Since its inception, Rotten Tomatoes has been nothing if not polarizing in film and television circles. Film fans seem to have almost as many opinions about the site as there are reviews hosted on the platform. Some people view the review aggregator as a useful tool that helps viewers make smart entertainment choices with their time and money – while others think of the site as damaging to the cinematic experience and even antithetical to the art form of filmmaking writ large.
If one thing is clear, Rotten Tomatoes drudges up strong opinions on both sides of the debate. But just how useful is this controversial site? Do people actually consult with Rotten Tomatoes before purchasing a movie ticket they’ve been eyeing? How often does a bad Rotten Tomatoes score correlate to a poor box office reception? We took to the forums and interviewed a diverse subsection of film fans to find out. But first, let’s do a brief overview of Rotten Tomatoes as an institution to get our bearings.
History of the Tomatometer
Rotten Tomatoes was started in 1998 by an undergraduate student named Senh Duong as a fairly unserious side project. Duong was a diehard fan of Jackie Chan’s films and wanted to create a one-stop shop for Chan-a-holics to peruse reviews online. Rather unexpectedly, the site took off almost overnight, which resulted in Duong expanding the scope to include a broader catalog of films. Within its first week live, the fledgling startup garnered shoutouts from legacy media operations like Yahoo! and USA Today.
Slowly but surely, Rotten Tomatoes increased its public profile throughout the 2000s while being bought and sold to the highest corporate bidder every few years. By 2011, Warner Bros owned the site, and Rotten Tomatoes enjoyed the heftiest slice of the cultural zeitgeist yet. It was becoming commonplace for movie studios to boast about their fresh Tomatometer scores in trailers and promotional material. Midway through the 2010s, the site became a breeding ground for review-bombing—a practice commonly used by toxic fandom subsets to lambast films with a progressive message, often before they’ve even premiered. Rotten Tomatoes was able to mitigate some of the damage from trolls by putting a verification process in place for audience reviews.
For better or worse, nowadays, Rotten Tomatoes has undeniably become the one-stop shop for film reviews its creator envisioned (albeit a bit less Chan-centric than he initially hoped). But enough with the history lesson; what do film fans think of the site?
RT: Rotten or fresh?
In preparation for this piece, we posed a few of our most burning Rotten Tomatoes queries to a random selection of film fans to get an idea of how useful (or aggravating) this aggregator is in their experience. When we asked them how much a Rotten Tomatoes score influences their intention to see a film, unsurprisingly, we received mixed reviews.
“A little influence,” says Trevor, “but I mostly use it to verify what I’ve heard through word of mouth. If I like a trailer or see a lot of people raving about something on social media, I’m way more inclined to go see it rather than a fresh RT score alone.”
Kalyan, a Reddit user and frequenter of r/movies was more emphatic in his support of the site. “I always check Rotten Tomatoes before going to a movie,” he says, “I use it over IMDB, Letterboxd, or anything else. I particularly care about the ‘Top Critics’ aggregate score.”
Other respondents were not so supportive. Mikey, another r/movies commenter reports, “I think Rotten Tomatoes has completely broken the way we talk about movies. The idea of using an RT score as an objective measure of film quality is gross. Film criticism is a real art, and I think most people use RT as an excuse to avoid reading full critic reviews – which is a shame.”
Audience or critic scores?
One of Rotten Tomatoes’ most distinguishing features is its usage of two distinct Tomatometers: one for aggregating critic reviews and another for gauging audience reactions. Generally, a highly anticipated Hollywood feature with a hefty marketing budget can garner up to 400 or more critic responses that comprise the Tomatometer score. However, the audience score almost always has far more respondents – often landing between 80,000 to over 100,000 unique ratings. We asked our interviewees about which meter is more useful to them when seeking out movies and shows to watch. Interestingly, none of them viewed the audience score as more helpful than the critic score.
“I definitely don’t care about the audience score,” says Howard. “There are too many people out there trying to influence ratings in accordance with their political agendas.”
Howard is most likely referring to those pesky review bombers we mentioned earlier. One of the most contentious and publicized instances of review bombing took place in 2019 in the wake of Captain Marvel’s premiere. During press interviews and promotional content for the film, lead actress Brie Larson made a few off-hand comments espousing general agreement with certain feminist sentiments.
Predictably, this angered the “anti-SJW” set of MCU fans, causing them to spring into action with a flurry of one-star audience reviews on Rotten Tomatoes and similar film review sites. Since the Captain Marvel ordeal, Rotten Tomatoes has taken several measures to crack down on review bombers, but for some fans, the reforms are too little, too late.
But some fans prefer the critic score for other reasons. “I’m more inclined to go with the critic score,” replies Austin, “Most audience members aren’t thinking deeply enough about the movie for their opinions to have any kind of complexity – they usually just follow the masses.”
So is Rotten Tomatoes a useful tool?
Our final question asked our respondents to expound upon the overall usefulness of Rotten Tomatoes for them as filmgoers. Does it actually impact their financial decisions regarding the entertainment they consume?
“Sort of,” says Joshua, “it can give vague indications as to the quality of a movie, but I believe it’s best to find individual critics whose reviews you generally agree with and see what they think if you want to gauge how much you might like a movie.”
Sean, an r/movies commenter, takes things a step further. “I do. It helps fans separate the wheat from the chaff, which in turn hopefully motivates studios to make better films.”
Some respondents were a little less forgiving in their summations of the site. “I think Rotten Tomatoes is generally ineffective at determining whether a movie is good or not,” says Austin. “Ultimately, it takes away from why people make art in the first place.”
Throughout this conversation, it’s essential to remember that Rotten Tomatoes is merely a review aggregator. Aside from the bite-sized “Critic Consensus” blurbs, the site doesn’t actually espouse any opinions of its own. All it does is compile reviews, stamp them fresh or rotten, and tally up the results. A film with a 100% rating on the Tomatometer could’ve received that score by garnering shrug-worthy 6/10 scores from every respondent. It’s more effective when viewed as a metric of “watchability” rather than excellence.
From where we’re standing, Rotten Tomatoes’ usefulness is in the eye of the beholder. It’s ideal for separating the truly awful films from the passable, but maybe not so adept at distinguishing the exceptional from the mediocre. In other words, use it with an open mind and discerning eyes, and you shouldn’t get burned too often.
I don’t to physical movie theaters, but rotten tomatoes helps me decide between two movies or how long to give the rated movie a chance, Prior to watching something else. The “star” system works well too, however in the end I make up my own mind. For example I would rather watch a good ship or submarine movie than a western…..