what does rotten tomatoes mean in a movie review

Rotten Tomatoes Ratings — How Does Rotten Tomatoes Work?

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How Does Rotten Tomatoes Work?

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T he Rotten Tomatoes ratings system―good or bad? Well, I’d say it’s a bit better than the original way tomatoes were used to judge entertainment. Because even if we want to throw fruit at the screen, 21st century technology reminds us we don’t have to. Rotten Tomatoes will provide us with a fair Critic consensus before we even get to the theatre (saving us a ton of food and money).

So how does Rotten Tomatoes work, exactly? Is it a reliable judge of… characters … Okay, okay, hold your tomatoes please. Let’s get a behind the scenes look at how it all works.

What do the Rotten Tomatoes symbols mean? Read on

Rotten tomatoes ratings system.

Rotten Tomatoes started in 2000 and it quickly became moviegoers go-to for reviews. But ever since Fandango acquired the company, it’s become even more well-known adding something called a “Tomatometer” score next to every movie and ticket listing. 

Critics have suggested that there is much more nuance and complication when it comes to the correlation between a Rotten Tomatoes rating and ticket sales. And while we will not get into that in this article, I think there is something to be said psychologically about seeing a rating right before you make your choice.

But I digress. 

I know for me, the ubiquitous nature of a Rotten Tomatoes score has made me feel like they hold more weight than they once did. But do they really hold more weight? How is the score actually calculated? And how are critics curated? 

Let's break it down.

Tomatometer Breakdown

Rotten tomatoes rating system, how does the tomatometer work.

The Rotten Tomatoes rating system uses a scale better known as the “The Tomatometer.” This represents the percentage of positive reviews for a given film or show. The Tomatometer score is calculated after five reviews.

As the reviews come in, The Tomatometer measures the positive reviews against the negative ones and assigns either an overall score of fresh or rotten rating to the film or television show. 

A red tomato score indicating its fresh status, is designated when at least 60% of the reviews are positive. 

A green splat indicating rotten status, is displayed when less than 60% of the reviews are positive. 

If there is no score available, it usually just means the movie or show hasn’t been released or there aren’t enough reviews yet. So, now that we know how they’re calculated, who’s doing the reviewing? 

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How Does Rotten Tomatoes Rate Their Movies

How is rotten tomatoes rated .

Rotten Tomatoes is careful in its Critic curation. It won’t include just any critic’s review. It aggregates those who have been regularly putting out movie reviews over the last two years, and those who are considered active by Rotten Tomatoes standards. This just means they’ve published a review within the last year. While there are about 3,000 accepted reviewers (see the Tomatometer-approved critics criteria), usually only several hundred are actively reviewing for any given film. 

Many times, it’s much less. And Top Critics are counted with a separate score. So while the the Rotten Tomatoes rating system is really just general consensus, you can see some of the more renowned critics in a different space.

But it’s not just about the critics! You also get a fully rounded out review because you can also see how the audience feels. 

What is the Tomatometer?

Popcorn rating explained, rotten tomatoes audience score.

This is a great feature of the site because it provides information from everyday moviegoers but also gives you some insight to see how close this score is to the critics’ scores. It can help you gauge if it’s truly a must-see or probably-pass. And it’s calculated similarly to critic reviews.

The Audience Score is designated by a popcorn bucket.

The score is the percentage of users who have rated the movie or show positively. There is also a section for Verified Ratings which includes those that have actually bought tickets. 

To receive a full popcorn bucket , at least 60% of users give a film or show a star rating of 3.5 or higher.

A tipped over popcorn bucket indicates that less than 60% of users have given it a 3.5 or higher. 

The most interesting finds are the ones that have a green splat for critics, and a full bucket of popcorn from the audience. 

While it’s rarely ever vice-versa, it happens, and it’s then when Rotten Tomatoes ratings may seem more subjective, and we wonder if the system works. And while reviews are opinion to some extent, the site boasts something called Certified Fresh, which brings a little more objectivity to the critique. 

Audience Score Breakdown

Certified rotten tomatoes score, what is certified fresh.

What does Rotten Tomatoes mean by Certified Fresh?

If a film or television show is awarded a Certified Fresh status, it’s being acknowledged that it’s met these requirements:

• It has at least five reviews from Top Critics
• A steady Tomatometer score of at least 75%
• Limited release films must have at least 40 reviews
• Wide release films must have at least 80 reviews
• TV shows are eligible by season and must have at least 20 reviews per season

Of course these stats could fluctuate, especially within the first few days or weeks of a film’s release. If it meets these requirements, it is automatically flagged for review.

When the Rotten Tomatoes staff can determine the movie or show is unlikely to fall below these numbers, it achieves its Certified Fresh status.

Similarly, if the Tomatometer score ever falls below 70%, it will lose this status. Because the Rotten Tomatoes ratings system is so general, RT certified fresh consideration gives the site more objective credibility. 

What does Rotten Tomatoes mean for movies

Is rotten tomatoes good for movies.

So, what's the bottom line? With the movie theater business under constant assault from the rise of streaming services, audiences are less and less likely to venture out to the movies. If they do happen to make it outside the house, they'll likely be extra picky about how they spend their money.

Will they choose an "untested" wildcard movie or one that has general approval from fans and critics? The answer is self-evident. On its surface, the Rotten Tomatoes rating system and Tomatometer seem to be a legitimate resource for the discerning consumer. 

However, there is also a legitimate concern for low-budget indie movies who already have the cards stacked against them in distribution. Since they don't have the marketing budget of the Hollywood tentpoles, curious moviegoers have little else to go on besides the Tomatometer. These "little fish" movies live or die by this system, which is ultimately opinion-based and subjective.

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What is a Cliche? Learn from Examples

If you’re a filmmaker or just love the movies, using cliches are a sure fire way to get awarded a nice big green splat, or a tipped over popcorn bucket.  Next up, are some examples of these tired situations and ways to avoid them.

Up Next: Cliche explained →

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Rotten Tomatoes, explained

Does a movie’s Rotten Tomatoes score affect its box office returns? And six other questions, answered.

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In February 2016, Rotten Tomatoes — the site that aggregates movie and TV critics’ opinions and tabulates a score that’s “fresh” or “rotten” — took on an elevated level of importance. That’s when Rotten Tomatoes (along with its parent company Flixster) was acquired by Fandango , the website that sells advance movie tickets for many major cinema chains.

People had been using Rotten Tomatoes to find movie reviews since it launched in 2000, but after Fandango acquired the site, it began posting “Tomatometer” scores next to movie ticket listings. Since then, studio execs have started to feel as if Rotten Tomatoes matters more than it used to — and in some cases, they’ve rejiggered their marketing strategies accordingly.

It’s easy to see why anyone might assume that Rotten Tomatoes scores became more tightly linked to ticket sales, with potential audiences more likely to buy tickets for a movie with a higher score, and by extension, giving critics more power over the purchase of a ticket.

But that’s not the whole story. And as most movie critics (including myself) will tell you, the correlation between Rotten Tomatoes scores, critical opinion, marketing tactics, and actual box office returns is complicated. It’s not a simple cause-and-effect situation.

My own work is included in both Rotten Tomatoes’ score and that of its more exclusive cousin, Metacritic . So I, along with many other critics , think often of the upsides and pitfalls of aggregating critical opinion and its effect on which movies people see. But for the casual moviegoer, how review aggregators work, what they measure, and how they affect ticket sales can be mysterious.

So when I got curious about how people perceive Rotten Tomatoes and its effect on ticket sales, I did what any self-respecting film critic does: I informally polled my Twitter followers to see what they wanted to know.

Here are seven questions that many people have about Rotten Tomatoes, and review aggregation more generally — and some facts to clear up the confusion.

How is a Rotten Tomatoes score calculated?

The score that Rotten Tomatoes assigns to a film corresponds to the percentage of critics who’ve judged the film to be “fresh,” meaning their opinion of it is more positive than negative. The idea is to quickly offer moviegoers a sense of critical consensus.

“Our goal is to serve fans by giving them useful tools and one-stop access to critic reviews, user ratings, and entertainment news to help with their entertainment viewing decisions,” Jeff Voris, a vice president at Rotten Tomatoes, told me in an email.

The opinions of about 3,000 critics — a.k.a. the “Approved Tomatometer Critics” who have met a series of criteria set by Rotten Tomatoes — are included in the site’s scores, though not every critic reviews every film, so any given score is more typically derived from a few hundred critics, or even less. The scores don’t include just anyone who calls themselves a critic or has a movie blog; Rotten Tomatoes only aggregates critics who have been regularly publishing movie reviews with a reasonably widely read outlet for at least two years, and those critics must be “active,” meaning they've published at least one review in the last year. The site also deems a subset of critics to be “top critics” and calculates a separate score that only includes them.

Some critics (or staffers at their publications) upload their own reviews, choose their own pull quotes, and designate their review as “fresh” or “rotten.” Other critics (including myself) have their reviews uploaded, pull-quoted, and tagged as fresh or rotten by the Rotten Tomatoes staff. In the second case, if the staff isn't sure whether to tag a review as fresh or rotten, they reach out to the critic for clarification. And critics who don't agree with the site’s designation can request that it be changed.

As the reviews of a given film accumulate, the Rotten Tomatoes score measures the percentage that are more positive than negative, and assigns an overall fresh or rotten rating to the movie. Scores of over 60 percent are considered fresh, and scores of 59 percent and under are rotten. To earn the coveted “designated fresh” seal, a film needs at least 40 reviews, 75 percent of which are fresh, and five of which are from “top” critics.

What does a Rotten Tomatoes score really mean ?

A Rotten Tomatoes score represents the percentage of critics who felt mildly to wildly positively about a given film.

If I give a film a mixed review that’s generally positive (which, in Vox’s rating system, could range from a positive-skewing 3 to the rare totally enamored 5), that review receives the same weight as an all-out rave from another critic. (When I give a movie a 2.5, I consider that to be a neutral score; by Rotten Tomatoes' reckoning, it's rotten.) Theoretically, a 100 percent Rotten Tomatoes rating could be made up entirely of middling-to-positive reviews. And if half of the critics the site aggregates only sort of like a movie, and the other half sort of dislike it, the film will hover around 50 percent (which is considered “rotten” by the site).

Contrary to some people’s perceptions, Rotten Tomatoes itself maintains no opinion about a film. What Rotten Tomatoes tries to gauge is critical consensus.

Critics’ opinions do tend to cluster on most films. But there are always outliers, whether from contrarians (who sometimes seem to figure out what people will say and then take the opposite opinion), or from those who seem to love every film. And critics, like everyone, have various life experiences, aesthetic preferences, and points of view that lead them to have differing opinions on movies.

So in many (if not most) cases, a film’s Rotten Tomatoes score may not correspond to any one critic’s view. It’s more like an imprecise estimate of what would happen if you mashed together every Tomatometer critic and had the resulting super-critic flash a thumbs-up or thumbs-down.

Rotten Tomatoes also lets audiences rate movies, and the score is often out of step with the critical score. Sometimes, the difference is extremely significant, a fact that's noticeable because the site lists the two scores side by side.

There’s a straightforward reason the two rarely match, though: The critical score is more controlled and methodical.

Why? Most professional critics have to see and review many films, whether or not they’re inclined to like the movie. (Also, most critics don’t pay to see films, because studios hold special early screenings for them ahead of the release date, which removes the decision of whether they’re interested enough in a film to spend their hard-earned money on seeing it.)

But with Rotten Tomatoes’ audience score, the situation is different. Anyone on the internet can contribute — not just those who actually saw the film. As a result, a film’s Rotten Tomatoes score can be gamed by internet trolls seeking to sink it simply because they find its concept offensive. A concerted effort can drive down the film’s audience score before it even comes out, as was the case with the all-female reboot of Ghostbusters .

Even if Rotten Tomatoes required people to pass a quiz on the movie before they rated it, the score would still be somewhat unreliable. Why? Because ordinary audiences are more inclined to buy tickets to movies they’re predisposed to like — who wants to spend $12 to $20 on a film they’re pretty sure they’ll hate?

So audience scores at Rotten Tomatoes (and other audience-driven scores, like the ones at IMDb) naturally skew very positive, or sometimes very negative if there’s any sort of smear campaign in play. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that. But audience scores tend to not account for those who would never buy a ticket to the movie in the first place.

In contrast, since critics see lots of movies — some of which they would have gone to see anyhow, and some of which they would’ve never chosen to see if their editors didn’t make the assignment — their opinion distribution should theoretically be more even, and thus the critical Rotten Tomatoes score more “accurate.”

Or at least that’s what Rotten Tomatoes thinks. The site displays a movie’s critics’ scores — the official Tomatometer — at Fandango and in a more prominent spot on the movie’s Rotten Tomatoes landing page. The audience score is also displayed on the Rotten Tomatoes page, but it’s not factored into the film’s fresh or rotten rating, and doesn’t contribute to a film being labeled as “certified fresh.”

Why do critics often get frustrated by the Tomatometer?

The biggest reason many critics find Rotten Tomatoes frustrating is that most people’s opinions about movies can’t be boiled down to a simple thumbs up or down. And most critics feel that Rotten Tomatoes, in particular, oversimplifies criticism, to the detriment of critics, the audience, and the movies themselves.

In some cases, a film really is almost universally considered to be excellent, or to be a complete catastrophe. But critics usually come away from a movie with a mixed view. Some things work, and others don’t. The actors are great, but the screenplay is lacking. The filmmaking is subpar, but the story is imaginative. Some critics use a four- or five-star rating, sometimes with half-stars included, to help quantify mixed opinions as mostly negative or mostly positive.

The important point here is that no critic who takes their job seriously is going to have a simple yes-or-no system for most movies. Critics watch a film, think about it, and write a review that doesn't just judge the movie but analyzes, contextualizes, and ruminates over it. The fear among many critics (including myself) is that people who rely largely on Rotten Tomatoes aren't interested in the nuances of a film, and aren't particularly interested in reading criticism, either.

But maybe the bigger reason critics are worried about the influence of review aggregators is that they seem to imply there's a “right” way to evaluate a movie, based on most people's opinions. We worry that audience members who have different reactions will feel as if their opinion is somehow wrong, rather than seeing the diversity of opinions as an invitation to read and understand how and why people react to art differently.

Plenty of movies — from Psycho to Fight Club to Alien — would have earned a rotten rating from Rotten Tomatoes upon their original release, only to be reconsidered and deemed classics years later as tastes, preferences, and ideas about films changed. Sometimes being an outlier can just mean you're forward-thinking.

Voris, the Rotten Tomatoes vice president, told me that the site is always trying to grapple with this quandary. “The Rotten Tomatoes curation team is constantly adding and updating reviews for films — both past and present,” he told me. “If there’s a review available from an approved critic or outlet, it will be added.”

What critics are worried about is a tendency toward groupthink, and toward scapegoating people who deviate from the “accepted” analysis. You can easily see this in the hordes of fans that sometimes come after a critic who dares to “ruin” a film's perfect score . But critics (at least serious ones) don't write their reviews to fit the Tomatometer, nor are they out to “get” DC Comics movies or religious movies or political movies or any other movies. Critics love movies and want them to be good, and we try to be honest when we see one that we don't measures up.

That doesn't mean the audience can't like a movie with a rotten rating, or hate a movie with a fresh rating. It's no insult to critics when audience opinion diverges. In fact, it makes talking and thinking about movies more interesting.

If critics are ambivalent about Rotten Tomatoes scores, why do moviegoers use the scores to decide whether to see a movie?

Mainly, it’s easy. You’re buying movie tickets on Fandango, or you’re trying to figure out what to watch on Netflix, so you check the Rotten Tomatoes score to decide. It’s simple. That’s the point.

And that’s not a bad thing. It's helpful to get a quick sense of critical consensus, even if it's somewhat imprecise. Many people use Rotten Tomatoes to get a rough idea of whether critics generally liked a film.

The flip side, though, is that some people, whether they’re critics or audience members, will inevitably have opinions that don't track with the Rotten Tomatoes score at all. Just because an individual's opinion is out of step with the Tomatometer doesn't mean the person is “wrong” — it just means they're an outlier.

And that, frankly, is what makes art, entertainment, and the world at large interesting: Not everyone has the same opinion about everything, because people are not exact replicas of one another. Most critics love arguing about movies, because they often find that disagreeing with their colleagues is what makes their job fun. It's fine to disagree with others about a movie, and it doesn't mean you're “wrong.”

(For what it’s worth, another review aggregation site, Metacritic, maintains an even smaller and more exclusive group of critics than Rotten Tomatoes — its aggregated scores cap out around 50 reviews per movie, instead of the hundreds that can make up a Tomatometer score. Metacritic’s score for a film is different from Rotten Tomatoes’ insofar as each individual review is assigned a rating on a scale of 100 and the overall Metacritic score is a weighted average, the mechanics of which Metacritic absolutely refuses to divulge . But because the site’s ratings are even more carefully controlled to include only experienced professional critics — and because the reviews it aggregates are given a higher level of granularity, and presumably weighted by the perceived influence of the critic’s publication — most critics consider Metacritic a better gauge of critical opinion.)

