One of the most peculiar trends to me of the modern movie business is the enigma that is Rotten Tomatoes. The site obviously became famous for aggregating critic and user reviews for movies, compiling them into easy-to-understand “fresh” or “rotten” categories.

It was a cool idea and a way for moviegoers to check out a choice of a few films and see which one they fancied catching on a date or a night out with friends. Since those early days, the geek patrol, aka you guys and ourselves here at LRM have probably talked so much about Rotten Tomatoes scores that we make it seem like the score given on that website will ultimately decide how well that movie performs at the box office. However, is this actually true?

A new report by Morning Consult has analyzed just what effect Rotten Tomatoes scores have on a movie, though only domestically in the US and not worldwide. The results actually surprised me a little.

According to a survey of over 2000 US citizens, over a third of people marketed would regularly check Rotten Tomatoes before seeing a movie at theaters. However, it’s importance is refuted by Yves Bergquist, director of the Project on AI and Neuroscience in Media at the University of Southern California’s Entertainment Technology Center who said,

“The decision to go see a film is made far in advance of when Rotten Tomatoes scores start appearing.”

Many film critics have lambasted the site for oversimplifying and attributing quick and easy scores to film reviews. On this point, I completely agree. We here at LRM occasionally but very rarely agree on films, because we have our own tastes and preferences. I think it’s well known amongst our readers that myself and our Editor in Chief Joseph Jammer Medina rarely share opinions on film, so that when we do agree, we are usually pretty amazed.

A film review has to be personal, it has to include your own tastes, I don’t think there’s a science to it, something which quantifies a tangible measurable difference between good and bad films, we fans and critics can only say it the way we see it as it were.

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Most U.S. adults (58 %) report checking consumer reviews before renting or seeing a film, a higher number than those who reported that they glance at expert reviews (42 %). So this tells us that most fans are looking to see the views of other customers and fellow fans like they, rather than the perceived professional film critics. Which, as I am sure you know, does not really affect the more publicized average score of a movie on the site.

One-third said they have specifically checked the Rotten Tomatoes site before deciding to rent or go to a film. Of that third, 63 % said they opted not to see a film because of its score. surely that has to mean something?

In fact, some experts think the RT score has an even bigger effect on a movie than we imagine, some saying that advertising along with the RT score can have a huge effect on sales. The poll also shows that as a Rotten Tomatoes score increases in 10 % intervals, the percentage of people who say they’d go see the film increases by roughly the same margin. Interesting.

What about actual box office numbers? Last years 20 highest grossing movies had RT scores in the range of 29% up to 99%, that’s a huge swing from rotten to fresh as a daisy right there.

USC’s Bergquist analyzed 150 movies from last year and found no correlation between the box office return and the RT scores. He said

“An array of other signals, such as viewing the trailer, chatting with family and friends or noticing which outlets write about the film, creates a better predictive model for a film’s success than a Rotten Tomatoes score. In deciding when to see a film, respondents ranked the importance of expert (4 %) and consumer reviews (7 %) relatively low compared to the actors appearing in the movie (25 %), the quality of the trailer (27 %) and what family and friends say (34 %).”

So whilst RT scores do seem to have an impact and remain an important aspect of this industry, it is clear that these have far less impact on box office returns than word of mouth form your own peer groups or family, or the actors signed on to play the parts.

So you agree with the analysis or do you think that RT scores have an even bigger impact on a movie’s performance than is indicated in the report? Let us know your thoughts in the usual place below.

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SOURCE: Morning Consult

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