Hollywood Blames Rotten Tomatoes for "Summer from Hell"

Megalith

24-bit/48kHz
Staff member
Joined
Aug 20, 2006
Messages
13,000
Hollywood has suffered its worst summer at the box office in more than a decade, with last weekend’s Labor Day haul being the lowest in nearly 20 years. Movie executives have decided to blame Rotten Tomatoes and its “Tomatometer” scores for the fiasco, which are sweeping the web: complainants say that the aggregator hacks off critical nuance and holds a loose definition of who qualifies as a critic, making their scores illegitimate.

In an absurdist plot twist, Rotten Tomatoes is owned by film companies. Fandango, a unit of NBCUniversal, which also owns Universal Pictures, has a 75 percent stake, with the balance held by Warner Bros. Fandango bought control from Warner last year for an undisclosed price. (All parties insist that Rotten Tomatoes operates independently.) Mr. Yanover said it was silly for studios to make Rotten Tomatoes a box office scapegoat.
 
I'm sure it had nothing at all to do with shitty movies being played in theaters with exorbitant prices.....Much like major sports that used to be a "Family day out" are no longer that unless you have crap tons of disposable income, movies are quickly approaching that. It shouldn't cost a family of 4 $50 before snacks to watch a kids film.
 
Even Dunkirk was pretty much borderline. Nothing decent to watch. I wound up searching for foreign films with subtitles instead of the mediocre Hollywood stuff. This summer's selections wouldn't have even made the 'B' movie list 50 years ago. The plots suck. They try to make up for it with lots of noise and action, but a rotten story is a rotten story.
 
Sadly, I base my opinion of going to movies off the trailer for the movie. They show enough of the main parts anyways in them. I rarely look at reviews nor do I ever go to Rotten Tomatoes site. Those pictures of the employees sitting around in the article's pictures is funny to me.

The one where Senior editor seems like she is inspired by their stair case and chandelier. She seems to be thinking, "How can I take down the movie industry with bad reviews of terrible movies."
07ROTTENTOMATOES4-superJumbo.jpg
 
"Holds a loose definition of who qualified as a critic". Yeah like average people that better represent Joe Sixpack and the kinds of movies we want to see. Not some film snob that's never had a real job. There's a reason movies that do best at the box office usually do worse with the "critics".

But as mentioned above, boring movies probably has more to do with poor ticket sales than a website.
 
Hey, it's the american way. Blame everyone else.

one thing blows up that whole argument.
Logan Lucky got a pretty high tomato mark, but flopped big time at the box office.

Hitman's Bodyguard got a shit tomato, and managed to be #1 at the box office.

RT isn't as powerful as they think.

If a Marvel movie got shitty tomatoes, a ton of people would still watch it.

If we don't count sequel fatigue, Hollywood doesn't necessarily make shitty movies, they just don't make movies people want to pay to watch, and they'd rather wait till the movies come out on netflix.

People are smart enough to judge what they find entertaining, and they don't really need RT.
 
Last edited:
WW was such shit it made my nose bleed. Also, it is just a matter of time before they start blaming the weather for poor performance. Now what I would like to see is if it was still profitable, which it most likely was/is.
 
Hey, it's the american way. Blame everyone else.

one thing blows up that whole argument.
Logan Lucky got a pretty high tomato mark, but flopped big time at the box office.

Hitman's Bodyguard got a shit tomato, and managed to be #1 at the box office.

RT isn't as powerful as they think.

If a Marvel movie got shitty tomatoes, a ton of people would still watch it.

If we don't count sequel fatigue, Hollywood doesn't necessarily make shitty movies, they just don't make movies people want to pay to watch, and they'd rather wait till the movies come out on netflix.

People are smart enough to judge what they find entertaining, and they don't really need RT.
I wouldn't call Logan a huge flop. It made $600 mil on a $97 mil budget. That is pretty good for a none MCU movie that is rated R. Dead Pool only made $160 mil more. Hitman only made $21 mil on it opening weekend which is not impressive. So being #1 means nothing if it is a weak weekend of releases. Hitman might not be considered a flop cause it was very cheap to make coming in at only $30 mil but still not a hit movie.
 