Does a movie’s Rotten Tomatoes score affect its box office earnings?

The short version: It can, but not necessarily in the ways you might think.

A good Rotten Tomatoes score indicates strong critical consensus, and that can be good for smaller films in particular. It’s common for distributors to roll out such films slowly, opening them in a few key cities (usually New York and Los Angeles, and maybe a few others) to generate good buzz — not just from critics, but also on social media and through word of mouth. The result, they hope, is increased interest and ticket sales when the movie opens in other cities.

Get Out , for example, certainly profited from the 99 percent “fresh” score it earned since its limited opening. And the more recent The Big Sick became one of last summer's most beloved films, helped along by its 98 percent rating. But a bad score for a small film can help ensure that it will close quickly, or play in fewer cities overall. Its potential box office earnings, in turn, will inevitably take a hit.

Yet when it comes to blockbusters, franchises, and other big studio films (which usually open in many cities at once), it’s much less clear how much a film’s Rotten Tomatoes score affects its box office tally. A good Rotten Tomatoes score, for example, doesn't necessarily guarantee a film will be a hit. Atomic Blonde is “guaranteed fresh,” with a 77 percent rating, but it didn‘t do very well at the box office despite being an action film starring Charlize Theron.

Still, studios certainly seem to believe the score makes a difference . Last summer, studios blamed Rotten Tomatoes scores (and by extension, critics) when poorly reviewed movies like Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales , Baywatch , and The Mummy performed below expectations at the box office. ( Pirates still went on to be the year’s 19th highest-grossing film.)

2017’s highest grossing movies in the US

But that correlation doesn’t really hold up. The Emoji Movie , for example, was critically panned, garnering an abysmal 6 percent Rotten Tomatoes score. But it still opened to $25 million in the US, which put it just behind the acclaimed Christopher Nolan film Dunkirk . And the more you think about it, the less surprising it is that plenty of people bought tickets to The Emoji Movie in spite of its bad press: It's an animated movie aimed at children that faced virtually no theatrical competition, and it opened during the summer, when kids are out of school. Great reviews might have inflated its numbers, but almost universally negative ones didn't seem to hurt it much.

It's also worth noting that many films with low Rotten Tomatoes scores that also perform poorly in the US (like The Mummy or The Great Wall ) do just fine overseas, particularly in China. The Mummy gave Tom Cruise his biggest global opening ever . If there is a Rotten Tomatoes effect, it seems to only extend to the American market.

Without any consistent proof, why do people still maintain that a bad Rotten Tomatoes score actively hurts a movie at the box office?

While it’s clear that a film’s Rotten Tomatoes score and box office earnings aren't correlated as strongly as movie studios might like you to think, blaming bad ticket sales on critics is low-hanging fruit.

Plenty of people would like you to believe that the weak link between box office earnings and critical opinion proves that critics are at fault for not liking the film, and that audiences are a better gauge of its quality. Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, co-star of Baywatch , certainly took that position when reviews of the 2017 bomb Baywatch came out:

Oh boy, critics had their venom & knives ready . Fans LOVE the movie. Huge positive scores. Big disconnect w/ critics & people. #Baywatch https://t.co/K0AQPf6F0S — Dwayne Johnson (@TheRock) May 26, 2017

Baywatch ended up with a very comfortably rotten 19 percent Tomatometer score , compared to a just barely fresh 62 percent audience score. But with apologies to The Rock, who I’m sure is a very nice man, critics aren't weather forecasters or pundits, and they’re not particularly interested in predicting how audiences will respond to a movie. (We are also a rather reserved and nerdy bunch, not regularly armed with venom and knives.) Critics show up where they’re told to show up and watch a film, then go home and evaluate it to the best of their abilities.

The obvious rejoinder, at least from a critic’s point of view, is that if Baywatch was a better movie, there wouldn’t be such a disconnect. But somehow, I suspect that younger ticket buyers — an all-important demographic — lacked nostalgia for 25-year-old lifeguard TV show, and thus weren't so sure about seeing Baywatch in the first place. Likewise, I doubt that a majority of Americans were ever going to be terribly interested in the fifth installment of the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise (which notched a 30 percent Tomatometer score and a 64 percent audience score), especially when they could just watch some other movie.

A pile-up of raves for either of these films might have resulted in stronger sales, because people could have been surprised to learn that a film they didn’t think they were interested in was actually great. But with lackluster reviews, the average moviegoer just had no reason to give them a chance.

Big studio publicists, however, are paid to convince people to see their films, not to candidly discuss the quality of the films themselves. So when a film with bad reviews flops at the box office, it’s not shocking that studios are quick to suggest that critics killed it.

How do movie studios try to blunt the perceived impact when they’re expecting a bad Rotten Tomatoes score?

Of late, some studios — prompted by the idea that critics can kill a film’s buzz before it even comes out — have taken to “ fighting back ” when they’re expecting a rotten Tomatometer score.

Their biggest strategy isn’t super obvious to the average moviegoer, but very clear to critics. When a studio suspects it has a lemon on its hands, it typically hosts the press screening only a day or two ahead of the film's release, and then sets a review “embargo” that lifts a few hours before the film hits theaters.

Consider, for example, the case of the aforementioned Emoji Movie . I and most other critics hoped the movie would be good, as is the case with all movies see. But once the screening invitations arrived in our inboxes, we pretty much knew, with a sinking feeling, that it wouldn’t be. The tell was pretty straightforward: The film’s only critics' screening in New York was scheduled for the day before it opened. It screened for press on Wednesday night at 5 pm, and then the review embargo lifted at 3 pm the next day — mere hours before the first public showtimes.

Late critics’ screenings for any given film mean that reviews of the film will necessarily come out very close to its release, and as a result, people purchasing advance tickets might buy them before there are any reviews or Tomatometer score to speak of. Thus, in spite of there being no strong correlation between negative reviews and a low box office, its first-weekend box returns might be less susceptible to any potential harm as a result of bad press. (Such close timing can also backfire; critics liked this summer's Captain Underpants , for example, but the film was screened too late for the positive reviews to measurably boost its opening box office.)

That first-weekend number is important, because if a movie is the top performer at the box office (or if it simply exceeds expectations, like Dunkirk and Wonder Woman did this summer), its success can function as good advertising for the film, which means its second weekend sales may also be stronger. And that matters , particularly when it means a movie is outperforming its expectations, because it can actually shift the way industry executives think about what kinds of movies people want to watch. Studios do keep an eye on critics’ opinions, but they’re much more interested in ticket sales — which makes it easy to see why they don’t want risk having their opening weekend box office affected by bad reviews, whether there’s a proven correlation or not.

The downside of this strategy, however, is that it encourages critics to instinctively gauge a studio’s level of confidence in a film based on when the press screening takes place. 20th Century Fox, for instance, screened War for the Planet of the Apes weeks ahead of its theatrical release, and lifted the review embargo with plenty of time to spare before the movie came out. The implication was that Fox believed the movie would be a critical success, and indeed, it was — the movie has a 97 percent Tomatometer score and an 86 percent audience score.

And still, late press screenings fail to account for the fact that, while a low Rotten Tomatoes score doesn’t necessarily hurt a film’s total returns, aggregate review scores in general do have a distinct effect on second-weekend sales. In 2016, Metacritic conducted a study of the correlation between its scores and second weekend sales , and found — not surprisingly — that well-reviewed movies dip much less in the second weekend than poorly reviewed movies. This is particularly true of movies with a strong built-in fan base, like Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice , which enjoyed inflated box office returns in the first weekend because fans came out to see it, but dropped sharply in its second weekend, at least partly due to extremely negative press .

Most critics who are serious about their work make a good-faith effort to approach each film they see with as few expectations as possible. But it's hard to have much hope about a movie when it seems obvious that a studio is trying to play keep-away with it. And the more studios try to game the system by withholding their films from critics, the less critics are inclined to enter a screening devoid of expectations, however subconscious.

If you ask critics what studios ought to do to minimize the potential impact of a low Rotten Tomatoes score, their answer is simple: Make better movies. But of course, it’s not that easy; some movies with bad scores do well, while some with good scores still flop. Hiding a film from critics might artificially inflate first-weekend box office returns, but plenty of people are going to go see a franchise film, or a superhero movie, or a family movie, no matter what critics say.

The truth is that neither Rotten Tomatoes nor the critics whose evaluations make up its scores are really at fault here, and it’s silly to act like that’s the case. The website is just one piece of the sprawling and often bewildering film landscape.

As box office analyst Scott Mendelson wrote at Forbes :

[Rotten Tomatoes] is an aggregate website, one with increased power because the media now uses the fresh ranking as a catch-all for critical consensus, with said percentage score popping up when you buy tickets from Fandango or rent the title on Google Market. But it is not magic. At worst, the increased visibility of the site is being used as an excuse by ever-pickier moviegoers to stay in with Netflix or VOD.

For audience members who want to make good moviegoing decisions, the best approach is a two-pronged one. First, check Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic to get a sense of critical consensus. But second, find a few critics — two or three will do — whose taste aligns with (or challenges) your own, and whose insights help you enjoy a movie even more. Read them and rely on them.

And know that it’s okay to form your own opinions, too. After all, in the bigger sense, everyone’s a critic.

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Rotten Tomatoes Ratings System: The Complete Guide

In the ever-evolving world of cinema, Rotten Tomatoes has emerged as a pivotal player in how movies are perceived and received.

This review aggregation website has become a go-to source for many moviegoers, offering a quick glance at a film’s overall reception.

It synthesizes the opinions of critics and audiences into a single, accessible metric, influencing viewers’ choices and the industry at large.

The Rotten Tomatoes ratings system, with its unique “Tomatometer” and audience scores, has reshaped the landscape of movie reviews and box office success.

ROTTEN TOMATOES RATINGS SYSTEM

What is the rotten tomatoes ratings system.

Rotten Tomatoes employs a ratings system that categorizes films into “Fresh” or “Rotten” based on critic reviews. A film is considered “Fresh” if it receives more positive reviews than negative ones.

The Tomatometer score, displayed as a percentage, reflects the proportion of positive reviews a movie has received from accredited critics.

For instance, a film like Toy Story 3 boasts a high Tomatometer score, indicating widespread critical acclaim.

Since its inception in 1998, Rotten Tomatoes has grown to become the most popular movie review site on the internet.

Across this platform, professional and amateur critics alike offer their opinions of movies they have seen recently or from years past.

This includes a film’s quality rating which is determined by dividing the number of positive reviews by all reviews written for that particular movie; however, many people are unaware of how exactly this process works.

How Does Rotten Tomatoes Work?

At its core, Rotten Tomatoes functions by collating reviews from accredited film critics. Each review is classified as “Fresh” or “Rotten” based on the critic’s assessment. The Tomatometer score is then calculated as the percentage of “Fresh” reviews out of the total number.

A significant aspect of the system is the minimum review requirement; a movie must receive a certain number of reviews (the number varies for wide releases vs. limited releases) to be assigned a Tomatometer score.

To earn the “Certified Fresh” status, a film must consistently maintain a high Tomatometer score and meet additional criteria including a minimum review count, with a requisite portion coming from “Top Critics.”

Rotten Tomatoes Ratings System

The Rotten Tomatoes rating system includes two key scores: the Tomatometer and the Audience Score.

The Tomatometer score, determined by professional critics, classifies films as “Fresh” or “Rotten” based on the percentage of positive reviews. A film like “Toy Story 3” with a high score is indicative of widespread critical acclaim.

On the other hand, the Audience Score reflects the opinions of regular moviegoers, providing a more populist perspective on a film’s appeal.

This audience-driven score is calculated from the ratings submitted by verified users and is presented as the percentage of audiences who have rated the film positively.

Rotten Tomatoes – Historical Context

Since its inception in 1998, Rotten Tomatoes has evolved significantly. The site started as a simple collection of movie reviews but has grown into a major aggregator, influencing viewers’ and critics’ perceptions of films.

Its acquisition by Fandango in 2016 marked a significant shift, integrating the platform more closely with movie ticket sales and expanding its influence.

Over the years, Rotten Tomatoes has adapted to changing media landscapes and audience behaviors, remaining a key player in how films are rated and reviewed.

Certified Fresh Rotten Tomatoes Score

The “Certified Fresh” designation is a mark of high quality and consistent positive reviews. To earn this badge, a film must have a steady Tomatometer score of 75% or higher after a set number of reviews, including a certain amount from Top Critics.

This status is a hallmark of excellence and often used in marketing materials.

Films like “The Dark Knight” have proudly displayed their “Certified Fresh” status, signifying their exceptional reception.

Rotten Tomatoes Audience Score

Alongside the Tomatometer, the Audience Score offers a perspective on the viewer’s reception of a film.

This score is calculated from the ratings submitted by verified users and presented as a percentage of audiences who rated the film favorably.

This metric provides a sense of how a movie resonates with the general public, complementing the critics’ reviews.

Movies like “The Greatest Showman,” which garnered mixed critical reviews but was beloved by audiences, illustrate the divergence that can occur between critic and audience opinions.

Is Rotten Tomatoes Good For Movies?

The influence of Rotten Tomatoes on the film industry is significant. Its scores can impact a movie’s marketing strategy and audience turnout.

While some argue that the aggregation simplifies the nuanced opinions into a binary system, potentially skewing public perception, others appreciate the straightforward, accessible summary of a film’s reception.

The platform has become a powerful tool for viewers to gauge whether a movie is worth their time and money.

Methodology Of Critic Selection For Rotten Tomatoes

Rotten Tomatoes employs a selective process for including critics in its aggregation system. The site categorizes critics into two groups: “All Critics” and “Top Critics.”

To be considered, critics must be affiliated with a recognized publication or have a proven track record in film criticism.

This includes writers for major newspapers, notable online publications, and recognized freelance critics.

The “Top Critics” category is more selective, including those from major publications like The New York Times, The Guardian, or significant industry-related magazines.

Rotten Tomatoes continuously evaluates and updates its list of critics to ensure a diverse and comprehensive representation of viewpoints.

This methodology aims to provide a balanced and authoritative assessment of films, although it has faced criticism over representation and inclusivity in its selection of critics.

Impact Of Rotten Tomatoes On Movie Marketing

The influence of Rotten Tomatoes on movie marketing is profound. A high Tomatometer score can be a significant marketing tool, often prominently featured in movie trailers and advertisements.

Conversely, a low score can lead studios to adjust their marketing strategies, sometimes reducing the promotional budget or shifting focus to other aspects like star power or genre appeal.

In extreme cases, studios might limit pre-release screenings to delay the aggregation of reviews on the site, thereby managing potential negative impact.

The “Certified Fresh” badge, in particular, is a coveted status, often used in marketing materials to attract audiences looking for quality assurance.

This dynamic has led to a growing debate within the industry about the power wielded by Rotten Tomatoes and its potential to unfairly sway audience perceptions before a film’s release.

User Interaction On Rotten Tomatoes

Rotten Tomatoes not only aggregates critic reviews but also encourages active user interaction. Users can rate movies on a scale from 0.5 to 5 stars, and these ratings contribute to the Audience Score.

This feature democratizes film criticism, allowing everyday viewers to voice their opinions alongside professional critics. Users can also write full reviews, engage in discussions, and create personal lists of favorites.

The site incorporates these user ratings into its overall presentation of a film’s reception, offering a more holistic view that includes both critic and audience perspectives.

However, this system has been subject to manipulation attempts, such as review bombing, where groups of people intentionally lower a film’s audience score due to controversies or fan-driven campaigns.

Rotten Tomatoes has implemented measures to counteract such issues, emphasizing the importance of genuine audience engagement.

Criticism Of Rotten Tomatoes

Rotten Tomatoes has faced its share of criticism. One major concern is the potential negative impact of a low Tomatometer score on a film’s box office performance.

Critics also point out potential biases in the critic selection process and the oversimplification of reducing complex film critiques to a single numerical score.

The platform has been accused of influencing public opinion disproportionately, potentially discouraging viewers from watching films with moderate scores.

Influence On The Film Industry

Rotten Tomatoes’ ratings have a notable impact on audience decisions and box office numbers. High scores can significantly boost a movie’s appeal and marketing, while low scores might deter audiences.

The site’s influence extends to shaping public discourse around films, often becoming a reference point in discussions about a movie’s quality and success.

Comparison With Other Platforms

When compared with other review aggregation sites like Metacritic , Rotten Tomatoes stands out for its straightforward, binary rating system.

