Do you think Rotten Tomatoes was right into giving KOTM a bad score?

[UltramanGoji]

*Snip*

Well said. I agree with many of your points, especially in regards to the studio marketing push to equate Rotten Tomatoes with a solid "grade" the film receives. The site itself (or at least their social media) is also to blame for this as they often have little digital "countdowns" to the revelation of a film's Tomatometer score.

I'm also in the camp of removing myself from applying numerical ratings to movies these days. Meaningless labels like "10/10" or "6/10" reduce films down to a certain set of standards and qualities that people believe can be applied to arbitrary numbers. There is no such thing as a "perfect film" to me (or at least, not enough to make it a prominent phrase in my vocabulary) so a film given a perfect rating seems more disingenuous to me than helpful. Likewise for a film with a middling rating like 5/10. What does that even mean? The film is 50% good, 50% bad? It's nonsense.

As a film major, I find myself agreeing with critics more often than not because I believe most of them come from a similar academic background as me so I can understand what they would see in a film and how it succeeds/fails at that. The typical audience member normally goes into a film with a one-track mind solely focused on being entertained and while there's nothing wrong at all with that, it's not exclusively what I see movies for. That's why the Audience Score for me on RT is an utterly pointless widget. Scores generally range from the 80-90% mark for almost any film and at that point if everything is loved by 90% of the population, why bother listening to it?

[Terasawa]

There's also a very clear subset of people who blatantly hate RT because a movie they liked had a bad percentage and a movie they disliked got the opposite. You can tell who they are by how they act about it. RT is wrong until it's right for them.

AKA most of the people in this thread.

Scorsese has a point but I wonder what his solution would be. Rotten Tomatoes really isn't doing anything people have done since the early days of cinema. If you were to get rid of all the aggregate score sites you'd just have people going back to what we used to do when we weren't sure if we wanted to see a movie: read the reviews in the newspaper, wait to see what the critics had to say on The Today Show or At the Movies, etc. RT is just putting all the big name critics' reviews in one place and showing what percentage of them liked it.

It's not RT's fault that 41% of critics didn't like the new Godzilla movie, nor is it their fault if audiences saw that score and said "I want to spend my money on something else."

[gridiron_kaiju]

As a film major, I find myself agreeing with critics more often than not because I believe most of them come from a similar academic background as me so I can understand what they would see in a film and how it succeeds/fails at that. The typical audience member normally goes into a film with a one-track mind solely focused on being entertained and while there's nothing wrong at all with that, it's not exclusively what I see movies for. That's why the Audience Score for me on RT is an utterly pointless widget. Scores generally range from the 80-90% mark for almost any film and at that point if everything is loved by 90% of the population, why bother listening to it?

So you’re basically calling us “typical audience members” stupid because we aren’t “film majors” or have “academic” background. I’ve got news for you...you being a film major doesn’t make yours nor any critics opinion worth more than mine.

[UltramanGoji]

As a film major, I find myself agreeing with critics more often than not because I believe most of them come from a similar academic background as me so I can understand what they would see in a film and how it succeeds/fails at that. The typical audience member normally goes into a film with a one-track mind solely focused on being entertained and while there's nothing wrong at all with that, it's not exclusively what I see movies for. That's why the Audience Score for me on RT is an utterly pointless widget. Scores generally range from the 80-90% mark for almost any film and at that point if everything is loved by 90% of the population, why bother listening to it?

So you’re basically calling us “typical audience members” stupid because we aren’t “film majors” or have “academic” background. I’ve got news for you...you being a film major doesn’t make yours nor any critics opinion worth more than mine.

Of course not, don't be fucking stupid. I said the typical audience member goes to a movie for entertainment and that's totally okay but it's not what I go to see movies for. I didn't say anything about my opinion or a critic's opinion being "worth more".

[Jetty_Jags]

I think it needs to be said that someone giving a negative opinion on a subject another person likes is not an attack on the other person, even if the review is particularly harsh.

If Bob is a food critic and writes on his blog that pizza is an uninspired dish that fails to effectively create an interesting flavor and is a prime example of overly simple foods, he’s not attacking everyone who likes pizza, he’s just stating his opinion. Now sometimes people feel attacked for liking what other people consider simple or stupid things, but I think this is an unhealthy mindset. First off, its ok to enjoy things that are stupid. I love Godzilla vs Megalon. I know it’s stupid but I love it for all its insanity and flaws and that’s ok. Knowing something is stupid doesn’t make my opinion more or less valid. It’s also ok to disagree with other people on things they find stupid. A lot of people think Evangelion is convoluted and pretentious trash, but I disagree, I actually think it’s an interesting character study and that’s ok. My opinion that the show is great is no more or less valid than those who think it’s dumb. But many times I see people conflate negative opinions with personal attacks which to me would create an exceedingly hostile environment. I’d imagine such a mindset would create a lot of anxiety if every adverse opinion was treated as an attack.

Now I will say, going back to Bob, if Bob says pizza is simple and everyone who likes it is stupid, than there is justification for feeling attacked. However I’d argue to not really give it any attention because at that point Bob is just a dick, and is not worth listening to, and as aforementioned his opinion isn’t any more valid than those who like pizza.


I’ll eat my words if I’m proven wrong, but I’d bet that despite the fandoms hostility towards critics of kotm, there are no examples of critics reviewing king of the monsters telling people that they can’t enjoy it, that they shouldn’t enjoy it, or that they are stupid for enjoying it. All the negative reviews, even those that consider aspects of the film to be stupid, are simply stating their thoughts on the material.

Now the one thing I do think the fandom may be justified in being frustrated with is the automatic association that the genre is just for stupid movies to begin with. The idea that Godzilla movies can’t rise above drivel. My response to this is that the fandom when encountering this behave respectfully and try to articulate why these movies can have greater merit. But there have been well received kaiju movies, so I’m not even sure how much of a limitation this perception is (and the superhero genre if anything can show that these perceptions can be broken).

[tbeasley]

Nobody seems to understand how RT works.

Aside from the CEO maybe -

[BlankAccount]

Holy shit is that a bamboo? AHHHHH! *jumps out window*

[tbeasley]

Holy shit is that a bamboo? AHHHHH! *jumps out window*

No, that is a baboon.

[BlankAccount]

Holy shit is that a bamboo? AHHHHH! *jumps out window*

No, that is a baboon.

Nice catch.