Rotten Tomatoes

Rotten Tomatoes
Screenshot
Type of site
 Film and television review aggregator and user community
Owner
[1][2]
Founder(s) Senh Duong
Key people Senh Duong
Patrick Y. Lee
Stephen Wang
Website www.rottentomatoes.com
Alexa rank Negative increase 405 (October 2018)[3]
Commercial Yes
Registration Optional
Launched August 12, 1998 (1998-08-12)
OCLC number 48768329

Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang.[4][5][6][7] The name "Rotten Tomatoes" derives from the practice of audiences throwing rotten tomatoes when disapproving of a poor stage performance.

Since January 2010, Rotten Tomatoes has been owned by Flixster, which was in turn acquired by Warner Bros. in 2011. In February 2016, Rotten Tomatoes and its parent site Flixster were sold to Comcast's Fandango.[8] Warner Bros. retained a minority stake in the merged entities, including Fandango.[2]

History

Logo used from 2001 to 2018

Early Development

Rotten Tomatoes was launched on August 12, 1998, as a spare-time project by Senh Duong.[9] His goal in creating Rotten Tomatoes was "to create a site where people can get access to reviews from a variety of critics in the U.S."[10] As a fan of Jackie Chan's, Duong was inspired to create the website after collecting all the reviews of Chan's movies as they were being published in the United States. The first movie whose reviews were featured on Rotten Tomatoes was Your Friends & Neighbors (1998). The website was an immediate success, receiving mentions by Netscape, Yahoo!, and USA Today within the first week of its launch; it attracted "600–1000 daily unique visitors" as a result.

Duong teamed up with University of California, Berkeley classmates Patrick Y. Lee and Stephen Wang, his former partners at the Berkeley, California-based web design firm Design Reactor, to pursue Rotten Tomatoes on a full-time basis. They officially launched it on April 1, 2000.[11]

In June 2004, IGN Entertainment acquired Rotten Tomatoes for an undisclosed sum.[12] In September 2005, IGN was bought by News Corp's Fox Interactive Media.[13] In January 2010, IGN sold the website to Flixster.[14] The combined reach of both companies is 30 million unique visitors a month across all different platforms, according to the companies.[15] In 2011, Warner Bros. acquired Rotten Tomatoes.[16] In February 2016, Flixster, including Rotten Tomatoes, was acquired by Fandango, a company that Warner Bros. has a minority share.[17]

Recent Timeline

  • By late 2009, the website was designed to enable Rotten Tomatoes users to create and join groups to discuss various aspects of film. One group, "The Golden Oyster Awards", accepted votes of members for various awards, spoofing the better-known Oscars or Golden Globes. When Flixster bought the company, they disbanded the groups, announcing: "The Groups area has been discontinued to pave the way for new community features coming soon. In the meantime, please use the Forums to continue your conversations about your favorite movie topics".
  • In early 2009, Current Television launched the televised version of the web review site, The Rotten Tomatoes Show. It was hosted by Brett Erlich and Ellen Fox and written by Mark Ganek. The show aired every Thursday at 10:30 EST on the Current TV network.[18] The last episode aired on September 16, 2010. It returned as a much shorter segment of InfoMania, a satirical news show that ended in 2011.
  • As of February 2011, new community features have been added and others removed. For example, users can no longer sort films by Fresh Ratings from Rotten Ratings, and vice versa. On September 17, 2013, a section devoted to scripted television series, called "TV Zone", was created as a subsection of the website.[19]
  • In February 2016, Rotten Tomatoes and its parent site Flixster were sold to Comcast's Fandango. Warner Bros retained a minority stake in the merged entities, including Fandango.[2]
  • From 2007 to 2017, the website's editor-in-chief was Matt Atchity, who left in July 2017 to join The Young Turks.[20] On November 1, 2017, the site launched a new web series on Facebook, See It/Skip It, hosted by Jacqueline Coley and Segun Oduolowu.[21]
  • In March 2018, the site announced its new design, icons and logo for the first time in 19 years at SXSW.[22]

Website

Rotten Tomatoes is a top 1000 site, placing around #400 globally and top 150 for the US only, according to website ranker Alexa.[23] Monthly unique visitors to the rottentomatoes.com domain is 26M global (14.4M US) according to audience measurement service Quantcast.[24]

Tomatometer critic aggregate score

Rotten Tomatoes staff first collect online reviews from writers who are certified members of various writing guilds or film critic-associations. To be accepted as a critic on the website, a critic's original reviews must garner a specific number of "likes" from users. Those classified as "Top Critics" generally write for major newspapers. The critics upload their reviews to the movie page on the website, and need to mark their review "fresh" if it's generally favorable or "rotten" otherwise. It is necessary for the critic to do so as some reviews are qualitative and do not grant a numeric score, making it impossible for the system to be automatic.

