Hollywood whines about reviews

[Will E Worm]

Attacked by Rotten Tomatoes


Hollywood had a horrible summer.

Between the first weekend in May and Labor Day, a sequel-stuffed period that typically accounts for 40 percent of annual ticket sales, box office revenue in North America totaled $3.8 billion, a 15 percent decline from the same span last year. To find a slower summer, you would have to go back 20 years. Business has been so bad that America’s three biggest theater chains have lost roughly $4 billion in market value since May.

Ready for the truly alarming part? Hollywood is blaming a website: Rotten Tomatoes.

“I think it’s the destruction of our business,” Brett Ratner, the director, producer and film financier, said at a film festival this year.

Some studio executives privately concede that a few recent movies — just a few — were simply bad. Flawed marketing may have played a role in a couple of other instances, they acknowledged, along with competition from Netflix and Amazon.

But most studio fingers point toward Rotten Tomatoes, which boils down hundreds of reviews to give films “fresh” or “rotten” scores on its Tomatometer. The site has surged in popularity, attracting 13.6 million unique visitors in May, a 32 percent increase above last year’s total for the month, according to the analytics firm comScore.

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Hollywood needs to come up with new ideas and keep the liberal/ communist politics out of the movies.

Actually, a new movie and entertainment and tech capital needs to be created. One that is Conservative.

 

[Rey C.]

Yes, people might be more inclined to spend $50 to take a date to a movie if they could watch something other than yet another super hero/cartoon fantasy movie, constant (poorly done) remakes of old classics, or some heavy handed political correctness lecture. Even the most brain dead moron is going to get tired of The Fast & the Furious by Part 15 (we're close, aren't we?!). And even the most tight-assed, whining feminist will eventually get tired of going to yet another men bad/women good, little woman beat up big man PC flick.

I haven't cared about going to the movies in twenty plus years. But my current girlfriend enjoys a night out at the movies. And finding something fit to watch (that doesn't totally suck) is quite the chore. She doesn't like the check the PC box, assembly line, formulaic crap that Hollyweird is churning out now anymore than I do.

Hey, here's a crazy idea... how about making an edgy, well written film that I can't predict what each character's role is and I can't predict how it's going to turn out? Can ya do it, Hollyweird? Well, there was a time. But I sense that that time has now passed. Now you just make movies based on what some safe space seeking, millennial focus group claps like seals for.

 

[Johan]

There 3 problems with Rotten Tomatoes :
1) Wether it's a college student who post critics on his blog from mom's basement or a professional critic who publishes an article in the said newspaper it's the same to them.
2) It lacks nuances : every critic they review is either "fresh" (good, positive) or "rotten" (negative, bad). Wether you say this movie is a masterpiece" or "this movie is quite good, I guess", it's all the same : Fresh. Wether you say "This movie is just a steaming pile of shit" or "this movie is not very good" it's alal the same : Rotten
3) People don't read critics anymore. They look for the tomatometer and just decide wether they will see the movie or not based only on that number. But the thing with the Tomato meter is that a 60% score doesn't mean that the movie is 60% bad, it means 60% of reviews it received have ben categorised a "rotten" by Rotten Tomatoes. That means 40% actually thought the movie was good (or at least, 40% of the reviews it received have bern categorised as "fresh" by Rotten Tomatoes).

Anyway, the 2017 blockbuster season wasn't very good, several blokbusters were disapointing : Transformers, The Mummy, Valerian, Baywatch, etc.
Do better movies, you wil get better tomatometer ratings and better scores at the box office.

 

[xfire]

Yes, people might be more inclined to spend $50 to take a date to a movie if...

Movies shouldn't cost that damn much, and it's why I'm content with Netflix and HBO.

 

[ApolloBalboa]

Yes, people might be more inclined to spend $50 to take a date to a movie if they could watch something other than yet another super hero/cartoon fantasy movie, constant (poorly done) remakes of old classics, or some heavy handed political correctness lecture. Even the most brain dead moron is going to get tired of The Fast & the Furious by Part 15 (we're close, aren't we?!). And even the most tight-assed, whining feminist will eventually get tired of going to yet another men bad/women good, little woman beat up big man PC flick.

I haven't cared about going to the movies in twenty plus years. But my current girlfriend enjoys a night out at the movies. And finding something fit to watch (that doesn't totally suck) is quite the chore. She doesn't like the check the PC box, assembly line, formulaic crap that Hollyweird is churning out now anymore than I do.

Hey, here's a crazy idea... how about making an edgy, well written film that I can't predict what each character's role is and I can't predict how it's going to turn out? Can ya do it, Hollyweird? Well, there was a time. But I sense that that time has now passed. Now you just make movies based on what some safe space seeking, millennial focus group claps like seals for.

You said everything I wanted to (aside from the having a girlfriend part) and more, and I can't rep you for it.

I studied film for a few years in school before I realized that I might actually need a real job to support me, and rather than putting all my eggs in one basket and hoping Hollywood would have a place for me after graduation I left. In retrospect, the classes themselves were interesting (some more than others) but would've no more prepared me for the real world than if I'd studied art history. The studies themselves are still based in the cinema world of yesteryear, with mise en scène, verisimilitude, and actual thoughtful scripts being of paramount importance (or close to it). It doesn't take a genius to realize that very little of that, if any, goes on now. It's not enough that the film industry has essentially become one of franchises and tentpoles which makes it even more difficult to get a stand-alone film with pathos made, but there's no new ideas anymore. That's not to say that there aren't people who actually have new stories working, but studio heads will throw money at the latest crime-fighting superhero car robot movie or delve into their archives to rehash and reboot properties that don't need it rather than give the fledgling Spielberg, Altman, or Friedkin capital to produce a new, untested film. Most people (I want to believe) are getting sick of being treated like sheep that are supposed to be drawn in with explosions, fight scenes, crappy animation, and half-baked stories; I for one am. Hollywood wonders why it's getting such a bad wrap? Maybe it should try listening to people who don't flock to see the latest Avengers movie and take a risk on a picture that may not be packed with spectacle or special effects but is original and compelling; it worked for the New Hollywood, it could work again.