Metacritic, on the other hand, provides a weighted average score, potentially offering a more nuanced view of a film’s reception.

However, Rotten Tomatoes’ simplicity and the distinction between critic and audience scores make it a unique and influential platform in the film review landscape.

Rotten Tomatoes Rating System – Wrapping Up

Rotten Tomatoes has established itself as a pivotal component in the film industry, offering both moviegoers and professionals a comprehensive overview of a film’s reception.

Despite criticisms regarding its methodology and impact, its significance in shaping public opinion and box office outcomes is undeniable.

Matt Crawford

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I use rotten tomatoes to get a feel of how a movie is. I read the critics reviews. If it’s really bad I won’t go see the movie. If it’s 50/50 I’ll take a chance and go see the movie. Who knows I might be part of the 50% that likes it.

Good plan, Tonya!

I rarely rely on rotten tomatoes finding it a popularity contest not a quality review of excellence. It simply doesn’t include all genres.

Fair comment, Patricia.

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How Does Rotten Tomatoes Work?

Everything to know about the movie and TV rating site and how they get their percentages.

While there is an overabundance of nuanced, interesting film criticism on the Internet, a majority of movie fans base their opinions on a film from the score that it received on Rotten Tomatoes. Criticism is much more contextual than a simple numerical score given to a title, but Rotten Tomatoes offers a simple rating that tends to get aggregated. There is an increasing number of instances when studios use a positive Rotten Tomatoes score as a marketing tool. The films that achieve the rare 100% “fresh rating” are put under a public spotlight, and similarly, the films that are labeled as “rotten ” with a 0% score tend to live in infamy. However, the process of determining a Rotten Tomatoes score is more complicated than it may seem.

Rotten Tomatoes is a great platform for movie fans to utilize if they understand the site’s purpose. In addition to listing extensive movie data like other databases such as IMDb, Rotten Tomatoes is connected through its parent company Fandango to allow for the purchase of theater tickets. Additionally, it serves as a great tool to follow individual critics, look up specific reviews, and interact with other movie lovers. However, averaging out a score is a complex process that includes outside factors that some users aren’t aware of.

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How Does Rotten Tomatoes' Rating System Work?

Rotten Tomatoes aggregates two primary ratings; there is a “% fresh” according to critics, and one according to audiences . The critical score, which is the primary number listed alongside a film, is the percentage of positive reviews that a film receives, with a minimum of five reviews needed to officially list on the “Tomatoemeter.” The audience score is determined by a five-star rating system that users submit when adding their custom reviews.

In order to be listed as an official critic, journalists must be a member of a writing guild, critic’s group, or have enough followers or “likes” on their platform before they can be admitted. There’s an exhaustive evaluation process that critics must fill out in order to be accepted. Each review is listed as either broadly positive or broadly negative and given either a fresh or rotten rating as a result. A blurb, rating, and score from the review are linked to the reviews section of each film’s page.

There is a slightly different process for television. TV shows are given their average rating in their entirety, with individual segments for specific episodes and seasons. The overall score is determined by the average of these. This can explain why certain shows that have noticeable trends in quality tend to rank a certain way. It may be strange that The Simpsons only has an 85% rating, even though the first eight seasons each scored 100% fresh, but it's because the number of standout episodes in the later seasons has declined.

Averages Vs. Consensus

While it may seem confusing that the score is simply a percentage of reviews and not an average, not every critic uses the same rating system. Some critics rate out of four or five stars, others give a letter grade, and some either have their own rating system or simply don’t assign a rating. It makes it impossible to create an average of different metrics. An average score listed alongside each film is included to give a rough estimate, and general summaries of the film’s reception written by the Rotten Tomatoes staff are also included.

This makes using the “Tomatometer” an occasionally flawed way to determine a film’s quality; the score is based on how many critics liked or disliked a film, but there’s no way to evaluate their enthusiasm. A film that is heralded with a high score (such as a 5/5 star or A+ grade) could be listed as positive, but so could a more mixed or passable response with an ambivalent rating (such as a ⅗ star or B- grade). Similarly, a film that is absolutely derided by a critic (such as a ⅕ star or F grade) could be listed as rotten alongside a more mixed or average response. As a result, films that are more divisive tend to fare worse, while those that are more broadly accepted as simply “good” tend to do very well, such as the recently released M3gan .

The “Tomatoemeter” itself takes into consideration the number of reviews for a given film when determining whether the film can be “certified fresh.” A wide-release film receives a “certified fresh” rating if it scores an average between 75% and 100% positive ratings based and has at least 80 reviews; limited-release titles only require 40 reviews. Five of these reviews must be from “top critics,” a group that includes journalists with a significant catalog, consistency, and following. These reviews can be singled out from the broad critical reviews in their own section.

What Is Rotten Tomatoes Good For?

Simply determining your opinion on whether or not a film is worth watching based on its score isn’t a great way to make decisions; film fans may be surprised to see the many beloved classics that are listed as “rotten,” such as Spaceballs, Constantine, The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou, and The Mighty Ducks ; the same could be said in reverse, as the broadly disliked Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is “certified fresh” at 78%.

While some may note the difference between a film’s audience and critical scores as a sign that film critics are “out of touch,” they are using completely different metrics. Additionally, review bombing can be an issue, as some recent projects such as Star Wars: The Last Jedi and The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power have been bombarded with hateful user reviews for including more diverse ensemble casts. Similar to any other consensus platform like IMDb or Letterboxd, there’s no way to determine whether someone has actually seen a film or series, or whether they’re a bot.

However, there are a number of upsides to Rotten Tomatoes. Having a broad range of reviews listed can allow fans to follow specific critics, or look up reviews that they may disagree with in order to get a different perspective. Nothing is as simple as a number, but cinephiles should be able to determine for themselves whether a film is “fresh” or “rotten.” At the end of the day, cinema is a subjective medium.

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Daniel Choi is a writer who’s currently pursuing a BA in Film & Television from New York University. With a background in amateur film production, Daniel is fascinated by how artists’ cultural backgrounds inform their work, subconsciously or not, and how that work is then perceived by different audiences across time and space. He joined Hollywood Insider to promote its mission statement of substantive entertainment journalism, and hopes to enrich readers’ understandings of cinema through insightful analysis.

Dec 28, 2020

Table of Contents

Photo: Rotten Tomatoes

Before we waste our time and money sitting through an entire feature film or television series, we go online to check its ratings. Many of us probably have a mental threshold for what’s worth seeing–80%, maybe 70%. 60% is right on the cusp–that’s a film you might approach with dampened expectations. But is this the right way to go about things?

Like many modern fixtures of the internet, Rotten Tomatoes was once a novelty–it quickly became such an authoritative denominator of a film’s quality that a bad rating can tank box office performance. Good ratings, on the other hand, are now often featured in trailers.

Aggregate review sites such as Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic are excellent and useful tools for getting an idea of a work’s critical reception at a glance, but they’ve also shaped our ideas of what it means for a piece to be “good” or “bad,” for better or for worse. Ratings were never meant to be a conclusive evaluation of a film’s quality, but that seems to be the way that the general public looks at it. 

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For the most part, they tell you what you need to know. If a film has a rating of 17%, it’s probably not going to impress. Nevertheless, their percentage scores hide a lot of nuances that has simultaneously bolstered the collective power of critics while undermining the significance of the individual voice. In this article, I’m going to discuss the reasons why a percent rating shouldn’t be taken at face value, specifically in terms of Rotten Tomatoes, as that has become the most powerful locus of critical discussion of film and television.

Rotten Tomatoes: Thumbs-up or Thumbs-down

Rotten Tomatoes’ Tomatometer score is calculated by simple division–the number of positive reviews over the total number of reviews. Becoming a Tomatometer-approved critic is an application-based process and no critic’s opinion is given more weight than any other. 

However, in order to calculate this basic percentage, Rotten Tomatoes simplifies each critic’s reviews–in the same way that a film is either “fresh” (exceeds 60% approval) or “rotten,” a critic’s review is either favorable or unfavorable. Hypothetically, a film to which every critic gives a rating of 3.5/5, for instance, would attain a Rotten Tomatoes score of 100%. It’s unlikely that this would occur outside of this hypothetical scenario, but is plausible nonetheless. 

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On the other end of the hypothetical spectrum is a film that garners deific praise from half of those who saw it, and abject disdain from the other half–a polarised reception. This film would receive an ultimate rating of 50%, which is commonly interpreted as a bad rating. 

If you look at contemporary reviews of what are now legendary films, many received polarised critical reception. 2001: A Space Odyssey and The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly , for instance, would probably have received around 50% if Rotten Tomatoes were around, but are now considered exemplars of their genre. 

Their current Tomatometer ratings reflect the result of their re-evaluations, but will films of the present be granted the same amnesty moving forward? In this way, Rotten Tomatoes has solidified the film canon while casting immediate judgment on new releases, coloring their public perception prematurely.

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The Illusion Of Objectivity

Additionally, the fact that ratings are presented in the form of a percentage necessitates the comparison with schoolyard letter grades . With no evidence to back up this statement, I postulate that our deeply-ingrained concept of letter grades contributes to the ease with which we accept percentage ratings as indicators of quality.

Educators and pundits have long expressed the inadequacies of measuring student performance through summative assessment–causing students to focus more on earning a grade rather than learning the material, for instance, not to mention the impossibility of a subjective evaluation being translated objectively into a numerical value.

If it’s impossible for a teacher to objectively evaluate a 500-word essay, it’s impossible to put an objective numerical value on the quality of a film. However, that was never Rotten Tomatoes’ goal. Aggregating critical reviews is just a good way to get a finger-in-the-wind type of reading, but many people don’t care to look beyond that convenient, monolithic percentage. Its democratic approach to rating a film has contributed to a sense of objectivity, but the value of film criticism has always come from more than an objective, ultimate indictment.

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Pauline Kael , one of the most influential film critics of all time, is famous for her derision of the “ideal critic’s” aim of achieving objectivity, calling it “saphead objectivity.” Her reviews were grounded in her personal experience of the film, as opposed to the commonplace approach of technical, esoteric didacticism. Her style and philosophy were pivotal in the landscape of criticism and analysis, proving that a film couldn’t just be reduced to a technical examination of its craft.

Why Critics Aren’t As Credible

Today, fewer people read individual reviews than ever before. The open forum of the internet has done much to dispel classic notions of elitism, and people have shied away from critics who tell them what’s good and what’s bad–Pauline Kael was rebelling against the same thing decades ago. 

Furthermore, there has been a greater outcry in recent years about the lack of diversity among professional film critics, a point justly made. The opinion of the white male is less valuable in a world of film and television offering greater diversity and stories thereof.  

To read an individual review reveals these underlying issues, but taking that plethora of opinions and turning them into nameless “yays” or “nays” depersonalizes them. People aren’t trusting of singular opinions, but amass a bunch and it becomes a poll. The fact that Rotten Tomatoes offers an audience score furthers the idea that this is simply a populist approach to judging films. The question of what a film does right and what it does wrong is no longer relevant–the question is- how many people out of 100 liked it?   

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In his review of Spirited Away , Roger Ebert wrote, “Movies made for “everybody” is actually made for nobody in particular.” This quote has always stuck with me and seems to repudiate the philosophy that Rotten Tomatoes have nurtured–a “good” film is one that’s palatable to most people. 

It’s important to note that it was never the intention of Rotten Tomatoes to be a barometer of “quality,” but it seems to me that the Tomatometer score is often interpreted by the average person as such. In turn, it seems like studios make a greater effort to cater to their audience before the film even comes out.

It’s unfortunate that a website which aggregates reviews of films has wound up affecting the works that it only meant to discuss–it reminds me of an actor becoming self-conscious because a mirror is held up to their face. While ratings are certainly a useful tool, I only want to emphasize how it shouldn’t be the be-all and end-all of critical discussion.

By  Daniel Choi

Click here to read H ollywood Insider’s  CEO Pritan Ambroase’s love letter to Black Lives Matter,  in which he tackles more than just police reform, press freedom and more – click here.

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Daniel Choi is a writer who's currently pursuing a BA in Film & Television from New York University. With a background in amateur film production, Daniel is fascinated by how artists' cultural backgrounds inform their work, subconsciously or not, and how that work is then perceived by different audiences across time and space. He joined Hollywood Insider to promote its mission statement of substantive entertainment journalism, and hopes to enrich readers' understandings of cinema through insightful analysis.

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8 Fresh Facts About Rotten Tomatoes

By kristy puchko | jul 29, 2021.

Whether you’re looking to head to the theaters or seeking something special to stream on Netflix , you're not alone if you click over to Rotten Tomatoes before making your final viewing decision. For over 20 years, this review aggregate site has been a gift to audiences, assigning movies and TV shows a “fresh” or “rotten” label based on hundreds of critics’ opinions. Today, the site boasts more than 1.1 million reviews, over 26,000 Tomatometer ratings, and thousands of active critics. But there’s much more to Rotten Tomatoes than meets the eye. Here are a few facts about the influential (and sometimes controversial) movie website.

1. Jackie Chan inspired the Rotten Tomatoes concept.

In 1998, Senh Duong was excitedly anticipating the U.S. release of Jackie Chan's Rush Hour . Frustrated that he couldn’t easily find news and reviews for the upcoming action-comedy online (or reviews for any of Chan's movies for that matter), Duong imagined a website that would aggregate reviews in one easy-to-browse location. So he called on a couple of his friends from UC Berkley, Patrick Lee and Stephen Wang, to help him code the concept.

“It was quite a genius, outside-the-box idea,” co-founder Wang wrote of Duong’s brainchild in a personal blog post celebrating Rotten Tomatoes’ 20th anniversary. However, Rotten Tomatoes might have been little more than a short-lived fan page if it weren’t for Rush Hour ’s release being pushed from August to September 1998.

As Duong waited the extra few weeks for Rush Hour to actually come out, he decided to collect reviews for other movies that were on the horizon on his site. According to Wang, “The first film page to launch was Neil Labute’s Your Friends & Neighbors , and by the time it had launched on August 13, 1998, he had already come up with some of Rotten Tomatoes’ key elements: The Tomatometer, Fresh and Rotten icons for reviews, review quotations and links, and the ‘Rotten Tomatoes’ name.”

2. Rotten Tomatoes’ name comes from an obscure movie reference.

A popular misconception is that the website’s moniker alludes to the idea of throwing the festering vegetables at a bad theatrical performance. However, according to Rotten Tomatoes’ own published account , Duong came up with the name after watching the French-Canadian coming-of-age fantasy Léolo , in which the titular boy imagines his mother got pregnant from falling into a cart of Italian tomatoes. The film currently has a rating of 90 percent .

3. Roger Ebert gave Rotten Tomatoes two thumbs up.

Duong started spreading the word of the newly minted site by posting links in Usenet movie groups, and by 1999, Rotten Tomatoes was gaining steam, earning a spotlight from USA Today and Netscape. “Which was huge back then,” he explained in the site’s oral history . However, the biggest signal boost came from iconic film critic Roger Ebert , who praised Rotten Tomatoes in the now-defunct Yahoo! Internet Life magazine . Not only did this massively raise the site’s profile, but having Ebert—a legendary cinephile—vouch for it went a long way toward convincing movie buffs to give the concept a shot.

4. The Tomatometer is widely misunderstood.

Similar to Siskel & Ebert’s thumbs up or thumbs down, Rotten Tomatoes operates on a binary. Whether a Tomatometer-approved critic’s review is a rave, a pan, or mixed, it must be entered as either rotten or fresh. Therefore, not-bad-but-not-great movies might fall on either side of the divide. For a title to qualify as fresh, it must earn a rating of 60 percent higher , determined by averaging the number of fresh/rotten reviews from at least five eligible critics (there are thousands of critics on Rotten Tomatoes who all have to meet certain criteria before their reviews are counted).

Many readers often regard this system like a grade on a report card, where 60 percent might be a D, 70 percent equates a C, and 90 percent or higher might be an A. But the Tomatometer isn't grading a film's quality from 1 to 100 percent; it's simply the percentage of fresh reviews. So, a movie with a score of 90 doesn't mean the majority of critics thought the quality was a 9/10, only that 90 percent of critics gave it a fresh rating.

5. Rotten Tomatoes’ criteria for critics has changed dramatically over the years.

Early on, Duong and his growing team chiefly collected reviews from major outlets, including newspapers, magazines, and broadcasters. As internet culture evolved, they sought to include critics who were writing for online outlets. “[Studio publicists] were generally wary of online critics and treated them as second-class citizens,” Duong explained in a Rotten Tomatoes history piece . “That was one of the reasons why I wanted to feature online critics on the Tomatometer.”

