You Can't Stop the Internet

FrgMstr

FrgMstr

Just Plain Mean
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Joe Rogan used to say "You can't stop the Internet" all the time right after the UFC would run its copyright warnings, and to some extent he was, and still is for that matter, very correct. Many of the major picture studios, while focusing on copyright and pirating issues for a while now, are now shifting focus to another thing the Internet is used for every single day...your opinion. Sony (and others) are now hedging their release schedules to critics now in an attempt to keep the collective opinion away from the rest of us. Rotten Tomatoes is really coming to the front of the pack of the "worst offenders."
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The power of the "Tomatometer" has reached a tipping point as critics screenings inch closer and closer to openings and movies try to avoid the dreaded green splat. One possible secret weapon? Sony wouldn't let reviews post until midday on July 27, hours before the pic began playing in previews before rolling out everywhere. Sony, like every studio, is looking for their own basket of rotten eggs to throw at review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes in hopes of combating a bad "Tomatometer" score. That means screening some titles later and later for critics.

Of course, the easiest way to combat the Tomatometer would be to stop making shit movies. But that is just a crazy thought.
 
I haven't seen a film in the theater since that new Harry Potter film. Which I enjoyed but was a tad formulaic.

Hollywood hasn't been doing a good job being unique and entertaining on a whole.
 
But critics are usually always wrong. Rotten tomatoes is garbage anyhow. I watch roughly 50 movies a year in the theater and almost always disagree with so called critics.
 
viscountalpha said:
I haven't seen a film in the theater since that new Harry Potter film. Which I enjoyed but was a tad formulaic.

Hollywood hasn't been doing a good job being unique and entertaining on a whole.
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I feel that there's too much money wrapped up in movie creation these days. They essentially want to consistently make a healthy profit with every movies. But movies are too dependent on the human factor in both creation and evaluation. Just like every other possible storytelling medium. To an extent, light novels in Japan have gotten similarly formulaic (on the whole). Likewise so has anime and manga. When money and putting food on the table is involved, many simply want consistent returns... rather than trying to create a big hit that is possibly hit or miss. And many big hits will be. You know when you're going off the deep end in content creation. In order to create a truly great work, you also generally have to go all the way. But going all the way is betting a lot on the audience.

So, we have these formulaic excuses for a story, in the meantime. Many hate TVTropes because it "ruins enjoyment". Frankly, I rather see it as a guide for how you can create a story that is not formulaic, or at least use tropes to their best effect...
 
Is that why there's no reviews for The Dark Tower yet? Usually I see a meter available a week before release but nothing so far.
 
Wolf-R1 said:
I'm always amazed that so many shit movies are made and I always wonder who's making money off of these things? So many movies are made and lose money because they suck. If I were an economics person I might invest time into understanding this dynamic that shouldn't work but it somehow does.
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You ever been to a casino? Yeah they'll loose a lot of money on a streak of movies but it only takes them two, maybe one, solid box office hit to negate all of the previous losses.

That dynamic is probably why they greenlight so many movies without proper vetting of the script/people behind it.

What the studios are really complaining about here is that they aren't making more money than they are. It's not that Rotten Tomatoes is making them lose any.
 
fak u hollywood.

you make good movies, I go watch,

you make shit gtfo
 
I've seen very enjoyable movies that had a green splat, I think movie studios should do a better job of making people realize that others opinions don't always line up with others.
 
My wife and I work in the film/tv industry and its a great living, but most stuff out there is so bad that its pushed me to start reading books and I can't even read.
 
I wonder how many trillions of dollars have been wasted trying to stop the internet by both the government and private industry.
 
Wolf-R1 said:
I'm always amazed that so many shit movies are made and I always wonder who's making money off of these things? So many movies are made and lose money because they suck. If I were an economics person I might invest time into understanding this dynamic that shouldn't work but it somehow does.
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The movie industry is shady as hell. That is how it works. Some movies end up being write offs pretty much on purpose. Overseas distribution companies tend to be great money washing machines.