The website keeps track of all of the reviews counted for each film and the percentage of positive reviews is calculated. Major, recently released films can attract up to 300 reviews. If the positive reviews make up 60% or more, the film is considered "fresh", in that a supermajority of the reviewers approve of the film. If the positive reviews are less than 60%, the film is considered "rotten". An average score on a 0 to 10 scale is also calculated. With each review, a short excerpt of the review is quoted that also serves a hyperlink to the complete review essay for anyone interested to read the critic's full thoughts on the subject.

"Top Critics", such as Roger Ebert (deceased), Desson Thomson, Stephen Hunter, Owen Gleiberman, Lisa Schwarzbaum, Peter Travers and Michael Phillips are identified in a sub-listing that calculates their reviews separately. Their opinions are also included in the general rating. When there are sufficient reviews, the staff creates and posts a consensus statement to express the general reasons for the collective opinion of the film.

This rating is indicated by an equivalent icon at the film listing, to give the reader a one-glance look at the general critical opinion about the work. The "Certified Fresh" seal is reserved for movies that satisfy two criteria: a "Tomatometer" of 75% or better and at least 40 reviews (for limited release movies, otherwise 80) from "Tomatometer" critics (including 5 Top Critics). Films earning this status will keep it unless the positive critical percentage drops below 70%.[25] Films with 100% positive ratings but fewer than required reviews may not receive the "Certified Fresh" seal.

IconScoreDescription
70–100%Certified Fresh. Wide-release films with a score of 75% or higher that are reviewed by at least 80 critics, of which 5 are "Top Critics", are given this seal. The "Certified Fresh" seal remains until the score drops below 70%.[25] Films with limited releases require only 40 reviews (including 5 from "Top Critics") to qualify for this seal.[25]
60–100%Fresh. Films with a score of 60% or higher that do not meet the requirements for the "Certified Fresh" seal.
0–59%Rotten. Films with a score of 0–59% receive this seal.

Golden Tomato Awards

In the year 2000, Rotten Tomatoes announced the RT Awards honoring the best-reviewed films of the year according to the website's rating system.[26] This was later renamed the Golden Tomato Awards.[27] The nominees and winners are announced on the website, although there is no actual awards ceremony.

The films are divided into wide release and limited release categories. Limited releases are defined as opening in 599 or fewer theaters at initial release. Platform releases, movies initially released under 600 theaters but later receiving wider distribution, fall under this definition. Any film opening in more than 600 theaters is considered wide release.[27] There are also two categories purely for British and Australian films. The "User"-category represents the highest rated film among users, and the "Mouldy"-award represents the worst-reviewed films of the year. A movie must have 40 (originally 20) or more rated reviews to be considered for domestic categories. It must have 500 or more user ratings to be considered for the "User"-category.

Films are further classified based on film genre. Each movie is eligible in only one genre, aside from non-English language films, which can be included in both their genre and the respective "Foreign" category.

Once a film is considered eligible, its "votes" are counted. Each critic from the website's list gets one vote (as determined by their review), all weighted equally. Because reviews are continually added, manually and otherwise, a cutoff date at which new reviews are not counted toward the Golden Tomato awards is initiated each year, usually the first of the new year. Reviews without ratings are not counted toward the results of the Golden Tomato Awards.[27]

Critics Consensus

Each movie features a brief summary of the reviews used in that entry's Tomatometer aggregate score. These are written by Jeff Giles, a longtime author for the site.[28]

Audience score and reviews

Positive audience score
Negative audience score
Positive and negative audience score icons

Each movie features a "user average", which calculates the percentage of registered users who have rated the film positively on a 10-star scale, similar to calculation of recognized critics' reviews.

Localized versions

Localized versions of the site available in the United Kingdom, India, and Australia were discontinued following the acquisition of Rotten Tomatoes by Fandango. The Mexican version of the site (Tomatazos) remains active.

