a money-making venture for Jeff Bezos, right? And it's not a secret that Bezos is trying to get close to President Trump. So there's arguably something flattering to the

president about this movie being worth so much and about so many people wanting to see a documentary about the First Lady, which brings us to the thing that we're going to get into in this episode. It is something else that I've seen a bunch of people wondering about on Reddit. Are you ready? Do you know the phrase, Kalyani, AstroTurfed? Are you familiar? I am familiar with AstroTurf, even though I was not what you might call an athlete. But I imagine there's a different meeting.

Yeah, yeah. artificial turf. The idea here being that you can use the internet to suggest or create interest in something even though there's no interest in the thing or very little interest in the thing. So kind of like using the tools of the internet to make something seem more popular than it is. Long story short. Like audience plant type. That's right. And, you know, in that discussion about astroturfing in this movie and review, specifically reviews, there was a lot of conversation about the website Rotten Tomatoes, which do you use Rotten Tomatoes? I don't actually. I mean, I used it in the sense that like when I Google a movie and then I see the like rotten tomatoes, on Google it pops up as like a potential data point. Yeah. But I can't say that like I've, you know, gone and logged on to Rotten Tomatoes and looked. Okay.

I don't. You're not checking the freshness of the tomatoes, is what you're telling me. No, I'm not a big tomato fan in general, but that's either here nor there. Okay. All right. So the current rating of this movie is like 10% via critics, so 90% rotten. And the audience score is 99% fresh. So this is like a huge difference in scores.

So, you know, I think it's time for me to sort of lean back in my movie chair. I'm going to take my popcorn out, or in this case, my Mike and Ikes, and I'm ready to learn. Because, Kalyani, you started looking into this. And I think what we're trying to answer, right, is these very specific questions. People are wondering why there's such a big difference between the critic score and the audience score. Could this be the result of astroturfing? I've seen a lot of Reddit threads over the past couple of weeks sort of referencing this, making jokes about it,

specifically using the word astro-turfing. There's not like one big post, but there's a lot of people referencing astroturfing and fake reviewing in all of the different Reddit threads that are discussing this topic of the movie. And you've done some deep diving, Kalyani, into how Rotten Tomatoes works. I have questions, you have answers.

We are going to get into all of it right when we come back. Support for this podcast comes from Nature is the Solution, a podcast from the Nature Conservancy. When it comes to the environment, it's easy to focus on doom and gloom, but that's not the whole story, especially when there are so many projects working towards bringing people and nature together. In this moment, optimism isn't naive. it's necessary. Follow Nature is the solution wherever you listen to podcasts

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the creative studio from WBUR's Business Partnerships Team. Become a thought leader. Recruit new talent, reach new audiences, whatever your goal, we can help. Discover how the magic is made at WBUR.org slash creative studio. We're back, Kalyani. We're back. And you're about to learn me some facts. And I have been doing some deep digging in the tomato garden, as they say. And I'm going to start with a little history lesson. Have you ever seen the small, the tiny indie film?

rush hour. Please tell me you speak English. Do you understand the words that are coming out of my mouth? Oh my God. We were talking about this and yes, I have seen both. I've seen one and two. I don't know if

there were more. There was one more. They probably should have stopped at one. And the reason I know this is because I just rewatched both movies for the first time in 20 years. I watched them as a child and I watched them both back to back on a plane, which in my opinion is like, I think that's the only format in which rush hour should ever be viewed is on a plane. I think some movies are just built for

the plane and this one is. But for people who have not seen the movie, it's a buddy cop film that stars Chris Tucker and Jackie Chan. And they've sort of been thrown together to solve, this is the first movie, they've been thrown together to solve the kidnapping of a diplomat's daughter. And it's watching it back 20 years later. Like, I don't. don't think you can argue with the fact that rush hour is funny, but it's also aged in a way that's like not so hot. I don't know that you would see that movie made in the same way today. I have not watched it since I, since like, when did it come out? Do you know when it came out? 1998. And this is relevant. 1998 is relevant. Okay. So in 1998, a guy named Senyong,

he actually ends up creating rotten tomatoes. But at the time, he was just a really big fan. of Jackie Chan movies. Okay. And he was looking for information about this movie, in particular, Rush Hour. And I admittedly was not super sentient

in 1998. Like, I was around, but I wasn't watching movies. So I'll have to ask you. I mean, do you remember how people used to find movie reviews? No idea. No idea.

It was primarily looking at newspapers, magazines. Like, you would have to go somewhere, look at a physical article and sort of, there was no central place in which all those reviews were compiled. That's a good. That's a good point.

It was like a wire service. Either there was a local critic in the newspaper that you read. Right. Or they were like, it was like a wire service and the reviews would come out when the movies came out that week. And it was like, sometimes you didn't even know who the person writing the reviews was. It was just like the review that the wire service that ran in the newspaper, you're like, oh, I got three and a half stars.

and here's like a paragraph or two on the movie. Interesting. Yeah, I didn't even think about that. Yeah, so he was looking at all these different sources of information about this Jackie Chan movie. And he was like, wait a minute. What if there was a site that put together reviews from all these different sources in one place? And here's how he described it on a podcast called So This Is My Why last year. Every weekend I noticed there were all these asked for movies. And every movie, no matter how good or bad will have critical.