Last edited:
WW was such shit it made my nose bleed. Also, it is just a matter of time before they start blaming the weather for poor performance. Now what I would like to see is if it was still profitable, which it most likely was/is.

Wonder Woman was massively overrated by feminist film critics. It was mediocre and dull. Basically just a Captain America clone with a female protagonist.

Dunkirk was the only good movie this summer. And even Dunkirk is a love it or hate it kind of movie. Everything else was mediocre or bad. If Hollywood wants to make more money, they should make better movies.
 
Last edited:
RT had nothing to do with it.

I would suggest that next summer they should try;

Releasing Transformers 18, Pirates of the Depp 20, Perhaps an Apes spin off, How about another King Arthur movie as a comedy they haven't tried that, A prequel to the prequel of alien, Baywatch didn't go over well cause it was the wrong property next summer go with a Knight Rider comedy, More Dark universe yes next summer we want Frankenstein with 50 year old ex stars phoned in performances please please, For the kids why not Toy Story 20 (that is happening I think) it will do much better then cars 30, The kids just got another Despicable Me flick so next summer Minons 2 -why isn't this direct to netflix-, Emoji 2 why not the idea is solid no idea why the first one flopped just hire cheaper actors... or hire Ben Kingsley to play the barfing emoji he'll do anything cheap, and of course make sure you dig up some more Steven King stories to ruin.

Anyway ya... movies suck... so blame the reviewer. Movies that did well this summer tend to be movies that offered at least something new. Wonder woman, a well done female hero. Spider man ok its the millionth spider man movie but it offered something new (marvel), Logan sure we have seen jackman what 20 times in the role but it was his final and offered something different, Dunkirk did well we get lots of war movies sure but a well done movie about a battle we all know doesn't have a rarrar kill da nazis ending I was interested. Hollywoo is their own worst enemy the industry has gotten so big they are adverse to taking actual risks anymore.
 
These people obviously have no clue.

I have never based a movie viewing decision using rotten tomatoes...

Also, I rarely go to a traditional movie theater. I get a superior experience at home now.
 
There used to only be one or two big summer blockbusters that everyone had to go see. Now Hollywood expects a Major Blockbuster breakthrough virtually every week during the summer. Without the actual quality content, you're just not going to fill seats no matter who you point the finger at. I went to see Dunkirk in Imax with the butt-kickers this summer, the only movie I saw in the theater and it was well worth it. I haven't gotten the feels over anything else driving me into the cinema (although I regret not seeing the last ape movie in theater). The words pirates and transformers, in their nth iteration, simply don't hold any mystique anymore. People have been burned by too many awful blockbusters lately and sites like Rotten Tomatoes are a godsend in filtering through the PR bullshit and advertising misdirection that fails to live up to the hype.

This is the same argument as AAA game developers putting NDA on reviews for games until trivial hours before release (if even prior). Using bait and switch marketing, in opposition to creating a quality product, should not be business as usual in these industries. I'm glad that we have more data to consider when making the decision to make a seemingly expensive trip to the Cinema (Typically costs me around 35$ for 2 people with 1 drink each and 1 popcorn shared). To put that 35$ into perspective I could buy an online game that may give me over 1000 hours of gameplay instead of a frustrating hour and a half, leaving with complaints about the unnatural dialogue, poor plot that must be explained to the audience in the lowest common denominator, and obvious resolution.

With or without a massive campaign of deception, if a movie is good, it will find a target audience. Silencing the filters like Rotten Tomatoes that sift past the veil of secrecy put up by Studios should be looked at as nothing except censorship. I don't read the reviews to sort out plot points or weigh the acting chops of every star in a film. I just do a quick skim to see if the movie is total shit. If people can't decide with their wallets and force studios to make a better quality picture, we would all be watching the dark tower and other disasters as the status quo.
 
It's funny,

We look at the tomato meter. If critics LOVE it and audiences HATE it, we stay away. If cricits HATE it and audiences LOVE it, then we take the audiences opinion every time. It rarely left us down.

