MovieChat Forums > Ryûzô to 7 nin no kobun tachi (2015) Discussion > Prime example of manipulated rating

Prime example of manipulated rating

posted 8 years ago by FilmCuckoo
4 replies | jump to latest

The ridiculously low score for this movie should serve as a perfect example, how easy it really is to manipulate IMDb ratings for any movie that has fewer than, let's say 3000 votes. IMDb has always been secretive about the exact way the ratings are weighted, but this is one really good example, how it can be done. I consider myself an advanced viewer of movies, even as someone who has gone beyond understanding basic film semantics. I know a really bad movie stinker, when I see one, and the current rating for this movie is nowhere near reality. I will gladly admit this is not a 9 or 10, but I would say the realistic rating for this movie would be between 7.0 -8.0.

One way to observe the movie ratings with manipulated scores is the vote breakdown, which thankfully can be observed at least on some basic level. If we would think the rating breakdown as a graphic table, for example, a "real" rating should have more or less, one of the three shapes:

1. "The Uniform Peak Wave" = one of the most common shapes, where the rating is heavy on where the high peak is ANY point BETWEEN 1 and 10 stars, and both the high and low ends descend and ascend uniformly.

2. "The Uniform Descending Wave" = Probably the rarest shapes, as this is heavy on the high scores from 7-10 stars, and descends uniformly.

3. "The Uniform Ascending Wave" = Score is heavy with low ratings 1-6, and is uniformly ascending.

However, as we know, and can all understand from this, the shapes that form 2 or even more clear peaks, and especially the one where the middle is pushed down, and forms the shape of a simplified capital letter "C", we are then safe to assume, we are now dealing with manipulated scores. There is no way in real world, where any movie would be heavy on BOTH the low and the high score, if it would be voted on realistically. This movie is one of those. Just take a look at the breakdown yourself, and you'll see what I mean.

[–] usapon 8 years ago

no, it's not manipulated (at least not this movie). You just need to know what to look for.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4176776/ratings

When out of the 338 people giving a rating of just 1, 336 are females and of those 280 are under 18 years old. So, you can extrapolate from this that young (non-US) girls don't like this movie which is probably not that surprising. (Only 40 people from the US voted at all).

If you look at the top 1000 voters you get a 6.5 average which is not bad. The Arithmetic Medium is a 6 when only 913 people voted and of those 37% (338) voted 1. So, that's also not a bad score. Finally, 18% which represents the biggest group score is a 7, so that pretty much tells you this should be at least a 6.8 which is in sync with similar Takeshi movies. If you remove the 1's which are obviously skewing the score the weighted average does hit 6.7, so there you are.

I tend not to look at just the total average score for any movie and dive deeper into the stats which says a lot more especially when it comes to gender, age, non-US and the top 1000 voters. I suggest doing the same.

To see or not to see that is the question...

[–] FilmCuckoo 8 years ago

Well, that's one way to look at the ratings for this movie... It seems you missed the actual point: The seriously unusual anomaly, where there is the unexplained peak of 1s, which just isn't realistic, as when we observe this from the pure statistic point of view, the chance that this could occur in reality, is astronomically high, when the obvious weight, and the way that votes are concentrated around 7 (total number of votes placed at 7 and 8 exceed the number of votes on 1, but there are hardly any votes on 2, 3, 4 or 5). This is just to say that the high number of ones, doesn't correspond much with reality, as this isn't the kind of movie, that would even warrant a rating of 1... I mean, not 40% of the given votes! And then there is the fact regarding the bad reviews: Each one of the reviews that rate this movie poorly, are the ONLY reviews by those users, and these users have not even RATED any other movie, nor do they have ANY other activity on their accounts, which is a clear indication there has been some sort of campaign to get the rating show lower than it should. You know it's not that difficult or even particularly time consuming to create few hundred fake accounts. But... I admit, it is difficult to proof. -Still, common sense is much more viable resource, when looking at the rating for this movie. And this movie is a good one, well worth a watch.

[–] Suzume-san 8 years ago

I very much doubt that many young women under 18 have actually seen this, let alone come on here to rate it. Some dork with a grudge again!

It's a lovely film, warm and funny, an affectionate tribute to the yakuza-movie genre from a master director. I saw it here in London at the BFI London Film Festival last year, and the audience clearly loved it, laughing throughout and applauding heartily at the end.

[–] sluido 7 years ago

I very much doubt that many young women under 18 have actually seen this, let alone come on here to rate it. Some dork with a grudge again!

After reading the post you replied to I wanted to say EXACTLY the same thing!! I don't know who dislikes Takeshi so much... doesn't matter though, next film will be maybe better marketed abroad??