Excel is saying how great it is. I've seen some pretty bad movies, and I'm just like, there's no way this movie is that good. So that came to me the idea, hey, I should just create a website, pattern it after these movie ads, but not just the good one, but also the bad ones. So he puts together the site that becomes Rotten Tomatoes in like a crazy short period of time, and so it would be ready in time for the release of Rush Hour in August of 1998. But then the movie gets pushed.

to September of 1998. So he ends up using it to compile reviews for other movies too, not just like as a site about Jackie Chan movies. That's super interesting to me. I mean, it just reminds me of this like wisdom of the crowd idea of a certain time on the internet when it was like, you know what? Like the information that we have that's like highly moderated is not as good as the like total feedback of the audience that's like going to this thing.

Yeah. And that makes sense to me. From a 1998 perspective, that makes sense to me. Yes. Well, I mean, the site has really evolved over time. It sort of does both, right? It's got the opinions from the critics. And it's got the audience opinions. And on Rotten Tomatoes, for people who don't know, there's two scores that you actually have to pay attention to. There's the tomato meter, which is the one that most people are familiar with. It's based on the reviews of critics. The staff of Rotten Tomatoes, they go through hundreds of opinions from film and TV critics, and then they mark them whether they're positive or negative. And then the score that you see, like, 55%, represents the percentage of reviews that were positive. So 60% are more positive reviews fresh. 60% or less, rotten. That's when you see the green splat. Got it.

But there's another score that I think is really key to this discussion about Melania. It's the popcorn meter, which assigns. a rating based on what fans think, not critics. Have you ever looked at that one? Yeah, I've seen the popcorn bucket. Yeah. And so here's how Rotten Tomatoes describes the popcorn meter working. If 60% or more of the reviews give a movie or show a star rating of 3.5 or higher, it's hot. If less than 60% of the reviews have a star rating of 3.5 or higher, it's stale. If a movie or show doesn't have enough reviews or hasn't been released yet, it will have a no popcorn meter score label. When we can verify users who bought a ticket to a film, the default score shown is composed of

verified ratings and checkmarks appear next to their reviews. Clearly one of those like, okay, the marketing team helps us explain this big change to the website to all the users, right? It's like... Right. And there's another like little nitpicky thing that's really important to pay attention to here, which is that the default popcorn meter score that you see on the website is made of verified ratings. which means those are reviews from people that Rotten Tomatoes can verify bought a ticket to the movie. So that's specifically people who bought the ticket on Fandango. As far as I can tell, they're only able to verify reviews from ticket purchases off Fandango.

Do you buy your movie tickets on Fandango? No, I buy my movie tickets. I don't know why I said that with so much disdain. I have no beef towards Fandango. I just buy them from my like local indie theater on their website. And I don't think I've ever left a review on Fandango or Rotten Tomatoes. Well, that's an interesting thing, too, right? Is you're basically like, I get why they're doing it.

They're trying to, they're trying to ensure that they don't get astroturfed, right? Like, they're basically saying, no, you have to have actually purchased a ticket for this movie. Whether or not you went, I suppose you could purchase a ticket and not go, right? which is also what we're kind of talking about here. But that is their effort to have some control over it. Of course, we should say, like, part of the complexity here is, like, again, this idea of, like, well, we know the review is legit because somebody bought a ticket.

And we don't know a lot about how Fandango protects against block ticket buying or buying and not going and seeing the movie but leaving a review anyway. So our process of ensuring that the reviews are legit is still, it's not bulletproof, shall we say. But can you talk a little bit more, Kalyani, about how do you know how Rotten Tomatoes verifies its users? So the email address that you use when you log on to Van Dango to buy your ticket, that should match the email address that you're using to leave your Rotten Tomatoes review. Okay.

So if those two match, then your review is verified. Interesting. Okay. And this all comes back to Melania because Rotten Tomatoes parent company says that there's been no bot manipulation when it comes to the audience reviews for the documentary. Right. The reviews that are displayed on the popcorn meter are all verified reviews, which means that the people who reviewed Melania on Rotten Tomatoes bought a ticket for Melania. And we should note that these are just people who bought a ticket. Presumably they went to see the movie. There's no way to verify that they actually did. This is very interesting to me because, again, it sort of gets into this, like, weird zone of how, like, platforms on the internet work, right?

And they are, I would say, like, in these weird ways, they are kind of, like, buggy. And, like, once you start to drill down, you start to see stuff where you're like, huh. Well, I've been thinking about this discrepancy between the critic score and the audience score on Rotten Tomatoes for Melania specifically. And I have one theory, which is that I think this movie, it's coming out obviously in a very specific political environment. And if you're going to see Melania, it's likely, not a one-to-one, but it's likely that you have some positive feelings towards this presidential administration. You have positive feelings towards the First Lady herself. And I feel like the folks who are going to see this movie are likely people who are going to enjoy the movie and maybe feel inclined to leave a review because they want to counter any narratives about, oh, this movie wasn't very good. Meanwhile, critics who are watching the movie, they're watching it for work.