Maybe critics should get off their shiny thrones from above and get down to what audiences want to see.

But I'll echo what a lot have said here already, "The movies have sucked" Thank goodness for $20 for a family of 4 double header at the drive in, or I wouldn't be going anywhere.

Cars 3 was better than Cars 2. And Guardians of the Galaxy 2 wasn't bad either. And I liked wonder woman. But it wasn't anywhere on the scale of Marvel's universe.
 
I can't even remember the last good movie I've seen. My wife and I usually end up red boxing a movie, or trying to watch two to four movies on Netflix/hulu/prime and after ten to thirty minutes shut it all down. The only movies we finish are the actually good movies that we already own. Even then we've seen them all five times each.

If Hollywood would stop trying to force the poz down my throat and offer me a truly good movie without any thinly veiled fucked up race or sex related politics I'd love to give them some of my money. But that doesn't fit in with their actual goal, propaganda.
 
Hollywood greed, the horrible atmosphere, and recycling the same shit year after year is the root cause of this.
 
While RT has influence on people, this is massively overstating it. The real problem is, the movies for this summer just were not exciting. Couple that with even theater 3D dying it makes for a massive drop in box office. Also, Hollywood is being blinded by the fact that the last 12 years have been bolstered by superhero movies. Since Rami's Spider-man and Singer's X-men came out the summers have been brought up by a lot of superhero and comic book movies, combined with some surprisingly good kids and family movies. That completely died off this year.

No one cared about Alien: Cov after how abysmal Prometheus was (yes, I know, someone is going to say they loved it. Glad you liked it, but irrelevant to the discussion).
I don't know what strung out on coke exec green-lit King Arthur, but they need to be fired.
Baywatch was NEVER going to make money. Even with the Rock and a shockingly built Zac Efron the movie stood zero chance.
Pirates is as dead as (spoiler). Disney just needs to stop, Depp was basically sleep-walking through this last one.
Captain Underpants...Just WTF.
Tom Cruise presents Tom Cruise the Movie 55 written by Tom Cruise Staring Tom Cruise and barely featuring an utterly wasted talented actress was also doomed from the get-go as Universal continues to prove it has no idea how to make movies anymore.
Transformers: That Knight...HA! HA! HA! That is all.
Why the fuck Sony decided to pay SEVEN FIGURES for the Emoji script treatment is beyond me. Did the writer have some some compromising pictures of Tom Rothman with a monkey or something?
Dark Tower...*Sigh* Yeah, that movie was never going to make money.
The Nut Job 2....Do I need to comment on this one?

There were some good movies this year, but a lot of them were smaller movies. Wonder Women and Guardians did well, but never of them were destined to pull in the kinds of numbers needed to boost the summer haul. Apes and Spidy were supposedly good as well so that's four tentpole movies out of a few dozen failures. It was just a bad summer for movies. The end of the year should be interesting with Justice League, Thor 3: Maybe The Finally Made A Good One, and Star Wars. Summer 2018 should be a good one, money wise, there are more promising looking movies coming out then.[/spoiler]
 
WW was such shit it made my nose bleed. Also, it is just a matter of time before they start blaming the weather for poor performance. Now what I would like to see is if it was still profitable, which it most likely was/is.

So shitty i couldnt finish it. And superhero movies are my pet peeve. She sucks as an actress.
 
I wouldn't call Logan a huge flop. It made $600 mil on a $97 mil budget. That is pretty good for a none MCU movie that is rated R. Dead Pool only made $160 mil more. Hitman only made $21 mil on it opening weekend which is not impressive. So being #1 means nothing if it is a weak weekend of releases. Hitman might not be considered a flop cause it was very cheap to make coming in at only $30 mil but still not a hit movie.
Not Logan, Lucky Logan http://www.metacritic.com/movie/logan-lucky
 
I didn't watch a single movie this summer. TBH, none of them made me want to go. I thought about SpiderMan, but decided I'd just watch to watch it at home at a later date. I didn't even pay attention to Rotten Tomatoes.
Next movie I will watch is probably Star Wars.
 
