Comment by spiderice
3 years ago
> You can't average Trash opinions and end up with anything other than Trash
But Rotten Tomatoes doesn't take averages. The reason so many people take issue with Rotten Tomatoes is they don't know how to read the data.
Rotten Tomatoes shows you the (number of promoters) / (number of detractors). In other words, it tells you what percent of the people like the movie. Not how much they like it. A score of 95% on RT doesn't mean it's a nearly flawless movie. It means that 95% of people/critics think it is, at the very least, good.
Taken directly from the RT About page[1]:
> The Audience Score, denoted by a popcorn bucket, represents the percentage of users who have rated a movie or TV show positively
and
> The Tomatometer score represents the percentage of professional critic reviews that are positive for a given film or television show
If you understand that, RT is a very useful review site.
The "percent of the people like the movie" still doesn't tell you anything about WHO those people are. Nor does (number of promoters) / (number of detractors).
"professional critic reviews" ?? Please.
I'll stick with what I said: get to know a few critics, and read those.