They have to watch it regardless of whether they feel strongly or not towards the First Lady in the current administration. So I think that there's sort of a feeling that like, at least from my theorizing brain, that, you know, so almost like a confirmation bias thing, if you're likely to see Melania, you're probably the kind of person who's going to enjoy it too. All right. Okay. But there's also another connection. I just want to bring it full circle back to rush hour. There's another really interesting connection here between Melania and Rotten Tomatoes and Rush Hour, which is that Brett Rattman. who directs Melania also directed Rush Hour in 1998 and the whole Rush Hour franchise.

And his last movie before Melania was in 2014. And that's likely because in 2017 he was accused of sexual misconduct by a number of women in Hollywood. He vehemently denied allegations of sexual harassment and assault. But this is sort of his first big thing in the wake of those allegations. Wow. And he's also mentioned in the Epstein files. He's mentioned. He is pictured. He is pictured next to Jeffrey Epstein. That that is correct. Oh, man. Okay. So it's so we just, it's, we live in the weirdest timeline. And it is so strange to me this like random synchronicity. And I don't know what to do with that, but I guess my takeaways are... All roads lead to rush hour?

Sorry, I had to lighten it up. I guess so. Again, no, it's good to lighten it up. It's good to lighten it up, I guess. I mean, I guess what we're supposed to take away is that Rotten Tomatoes does have some way of verifying a thing that would... normally mostly correlate with going to a movie, which is buying a ticket. I have a takeaway. Okay. Not to be profound, but I do. No, please.

Please go on, my friend. Thank you, Kalyani. I think so often, like, when we are talking about arts and culture, so much of the experience of, like, watching a movie is really intangible. It's about how it made you feel. And sometimes, and what's great about sites like Rotten Tomato is it's sort of an ability to give data to like a general cultural feeling about something, right? And I think it makes people uncomfortable or upset when you see something like you see a low

percent from critics and then you see a 99 percent from the audience. You're like, what am I supposed to do with this data? How is it supposed to tell me to feel about this movie and the fact that it's coming out? I don't like that these things don't match and I don't like that maybe they don't match how I personally feel. And I kind of have to be like, guys, let's... Let's put the numbers down. You know, let's put the numbers down.

Because I think, I mean, and I say this is someone who does not consult Rotten Tomatoes religiously. I really do think that, like, when we're trying to quantify personal enjoyment and also, like, a cultural vibe based on these numbers in a system, as we've already talked about, I think it's just a futile task. And I think when we're thinking about a film like Melania and the time at which it's coming out, I don't think we're going to find any. clarity from Rotten Tomatoes numbers. So maybe my takeaway is put the numbers down and there's no real clarity we found there. I think that feels right. And I, you know, it also feels like relevant to a lot of the ways that I travel on the internet now, which is like I don't, I still believe in the wisdom of the crowd and also

the madness of the crowd. And so like I think both things are true and can be true depending on the situation. And I also will admit that, like, I don't I don't pay attention to Yelp reviews anymore. I don't, it's been a long time since I've gone to Rotten Tomatoes to see anything as far as a rating. Like, you know what I do now to tell where to eat, which is a very, which is a thing that I care much about, is I look at the Google photos. I go on to Google Maps. I find the place that I'm interested in. And I just do a deep dive on those photos.

And that's how I tell whether the place is good to eat at. And I don't know what the movie version of that is, but it might just be like you watch a lot of trailers. And like if the trailer looks good, then if they did a good job on the trailer, then maybe they'll do a good job on the movie. I don't know. Is that where we're at? I just look at TikTok and see how many, like, lusty TikTok edits there are.

And I'm like, if there's enough to grab me, like, same with books. If there's a line that I find interesting that someone posts about a book or like an edit, I'm like, you know what? That speaks to me. That speaks to me louder than any number can. I'm seated. That's a good takeaway, I think. Like, culture is not, culture is not like about what you, it's like you were saying

before. Culture is not really about, like, the numbers and the data. It's about, at least a. a consumer. It's about like how you feel, right? So like, I think that's a good place for us to land on. And if you feel like going to see Melania, you know, you don't have to respond to the Craigslist ad and get your $50. You can just go. And if you don't, you can just go. Yeah, you could. And if you don't, don't, don't go. Endless Threat is a production of WBUR in Boston. This episode was produced by Kalyani Saxena.

and Grace Tatter, and hosted by me, Ben Brock Johnson. And me, Kalyani Saxana. It was edited by Meg Kramer, Mix and Sound Design by Paul Vykus. The rest of our team is Amory Sebertsin, Dean Russell, Chiosna, Bernadot, Emily Jankowski, and our managing producer, Summata Joshi. Endless Thread is a show about the blurred lines between online communities and your Fandango account. If you have an untold history and unsolved mystery or another story from the internet that you want us to tell,

hit us up. Endless thread at WBUR.org.