“The worst thing that we have in today’s movie culture is Rotten Tomatoes. I think it’s the destruction of our business,” director and producer Brett Ratner declared in March, and it’s a sentiment that’s quickly becoming the conversation of the summer movie season. Hollywood has been grappling with what they perceive to be the problem of reviews tanking their movies — such as “Baywatch” and “The Mummy” (though the latter did very well overseas) — before they have a chance to start, thanks to moviegoers being more savvy about the critical consensus around a movie, and more selective about where to spend their hard earned dollars. However, this concern by the major studios is nothing new.
Vanity Fair reveals that in 2015, 20th Century Fox commissioned a study titled “Rotten Tomatoes and Box Office,” and it essentially predicted the increasing influence the site would have in the years to come.
“The power of Rotten Tomatoes and fast-breaking word of mouth will only get stronger. Many Millennials and even Gen Xers now vet every single purchase through the internet, whether it’s restaurants, video games, make-up, consumer electronics, or movies. As they get older and comprise an even larger share of total moviegoers, this behavior is unlikely to change,” the study noted.
It’s a bit amusing to read Fox come to a conclusion that seems so obvious — young moviegoers will make informed decisions, shock! — but finding a solution to this problem proves elusive, other than the studio simply considering cancelling critics screenings.
“Consider not giving the critics a chance to slam you. While it’s never a great feeling to withhold from critics, now it may help to at least preserve your Friday,” the aforementioned study suggests.
To to be fair to the studios, Rotten Tomatoes is far from a flawless system. The binary Fresh/Rotten choice when reviews are submitted leaves no room for nuance, and most of the critics skew heavily toward older white males, which means the critical perspective is far from perfect or representative of moviegoers as a whole.
READ MORE: Critics Want What You Want: Good Movies, Period
Still, it’s hard to look at this issue and not feel the way one unnamed marketing executive at an independent film distributor does, who remarked to the magazine: “Fuck you — make a good movie!”
Indeed, if Hollywood paused in their quest to churn out blockbuster after blockbuster to make sure the quality level was there, we probably wouldn’t be having this discussion.