Over the years, online media coverage exploded, pushing Rotten Tomatoes to repeatedly update its criteria, including more websites and freelancers who worked for multiple outlets. In 2018, Rotten Tomatoes expanded its Critic Criteria to include YouTubers, podcasters, and self-published bloggers. The goal was to reflect the emerging and increasingly diverse landscape of film and TV criticism, considering not just outlet but also insight, audience, quality, and dedication.

6. Audience Scores play a big role for Rotten Tomatoes, but they're not always reliable.

According to a Rotten Tomatoes rep, the Audience Score section was added to the site in 2004 in order to allow the public to weigh in on movies as well. Illustrated by a popcorn bucket, the Audience Score percentage can reflect the opinions of thousands of Rotten Tomatoes users. However, concerns have been raised that without proof of viewing, users could vote on movies they hadn’t seen. So, in 2019, following acquisition from the online ticket-seller Fandango, the site began requesting ticket confirmation to verify voting users who had watched a given film. Thus, more recent film’s Audience Scores can be sorted by verified audiences or all audiences .

7. Some people in Hollywood think Rotten Tomatoes actually hurts the movie industry.

The summer of 2017 saw a 15 percent decline in movie ticket sales in America from the previous year, leading some in Hollywood to put the blame squarely on Rotten Tomatoes, which boasted around 13.6 million unique visitors a month. The New York Times reported that filmmakers felt that a bad score could kill a movie’s opening weekend, while others blamed the wide net Rotten Tomatoes had cast, allowing critics from smaller sites to be counted alongside century-old outlets. The “rotten” movies in question from The New York Times piece included the Dwayne Johnson-fronted Baywatch ( 17 percent ) and Guy Ritchie’s King Arthur: Legend of the Sword ( 31 percent ).

During the Sun Valley Film Festival, director Brett Ratner, whose Ratpac company co-financed 2016's infamously rotten Batman v Superman ( 28 percent ), put it more bluntly : “I think it’s the destruction of our business.”

Still, movies that score low on the Tomatometer aren't guaranteed flops, either—out of the 100 top-grossing domestic movies of all time, 20 of them have been declared rotten, including Batman v Superman .

8. Those 100 percent ratings on Rotten Tomatoes stir up plenty of controversy.

The rare achievement of a 100 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes has been managed by landmark classics like Charlie Chaplin ’s The Gold Rush (1925) as well as modern masterpieces like Richard Linklater’s Before Sunrise (1995). However, this seemingly perfect score can be treated as a target. At least three times, a member of the rarefied 100 Club was later knocked out by a single review.

First, it happened to Greta Gerwig’s celebrated coming-of-age comedy Lady Bird (2017), much to the ire of film fans online . Then, in 2021, The New York Times reported that Orson Welles’s iconic Citizen Kane had been bumped down to 99 percent because a resurfaced 80-year-old review was recently added on Rotten Tomatoes. Much fun was had online by those who joked this meant that Paul King’s Paddington 2 (2017) was clearly superior to Citizen Kane , as the family-friendly sequel had a 100 score. The victory was short-lived: A month later, IndieWire revealed a previously unposted review of Paddington 2 was added to the site, bringing it down to 99 percent along with its still very highly acclaimed companions.

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Frequently Asked Questions

About rotten tomatoes, who owns rotten tomatoes who is the parent company.

In February 2016, Rotten Tomatoes and its parent site Flixster were acquired by Fandango (which is owned by Comcast). Warner Bros. retains a minority stake in the merged entities, including Fandango.

COMMUNITY CODE OF CONDUCT

Does rotten tomatoes have a community code of conduct.

We're all about debate and discussion at Rotten Tomatoes and want to know what our fans think. Learn more about our community code of conduct .

ACCESSIBILITY

At Fandango, we are committed to making our products, content, and experiences accessible to the widest possible audience, including people with disabilities. We are actively working to increase the accessibility and usability of Rotten Tomatoes. This website strives to conform to level AA of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.1. We also provide closed captions on movie trailers that are available through our website. For more information or to contact us about an issue related to website accessibility, please contact us: Customer Support .

TOMATOMETER

What is the tomatometer.

The Tomatometer score represents the percentage of professional critic reviews that are positive for a given film or television show. A Tomatometer score is calculated for a movie or TV show after it receives at least five reviews. Learn more about our Tomatometer .

When does a Tomatometer score appear on the site?

A Tomatometer score is calculated for a film or TV show once it has received at least five reviews.

Why do some scores fluctuate or change?

The Tomatometer is a fluid measurement that can change over time as more reviews are added for a given film or TV show. Learn more about our Tomatometer .

What is the difference between the Tomatometer and Audience Score?

The Tomatometer score is calculated from reviews published by Tomatometer-approved critics. The Audience Score is calculated from ratings submitted to Rotten Tomatoes by users. Learn more about our Tomatometer and the Audience Score .

Why doesn't Rotten Tomatoes have a mixed rating?

Tomatometer scores fall into 3 easy-to-understand categories: Fresh (60% and up), Rotten (59% and below), and Certified Fresh for films with more than 75% positive reviews that meet other criteria -- see the criteria . For reviews that have an original (outside) rating (e.g. star, letter grade, numeric) we post that with the review on the site.

What is the Adjusted Tomatometer?

The Adjusted Tomatometer Score, which often appears in editorial lists, takes into account the number of reviews, the year of release, and the average Tomatometer scores of other films released contemporaneously. It is primarily used when comparing or ranking films across several decades. The adjusted score is not the official Tomatometer score – and is not used on a movie or TV page.

What is an embargo date?

A review embargo is set by the studio or TV network and prohibits outlets and organizations that have seen the film / TV show from posting reviews until that specified time. Sometimes studios and TV networks also set embargoes for social media reactions from critics and journalists.

Why don't certain movies or TV shows have Tomatometer scores yet?

Movies and TV shows must have at least five reviews to generate a Tomatometer score.

Why do certain movies only have a few reviews?

There are a variety of reasons why a film or TV show may not have many reviews on Rotten Tomatoes. The simplest explanation is there may not be many reviews from Tomatometer-approved critics available for that specific film or TV show in question. Other reasons include:

• Some available reviews haven't been collected or added yet.
• A film or TV show is from an era when film criticism was not as robust as it is now.
• A film or TV show review appeared in a print publication and may not have been published or made available online.

Why is one review with a 2.5 marked Fresh while another review marked 2.5 is marked Rotten? Likewise, why is one review with a 3/5 marked Fresh while another is marked Rotten? Shouldn't they always be Fresh or always be Rotten?

Sometimes a reviewer will give a rating that is in the middle, so a decision has to be made: is it Fresh or is it Rotten? When those reviews have been added to RT by a self-submitting critic or publication, we defer to their judgement. When our review curation team comes across a mixed review, we have a process in place to determine whether it is mixed-positive or mixed-negative. When two reviews that have the same individual rating are alternately marked Fresh and Rotten, it means that for one of those reviews, the critic felt mixed-positive, and for the other, the critic felt mixed-negative. Learn more about our curation process .

Who writes these reviews? Will you post mine?

Tomatometer-approved critics come from all across the U.S., and the world. They publish on a variety of platforms – among them you'll find podcasters, newspaper and magazine writers, bloggers, and YouTubers. Their reviews embody several key values – insight and dedication among them – and meet a set of Eligibility Guidelines . See our list of Tomatometer-approved critics .

Where is the Average rating now on the site?

The average rating can be viewed by clicking on the "More Info" tab in the Tomatometer module on movie pages.

What is the Average Rating? How is it calculated?

The Average Rating is an average of the individual critic scores, based on a 1-10 scale. Each critic's original rating scale (e.g. star, letter grade, numeric) is converted to a number between 1 and 10, and then the numbers are averaged. Reviews without individual ratings are not counted in the Average Rating calculation, and a minimum of five reviews with individual ratings is required for an Average Rating to be calculated. The Average Rating measures the overall quality of a film or TV show based on an average of individual critic scores. The Tomatometer simply measures the percentage of positive reviews for a given film or TV show.

Does Rotten Tomatoes employ critics?

No, Rotten Tomatoes does not employ critics.

What is a review aggregator?

A review aggregator is a website that collects reviews of products and services. Rotten Tomatoes collects film and TV reviews from critics who publish at outlets worldwide. These reviews are rated either Fresh or Rotten, which contributes to a film or TV show's Tomatometer score. Learn more about the Tomatometer .

What is the difference between a Critic Review, an Audience Review, and a User Rating?

A Critic Review is a review of a film or TV show that has been published by a Tomatometer-approved critic or source. An Audience Review is a review of a film or TV show that has been submitted by a Rotten Tomatoes user. A User Rating is a star rating given by a Rotten Tomatoes user through a star-rating mechanism. For more information on audience reviews and User Ratings .

Who are the approved Tomatometer critics?

How can i become a tomatometer-approved critic.

To become Tomatometer-approved, critics need to meet the eligibility guidelines and key values outlined in our Critics Criteria .

How does someone become a Top Critic?

Unlike critics who can apply to be Tomatometer approved, Top Critic status is granted by a set of criteria and a selection panel that includes the Rotten Tomatoes critic relations and curation teams, and a newly formed advisory board of critics and industry professionals. It cannot be applied for.

How do you identify who will receive Top Critic status?

We have an internal team at Rotten Tomatoes who continuously monitors and proactively identifies critics who qualify for Top Critic status.

AUDIENCE REVIEWS

What is the difference between the audience review and user rating.

An audience review is a text review of a film or TV show that has been submitted by a Rotten Tomatoes user. A User Rating is a user's star rating on a film or TV show, without a text review.

How do I leave a review?

If you are logged in, you can go to any movie or TV show's page to rate and/or review it using the star-rating system and text box directly under the Tomatometer. You can see your ratings by clicking on Profile in the drop-down menu at the top right of the page.

What is the minimum length of an Audience Review?

We require reviews to be a minimum of 20 characters in length.

When do I get to submit my audience review?

After confirming your email address, you can write a review when logged in to the site through a Rotten Tomatoes account or Gmail log-in.

When you are logged in, you'll be able to view a movie or TV show's details page and rate and/or review the movie or show using the stars and text box directly under the Tomatometer. For movies, reviews can be left after the film's theatrical release date.

Why is my review not showing up right away?

In an effort to encourage thoughtful discussion and debate, we require reviews to be a minimum of 20 characters in length to be published. Please also keep in mind that reviews may take some time to be published and are subject to our Code of Conduct . If you continue having trouble, contact customer service .

When will we see an Audience Score?

The Audience Score becomes available after the theatrical release date for a film. Only after that will users be able to leave an audience review or rating for that film.

Why can't I leave a review before the movie is released?

Rotten Tomatoes users can only leave audience reviews and User Ratings following a movie's U.S. release date, as listed on our site. Verified Reviews are available for movies in the U.S. that were released after May 23, 2019 – the date we added this feature.

Why do some movies have Audience Scores and user reviews before their release date?

A number of films are shown in special preview screenings or early screening series prior to their official U.S. release date. We allow users to rate and review these movies from the time of their first large-scale screenings.

What is a Verified Review?

A Verified Review is a review written by a user who we can confirm bought a ticket to the movie they're reviewing, which we believe is a strong indicator that they have seen the movie. “Verified” will be displayed next to a review to help users identify which reviews are “Verified.”

How does my review become verified?

When you submit a review on Rotten Tomatoes, you now have the option to select “Verify I bought my ticket” beneath the review text box and select the ticket provider from which you made your purchase. If the email address of your Rotten Tomatoes account matches the email address you used to buy your ticket, we will mark your review as “Verified”.

How do I know if my review has been verified?

If we're able to verify your ticket purchase, you'll see “Verified” next to your review once it's posted to Rotten Tomatoes.

Why is my review not verified?

Currently, if you did not buy your ticket from Fandango, your review cannot be “Verified”. We are planning to work with other ticket providers to help verify Rotten Tomatoes reviews and will add new options for verification in the future. If you purchased a ticket from Fandango and are having issues with your review being verified, please contact customer service .

Do all movies have Verified Reviews?

Verified Reviews are available for movies in the U.S. that were released May 23, 2019 – the date we added this feature.

What movies can have Verified Reviews?

Verified Reviews are possible for movies released in theaters in the United States from May 23, 2019 onward. Currently, movies released before that date and movies not released theatrically, as well as TV and streaming titles, won't have Verified Ratings or Reviews. We are planning to add functionality that will allow us to verify reviews no matter how and where a user saw a movie, TV, or streaming title.

Can I see all user ratings and reviews, even if they weren't verified?

If you're interested in seeing an Audience Score that includes all included ratings, not just those that have been verified, you can click the “more info” link beneath the Audience Score and choose “All Audience”. When reading reviews, choose the “All Audience” tab and all reviews are displayed with the newest one showing first. Verified Reviews will be displayed with a “Verified” icon to show we've confirmed that the reviewer has purchased a ticket to that movie.

Is a Verified Review different from Super Reviewer?

Yes. “Verified” simply means that we can confirm that the user writing the review purchased a ticket to the movie being reviewed. Super Reviewers are users who've demonstrated consistent insight and whose reviews we feature prominently on movie pages.

Can reviews from outside of the United States be verified?

Currently, we are only able to verify reviews for movies from reviewers who purchased tickets in the United States. We are working on ways we may be able to offer this feature for other reviewers outside of the United States in the future.

Why aren't there Verified Reviews on television pages and all movie pages?

Verified Reviews are available for movies that were released in the United States May 23, 2019 – the date we added this feature. We're planning to add other ticket and content providers in the future to help us verify reviews for more movies and TV/streaming.

Will you be adding more ways to verify reviews?

We are actively working on adding more ticket providers to help us confirm ticket purchases, as well as functionality that will allow us to verify reviews no matter how and where the user saw a movie.

Can I verify my reviews for Netflix and other streaming services?

Not currently, but we are always looking to improve the usefulness of our Audience rating system for fans and are working on ways we may be able to do this in future.

I purchased a physical ticket to a movie; how do I verify my review?

Currently, we cannot verify physical ticket purchases. However, we're currently considering ways we could do so in the future.

Someone purchased a ticket for me, how do I verify my review?

At this time, we can only verify one review and rating per transaction. So, if someone buys more than one ticket – say for a bunch for friends – each person can leave a review, but only the person with the email address used for the purchase will have their review verified.

Which companies are included in verifying tickets? Will there be more added in the future?

Currently, users can verify their reviews through Fandango. We are currently working to bring on additional ticket providers to help us verify reviews and ratings.

If my review is verified why isn't it included in the Tomatometer?

The Tomatometer is generated by the reviews of Tomatometer-approved professional critics who meet a set of criteria. These are professional, working movie and TV critics. Verified Reviews and ratings are made up of users who we can confirm purchased a ticket to the movie they're reviewing.

I have a Rotten Tomatoes account, why is my review not verified?

Reviews and ratings are verified when we can confirm the user bought a ticket to the movie.

I did buy a ticket on Fandango, but my review is not verified: why?

The review might not be verified for a couple reasons. First, if the email address for your Rotten Tomatoes account does not match your Fandango account email, we will not be able to confirm your ticket purchase and verify your review. Second, verifiable reviews may not be possible for the title you are reviewing (e.g. if it is an older movie, a streaming or TV title).

My ticket purchase was confirmed, but my Verified Review is not showing up on the site. Why can't I see my review?

In an effort to encourage thoughtful discussion and debate, we require reviews to be a minimum of 20 characters in length to be published. Please also keep in mind that reviews may take some time to be published and are subject to our Code of Conduct . If you continue having trouble, customer service .

CERTIFIED FRESH

W​hat is the difference between a wide-release certified fresh and limited release certified fresh.

Because films in limited release open in far fewer theaters than films in wide release, the threshold to achieve Certified Fresh status is lower. For more information on what qualifies a film for Certified Fresh status, click here .

Why aren't all movies marked Certified Fresh with 80 reviews at 80%?

The prerequisites for Certified Fresh status are only the bare minimum that a film must achieve to qualify for the distinction. A film does not automatically become Certified Fresh when it meets those prerequisites. Before we mark a film Certified Fresh, we must feel confident that the Tomatometer score has settled and isn't likely to deviate too much.

Why does it take longer for some movies to go Certified Fresh?

If the film in question is a wide release, you may find your answer above. If the film in question is a limited release, it may be because its Tomatometer score is right on the cusp of the bare minimum 75%, and the addition of more reviews could change the score in either direction. Another instance is a film is scheduled to expand from a limited to a wide release, in which case we would apply the Certified Fresh prerequisites for wide-release films to it and wait for the expansion to assess whether it qualifies.

How does a movie or TV show qualify for Certified Fresh status?

For information on Certified Fresh status, click here .

What is the curation process?

