By Nick Ubels, Michael Scoular, Joel Smart – Email
Print Edition: February 29, 2012
Michael: As everyone familiar with the practice of assigning a numerical value to something not so easily quantified, or really, reducible to a letter grade or number at all, knows, the persistence of the weight placed on these inexact, often whimsical judgments can be a little maddening. It’s the easy way out. But for some it makes it extremely easy to see what passes the grade, what’s worth paying attention to and what is better off tossed aside. How Rotten Tomatoes, a site wholly in favour of the sanctity of numbers, became not just the first destination for those who like their movie discourse to be little more than consumer reviews, but a name synonymous with film criticism, is a something of a puzzle, no matter how much of a given it has become today. A large part of it likely stems from the desire for instant access. The dearth of insight from many newspaper balcony scribes is another contributing factor and general lethargy perhaps another. But the bigger questions here might be whether Rotten Tomatoes’ presumptive monopoly on movie-talk should be questioned. Does the funnel of plot summaries and thumb up/downs really result in anything approaching a reliable, worthy indicator that we’ll see something worth watching at the movies, or even find simple satisfaction?
Nick: I think these sites provide a different service whether they are used before or after taking in a particular work, so let’s start by looking at the experience of a moviegoer trying to decide what to watch on a Friday night. Rotten Tomatoes can tell them in a matter of seconds which movie has received the highest percentage of positive reviews. Of course, this means controversial films that have split the critics will wind up with a fairly low score and might be ignored by the ostensibly discerning viewer. In a world full of seemingly endless entertainment choices and limited budgets, is this a fair trade off? Should we eschew risk and put our trust in the safety of critical consensus?
Joel: Personally, I’ve always been rather wary of a critical review ending in a rating of stars or thumbs – likely because I remain unsure whether the purpose of a review is to analyse the value of a film, or simply to say how much or little it was enjoyed. Ultimately, it seems that the review must incorporate both. Yet, when it comes time for movie night, I can’t help but check Metacritic to see what kind of number a film has received. It’s quick and if you only look at a number you don’t really have to worry about spoilers.
Perhaps easy access to review aggregate sites is actually preventing people from seeing some of the films that might have otherwise turned into cult classics. Take a film like Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, for instance. The majority of reviewers didn’t “get” the film, but for others it was one of the best of the year.
To a degree we are already in a world where market research trumps the auteur film-maker; does a site like Metacritic increase the chance that some of these films without mass appeal simply won’t find the audience that they might have otherwise?
Michael: Joel, you raise a very interesting point in your example of Scott Pilgrim, because it was actually a movie critics practically fell over each other praising. Whether people were checking the scores or the words, the movie did well critically. But this love did not spread widely, at least in a large, “definition of a hit” sense. The failure of Scott Pilgrim, I think, is not the problem of reviewers or audiences not getting the movie but rather the inevitable outcome of the result-driven, A or B dichotomy brand of thinking Rotten Tomatoes fosters. The site has entered the vernacular, is used as an argumentative tool, and is home to commenters that launch death threats at reviewers that upset perfect ratings for films they are anticipating, never mind have seen, nuanced arguments be damned.
You’re right Nick, that the site is a very helpful as a reviews’ aggregate. I can usually find a good pool of opinions on most movies, the more recent and widely released the better, and I’ve been introduced to critics I now value tremendously through their assemblage of publications and blogs with relative ease. But the “relative” is the sticking point even on this side of the site’s utility. Rotten Tomatoes is the opposite of conducive when it comes to readers who want to actually read reviews. The prominent position of everything but the reviewers that drive the site is obvious, but I also have a bone to pick with the reviewers Rotten Tomatoes chooses to uphold as the voices worth listening to. Their selection/approval process, which draws the line at large newspapers and traffic-heavy blogs, has made for a group of critics where the only constant is plot summary. I am not any kind of authority on all the key voices that write mainly on blogs or journals, but out of about twenty I visit with some regularity and whose opinion I value, only three feature anywhere on Rotten Tomatoes. The idea being Rotten Tomatoes should be the authority, but they place as little importance on curating critics worth reading as they do maintaining links for older reviews. If they don’t have any kind of handle on reviewers, and their so-called guidance consistently fails to correllate with audiences (I’ve found local viewer-driven sections of sites like Cinema Clock to be much better indicators as to if the average moviegoer will like what’s playing), then is there any good reason for their metric to enjoy such a glorified distinction?
Nick: Some of the most interesting critics, as you said, work outside of the major newspaper and high traffic blog system. In fact, I find many newspaper reviews to take a middle-of-the-road to positive line on most movies. In some cases, their inclusion could result in rating inflation.
Joel: My dilemma is that a film like Twilight is the absolute best thing in existence for a particular audience. Yet, no aggregate review site—RT, MC, or IMDb—can do justice to both that audience and to someone like me, who has no interest in reading the books or fantasizing over sparkling vampires.
Michael: Actually, an aggregate certainly can fill that role. A site like Rotten Tomatoes is an aggregate not just in score but in how it gathers together, in cases of new wide releases like Twilight, hundreds of reviews that can then be read independently of whatever rating the overarching site turns the various opinions into, and from that accumulated data it can be found that yes, there are reviews from “serious” critics that don’t dismiss the movie because of its source material, Stephanie Zacharek being perhaps the most prominent example for the example you used. The 25 per cent rating means the popular voice reflects your disinterest and annoyance, but the format of the site does not shut out alternate views. It could be improved, and as your post suggests, the best use of the site is often forgotten, but it can be used for better purposes than as some kind of recommendation based on overview.
The thing that strikes me about this mindset is how it also translates over to other mediums. Where in movies there exists this urge to look for a recommendation, however unreliable, theoretically to ensure hours aren’t wasted (find me someone who hasn’t been unenthused by a movie recommended by this method of RT scores and IMDb ratings), music seems to have transcended this problem. I’m not as intimately familiar with the music scene, but it seems to me there’s both a different approach to finding music and the way music is valued.
Nick: It is the lack of a unified scene that I think largely exempts music from this phenomenon. Aggregate sites still exist, but they have a much lower currency in online and other music communities. An illustrative example: The Oscars versus the Grammys. The Oscars—though still derided by many—are not nearly as out of touch as The Grammys. No one considers The Grammys to have any bearing on which album was really the best in any given year. The body of music critics is not held in the same esteem as their cinematic peers. Touching on what Joel said earlier, there seems to be more of an expectation of individualized taste in music. Variation on the consensus seems to be encouraged and rewarded among most music listeners. Maybe it has something to do with the numbers: there are approximately 70,000 albums and 550 films released in the United States each year, meaning music fans have a much wider selection from which to pull their favourites. This also means that—other than a few big name releases—different publications end up covering mostly different albums. Joel, what do you think the impact of aggregate sites is on video game consumption?
Joel: I think that video games are more impacted by “scores” than films are. This is because video games are rarely regarded as art. Things that people don’t appreciate about a game are rarely defended as being the “artistic expression” of the creator.
Perhaps the impact is also due to the necessary functionality of a game. For example, if the controls of a game are difficult or sluggish, the player may be convinced that the game is truly “bad” and not simply different from their tastes. I think players expect a game review to protect them from investing a lot of money into a truly bad game. In many ways, the stakes are a lot lower with a film review.
That said, I think there is also a lot less respect for game critics. In the film world you’ve got someone like Roger Ebert; I don’t think there is anyone at that level in games. Perhaps that as well, though, makes an aggregate site seem all-the-more appealing for games – a general consensus seems more valuable than a solitary, semi-anonymous voice. As a result, I think game-makers feel a stronger push from investors and producers to create a game that will meet critical expectations.