API

The Rotten Tomatoes API provides limited access to critic and audience ratings and reviews, allowing developers to incorporate Rotten Tomatoes data on other websites. The free service is intended for use in the US only; permission is required for use elsewhere.[29]

Influence

Major Hollywood studios have grown to see Rotten Tomatoes as a threat to their marketing. In 2017 several blockbuster films like Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales, Baywatch and The Mummy were projected to open to a respective $90 million, $50 million and $45 million, but ended up debuting with $62.6 million, $23.1 million and $31.6 million. Rotten Tomatoes, which gave the films low scores of 30%, 19% and 16%, respectively, was faulted for undermining them. That same summer, films like Wonder Woman and Spider-Man: Homecoming (both 92%) received high scores and opened on par or exceeded expectations with their $100+ million trackings.[30][31][32]

As result of this concern, 20th Century Fox commissioned a 2015 study, titled "Rotten Tomatoes and Box Office", that stated the website combined with social media was going to be an increasingly serious complication for the film business: "The power of Rotten Tomatoes and fast-breaking word of mouth will only get stronger. Many Millennials and even Gen X-ers 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".[33] Other studios have commissioned a number of studies on the subject, with them finding that seven out of 10 people said they would be less interested in seeing a film if the Rotten Tomatoes score was 0-25, and that the site has the most influence on people 25 and younger.[32]

The scores have reached a level of online ubiquity which film companies have found threatening. For instance, the scores are regularly posted in Google search results for films so reviewed. Furthermore, the scores are prominently featured in Fandango's popular ticket purchasing website and its mobile app, Flixster. This led to complaints that the scores, especially "rotten" ones, are prone to affect the purchasing decisions of the public, such as saying in no-so-many words "You are an idiot if you pay to see this movie".[34]

Others have argued that filmmakers and studios have only themselves to blame if Rotten Tomatoes produces a bad score, as this only reflects a poor reception among film critics. As one independent film distributor marketing executive noted, "To me, it's a ridiculous argument that Rotten Tomatoes is the problem ... make a good movie!".[35] ComScore's Paul Dergarabedian had similar comments, saying: "The best way for studios to combat the 'Rotten Tomatoes Effect' is to make better movies, plain and simple".[32]

Response from studios

Some studios have suggested embargoing or cancelling early critic screenings in a response to poor reviews prior to a film's release affecting pre-sales and opening weekend numbers.[31] In July 2017, Sony embargoed critic reviews for The Emoji Movie until mid-day the Thursday before its release. The film ended up with a 9% rating (including 0% after the first 25 reviews), but still opened to $24 million, on par with projections. Josh Greenstein, Sony Pictures president of worldwide marketing and distribution, said: "The Emoji Movie was built for people under 18 ... so we wanted to give the movie its best chance. What other wide release with a score under 8 percent has opened north of $20 million? I don't think there is one". Conversely, Warner Bros. also did not do critic pre-screenings for The House, which ended up with a 16% rating, until the day of its release, but it still opened to just $8.7 million, the lowest of star Will Ferrell's career.[32]

That marketing tactic can backfire, and drew the vocal disgust of influential critics such as Roger Ebert, who was prone to derisively condemn such moves, with gestures such as "The Wagging Finger of Shame", on At the Movies.[36] Furthermore, the very nature of withholding reviews can draw early conclusions from the public that the film is of poor quality because of that marketing tactic.[37]

Jon Penn of the National Research Group (NRG) noted that the website is an increasingly serious interference to movie marketing: “Moviegoers love trailers. They pay attention to the TV spots. But Rotten Tomatoes is like the truth serum on the entire [promotional] campaign: are all the things you're telling me about the movie true or not?".[33]

Criticism

Oversimplification

In January 2010, on the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the New York Film Critics Circle, its chairman Armond White cited Rotten Tomatoes in particular and film review aggregators in general as examples of how "the Internet takes revenge on individual expression".[38] He said they work by "dumping reviewers onto one website and assigning spurious percentage-enthusiasm points to the discrete reviews".[38] According to White, such websites "offer consensus as a substitute for assessment".[38]

Director and producer Brett Ratner has criticized the website for "reducing hundreds of reviews culled from print and online sources into a popularized aggregate score", and feels it is the "worst thing that we have in today's movie culture".[39] Writer Max Landis, following his film Victor Frankenstein receiving an approval rating of 24% on the site, wrote that the site "breaks down entire reviews into just the word 'yes' or 'no', making criticism binary in a destructive arbitrary way".[40]