Curation is the process of adding reviews to our system. The majority of reviews on Rotten Tomatoes are added by a team of curators who check our Tomatometer-approved sources on a daily basis for new review articles, videos, and podcasts. Every review is analyzed thoroughly so the curator can determine if it should be marked as Fresh or Rotten. Next, the curator looks for a pull-quote that summarizes the review and best demonstrates its positive or negative opinion. Lastly, they include the original rating given by the critic, when available. Other reviews -- the ones that don't go through our curation process -- are added by the critics or outlets that published them, and they decide their own quotes and Fresh/Rotten designations.

How are reviews submitted?

Reviews are added in two ways: either through curation or by self-submitting Tomatometer- approved critics, who add their reviews themselves. Only reviews from approved critics and sources are included on the Tomatometer.

What is the difference between a self-submitted review and a curated review?

The majority of Tomatometer-approved reviews are collected by our curation team, who also mark a review Fresh or Rotten and select a representative pull-quote. Self-submitters are critics who add their own reviews, determine Fresh/Rotten status themselves, and select corresponding pull-quotes.

Individually approved critics can choose to be self-submitters or have our curation team collect reviews on their behalf, while approved publications have the option to nominate one critic/editor to submit reviews for their entire roster.

Do you ever reach out to a reviewer to get clarification on a review?

Yes. If the curation team is unable to reach a consensus on a review, we reach out to the reviewer and ask them to make the call.

How do you determine whether a review with no star rating is Fresh or Rotten?

When a review does not have a star rating or letter grade, the RT curator adding the review will assess whether it is Fresh or Rotten. If the curator is unable to do so, they will consult the curation team for independent analysis and attempt to come to a consensus. If the team is unable to reach a consensus on the review, they will reach out directly to the critic for the final word.

How do I submit a movie title to Rotten Tomatoes?

Before submitting a movie title to us, please do the following:

• Make sure we don't already have the title in our database by searching for it in the search field at the top of our site.
• If you cannot find the title you're looking for, submit a data request to us with the following: a link where information about the movie is listed, or provide basic details including the title, release year, and name of the director(s). Please note that page creation is at the discretion of Rotten Tomatoes' staff and may depend on additional criteria, as well as team resources. Not all requests may be fulfilled.

Your movie/actor information is wrong!

Thanks for catching that. We work hard to make sure all of our movie and actor information is correct, but sometimes this is not the case, due to studio changes, data import errors, etc. We also list wide release dates, which may look wrong to users who live in areas with previews and limited release showings.

If you do find inaccurate data, please tell us here ​ and we will check the data against our sources and contact the publicist or distributor if necessary.

USER ACCOUNTS

Can i merge my fandango and rotten tomatoes accounts.

No, Fandango and Rotten Tomatoes accounts cannot be merged.

Why can't I login via Facebook?

Option 1: Use the email address associated with your Facebook account to create a Rotten Tomatoes profile, and we will transfer your account history.

Option 2: If your Facebook account is a Gmail address, you can also use the Gmail login feature to create a Rotten Tomatoes profile, and we will transfer your account history.

Why can't I change my account username?

If you are logged in through Rotten Tomatoes, you can change your account username by scrolling over your name in the top right corner of any RT page and clicking the “Account” link. That will take you to the Account Settings page, where you will see the option to change your Profile Display Name.

Why can't I change my account profile image?

Currently, if you are logged in to a Rotten Tomatoes account using your email, there is no way to change your profile image.

Why can't I delete my account?

We are experiencing issues with that page, and we are working to resolve it. In the meantime, our team can manually delete your account if you send a request through this form and we are able to verify that you have access to the email address associated with the account in question.

Why do I need to confirm my account?

We ask our users confirm their accounts as a security precaution and to maintain the authenticity of the Audience Score.

How do I cancel a profile and remove my account?

If you want to cancel a Rotten Tomatoes account, please tell us here​ .

I have a question regarding my Flixster Video Ultraviolet account.

Flixster video is no longer in service and neither is UltraViolet.

Decoding The Symbols: Understanding What The Rotten Tomatoes Ratings Mean

• Last updated Jul 27, 2023
• Difficulty Intemediate

• Category Symbolism

When it comes to film and television reviews, Rotten Tomatoes has become a household name. But have you ever wondered what those little symbols next to the movie or TV show ratings actually mean? Whether it's a juicy red tomato or a squished rotten tomato, these symbols hold the key to determining whether a film or show is worth your time. Join me as we delve into the world of Rotten Tomatoes and uncover the hidden meanings behind those iconic symbols.

What You'll Learn

What are the different symbols used by rotten tomatoes and what do they represent, how does rotten tomatoes determine the rating for a movie or tv show, are there any limitations or criticisms of the rotten tomatoes rating system, how do the symbols on rotten tomatoes, such as the certified fresh or rotten icons, affect the perception of a movie or show, can you explain the significance of the tomatometer score and how it relates to the symbols on rotten tomatoes.

Rotten Tomatoes is a popular website that aggregates reviews for movies and TV shows. It uses a variety of symbols to represent the reviews and give an overall score for each title. These symbols help viewers quickly understand the general consensus on a particular movie or show. Here are the different symbols used by Rotten Tomatoes and what they represent.

• Certified Fresh: This symbol, denoted by a red tomato with a green background, indicates that a movie or TV show has received positive reviews from critics. To earn the "Certified Fresh" label, a title must have a Tomatometer rating of 75% or higher, with a minimum number of reviews.
• Fresh: The Fresh symbol, also a red tomato, indicates that a movie or show has received mostly positive reviews. Titles with a Tomatometer rating between 60% and 74% are considered "Fresh."
• Rotten: The Rotten symbol is represented by a green splat over a red tomato. It signifies that a movie or TV show has received mostly negative reviews. Titles with a Tomatometer rating below 60% are labeled as "Rotten."
• Audience Score: In addition to the Tomatometer rating, Rotten Tomatoes also includes an Audience Score. This score represents the average rating given by verified audience members who have submitted reviews. The Audience Score is represented by popcorn tubs and can range from 0% to 100%. This score gives viewers an idea of how the general audience perceives a particular title.

It's important to note that the Tomatometer and Audience Score are separate metrics. The Tomatometer represents the opinions of critics, while the Audience Score reflects the opinions of general viewers. It is not uncommon for there to be a discrepancy between the two scores, as critics and audiences often have different tastes and preferences when it comes to movies and TV shows.

Rotten Tomatoes' use of symbols makes it easy for viewers to quickly understand the overall consensus on a movie or TV show. Whether it's the "Certified Fresh" label, the "Fresh" symbol, the "Rotten" splat, or the Audience Score, these symbols provide valuable information that can help viewers make informed decisions on what to watch.

The Symbolic Meaning of the Horse Shoe: A Closer Look

You may want to see also

Rotten Tomatoes is a popular website that aggregates reviews from professional critics and calculates a rating for movies and TV shows based on those reviews. The website has become a go-to source for moviegoers and television enthusiasts who are looking for recommendations or simply want to gauge the critical reception of a particular film or show. But how exactly does Rotten Tomatoes determine the rating for a movie or TV show?

Rotten Tomatoes uses a unique system to calculate the rating called the Tomatometer. The Tomatometer is a percentage score that represents the overall positive reviews for a movie or TV show. A high percentage on the Tomatometer indicates that the film or show has received mostly positive reviews, while a low percentage indicates that it has received mostly negative reviews.

To determine the Tomatometer score, Rotten Tomatoes collects reviews from accredited critics, including professional journalists, bloggers, and other media members. These critics are carefully selected based on their expertise and credibility, ensuring that the reviews used to calculate the score come from trusted sources.

Once the reviews are collected, Rotten Tomatoes assigns each one a rating of either "fresh" or "rotten". A fresh rating indicates a positive review, while a rotten rating indicates a negative one. The rating is determined by the critic's overall opinion of the movie or TV show.

After assigning the fresh or rotten rating, Rotten Tomatoes calculates the overall percentage of positive reviews to determine the Tomatometer score. If a movie or TV show receives at least 60% positive reviews, it is considered "fresh" and receives a certified fresh badge. If the percentage falls below 60%, it is considered "rotten". The Tomatometer score is then displayed prominently on the movie or TV show's page on the Rotten Tomatoes website.

It's important to note that the Tomatometer score does not reflect the average rating of the reviews. For example, a movie or TV show with a 90% Tomatometer score does not mean that it received an average rating of 9 out of 10. Instead, it means that 90% of the reviews collected were positive.

While the Tomatometer score is a useful tool for quickly gauging critical reception, Rotten Tomatoes also provides additional information to help users make informed decisions. The website includes an Audience Score, which represents the percentage of Rotten Tomatoes users who rated the movie or TV show positively. This score can provide a different perspective, as it is based on the opinions of regular viewers rather than professional critics.

In conclusion, Rotten Tomatoes determines the rating for a movie or TV show by collecting reviews from accredited critics and assigning them a fresh or rotten rating. The overall percentage of positive reviews is then used to calculate the Tomatometer score. While the Tomatometer is a helpful tool, it's just one aspect of Rotten Tomatoes' comprehensive approach to providing valuable information to moviegoers and TV enthusiasts.

What Does the Yellow Eye Symbol Mean on TikTok: Decoding Its Meaning and Significance

Rotten Tomatoes is a popular movie and TV review aggregator that is widely used by both critics and audiences to determine the overall consensus on a particular film or TV show. While it is generally regarded as a useful tool for gauging the quality of a film or TV show, there are some limitations and criticisms that have been raised regarding the Rotten Tomatoes rating system.

One of the main criticisms of the Rotten Tomatoes rating system is its reliance on binary ratings, where a film or TV show is either classified as "fresh" or "rotten" based on whether its average rating is above or below a certain threshold. This binary system fails to capture nuance and can lead to misleading results. For example, a film with a rating of 6/10 can be classified as "rotten," despite having an overall positive reception from audiences and critics.

Another limitation of the Rotten Tomatoes rating system is that it does not take into account the intensity of the reviews. A film with a high percentage of positive reviews may have a lower average rating compared to a film with a lower percentage of positive reviews but higher average rating. This can distort the overall perception of a film's quality, as the average rating may be a more accurate representation of the critics' opinions than the percentage of positive reviews.

Furthermore, the Rotten Tomatoes rating system does not take into account the demographic breakdown of the reviews. While it provides an overall consensus on a film or TV show, it fails to acknowledge that different demographics may have varying opinions on a particular work. This can lead to a skewed representation of a film's quality and may not accurately reflect the opinions of specific demographics, such as minority groups or niche audiences.

Additionally, some critics argue that the Rotten Tomatoes rating system has an inherent bias towards mainstream blockbusters and popular films. This is because the system calculates the average rating by assigning equal weight to each review, regardless of the publication or the credibility of the critic. As a result, films with a larger number of reviews, such as big-budget Hollywood films, tend to have a higher average rating, even if some of the individual reviews may be negative. This can create a bias towards commercially successful films and may overlook smaller independent films that may have critical acclaim but a smaller number of reviews.

Despite these limitations and criticisms, the Rotten Tomatoes rating system remains a popular and influential tool for many moviegoers and TV viewers. It provides a general consensus on the quality of a film or TV show, which can be helpful for those looking for recommendations or to get an idea of the overall reception. However, it is important to approach the ratings with a critical eye and consider other factors, such as individual reviews and personal preferences, in order to make an informed decision about what to watch.

Understanding Weather Symbols and their Meaning on Android

When it comes to evaluating movies and TV shows, Rotten Tomatoes has become one of the most influential platforms. The website aggregates reviews from both professional critics and audience members, and assigns a score based on the percentage of positive reviews. However, it is not just the numerical score that holds power over the perception of a movie or show – the symbols used by Rotten Tomatoes, such as the Certified Fresh or Rotten icons, also play a significant role in shaping public opinion.

The Certified Fresh icon, represented by a red tomato, is a highly coveted symbol that signifies a movie or show has received positive reviews from critics and has achieved a certain threshold of overall approval. This symbol is accompanied by a numerical score, usually above 75%, which further reinforces the notion of quality. When a movie or show displays the Certified Fresh symbol, it instantly gains credibility in the eyes of the audience.

Conversely, the Rotten icon, represented by a green splatter, indicates that a movie or show has received negative reviews from critics and falls below the threshold of overall approval. This symbol is often accompanied by a score below 60%, which further cements the notion of a film's lack of quality. When a movie or show carries the Rotten icon, it can be seen as a warning sign for audiences to stay away.

These symbols have a psychological impact on viewers and influence their decision-making process. Seeing the Certified Fresh icon can create a sense of assurance and legitimacy, making viewers more inclined to watch the movie or show. On the other hand, the Rotten icon can create a sense of skepticism and doubt, leading viewers to opt-out of watching the content altogether.

The symbols themselves are visually striking and easy to understand, making them highly effective at grabbing the attention of potential viewers. The use of colors – red for Certified Fresh and green for Rotten – taps into the emotional associations we have with these colors. Red is often associated with positivity, success, and desirability, while green is associated with negativity, failure, and warning signs. This further reinforces the impact of the symbols on the perception of a movie or show.

Moreover, Rotten Tomatoes' symbols have become widely recognized and are frequently referenced in popular culture. They have become shorthand for the perceived quality of a movie or show, which has further solidified their influence on public perception. In today's digital age, audiences often rely on quick and easy ways to judge the worthiness of a movie or show, and these symbols provide exactly that.

However, while the symbols on Rotten Tomatoes can be helpful indicators, it is essential to approach them with caution. The symbols only represent aggregated reviews and may not necessarily align with an individual's personal taste. A movie or show that receives a Certified Fresh rating may still not resonate with every viewer, and a Rotten rating does not automatically make a film or show unwatchable. It is always important to consider individual preferences and interests when deciding what content to consume.

In conclusion, the symbols used by Rotten Tomatoes, such as the Certified Fresh or Rotten icons, play a significant role in the perception of a movie or show. They provide a quick and visually impactful way for audiences to judge the quality and desirability of content. However, it is crucial to remember that these symbols are just one piece of the puzzle and should be considered alongside personal preferences and interests.

Exploring the Rich Symbolism and Meaning Behind the Bison

The Tomatometer score is a critical tool used by Rotten Tomatoes to measure the consensus of film and television reviews. It is a helpful way for audiences to gauge the overall reception and quality of a movie or TV show. The significance of the Tomatometer score lies in its ability to provide a snapshot of popular opinion among critics.

Rotten Tomatoes assigns a Tomatometer score to each movie or TV show based on the percentage of positive reviews it receives. A high Tomatometer score indicates that a larger percentage of critics have given positive reviews, while a low score suggests a larger percentage of negative reviews. For example, a movie with a Tomatometer score of 90% means that 90% of the reviews collected by Rotten Tomatoes were positive.

Understanding the symbols associated with the Tomatometer score is important when interpreting the score. Rotten Tomatoes uses two symbols, the certified fresh tomato and a splattered green tomato, to visually represent a positive or negative review. A certified fresh tomato symbol is placed next to movies or TV shows with a Tomatometer score of 75% or higher, indicating a majority of positive reviews. On the other hand, a splattered green tomato symbol is used for movies or TV shows with a score below 75%, indicating a majority of negative reviews.

The certified fresh tomato symbol carries an added significance. In addition to having a Tomatometer score of 75% or higher, a movie or TV show must also have a minimum number of reviews (80 for wide releases and 40 for limited releases) to be considered certified fresh. This requirement helps to ensure that the positive reviews are not the result of a small sample size.

The Tomatometer score and its associated symbols allow audiences to quickly and easily assess the critical reception of a movie or TV show. Many viewers find it helpful to use the score as a starting point in deciding whether to watch something. However, it's important to remember that the score is based on the opinions of professional critics, and individual tastes may vary. It's always a good idea to read a variety of reviews and consider personal preferences when choosing what to watch.

In summary, the Tomatometer score and its symbols on Rotten Tomatoes are significant because they provide a reliable measure of critical consensus. The score helps audiences determine if a movie or TV show has received predominantly positive or negative reviews. By using the certified fresh tomato and splattered green tomato symbols, Rotten Tomatoes makes it easy for viewers to quickly assess the critical reception of a film or television program. However, it's essential to remember that personal preferences may differ, and reading a variety of reviews can provide a more comprehensive understanding of a movie or TV show.

The Symbolism and Meaning of Sparrows in Different Cultures

Frequently asked questions.

The Certified Fresh symbol on Rotten Tomatoes indicates that a movie or TV show has received positive reviews from a certain number of professional critics. To be Certified Fresh, a movie must have a Tomatometer score of 75% or higher, with at least 40 reviews from approved critics, including 5 Top Critics.

The Fresh symbol on Rotten Tomatoes means that a movie or TV show has received positive reviews from professional critics. However, unlike Certified Fresh, there is no specific threshold for the percentage of positive reviews required to receive the Fresh symbol.

The Rotten symbol on Rotten Tomatoes means that a movie or TV show has received mostly negative reviews from professional critics. To receive the Rotten symbol, a movie must have a Tomatometer score of 59% or lower.