Just look at all the big name actors that sued studios 20-30 years back over profit % deals they got screwed on. In the mid 90s Tom Hanks, Zemeckis, and Winston Groom the author of the book Forest Gump was based on all sued the studio... they showed no profit on the books after bringing in 660 million at the box office alone. Groom was only paid something like 350k. Hollywoo has gotten smarter since then... hiding their shady accounting a lot better. The suits in the 90s where far to public. lol

Bringing it back to something tech related... its how/why Chris Roberts movie studio(s) spent stupid amounts of millions making terrible movies and still managed to have investors. Movie studios and particularly overseas distribution companies are often laundries and for the big names "legal" write off schemes.

In any industry there are plenty of ways to turn profits from losses.
 
For me personally, Rotten Tomatoes is often a poor indicator of whether or not I will like the movie. I used to hear jokes that if Siskel and Ebert didn't like it, it must be a good movie.
 
ChadD said:
The movie industry is shady as hell. That is how it works. Some movies end up being write offs pretty much on purpose. Overseas distribution companies tend to be great money washing machines.

Just look at all the big name actors that sued studios 20-30 years back over profit % deals they got screwed on. In the mid 90s Tom Hanks, Zemeckis, and Winston Groom the author of the book Forest Gump was based on all sued the studio... they showed no profit on the books after bringing in 660 million at the box office alone. Groom was only paid something like 350k. Hollywoo has gotten smarter since then... hiding their shady accounting a lot better. The suits in the 90s where far to public. lol

Bringing it back to something tech related... its how/why Chris Roberts movie studio(s) spent stupid amounts of millions making terrible movies and still managed to have investors. Movie studios and particularly overseas distribution companies are often laundries and for the big names "legal" write off schemes.

In any industry there are plenty of ways to turn profits from losses.
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I learned about this in the great documentary The Producers.
 
JosiahBradley said:
But critics are usually always wrong. Rotten tomatoes is garbage anyhow. I watch roughly 50 movies a year in the theater and almost always disagree with so called critics.
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I do watch quite a few movies, but only after they have come out on DVD, or if not worth the price of a DVD, when they come out on one of the cable channels.

Last time I went to the theater was when I had free tickets to a premier a couple years ago.

I find Rotten Tomatoes ratings much closer to my tastes than the regular movies reviews.
To me, the more Hollywood acclaims or awards a movie gets, the more likely the movie is garbage and not worth seeing.
 
I actually loved the new Alien movie, but then I like all of them (though I refused to see the AvP movies...) Prometheus was cool too. (I know I'm in the minority there, but those were worth going to.) I liked the Potter movies ok, the Lord of the Rings and Hobbit movies, and This is the End was fun to see in the theater. Really haven't been to much other than those in recent years.

Loved the John Wick movies too, but didn't make it out for those.

I think the next thing I'll see is Blade Runner. Otherwise not much I care about out of Hollywood these days.
 
Well rotten tomatoes has the audience score right next to the critics one. I tend to weigh one over the other depending on the film.
 
I"m not worried about the delaying of critic reviews as I don't watch movies when it is just released. I wait 3 to 4 weeks depending on availability before going so that there is only a few of us watching it and we all get prime seats. By then, Tomatoes will have reflected the correct score and become a useful tool on deciding if a movie is worth watching or not.
 
sure you can stop the internet...if you can shut off enough servers, or poison the root DNS servers...or any number of other things ;)
 
J3RK said:
I actually loved the new Alien movie, but then I like all of them (though I refused to see the AvP movies...) Prometheus was cool too. (I know I'm in the minority there, but those were worth going to.) I liked the Potter movies ok, the Lord of the Rings and Hobbit movies, and This is the End was fun to see in the theater. Really haven't been to much other than those in recent years.

Loved the John Wick movies too, but didn't make it out for those.

I think the next thing I'll see is Blade Runner. Otherwise not much I care about out of Hollywood these days.
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I'm with you on the Alien movies. I liked both Covenant and Prometheus. Although to be honest, I think these could have been stories outside the Alien universe. I won't add spoilers to clarify what I'm talking about.
I plan on seeing Blade Runner, Ready Player One (even though I'm not sure about the trailer...), and of course Star Wars. We'll see on the rest.
 