Other

American director Martin Scorsese wrote a column in The Hollywood Reporter criticizing both Rotten Tomatoes and CinemaScore for promoting the idea that films like Mother! had to be "instantly liked" to be successful.[41]

While promoting the film Suffragette (which has a "fresh" rating[42]) in 2015, actress Meryl Streep accused Rotten Tomatoes of disproportionately representing the opinions of male film critics, resulting in a skewed ratio that adversely affected the commercial performances of female-driven movies. "I submit to you that men and women are not the same, they like different things", she said. "Sometimes they like the same thing, but sometimes their tastes diverge. If the Tomatometer is slighted so completely to one set of tastes that drives box office in the United States, absolutely."[43]

Rotten Tomatoes deliberately withheld the critic score for Justice League based on early reviews until the premiere of its See It/Skip It episode on the Thursday before its release. Some critics viewed the move as a ploy to promote the web series, but some argued that the move was a deliberate conflict of interest on account of Warner Bros.' ownership of the film and Rotten Tomatoes, and the tepid critical reception to the DC Extended Universe films, barring Wonder Woman.[44]

See also

References

  1. ↑ "Fandango snaps up Rotten Tomatoes and Flixster". Engadget(AOL). Retrieved February 19, 2016.
  2. 1 2 3 Anthony D'Alessandro. "Fandango Acquires Rotten Tomatoes & Flixster - Deadline". Deadline Hollywood. Penske Media Corporation. Retrieved February 19, 2016.
  3. ↑ "Rottentomatoes.com Traffic, Demographics and Competitors - Alexa". www.alexa.com. Retrieved 1 October 2018.
  4. ↑ "How Rotten Tomatoes became Hollywood's most influential — and feared — website". Los Angeles Times. ISSN 0458-3035. Retrieved 2018-04-18.
  5. ↑ "Entrepreneurial Best Practices Series: A Fireside Chat with Rotten Tomatoes Founder Patrick Lee - Berkeley-Haas Entrepreneurship Program". Berkeley-Haas Entrepreneurship Program. Retrieved 2018-04-18.
  6. ↑ "Notable Cal Alumni". Cal Alumni Association, UC Berkeley. 2018-02-21. Retrieved 2018-04-18.
  7. ↑ "Stephen Wang". angel.co. Retrieved 2018-04-18.
  8. ↑ Pallotta, Frank. "Fandango acquires review site Rotten Tomatoes, Flixster". CNNMoney. Retrieved 2018-04-18.
  9. ↑ Lazarus, David (April 26, 2001). "Fresh Look For Rotten Tomatoes / Help from college buddies elevates movie-rating website beyond hobby status". San Francisco Chronicle. Retrieved January 12, 2013.
  10. ↑ "Senh Duong interview, 2000". Asianconnections.com. August 19, 1999. Archived from the original on September 27, 2009. Retrieved December 4, 2009.
  11. ↑ Ryan, Tim. "Rotten Tomatoes Oral History". Rotten Tomatoes (Fandango Media). Retrieved December 4, 2009.
  12. ↑ "IGN Entertainment to Acquire Rotten Tomatoes". Corp.ign.com. June 29, 2004. Retrieved January 27, 2017.
  13. ↑ "News Corp. Acquires IGN for $650 Million". Bloomberg. September 10, 2005. Retrieved January 27, 2017.
  14. ↑ Graser, Marc (January 4, 2010). "Flixster buys Rotten Tomatoes". Variety. Penske Media Corporation. Retrieved January 4, 2010.
  15. ↑ "News Corp. Unloads Rotten Tomatoes Onto Flixster". TechCrunch (AOL). January 4, 2010. Retrieved February 19, 2016.
  16. ↑ Sweney, Mark (4 May 2011). "Warner Bros buys Rotten Tomatoes owner Flixster". The Guardian. Guardian News. Retrieved 1 September 2018.
  17. ↑ "Rotten Tomatoes and Flixster Acquired By Fandango". Slashfilm. Retrieved 2016-02-19.
  18. ↑ "The Rotten Tomatoes Show on Current". The Rotten Tomatoes Show. November 23, 2009. Retrieved December 4, 2009.
