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‘Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice’ Producer Says Rotten Tomatoes is Destroying Hollywood

Rotten Tomatoes is a great site. I use it anytime I’m trying to form my opinion on a movie I haven’t seen in order to sound smart. Instead of scouring the internet for reviews, I go there and get all the reviews in one spot. Aggregation is a beautiful thing.

Unless of course you’re Brett Ratner and you’re still trying to defend Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice.

“The worst thing that we have in today’s movie culture is Rotten Tomatoes,” said Ratner, whose company RatPac Entertainment co-financed Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice (among dozens of other Warner Bros. titles). “I think it’s the destruction of our business. I have such respect and admiration for film criticism. When I was growing up film criticism was a real art. And there was intellect that went into that. And you would read Pauline’s Kael’s reviews, or some others, and that doesn’t exist anymore. Now it’s about a number. A compounded number of how many positives vs. negatives. Now it’s about, ‘What’s your Rotten Tomatoes score?’ And that’s sad, because the Rotten Tomatoes score was so low on Batman v Superman I think it put a cloud over a movie that was incredibly successful.”

This is where Ratner is being closed-minded. People saw Batman vs. Superman because the Rotten Tomatoes score was so low. I had no interest in that movie until I saw it get skewered by everyone. Then, I thought, “it can’t be that bad” so I watched it. Turns out, it was that bad.

“People don’t realize what goes into making a movie like that,” Ratner continued. “It’s mind-blowing. It’s just insane, it’s hurting the business, it’s getting people to not see a movie. In Middle America it’s, ‘Oh, it’s a low Rotten Tomatoes score so I’m not going to go see it because it must suck.’ But that number is an aggregate and one that nobody can figure out exactly what it means, and it’s not always correct. I’ve seen some great movies with really abysmal Rotten Tomatoes scores. What’s sad is film criticism has disappeared. It’s really sad.”

Ratner definitely voted for Trump, right? After ready that paragraph, there’s no way that Ratner didn’t vote for Trump. And people don’t not see a movie because of the movies RT score. Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice scored a 27 percent on RT and it grossed nearly a billion dollars. Again, I’d argue that people are more likely to see a movie if it scores low because they want to see if it’s really that bad. And Ratner does realize that RT takes critic reviews and audience reviews, right?

In fact, Rotten Tomatoes’ Jeff Voris said as much.

“At Rotten Tomatoes, we completely agree that film criticism is valuable and important, and we’re making it easier than it has ever been for fans to access potentially hundreds of professional reviews for a given film or TV show in one place…The Tomatometer score, which is the percentage of positive reviews published by professional critics, has become a useful decision-making tool for fans, but we believe it’s just a starting point for them to begin discussing, debating and sharing their own opinions.”

Maybe we should just go back to thumbs to rate movies.

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Hyacinth
Hyacinth
6 years ago

Rotten Tomatoes and the other one – can’t remember the name – can be way off.