The Audience Score on Rotten Tomatoes is the percentage of Rotten Tomatoes users who have rated a movie or TV show positively. It is a separate rating from the Tomatometer score, which is based on reviews from professional critics.

The Critics Consensus on Rotten Tomatoes is a summary of the general critical consensus for a movie or TV show. While it may not be as important as individual reviews, it can give a general idea of the overall critical reception. Some users find it helpful in determining whether or not to watch a particular title.

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Den of Geek

Rotten Tomatoes: is it a good thing for movies?

Should Rotten Tomatoes itself be given a splat, or certified fresh?

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Article reposted in light of Brett Ratner’s comments, here . Originally posted August 2016

You may have seen last year, but a petition started doing the rounds demanding that the Rotten Tomatoes web service get shut down, following a torrent of negative reviews that went live for David Ayer’s Suicide Squad movie. The petition was then updated, to clarify that its aim is “to deliver a message to the critics that there is a lot of people disagree with their reviews”. In truth, in the era of social media, I think there are few critics who aren’t aware of this.

Still, this followed a petition earliein 2016 which called for Disney to stop paying off film critics, in order to negate the glowing reviews for Marvel movies. That one was launched in the aftermath of the savaging that Bryan Singer’s X-Men: Apocalypse was on the receiving end of.

Fandom has a habit, of course, of defending what it cares about, and sometimes attacking what it doesn’t. But I was interested in the Rotten Tomatoes debate in particular, not least because it’s a service I’ve grown – at least from my side of the fence – increasingly uncomfortable with. To be clear: not the site or service itself, more what it represents.

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Certified Fresh

If you’ve not had the pleasure, Rotten Tomatoes is genuinely an excellent resource. It gathers together reviews from across the world of modern movies, and in theory, allows you to find critical voices that tend to tally closely with your own tastes, and follow their respective reviews. It’s a useful place for getting an idea of how a film is being received, and at what it sets out to do, I struggle to fault it.

What I do struggle with, though, is the number that it spits out at the end of it, regardless of whether you’ve made The Godfather or The Do-Over . Because what Rotten Tomatoes does is aggregate reviews. It’s not the first to do it – Metacritic was and has been doing a similar job on videogames for years – but it’s arguably the biggest at what it does. And certainly the most influential right now.

What Rotten Tomatoes does is take the mix of reviews, and comes up with a critical consensus of sort. Then, it also comes up with a ‘Tomatometer’ score. At the time of originally writing, the score for Suicide Squad stands at 33%. This, in the parlance of Rotten Tomatoes, is a ‘splat’.

A splat, let me tell you, is not what movie marketing departments want to hear about.

The two other gradings that Rotten Tomatoes offers are Fresh (for films that are averaging a score of 60% or higher), and – this is the big one – Certified Fresh. For a film to be Certified Fresh, its score needs to be 75% or higher, and to be reviewed by at least 80 different critics, of which at least five need to be from the service’s anointed ‘Top Critics’. The criteria is relaxed slightly for limited release films.

Rotten Tomatoes determines itself who those top critics are, and it basically allows the service to make a weighted distinction between the film critic of the Los Angeles Times , and the film critic of the Billericay Herald . That said, with over 300 critics listed and growing, it would be fair to say that Rotten Tomatoes is a broad church, and that the critics it aggregates are of… well, let’s go with ‘varying quality’.

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But here’s a crucial point: what Rotten Tomatoes looks at, in its calculations, is the number of positive reviews that a film or TV show has. Not how positive or negative: just whether the critic concerned like the film or show, or otherwise. Thus, if a film has six positive reviews and four negative ones, in theory, said score would be 60%.

That’s unlike Metacritic, which averages out the actual scores given to productions. With Rotten Tomatoes, how much a reviewer likes a film isn’t relevant. They might like it, it might be their favourite movie of all time, but it’ll still count as one homogenous positive when the calculation is made. With Metacritic, and I’m just using it as it’s the most obvious parallel example, if six critics give a film five stars and four critics give it just one, the score would be 68% (before any hidden weighting comes into play, and some suspect it does at Rotten Tomatoes too). More often than not, though, because of the way it calculates its totals, Rotten Tomatoes scores tend to be higher than Metacritic’s.

The key factor for the purposes of this piece: at Rotten Tomatoes, every film gets a score, and an icon, be it a splat, fresh or certified fresh image. And nobody at Rotten Tomatoes needs to see the film or show itself to determine that.

Why does it matter?

There’s a simple bottom line here: decisions are being made about films based on their Rotten Tomatoes score. They’re being made by audiences as to whether to see a film, by studios who use it as a metric to whether a movie is any good, and by people who write articles for websites as a similar indicator of some kind of hive mind. Furthermore, I’ve had anecdotal evidence that the Rotten Tomatoes score of a previous film is a factor – I’ve no idea how high – in getting a production company to even greenlight a future movie. I’ve had people involved with films quote their Rotten Tomatoes score at me, and in each case, both of us knew that it mattered to a degree. That’s whether we liked it or not.

I first got a flavour of the importance of Rotten Tomatoes a while back, when Den Of Geek was asked directly by the director of a movie if our review of his film was being uploaded to the service. This was back in 2013, and as it turned out, we’d given said movie a three-star rating, but that was higher than the majority of other reviewers. As such, if our more positive review was uploaded to the service, then we’d have edged his film closer to a coveted Fresh rating.

Such conversations are now not uncommon. Two important people in the marketing departments of major movie studios have been in touch with us direct in the last six months alone to ask our view of Rotten Tomatoes, and to specifically request we upload a certain review or two.

We didn’t, but for a reason. For in terms of this site’s relationship with Rotten Tomatoes, we’ve taken a look at it, but elected not to get involved. Den Of Geek US has signed up, and I fully understand why. I’m not playing prude or snob here, and maybe one day Den Of Geek UK will be a part of it. It really is a service with merit, after all.

It’s just that personally, I struggle with it. There’s already plenty of debate over the prevalence of star ratings in movie reviews, and whether they’re a good or bad thing. I believe star ratings are useful before you see a film, if you don’t want to read too much but just want to get some guidance. But, like most people who write about movies, I’d far rather people went with the words, rather than the star icons. Just as filmmakers would rather have a fuller response than a picture of some fruit and that aforementioned number.

After all, with an aggregated score, it feels too much to me like tens of thousands of words, of argument, of detail, and of discussion, are being boiled down to a number and a little picture. That, as we’ve seen with Suicide Squad , it becomes just about that one score. Suicide Squad has 33% on Rotten Tomatoes? It must be bad, goes the argument. Never mind that many individual critics are citing the performances of Margot Robbie and Will Smith, or the assorted merits of the film (I’ve not seen it as I write this, I should add). Just that the film’s been fed through the modern reviewing sausage machine, and critic democracy has determined it to be bad.

And maybe it is. But films aren’t black and white (well, some are, but I didn’t mean it like that), and film reviewing isn’t black and white (same). I’m someone who finds Rotten Tomatoes useful, certainly, but I’m also someone who shudders a little when I see it appearing on a graph or in a Powerpoint presentation, as if it’s a fixed determinant of what’s good or not. It’s worth reiterating that there’s little nuance to its scoring, and effectively it allows but three verdicts from individual critics: great, okay and terrible. It’s also worth noting that two movie studios have a financial stake in the service, although said stakes are so miniscule there’s no question that they’ve influenced the scores the site has generated.

One more thing, too: Rotten Tomatoes is another of the growing number of services that doesn’t produce the bulk of its material itself, rather that it stands on the shoulders of others.

But the question at the start: is Rotten Tomatoes good for movies? It depends, really. If it’s the line between a film getting made or not? I’ve got all sorts of alarm bells there. If it’s a help in choosing what to watch? It’s hard to grumble too much. But I do still suspect many people think that its score given to films and TV shows is an average total, when actually, that’s really not the case.

Going back to that petition, then: it’s clearly doomed to failure. But that it’s raised, indirectly, the issue of review aggregators and their influence in the first place is surely of merit. Feel free to rate this article a splat at your leisure…

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Simon Brew | @SimonBrew

Editor, author, writer, broadcaster, Costner fanatic. Now runs Film Stories Magazine.

Whose ratings should you trust? IMDB, Rotten Tomatoes, Metacritic, or Fandango?

by Alex Olteanu

A data scientist investigates

Should you watch a movie? Well, there are a lot of factors to consider, such as the director, the actors, and the movie’s budget. Most of us base our decision off of a review, a short trailer, or just by checking the movie’s rating.

There are a few good reasons you would want to avoid reading reviews, or watching a trailer, although they bring much more information than a rating.

First, you may want to completely avoid spoilers, no matter how small. I understand that!

Second, it could be that you want an uninfluenced experience of watching that movie. This usually applies only to reviews, which are sprinkled with frames, like “this is a movie about the complexity of the universe” or “this movie is really not about love”. Once these frames get encoded in your short-term memory, it’s really hard to stop them from interfering with your own movie experience.

Another good reason is that if you’re tired or hurried, you might not want to read a review, let alone watch a 2-minute trailer.

So a numeric movie rating seems to be a good solution in quite a few situations, for quite a few people.

This article aims to recommend a single website to quickly get an accurate movie rating, and offers a robust, data-driven argumentation for it.

Criteria for “the best”

Making such a recommendation is a lot like saying “this is the best place to look for a movie rating,” which is an evaluative statement, resting on some criteria used to determine what is better, what is worse or worst, and what is best, in this case. For my recommendation, I will use one single criterion: a normal distribution.

The best place to look for a movie rating is to see whose ratings are distributed in a pattern which resembles the most, or is identical to, the pattern of a normal distribution, which is this: given a set of values lying in a certain interval, most of them are in the middle of it, and the few others at that interval’s extremes. Generally, this is how a normal (also called Gaussian) distribution looks like:

What’s the rationale behind this criterion? Well, from my own experience consisting of several hundred movies, I can tell that I’ve seen:

• a few outstanding ones that I’ve watched several times
• a couple that were really appalling, and made me regret the time spent watching them
• and a whole bunch of average ones, for most of which I can’t even remember the plot anymore.

I believe that most people — whether critics, cinephiles, or just regular moviegoers — have had a similar experience.

If movie ratings do indeed express movie quality, then we should see the same pattern for both.

Given that most of us assess the bulk of movies as being of an average quality, we should see the same pattern when we analyze movie ratings. A similar logic applies for bad and good movies.

If you’re not yet persuaded that there should be such a correspondence between the patterns, think about the distribution of ratings for a single movie. As many people rate the movie, it’s not a leap of faith to assume that most often there will be many of them with similar preferences. They’ll generally agree that the movie is either bad, average, or good (I will quantify later these qualitative values). Also, there will be a few others who assess the movie with one of the other two qualitative values.

If we visualized the distribution of all the ratings for an individual movie, we would most likely see that one single cluster forms in one of the areas corresponding to a low, an average, or a high rating.

Provided most movies are considered average, the cluster around the average area has the greatest likelihood of occurring, and the other two clusters have a smaller (but still significant) likelihood. (Note that all these likelihoods can be quantified in principle, but this would require a lot of data, and would have the potential to turn this article into a book.)

The least likely would be a uniform distribution in which there are no clusters, and people’s preferences are split almost equally across the three qualitative values.

Given these likelihoods, the distribution of ratings for a large enough sample of movies should be one with a blunt cluster in the average area, bordered by bars of decreasing height (frequency), resembling, thus, a normal distribution.

If you have found all this hard to understand, consider this illustration:

IMDB, Rotten Tomatoes, Fandango, or Metacritic?

Now that we have a criterion to work with, let’s dive into the data.

There are a lot of websites out there that come up with their own movie ratings. I have chosen only four, mainly based on their popularity, so that I could get ratings for movies with an acceptable number of votes. The happy winners are IMDB , Fandango , Rotten Tomatoes , and Metacritic .

For the last two, I have focused only on their iconic rating types — namely the tomatometer , and the metascore — mainly because these are more visible to the user on each of the websites (meaning it’s quicker to find them). These are also shared on the other two websites (the metascore is shared on IMDB and the tomatometer on Fandango). Besides these iconic ratings, both websites also have a less-featured rating type where only users get to contribute.

I have collected ratings for some of the most voted and reviewed movies in 2016 and 2017. The cleaned dataset has ratings for 214 movies, and can be downloaded from this Github repo .

I haven’t collected ratings for movies released before 2016, simply because a slight change has occurred in Fandango’s rating system soon after Walt Hickey’s analysis , which I will refer to later in this article.

I’m aware that working with a small sample is risky, but at least this is compensated by getting the most recent snapshot of the ratings’ distributions.

Before plotting and interpreting the distributions, let me quantify the qualitative values I used earlier: on a 0 to 10 scale, a bad movie is somewhere between 0 and 3, an average one between 3 and 7, and a good one between 7 and 10.

Please take note of the distinction between quality and quantity. To keep it discernible in what follows, I will refer to ratings (quantity) as being low, average, or high. As before, the movie quality is expressed as bad, average, or good. If you worry about the “average” term being the same, don’t, because I will take care to avoid any ambiguity.

Now let’s take a look at the distributions:

At a simple glance, it can be noticed that the metascore’s histogram (that’s what this kind of graph is called) most closely resembles a normal distribution. It has a thick cluster in the average area composed of bars of irregular heights, which makes the top neither blunt, neither sharp.

However, they are more numerous and taller than the bars in each of the other two areas, which decrease in height towards extremes, more or less gradually. All these clearly indicate that most of the metascores have an average value, which is pretty much what we’re looking for.

In the case of IMDB, the bulk of the distribution is in the average area as well, but there is an obvious skew towards the highest average values. The high ratings area looks similar to what would be expected to be seen for a normal distribution in that part of the histogram. However, the striking feature is that the area representing low movie ratings is completely empty, which raises a big question mark.

Initially, I put the blame on the small sample, thinking that a larger one would do more justice to IMDB. Luckily, I was able to find a ready-made dataset on Kaggle containing IMDB ratings for 4,917 different movies. To my great surprise, the distribution looked like this:

The shape of the distribution looks almost the same as that for the sample with 214 movies, except for the low ratings area, which is in this case feebly populated with 46 movies (out of 4917). The bulk of the values is still in the average area, which makes the IMDB rating worth considering further for a recommendation, although is clearly hard to rival the metascore, with that skew.

Anyway, what’s really great about this outcome is that it can be used as a strong argument to support the thesis that the 214-movies sample is fairly representative for the whole population. In other words, there’s a greater confidence now that the results of this analysis would be the same — or at least similar — to the results reached if absolutely all the movie ratings from all the four websites were analyzed.

With this increased confidence, let’s move on to examining the distribution of Fandango’s ratings, which doesn’t seem to have changed much since Hickey’s analysis. The skew is still visibly towards the higher part of the movie rating spectrum, where most of the ratings reside. The area for the lower half of the average ratings is completely empty, just like the one for low ratings. It can easily be concluded that the distribution is quite far from fitting my criterion. Consequently, I won’t consider it further for a possible recommendation.

(I promise that the torment of scrolling up will end soon. It’s much easier to compare the distributions if they are placed one near the other, rather than having them scattered across the article.)

Lastly, the tomatometer’s distribution is unexpectedly uniform, and would look even flatter under a different binning strategy (a binning strategy is defined by the total number of bars and their ranges; you can play with these two parameters when you’re generating a histogram).

This distribution is not easy to interpret in context, because the tomatometer it’s not a classical rating, but rather represents the percentage of critics who gave a positive review to a movie. This makes it unfit for the bad-average-good qualitative framework, because it makes movies either good, either bad. Anyway, I guess it should still boil down to the same normal distribution, with most of the movies having a moderate difference between the number of positive reviews and the negative ones (rendering many ratings of 30% — 70% positive reviews), and a few movies having a significantly bigger difference, in one way or the other.

Given the last consideration and the shape of the distribution, the tomatometer doesn’t meet my criterion. It could be that a larger sample would do it more justice, but even so, if I were to recommend it, I would do it with some reserves because of the vague positive or negative rating system.

At this point of the analysis, I could say that by looking at the distributions, my recommendation is the metascore.

However, the IMDB’s distribution seems to be worth considering as well, especially if you tweak a little the rating intervals for the three qualitative categories (intervals which I defined myself, more or less arbitrarily). From this perspective, recommending the metascore by mostly doing a visual examination is clearly not enough.

So, I will try to delimit between these two by using a quantitative method.

The idea is to use the Fandango variable as a negative reference, and then determine which variable, from the IMDB rating and the metascore, is the least correlated with it (I call these variables because they can take different values — for example, the metascore is a variable because it takes different values, depending on the movie).

I will simply compute some correlation coefficients, and the variable with the smallest value will be my recommendation (I will explain then how these correlation coefficients work). But before that, let me briefly justify choosing the Fandango variable as a negative reference.