So shitty i couldnt finish it. And superhero movies are my pet peeve. She sucks as an actress.

I struggled to finish it. Was wondering if it was going to get better at some point to justify the high ratings. It didn't. My wife, who was the one who wanted to watch it, said it sucked and fell asleep half-way through.
 
I still have yet to sit through the lastest transformers movie. 3 hrs of really nothing. To many quick edits, plot holes, etc Total mind fuck. But yeah havn't been to the movies since The force awakens. Why go when you can see a cam and then in a few months see a dvd cut. Fuck Hollywood.
 
There really wasn't a movie this summer I wanted to go see. The last one I hit up was Guardians of the Galaxy 2 with my son and a friend of his and it wasn't as good as I was hoping for. None of the other movies were interesting enough for me to even think of going to the theater.

My opinions had nothing to do with Rotten Tomatoes. I've never even once gone to the site.
 
Hollywood is just releasing to many movies for any one to be able to afford... So they are forcing the consumer to choose a select few movies over the span of the year. Because of the cost in relation to the experience
 
Hollywood is just releasing to many movies for any one to be able to afford... So they are forcing the consumer to choose a select few movies over the span of the year. Because of the cost in relation to the experience

Very true... I'm not poor but I'm also not going to spend $200 a month to go and see what 3? movies... just me and the wife ends up being between 40-60 bucks depending how crazy she makes me get at the concession desk. Take a kid to one of them and you are easily looking at $200+. So 1-2 movies tops all summer is where I draw the line. I went to 3 this year because the wife and I went to a cheap night deal for spiderman after it was out for almost a month. (only way the theaters cheap night is not suicide inducing)

I love movies and even enjoying watching really terrible movies from time to time... I won't however pay 20x what I would for netflix for the month. My 60" tv and decent sound setup is plenty good enough,the $10 a month I spend on my netflix means I have more to watch then I could catch up on ever.

Netflix + Groceries for the entire month.... or 3 nights at the theater, at least one of which will have some teen kicking your chair or giggling the entire time. Or 1 and 1/2 nights at one of the licenced options where there won't be a teen kicking your chair at least. Really there is just no choice the value is just terrible.
 
"Holds a loose definition of who qualified as a critic". Yeah like average people that better represent Joe Sixpack and the kinds of movies we want to see. Not some film snob that's never had a real job. There's a reason movies that do best at the box office usually do worse with the "critics".

We look at the tomato meter. If critics LOVE it and audiences HATE it, we stay away. If cricits HATE it and audiences LOVE it, then we take the audiences opinion every time. It rarely left us down.

Lots of people have long since realized that "what other people think of a movie" is a far better predictor than "what the critics like".

This is the same argument as AAA game developers putting NDA on reviews for games until trivial hours before release (if even prior).

All this will do is depress day-one sales: people will wait to buy the game until the reviews are available; this is exactly what already started happening years ago with the Internet and movies. It used to be a shit movie would get a good first weekend box office anyway, because it took a few days for word of mouth to spread. The Internet let people put up their opinions faster. It's too bad the studios haven't learned the proper lesson after all this time.
 
There weren't really any movies to see released the week before Labor Day weekend and the week of. I usually go see a movie every week, but nothing came out that looked interesting those last two weeks.
 
I wouldn't call Logan a huge flop. It made $600 mil on a $97 mil budget. That is pretty good for a none MCU movie that is rated R. Dead Pool only made $160 mil more. Hitman only made $21 mil on it opening weekend which is not impressive. So being #1 means nothing if it is a weak weekend of releases. Hitman might not be considered a flop cause it was very cheap to make coming in at only $30 mil but still not a hit movie.

He was talking about Logan Lucky(it has Adam Driver, Channing Tatum and Daniel Craig) which was actually a pretty good flick not Logan with Wolverine.
 
I am sure that rotten tomatoes was the primary reason the new Mummy movie failed....

:ROFLMAO:
 
Back
Top