MovieChat Forums > Terminator: Dark Fate (2019) Discussion > Remember when Rotten Tomatoes scores use...

Remember when Rotten Tomatoes scores used to mean something?


This film has a higher Rotten Tomatoes score than Alita and the same rating as Joker. Captain Marvel has a higher rating than all of them. The last Jedi stands at 91%, a higher rating than Infinity War. When did film critics become such an embarassment to their profession?

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I've been a massive fan of IT Chapter 2, and I'm stunned that this piece of crap has higher ratings than even that glorious movie! It pisses me off!

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I've noticed lately that there have been a lot of movies where the critics score and the audience score are substantially different.

Angel Has Fallen and Rambo: Last Blood posted very poor critics' scores recently, but high audience scores. On the flip side, Ad Astra did well with critics but audiences weren't nearly as sure about it.

What's interesting about TDF is that the audience score is substantially higher than the critics' score.

In any case, I think that lately the critics have really been letting their political views color the way they see movies.

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I think the "verified ratings" has something to do with that audience score.

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Well presumably the verified ratings system should make the rating MORE accurate, because only people who are confirmed to have seen the movie can vote.

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Yep, the fix is in. Hollywood knew Rotten Tomatoes was hurting their business so they devised clever ways to manipulate their pathetic tentpole movie scores. RT is now W O R T H L E S S.

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But the RT scores are submitted by the film reviewers themselves, not RT's employees. Rottentomatoes simply averages up every submitted review and give one big score.

Now if you are accusing the film journalists of trying to boost Hollywood, I can guarantee you will not find one who has consistently given every Disney, FOX, Paramount, Universal or Dreamworks movies great scores every time. I am sure any movie critic you pick has torn apart many big films from each of those studios. And even ones that really need a hit right now (such as Paramount) got torn apart big time with Gemini Man. If they were trying to help Hollywood increase ticket sales, Gemini Man would've gotten 98% on RT with the reviewers going "Ang Lee's Masterpiece. Best Picture contender and greatest action film of all time."

I'd worry less about whether DF has a higher score than Joker and Alita, as all of these scores are simply mathematical averages, not RT's own verdict and review. RT is not saying DF is better than Joker and Alita. RT is saying the hundreds of reviews that are submitted is giving their system this average, and that is what they post.

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RT can pick and choose which reviews they accept tho'.

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Their list of reviewers doesn't change wildly from film to film. It's the same body of reviewers every time, every week. NYTimes, USAToday, RogerEbert.com, Slate..you see the same names every week. They don't bar certain reviewers for giving a boatload of negative scores. If that were the case, Armond White would've been banned a long time ago. He is still a certified, verified RT reviewer.

And if there really was a conspiracy to boost mediocre films, they would've been more praiseworthy in their reviews for these mediocre films and given them much more exciting scores. But Dark Fate got around 68%, nothing special. And the reviewers said it was nothing special compared to the original two Terminator films, just competent and better than the other terrible sequels (which is not a high bar to cross).

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When were critics ever respectable? Ebert was as good as critics got and even he was only insightful about 30% of the time.

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Critics should just stay away from mainstream entertainment products. Keep reviewing your random artsy artsy pretentious high class movies though. That's where these critics do best. Leave blockbusters to the plebs.

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Plebs need education, too.

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You have a good point, the downside for critics is most couldn't make a living doing that because it would require talent and effort. The job of critics today is to draw web traffic and keep eyes on the page as long as possible, that's why the articles are so padded.

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RT was always Bullshit! It's not an average, it's a percentage considered "fresh". That used to mean 6/10 or more, but now RT can flip a 6/10 to lower the percentage!

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FIRST SISKEL DIED....THEN EBERT....THE PROFESSION IS DEAD.

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I have never liked Rotten Tomatoes, its been on the news so much I just ignore it.

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