Or you could not go see the movie on opening weekend and see it some other time after reviews come out. This feels like how Netflix hides the language of a movie now, and you need to start the movie in order to figure out if it is English or not.
 
Dk975 said:
Or you could not go see the movie on opening weekend and see it some other time after reviews come out. This feels like how Netflix hides the language of a movie now, and you need to start the movie in order to figure out if it is English or not.
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Bingo!

But seriously who uses Rotten Tomatoes as a metric as to whether or not to see a movie opening night? You want to see it opening night because it's opening night not because it's supposed to be a good movie.

That said, I've seen more than my fair share of RT "green splats" that have audience scores easily into the "watchable" range (60+%), so don't take reviewers so seriously.
 
sadsteve said:
I say you should try squirrels. Squirrels are really good at causing power outages, much better than any terrorists.
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While I spent 3 semesters at MS&T (Rolla, MO) there were 3 things that caused all loud sounds: Sonic booms from military fighter jets, (intentional) explosions at the experimental mine (it used to be called the MO School of Mines), and squirrels blowing transformers. Those little fuckers are like ISIS jihadists trying to kill women and children and the transformers are their targets.
 
saw this happening when they started removing the comments sections from imdb.
no dissenting opinion and independent criticism allowed!

+disabling comments on youtube
+enabling comments on select articles only on msm websites
+heavy downvoting to hide dissenting opinions (on forum formats with auto-hide)
+showing positive reviews on the front page (imdb for one)

big corps are now pretty much in control of the internet
 
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theBrownLlama said:
saw this happening when they started removing the comments sections from imdb.
no dissenting opinion and independent criticism allowed!

+disabling comments on youtube
+enabling comments on select articles only on msm websites
+heavy downvoting to hide dissenting opinions (on forum formats with auto-hide)
+showing positive reviews on the front page (imdb for one)

big corps are now pretty much in control of the internet
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the forum section was just pure cancer though on IMDB. i still hate that it's gone but for the most part it was just 14 year olds attacking each other. as far as the positive reviews i think it's based on the voting because i've seen a few horrendous movies where a 1 star review got front page priority over the 30+ fake 10 star reviews because more people found the negative one more helpful. but i wouldn't be surprised if the studio's were allowed to control what shows up either.
 
Critics in general are much more interested in self-preening and stroking their own ego than they are actually reviewing movies and informing the public. There are a few exceptions, sure, but the majority of them make it clear from how they write that they have an incredibly high opinion of themselves, blissfully ignorant of the fact that the world as a whole does not share that view. :)

As others have mentioned, the audience score on RT is quite useful - I tend to find a few 'known good' reviewers in the critics list, then weigh that against the audience score. Not exactly 100% reliable, but better than going on the pure RT score.
 
sirmonkey1985 said:
the forum section was just pure cancer though on IMDB. i still hate that it's gone but for the most part it was just 14 year olds attacking each other. as far as the positive reviews i think it's based on the voting because i've seen a few horrendous movies where a 1 star review got front page priority over the 30+ fake 10 star reviews because more people found the negative one more helpful. but i wouldn't be surprised if the studio's were allowed to control what shows up either.
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IMDB's owners changed the algorithm for the spotlighted review. Just look at The Dark Tower page.

TfNp57e

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where as the overwhelming majority and the most upvoted reviews are very negative

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1648190/reviews?ref_=tt_urv

corporate manipulation 101. now the community cannot even complain about this blatant attempt to promote ticket sales since they removed the forum.

plenty of IMDB forum threads were discussing items of a serious nature. Like why did they switch the races/gender/sexuality, why is xyz so focused on their race winning an oscar, (these two are the main reason why the owners shut the forum down. It's bad for the corporate image. Censorship is good. Dissent and criticism is bad),
spotting clues and associations that are missed, discussions of film making technique, links to interviews/analysis/bts, discussions of whose bright idea was it to make such horrendous movies/tv series.

even those threads that agrees with your bias is a guilty pleasure. now, everything is just bland corporate flavor.

we are left with less. alot less. It is a definite loss for the Internet community
 
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