Fandango’s users love movies too much

One reason for this choice is that the distribution of Fandango’s movie ratings is the furthest from that of a normal one, having that obvious skew towards the higher part of the movie ratings spectrum.

The other reason is the cloud of suspicion around Fandango left by Walt Hickey’s analysis . On October 2015, he was also puzzled by a similar distribution, and discovered that on Fandango’s website the numerical ratings were always rounded to the next highest half-star, not to the nearest one (for example, a 4.1 average rating for a movie would have been rounded to 4.5 stars, instead of 4.0).

The Fandango team fixed the biased rating system, and told Hickey that the rating logic was rather a “software glitch” on their website, pointing towards an unbiased system on their mobile app. (More about this on Hickey’s article .) The adjustment did change some statistical parameters for the better, but not enough to convince me not to work with the Fandango variable as a negative reference.

This is what the change looks like:

Now, let’s zoom in on Fandango:

Between the metascore and the IMDB rating, which is the least correlated with the Fandango rating?

The least correlated with the Fandango rating is the metascore. It has a Pearson’s r value of 0.38 with respect to Fandango, while the IMDB rating has a value of 0.63.

Now let me explain all this.

As two variables change, taking different values, they are correlated if there’s a pattern corresponding to both changes. Measuring correlation simply means measuring the extent to which there is such a pattern.

One of the ways to perform this measure is to compute the Pearson’s r. If the value is +1.0, it means there’s a perfect positive correlation, and if it’s -1.0, it means there’s a perfect negative correlation.

The extent to which the variables are correlated decrease as the Pearson’s r approaches 0, from both the negative and the positive side.

Let’s better visualize this:

Now, to put the abstraction above into context, if we compare how the values for two rating types change — say Fandango’s and IMDB’s — we can determine the degree to which there’s a pattern corresponding to both changes.

Given the correlation coefficients just mentioned, there is a pattern between Fandango and IMDB to a greater extent than is for Fandango and the metascore. Both coefficients are positive, and, as such, the correlation is said to be positive, which means that as Fandango’s ratings go up, IMDB’s ratings tend to go up as well, more than the metascores do.

Put differently, for any given movie rating on Fandango, it is more probable that the metascore is going to be more different from it than the IMDB rating.

The verdict: use Metacritic’s metascore

All in all, I recommend checking the metascore whenever you are looking for a movie rating. Here’s how it works, and its downsides.

In a nutshell, the metascore is a weighted average of many reviews coming from reputed critics. The Metacritic team reads the reviews and assigns each a 0–100 score, which is then given a weight, mainly based on the review’s quality and source. You can find more about their rating system here .

Now, I just want to point out a few downsides of the metascore:

• The weighting coefficients are confidential, so you won’t get to see the extent to which each review counted in the metascore.
• You’ll have a rough time finding metascores for less-known movies that appeared before 1999, the year Metacritic was created.
• Some recent movies whose main language is not English aren’t even listed on Metacritic. For example, the Romanian movies Two Lottery Tickets (2016) and Eastern Business (2016) are not listed on Metacritic, while they are on IMDB, with ratings.

Few more words

To sum up, in this article I made a single recommendation of where to look for a movie rating. I recommended the metascore, based on two arguments: its distribution resembles the most a normal one, and it is the least correlated with the Fandango rating.

All the quantitative and the visual elements of the article are reproducible in Python, as it is shown here .

Thanks for reading! And happy movie-going!

If this article was helpful, share it .

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Rotten Tomatoes: Where movie reviews are fresh or rotten

March 4, 2018 / 10:04 AM EST / CBS News

Thanks to the internet, the views of movie critics nationwide are being forged into a single critical mass. Jim Axelrod shows us how it's done:

If the artwork in the lobby of this California tech company doesn't tip you off, take a walk down the hall, past the themed conference rooms, such as the "Casablanca" room.

Or listen in to the discussion at the morning meeting. "Our top movies are 'Black Panther' and … it's just 'Black Panther'!" said Zoey.

Welcome to the headquarters of Rotten Tomatoes.

Even as the entertainment industry gathers tonight to see which of this year's films the Academy thought best, this company may be re-shaping the way we go to the movies -- and how we choose what we see.

"Without a Rotten Tomatoes, I as an individual, I guess I'd have to go read a hundred reviews," said Paul Yanover, the president of Fandango -- the online ticket company that acquired Rotten Tomatoes two years ago.

"Perfect marriage here of a technology company and an entertainment company," he said.

More than a third of moviegoers now make checking Rotten Tomatoes the last thing they do before buying a ticket. The site aggregates dozens of reviews curated from thousands of company-approved critics, and calculates the percentage that are positive.

"We're democratizing that research, and then we are democratizing access to it through the internet," said Yanover.

Jeff Voris, a vice president at Rotten Tomatoes, explained: "A curator will go find a review, put it in the system, and then read it to determine, is it 'fresh' or 'rotten'? If they're not sure, then our process is we send it to three other curators on the team who all read it independently."

Yanover added, "If there's real uncertainty, we'll go to the source and say, 'You're not being clear. Are you recommending this movie, or are you not?'"

If 75% or more of the critics post positive reviews (like 97% did with "Black Panther"), the movie is "Certified Fresh."

A score of 60 to 74 on the "Tomatometer" (like "Beauty and the Beast," with 71%) only gets you a "Fresh."

What you are trying to avoid as a filmmaker is a number under 60. That gets a "Rotten" thrown at it.  

"50 Shades Freed," for instance, had a Tomatometer score of 12!

It's Siskel and Ebert for the digital age.

When asked how wigged out studios are by Rotten Tomatoes, Ethan Titleman, who works for the National Research Group (a polling firm that tracks industry trends), said, "I think they're scared. It's still that shortcut. 

"And you can agree or disagree with the reviewer, but really nothing beats seeing that score at the end to know, yeah, I wanna spend my money or I don't wanna spend my money on this movie."

And that's exactly what spooks the studios: The idea their marketing machines may not be as able to overcome bad reviews in the age of Rotten Tomatoes.

"Rotten Tomatoes came on the scene, and it wasn't the voice of individual reviewers that mattered; it was a collective voice of Rotten Tomatoes," said Michael Lynton, the former CEO of Sony Entertainment. "I do know people pay a lot of attention to it. And I do think it does have an effect on how a movie opens. And it certainly has an effect on what the legs of a picture are."

Perhaps that's why director Martin Scorsese recently called Rotten Tomatoes "hostile to serious filmmakers," in a column for the Hollywood Reporter :

"They rate a picture the way you'd rate a horse at the racetrack, a restaurant in a Zagat's guide, or a household appliance in Consumer Reports . They have everything to do with the movie business and absolutely nothing to do with either the creation or the intelligent viewing of film. The filmmaker is reduced to a content manufacturer and the viewer to an unadventurous consumer."

"It's a very oversimplified system -- fresh/rotten" remarked Claudia Puig, president of the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, who sees more negative than positive with Rotten Tomatoes. "And there's a lot more nuance in film criticism. There's a lot more nuance in people's appreciation of film. I wish that there were more categories -- that there was, you know, a slightly overcooked tomato, a slightly raw tomato!"

Even with her issues with Rotten Tomatoes, Puig is still one of their top reviewers.

It seems there's no disputing the website's influence these days. "Certainly, studios are thinking, 'How are we going to reach the largest amount of people? How are we going to make the most money?'" said Puig.

And to do that in this day and age, she said, "You gotta get a good score on Rotten Tomatoes."

Axelrod asked Fandango's Paul Yanover, "Do you dispute the notion that Rotten Tomatoes has now almost achieved make-or-break status for movies being released?"

"I think that's too strong a statement," he replied. "I don't think it's make-or-break."

Jeff Voris said, "We don't think that at all. We believe that, if anything, we help shine a light often on films or TV shows that you might not know a lot about otherwise."  

Axelrod said, "I guess the school of thought there is, if you want to make a successful movie now, you've got to thread this Rotten Tomatoes needle. Do the moviemakers, the producers, the studios, do they have a point?"

Yanover said, "I look at it this way: Right now, there are nine Oscar-nominated movies [for Best Picture]. I believe every single one of them is Certified Fresh."

This year's Best Picture Oscar nominees, in order of Rotten Tomatoes' "Certified Fresh" ranking :

"Get Out" 99% "Lady Bird" 99% "Call Me By Your Name" 96% "Dunkirk" 93% "The Shape of Water" 92% "Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri" 92% "Phantom Thread" 91% "The Post" 88% "Darkest Hour" 86%

         For more info:

• rottentomatoes.com
• National Research Group
• Follow  @ClaudiaPuig on Twitter
• Los Angeles Film Critics Association

     Story produced by Gabriel Falcon.

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What does a 'fresh' rating on Rotten Tomatoes actually mean?

By Josh Terry

Depending on who you listen to, Rotten Tomatoes is out to destroy the world.

Fine, that might be a slight exaggeration. But the produce-themed movie review site has taken some flak in recent years — some felt the site unfairly sabotaged DC’s “Batman v Superman” in 2016 — and if your financial well-being is directly tied to annual box office receipts, Rotten Tomatoes could be a sore spot.

The basic argument is that even though Rotten Tomatoes is meant to be a reflection of critical and audience reaction, the site is having a pre-emptive effect on ticket sales.

Of course, promoters are more than happy to use the site when it serves their purposes. All kinds of well-reviewed movies will incorporate certified “fresh” scores into their advertising. It’s only when a movie stinks that the complaints come along. I think the bigger issue — if you can call it that — is that most people don’t understand how Rotten Tomatoes works.

When we see a percentage score out of 100, we naturally associate the results with the grades we got in school. Scores in the 90s were A’s, B’s were in the 80s and so on. So when a movie such as “Black Panther” gets a certified “fresh” 97 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, we interpret it as a film that is near perfection, while a film such as last year’s “The Emoji Movie” that lands around 9 percent, must be a steaming pile of garbage.

Now, most of the movies that score that low are steaming piles of garbage. But things get tricky around the 50-60 percent area (anything below 60 percent is considered “rotten”), where a percentage that might merit a D or an F in high school could mean something else entirely online.

This is because the Rotten Tomatoes score turns whatever metric the critic is using (stars, letter grades, thumbs) into a simple pass/fail. It doesn’t represent how much critics liked it or how much they hated it. It merely separates all the likes from all the dislikes.

In that light, a film that scores 98 percent might not be all that far from one at 59 percent. It just means the 98 percent movie got mostly positive reviews — not necessarily glowing reviews — where the 59 percent of critics who liked the second film might think it’s the best movie in the last decade.

Going back to the “Black Panther” example, I gave it 3 stars out of 4, which is my way of saying it was a good, solid movie, nothing wonderful. But my positive gets counted the same as every other positive, which in this case added up to 97 percent. I certainly wouldn’t give it an “A” in that sense, but I would recommend it.

It’s always interesting to see how Rotten Tomatoes interprets the reviews I feel a bit more divided on. If I wind up giving a movie 2½ stars, it’s because there’s something I clearly don’t like about it but can’t completely condemn it for. For example, “15:17 to Paris” had a great finish but stumbled quite a bit to get there, so I gave it 2½ out of 4.

To their credit, often the Rotten Tomatoes reps will email me to double-check before they make a decision on one of my more ambiguous reviews, and once you factor in the “audience score” and the “average rating,” there’s more than enough information to get a clear consensus.

None of this addresses the question of whether seeing that aggregate is going to pre-emptively steer audiences from “bad” movies, but isn’t that kind of what the site is supposed to do? My guess is the people who don’t like Rotten Tomatoes are probably the same people who don’t think much of critics anyway, and that’s fine. It’s your 10 bucks — just don’t say I didn’t try to warn you.

There Are Only Two Perfect Sci-Fi Movies, According To Rotten Tomatoes

It doesn't mean anything to say a movie is "perfect" in any objective sense. Unless Rotten Tomatoes says it does, of course.

The website that Martin Scorsese considers "hostile to filmmakers" and which would have you believe that Rick Alverson's excellent "The Comedy" is a complete dud, is to many people the be-all and end-all of movie analysis. The site occupies such a vaunted position within film discourse that it has an inordinate sway over our own viewing habits. We've all been scrolling through some streaming service only to skip over a film because of a low RT score that is, for some reason, baked right into the interface. Likewise, if Rotten Tomatoes says a movie is "Fresh" then people are going to pay attention.

Look, it doesn't matter that last year a Rotten Tomatoes hacking scandal emerged , or that movie studios and streamers rely far too much on the Tomatometer as a marketing tool. It's not a big deal that the way in which RT scores are calculated is mysterious at best, or that Warner Bros. and Universal Pictures owner Comcast have stakes in the company. What matters is that Rotten Tomatoes gives us an easily digestible way to understand whether movies are "good" or not. So, if the website says a movie is "perfect," that obviously means the film is an incontrovertibly brilliant all-time classic, and everything else is not. When it comes to sci-fi — the genre to which such celebrated classics as "2001: A Space Odyssey" belongs — RT has evidently bestowed this esteemed designation to just two films. So get ready to dutifully follow the Tomatometer and only watch two sci-fi films for the rest of your life.

Read more: 12 Reasons Why The Original Series Is The Best Star Trek Show

The Only Two Perfect Sci-Fi Movies Ever Made

Hey, it's totally fine that Rotten Tomatoes set up a needlessly restrictive binary between "Fresh" and "Rotten" movies because now, we've got yet another largely meaningless way to categorize art: the "perfect" RT score. We've already had the Royal decree declaring there will forever be only two perfect horror movies , and now we have official confirmation that there are also only two perfect science fiction films: James Cameron's startlingly prescient 1984 sci-fi slasher "The Terminator" and Andrei Tarkovsky's 1979 sci-fi thriller masterpiece "Stalker."

But what does it actually mean to have a "perfect" Rotten Tomatoes score? Well, the site works by aggregating approved critics' reviews and calculating a Tomatometer score. These critics submit reviews and, according to the site:

"When at least 60% of reviews for a movie or TV show are positive, a red tomato is displayed to indicate its Fresh status. When less than 60% of reviews for a movie or TV show are positive, a green splat is displayed to indicate its Rotten status."

Films or shows that maintain a "consistent Tomatometer score of 75% or higher," have at least five reviews from Top Critics, and meet various other seemingly arbitrary criteria are also eligible for the esteemed "Certified Fresh" designation. But even that elusive prize pales in comparison to achieving a perfect RT score, which basically just means a film has hit 100% on the Tomatometer. Currently, "The Terminator" and "Stalker" are the only two sci-fi movies to earn such a coveted ranking, which is fine. But surely this is just another reminder that RT scores really shouldn't command as much influence as they do.

If You're Going To Pick To Perfect Sci-Fi Films, You Could Do Worse

If you were forced to pick two perfect sci-fi movies, you could do a lot worse than "The Terminator" and "Stalker." James Cameron's 1984 breakthrough remains as remarkable and relevant today as it was when it first debuted. Cameron himself believes the events of "The Terminator" could actually happen and in today's culture where the shadow of AI looms, ready to be welcomed with open arms by Joe Russo , that perspective feels unsettlingly reasonable. But aside from the unnerving sense that it's "sci" isn't all that "fi," "The Terminator" was and is just a damn good time at the movies, melding elements of slasher horror with sci-fi to make a wholly original film that, some dodgy practical effects aside, has stood the test of time.

"Stalker," meanwhile, is similarly unnerving but in a much more arthouse, slow-burn way than its fellow "perfect" film. Like "The Terminator," Andrei Tarkovsky's 1979 effort can, at times, feel like a horror movie, but contains a big psychological thriller aspect that stems from its science fiction premise. The titular Stalker is played by Alexander Kaidanovsky, and acts as a guide to a writer (Anatoly Solonitsyn) and a professor (Nikolai Grinko), both of whom seek to enter a restricted area known as "The Zone." Just what "The Zone" is remains somewhat ambiguous, beyond it being a heavily guarded region where some calamitous event occurred, creating a room capable of granting a person's deepest wishes.

Like "The Terminator," Tarkovsky's film is often included in lists of the top sci-fi movies , and was even ranked as the 29th greatest film ever made in the British Film Institute's 2012 list . So, if there's going to be a "perfect" sci-fi film ranking, both movies are certainly worthy of consideration.

Yet Another Reminder That Rotten Tomatoes Isn't The Be-All And End-All

While Rotten Tomatoes isn't necessarily proclaiming "The Terminator" and "Stalker" to be objectively perfect, the site is based on a ranking system that at least has the veneer of a somewhat objective process, which simply collates existing reviews and spits out an overall ranking.