  19. ↑ Atchity, Matt. "Welcome to the Rotten Tomatoes TV Zone". Rotten Tomatoes (Fandango Media). Retrieved September 17, 2013.
  20. ↑ "Rotten Tomatoes Editor-in-Chief Matt Atchity Joins The Young Turks as Head of Programming". Variety. July 16, 2017.
  21. ↑ Spangler, Todd (October 26, 2017). "Rotten Tomatoes to Launch Weekly 'See It/Skip It' Show on Facebook (EXCLUSIVE)". Variety. Retrieved November 25, 2017.
  22. ↑ Richards, Katie (March 6, 2018). "Rotten Tomatoes Rolls Out a Fresh Logo and Visual Identity After 19 Years". Adweek. Retrieved March 6, 2018.
  23. ↑ "rottentomatoes.com". Alexa Internet. Retrieved November 26, 2017.
  24. ↑ "rottentomatoes". Quantcast. Retrieved November 28, 2014.
  25. 1 2 3 "Rotten Tomatoes: Licensing". Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved June 3, 2016.
  26. ↑ "2nd Golden Tomato Awards". Rotten Tomatoes. January 1, 2013. Retrieved April 21, 2013.
  27. 1 2 3 "14th Golden Tomato Awards". Rotten Tomatoes. January 1, 2013. Retrieved April 21, 2013.
  28. ↑ Barnes, Brooks (September 7, 2017). "Attacked By Rotten Tomatoes". The New York Times. The New York Times Company. Retrieved September 9, 2017.
  29. ↑ "Welcome to the Rotten Tomatoes API". Flixster, Inc. Retrieved November 28, 2014.
  30. ↑ Mendelson, Scott (June 13, 2017). "Rotten Tomatoes, Netflix And A Perfect Storm That Dooms Hollywood". Forbes. Forbes LLC. Retrieved June 14, 2017.
  31. 1 2 "How 'Pirates' & 'Baywatch' Are Casualties Of Summer Franchise Fatigue At The Domestic B.O." Deadline Hollywood. Penske Media Corporation. May 28, 2017. Retrieved July 20, 2017.
  32. 1 2 3 4 "Studios Fight Back Against Withering Rotten Tomatoes Scores". The Hollywood Reporter. Eldridge Industries. August 2, 2017.
  33. 1 2 Lee, Chris (June 9, 2017). "How Hollywood Came to Fear and Loathe Rotten Tomatoes". Vanity Fair. Retrieved October 29, 2017.
  34. ↑ Barnes, Brooks (September 8, 2017). "Rotten Tomatoes won't be getting fresh ratings from Hollywood". Toronto Star. Torstar Corporation. New York Times. Retrieved September 9, 2017.
  35. ↑ Lee, Chris (June 9, 2017). "How Hollywood Came to Fear and Loathe Rotten Tomatoes". Vanity Fair. Retrieved June 14, 2017.
  36. ↑ Knight, Chris (August 31, 2017). "Why Hollywood doesn't want you to see Tulip Fever, which has been buried deep for three long years". National Post. Retrieved October 5, 2017.
  37. ↑ Dickey, Josh. "There's a secret way to predict a movie's Rotten Tomatoes score". Mashable.com. Retrieved September 9, 2017.
  38. 1 2 3 White, Armond (April 3, 2010). "Do Movie Critics Matter?". First Things. Retrieved June 2, 2017.
  39. ↑ "Rotten Tomatoes Is 'the Destruction of Our Business,' Says Director". Entertainment Weekly. Time Inc. March 23, 2017. Retrieved June 2, 2017.
  40. ↑ Birrell, Mark (16 April 2017). "Critical Mass: Rotten Tomatoes and the death of individuality". The Spread. Retrieved 17 July 2018.
  41. ↑ Martin Scorsese (2017-10-10). "Martin Scorsese on Rotten Tomatoes, Box Office Obsession and Why 'Mother!' Was Misjudged (Guest Column)". The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved 2018-04-12.
  42. ↑ "Suffragette (2015)". Rotten Tomatoes. Fandango Media. Retrieved 2018-09-18.
  43. ↑ Shoard, Catherine (June 15, 2018). "Ocean's 8 stars blame dominance of male critics for film's mixed reviews". The Guardian. Guardian News and Media. Retrieved June 16, 2018.
  44. ↑ "'Justice League', Rotten Tomatoes, and DC Fans' Persecution Complex". Wired. Retrieved November 25, 2017.

Further reading

  • Wilkinson, Alissa (August 13, 2018). "CinemaScore, Rotten Tomatoes, and movie audience scores, explained". Vox.
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