But aside from the fact that these rankings are just aggregations of individual subjective opinions, they're also, as we've seen, open to manipulation. All of which is to say that it's fun to see which movies can attain the "perfect" RT ranking, but that's really all it is. While that may seem obvious, these percentage ratings have come to dominate much of the discourse surrounding film and TV, suggesting we might be taking it all a little too seriously. So, rather than wrap things up with more pessimism about the state of modern film and TV discourse, allow this to be a reminder of something hopefully reassuring: your own opinion is and always has been enough.

Read the original article on SlashFilm .

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X-Men '97 First Reviews: "Marvel's Best Release in Years," Critics Say

Thanks to its nostalgic 2d animation style, smart writing, and captivating action sequences, critics say the highly-anticipated sequel to x-men: the animated series is "x-quisite.".

TAGGED AS: Animation , First Reviews , television , TV

X-Men ’97 is the animated sequel to X-Men: The Animated Series , which went off the air after a five-season run on Fox in 1997. The 10-episode new season, which was created by Beau DeMayo , continues the adventures of the X-Men in the classic 2D animation style of the original series. The series marks the introduction of the classic group of superhero mutants to the MCU. The first two episodes are now streaming on Disney+.

Many of the original voice cast have returned, including Cal Dodd as Wolverine, George Buza as Beast, Lenore Zann as Rogue and Alison Sealy-Smith as Storm. Joining them are Jennifer Hale as Jean Grey, Holly Chou as Jubilee, A.J. LoCascio as Gambit, Ray Chase as Cyclops, JP Karliak as Morph and Matthew Waterson as Magneto.

Needless to say, there’s a lot of buzz surrounding the show. Is it all nostalgia or does the series deliver the goods? Here’s what critics are saying about X-Men ’97 :

How does it compare to X-Men: The Animated Series ?

(Photo by Marvel Animation)

The stories of those old episodes hold up, but the show itself is difficult to watch on modern television. X-Men ‘97 has none of those problems and it’s a joy seeing these characters animated in a new, crisp series. — Max Covill, RogerEbert.com

Despite carrying over styles, characters and actors from three decades ago, the show, in sum, represents Marvel’s best release in years. Yes, better than anything else in movies, live-action, streaming, or animation. — David Reddish, Wealth of Geeks

It threads the needle of adaptation and rebooting very well. These first three episodes of X-Men ’97 are great, and I expect the rest of the season to continue with that greatness. — Julian Lytle, RIOTUS

X-Men ’97 does an outstanding job of honouring X-Men: The Animated Series while still carving out a path for itself. — Britany Murphy, Muses of Media

Taking its cues from the original series, embracing the past, but ready to forge a path into the future, Marvel Animation’s X-Men ‘97 is entertaining and dramatic and retains the vibrant spirit of the original series. — Rodrigo Perez, The Playlist

As Marvel’s first X-Men offering since reclaiming the rights to the property five years ago, this show is a welcome indicator of the franchise’s future. It’s not just good, it’s X-quisite. — Zaki Hasan, San Francisco Chronicle

X-Men ‘97 represents the best kind of nostalgic exercise. It pays loving tribute to the original X-Men: The Animated Series while also smoothing over some of that show’s rough edges. — Jesse Schedeen, IGN Movies

How is the voice cast?

The voice performances are strong across the board, even if some cast members perhaps sound a little too old for their respective roles. — Josh Wilding, ComicBookMovie.com

The returning cast members haven’t lost a beat either, particularly Sealy-Smith and Dodd, who are up there with Kevin Conroy’s take on Batman as defining performers for their respective characters. Out of the new additions, Jennifer Hale stands out the most. The stalwart voice performer’s characterization of Jean Grey comes with all the warmth, lovability and determination that’s made the character so beloved, continuing to prove that she’s one of the best vocal actors in the industry. — William Goodman, TheWrap

The voice cast in X-Men ‘97 is generally strong, featuring a mix of returning favorites and new soundalikes. Frankly, there would have been no point in bringing anyone back if Dodd weren’t available to voice Wolverine. Between him, Alison Sealy-Smith’s Storm and Zahn’s Rogue, the new series has the most important bases covered. The newcomers mostly settle into their roles nicely. — Jesse Schedeen, IGN Movies

Does the writing and animation deliver?

The pace can be dizzying, but when rendered in the pleasantly throwback, neon-colored, two-dimensional style of the original, it’s also engaging. There’s no time for things to drag when the plot is this packed. — Alison Herman, Variety

What’s ultimately crucial is that X-Men ’97 gets these characters right, and watching the heroes interact on screen (whether it’s battling Sentinels or hanging out in the X-Mansion) proves to be the biggest source of joy in the opening three episodes. — Josh Wilding, ComicBookMovie.com

The series is part drama, part sitcom, part action fantasy, all wrapped up in a zippy half-hour package as accessible to the casual newcomer as it is to those who’ve been waiting 27 years to find out what happens next. — Angie Han, Hollywood Reporter

Yet new watchers coming into X-Men ‘97  blind will find the writing often provides the right amount of context around past events without falling into extensive exposition. — William Goodman, TheWrap

X-Men ’97 is exciting, it’s action-packed, but wow does the writing breathe new life into these already complex and fascinating characters. — Lauren Milici, Total Film

What about the action sequences?

The series makes the most of the fact that it’s not bound by the same kid-friendly standards as the original. The X-Men are finally allowed to cut loose and unleash their powers in ways they never could back in the ‘90s. Even Cyclops, for all that he may be a stick in the mud, personality-wise, comes across as just plain cool on the field of battle. — Jesse Schedeen, IGN Movies

The action sequences, like the recently released clip of the team fighting the mutant-hunting Sentinels, are easily the standouts. — William Goodman, TheWrap

The animation here is evoking the original designs, but modernizing them with flair, as everything looks more dynamic, the characters are vibrant, and the action scenes are truly jaw-dropping. — Ross Bonaime, Collider

The action sequences are thought out so well, with interesting camera angles and movements with such fluidity as the characters move on the screen. — Julian Lytle, RIOTUS

Are there any overarching themes?

When Roberto protests that he was “born this way” or a sneering bigot tells weather goddess Storm (Alison Sealy-Smith) that tolerance is only “a fad,” those moments draw power from the connections we make in our own minds to the oppression of queer people, people of color, women and so on. — Angie Han, Hollywood Reporter

X-Men  as a whole deals with the timeless question of what an oppressed minority owes its oppressor, and specific creations like the blue-furred scientist Beast (George Buza) and Cajun card-thrower Gambit (AJ LoCascio) have reputations that precede them. Shape-shifter Morph (JP Karliak) gets a slight makeover, but while DeMayo has described them as nonbinary, their gender neutrality comes off more as an extension of their longstanding superpower than a conspicuous nod to modern mores. — Alison Herman, Variety

Much of X-Men ‘97 is about the team grappling with their respective futures. It’s a fitting theme, considering this is the start of the franchise’s tenure under Marvel Studios, and getting it wrong could spell danger for what’s to come when the characters inevitably make their live-action debut. — William Goodman, TheWrap

But the episode doesn’t shy away from tackling some pretty big topics (something the original series was known to do), including motherhood, identity, abandonment, and the complicated feelings that come along with grief. — Lauren Milici, Total Film

Any final thoughts?

Absolutely no notes. It’s perfect. — Tessa Smith, Mama’s Geeky

It took nearly three decades to return to this world, but X-Men ’97 makes the wait well worth it. — Ross Bonaime, Collider

It may not reinvent the wheel, but in a certain sense, it does lay the groundwork for what Marvel hopes will be an, ahem, x-citing future. — Nick Schager, The Daily Beast

X-Men ‘97 marks an excellent start for the MCU mutant era. — William Goodman, TheWrap

For now, X-Men ’97 is a ‘90s-soaked delight that finally brings mutants back to our screens to usher in a marvellous new era of storytelling. — Josh Wilding, ComicBookMovie.com

X-Men '97: Season 1 (2024) premiered its first two episodes on Wednesday, March 20 on Disney+. New episodes will air weekly on Wednesdays.

Thumbnail image by Marvel Animation. On an Apple device? Follow Rotten Tomatoes on Apple News .

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Anne Hathaway's new movie lands mixed Rotten Tomatoes rating

Mother' Instinct is not mothering, say critics.

Anne Hathaway's new movie Mothers' Instinct is out now in cinemas, and the reviews have been released, too.

Hathaway and Jessica Chastain star as two 1960s neighbours who experience a horrible tragedy when one of their children falls from the balcony to their death. Soon enough, paranoia sets in and sinister accusations start getting thrown around.

While the film and its trailer bill it as a psychological thriller, critics found it more on the silly side and an exercise in unintentional camp.

Related: First trailer for Anne Hathaway's new movie inspired by Harry Styles

As a reminder, Rotten Tomatoes scores reflect the percent of critics who gave positive reviews, rather than an average of the scores. So in this case, less than half of them liked it at this time.

Here are what some reviews have said.

The Guardian - 2/5

"The movie ends up with such wild absurdity that it's difficult to recall the interesting and plausible touches of dysfunction and ambiguity that went into the opening scenes – particularly some business concerning a kid's toy bunny. But when the curtain rises on the third act, it is time for some very ripe and silly overacting and homicidal machinations which are wince-making in the wrong way."

The Telegraph - 2/5

"Susan Sontag famously defined camp as 'a seriousness that fails'. Where does that leave failed camp? Exhibit A: the duffness of Mothers' Instinct , which pairs Jessica Chastain and Anne Hathaway as 1960s neighbours feuding after a tragedy we can neither take seriously nor relish in the least."

Related: Anne Hathaway praises Christopher Nolan for "backing" her after online backlash

Empire - 4/5

"The real power of Mothers' Instinct lies in its dynamite cast. Hathaway, whose hair and costuming has echoes of Jackie Kennedy, is outstanding as a mother trying to reacclimate to society after a terrible loss. It's the hints at something more sinister lying behind the sincerity of her performance that makes her such a treat to watch. Chastain provides a worthy foil, suffering from her own overpowering guilt and anxiety while simultaneously trying to create an idyllic life for her husband and son."

The Film Stage - B-

" Mothers' Instinct slowly, surely gravitates from social-issue melodrama into more conventional thriller territory, and this isn't a slight letdown from what came before for how well Hathaway threads the needle between two disparate genres. The more impressive thing about Delhomme's film is that it, for the most part, commits to being a sincere, character-driven story about the very different effects grief has on two people, risking caricature because of its occasionally overblown theatrics while maintaining a sincerity through it all."

Mothers' Instinct is out in UK cinemas now.

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Joe Anderton is a freelance news writer and resident Welsh person at Digital Spy , having worked there since 2016. 

In his time he's covered a host of live events, interviewed celebrities big and small and crowbarred a countless amount of great/awful (delete as appropriate) puns into articles. 

A big fan of TV and movies both mainstream and obscure, Joe's main interest is in video gaming. Although particularly a PlayStation gamer, he plays across Xbox, Nintendo and PC/Steam Deck, and likes to keep tabs on many games he's not got the time to play.

Joe currently does not use Twitter, but he only ever used it to tell people to watch the film Help! I'm a Fish (which you really should do).

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Ghostbusters: frozen empire's rt audience score is good news after negative critical reaction.

After critics gave Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire the franchise's worst-ever score on Rotten Tomatoes, the audience score redeems its splat.

• Audiences on Rotten Tomatoes have awarded Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire with an 87% score on Rotten Tomatoes.
• The movie's critic score is nearly half of that total, at 44%.
• Critically, it is the lowest-rated installment of the entire five-movie franchise on Rotten Tomatoes, but audiences give it more credit.

Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire has reversed its fortunes on Rotten Tomatoes thanks to its audience score. The movie is the fifth theatrical installment in the franchise and a direct sequel to the 2021 legacy sequel Afterlife , following the original Ghostbusters reuniting with descendants of their late comrade Egon Spengler and some new friends to defend New York City from a new supernatural threat. Just days before its debut, the movie earned a splat on Rotten Tomatoes with a 44% score, the worst of the entire franchise.

Now that the Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire release has commenced, audiences have been able to share their reactions to the movie on Rotten Tomatoes . While the score will fluctuate as more reviews are added, at the time of writing, more than 250 user ratings have been amalgamated into an audience score of 87%. This almost exactly doubles the movie's critic score.

How Does Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire's Audience Score Measure Up?

With its robust audience score, Frozen Empire has managed to land in the middle of the audience chart for all five Ghostbusters movies . While its prospects are looking solid on that front, it has still fallen behind the audience scores for the original movie at No. 2 and Afterlife at No. 1. Below, see how the Rotten Tomatoes critic and audience scores for every installment in the franchise compare with one another:

Audiences seem to be having a considerably stronger reaction to Frozen Empire than the generally divisive Ghostbusters II . However, it is difficult to discern how it compares to the genuine reaction of viewers to the female-led 2016 reboot, which was review-bombed with misogynistic reactions and still retains the lowest audience score despite being one of the only two entries to be Certified Fresh on the platform. However, this very high score does seem to indicate that its blend of nostalgia and modern blockbuster filmmaking is connecting with audiences.

Ultimately, it will still be some time before there are enough Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire reviews to truly evaluate its place among general audiences. However, this early score could prove that the movie has more box office potential than it initially seemed. While movies in the franchise tend to have their box office results correlate to their critic scores, this reaction immediately out of the gate could provide it with a major word-of-mouth boost despite its Rotten Tomatoes splat.

Source: Rotten Tomatoes

Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire

Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire continues the story of a new generation of ghost hunters composed of Phoebe (Mckenna Grace), Trevor (Finn Wolfhard) and Podcast (Logan Kim), who received help from the original team in the previous movie. Paul Rudd returns as Gary Grooberson and franchise co-creator Ivan Reitman returns to write and produce.

Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey 2 Slashes Out a Perfect Rotten Tomatoes Debut

Against all odds and expectations, Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey 2 has become the comeback king of slasher movies with a huge Rotten Tomatoes debut

• Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey 2 surprises with a perfect 100% Tomatometer score on Rotten Tomatoes.
• Critics and audiences love the meta horror movie, setting up possible sequels and a cinematic universe.
• Director teases a grand scheme to bring together beloved characters in a horror crossover event.

In what could stand as one of the biggest turnarounds in cinema history, Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey 2 has debuted on Rotten Tomatoes with a perfect 100% Tomatometer score. Additionally, the meta public domain-raiding horror movie has landed a solid 85% approval rating from audiences who have seen the film during its limited theatrical release.

At time of writing, the audience rating has been temporarily removed from Rotten Tomatoes due to some reviews appearing to be copied from critics.

Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey 2

All of this is a far cry from the dismal reviews and several Golden Raspberry Awards of last year’s original, which saw the classic characters of Pooh and Piglet become horrifying, murderous monsters. When the first installment hit theaters, audiences were taken by surprise at the graphic violence that ensued, but also discovered that despite the movie’s ability to capitalize on the new public domain status of A.A. Milne’s original stories, the film itself was not one of the greatest movies of the genre .

Despite this, the incredibly low budget saw the movie become hugely profitable at the box office, and a sequel was quickly put into production. So quickly that just over a year later, the sequel has landed in cinemas for a limited run and delivered something that could not be further from the 3% critics' score of Blood and Honey . While it should be pointed out that this is based on just 6 reviews, and there are still plenty of opinions to come that could see that perfect score drop, that does not detract from the fact the film is playing well with audiences so far too. It seems like the sequels and “Poohniverse” crossover event teased by creator Rhys Frake-Waterfield may not be as incredulous as it originally seemed.

Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey 2 Expands the Original Movie’s Concept

In a year of many sequels, Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey 2 stood out as one that would likely manage to stumble its way through the blockbuster movies dominating the box office, and could potentially manage not to embarrass itself in the process. Instead, it seems that not only has it massively improved on its predecessor – helped along with a larger budget and the ability to use more of Milne’s characters, such as Tigger – but also given Frake-Waterfield’s other planned movies a boost in the process. Teasing his grand scheme to bring together the characters of Blood and Honey, as well as his Bambi, Peter Pan, and other projects, the director previously said:

“It will be complete carnage. We are heavily influenced by Freddy Vs Jason and The Avengers. We would love to see a horror movie where the villains group together and are going after their survivors. We have some incredible set pieces in mind and some sequences I think will truly shock people. The movies we are working on now as standalones are all building towards Poohniverse: Monsters Assemble. Similar to The Avengers, we will follow Pooh, Tigger, Rabbit, Owl, Piglet, Pinocchio, Sleeping Beauty, Bambi, The Mad Hatter, Peter Pan and Tinkerbell joining forces to wreak havoc. We are working with a larger scale budget on this one and are excited for what the future will hold. When you see stand-alone movies, you will see the Easter eggs hinting toward the crossover. Some of the villains also will not see eye to eye, which will allow for some carnage within the group in some epic sequences of monster vs monster.”

Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey 2 is currently on limited theatrical release and will soon move to VOD services.