Of all the Hollywood directors/writers/producers who are scorned by high-minded artistic elitists, I don’t really care enough about Brett Ratner to hate him. Like, I’ll pour my hot sauce of hate on people like director Zack Snyder, or hack supreme Damon Lindelof (it still makes me shake with rage that he’s allowed to work in Hollywood). But Brett Ratner? I don’t know, man. Ratner has directed films like: Rush Hour, Rush Hour 2, Red Dragon, The Family Man and Tower Heist. He’s produced films like: Black Mass, I Saw the Light, The Revenant, War Dogs and more. Is he sort of hacky as a director? Sure. But as you can see from his IMDB, he actually is accumulating an impressive CV as a producer.
So while I’m rather “meh” on Ratner in general, I can’t defend him when he says something dumb. He’s one of those Hollywood people who hates Rotten Tomatoes. Rotten Tomatoes is merely a critical-aggregate site which compiles reviews and assesses whether films are critically “fresh” or “rotten.” Hating RT is like hating math and statistics. But Ratner does have an issue with Rotten Tomatoes.
Director and producing mogul Brett Ratner says film critic aggregation site Rotten Tomatoes is a destructive force in Hollywood. Speaking at the Sun Valley Film Festival last weekend, the Rush Hour director wanted to make it clear he has plenty respect for traditional film critics. But he says reducing hundreds of reviews culled from print and online sources into a popularized aggregate score has become a toxic and often inaccurate label.
“The worst thing that we have in today’s movie culture is Rotten Tomatoes,” said Ratner, whose company RatPac Entertainment co-financed Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice (among dozens of other Warner Bros. titles). “I think it’s the destruction of our business. I have such respect and admiration for film criticism. When I was growing up film criticism was a real art. And there was intellect that went into that. And you would read Pauline’s Kael’s reviews, or some others, and that doesn’t exist anymore. Now it’s about a number. A compounded number of how many positives vs. negatives. Now it’s about, ‘What’s your Rotten Tomatoes score?’ And that’s sad, because the Rotten Tomatoes score was so low on Batman v Superman I think it put a cloud over a movie that was incredibly successful.”
Directed by Zack Snyder, Batman v Superman cost about $250 million to make and grossed nearly $900 million worldwide — despite being considered a disappointment (with a 27 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes).
“People don’t realize what goes into making a movie like that,” Ratner continued. “It’s mind-blowing. It’s just insane, it’s hurting the business, it’s getting people to not see a movie. In Middle America it’s, ‘Oh, it’s a low Rotten Tomatoes score so I’m not going to go see it because it must suck.’ But that number is an aggregate and one that nobody can figure out exactly what it means, and it’s not always correct. I’ve seen some great movies with really abysmal Rotten Tomatoes scores. What’s sad is film criticism has disappeared. It’s really sad.”
When people like Ratner complain about RT, I wonder if they’ve actually gone onto the site and checked out how user-friendly it is. I’m sure some people just look to see the RT rating – which, again, is merely a score based on an aggregate of top critics’ reviews – but a lot of people actually click on the individual critics’ names and read the full reviews. I do that all that time, and I believe a lot of people do the same thing. RT actually makes accessing professional film reviews a lot easier for people.
Now, all that being said, Batman Vs. Superman was a disaster and the fact that it managed to get 27% on RT is a joke. Ratner’s not mad that the film’s RT score was so bad, he’s mad that critics recognized the film as a flaming pile of garbage.
#NeverForget Ben Affleck’s reaction to BvS’s bad reviews. SAD BATFLECK.
Photos courtesy of WENN.
I think he is right. RT has destroyed movies that didn’t deserve to be destroyed. And while the site maybe “user friendly” that is not really the point. The site is not the problem. The way the score is used is the problem. Mainly because it is used in the wrong way. Not to mention almost anyone can be a “Critic” of movies. Additionally it is biased. You can see that if a “Critic” doesn’t like a particular actor/actress they are overly negative. If they like someone personally they bend over backwards to give that film more of a positive. I think it needs to not to be given the last word on a film; and sadly it is used that way.
Totally agree. An actual film critic who has studied film and has some understanding of film history is ranked equally on RT with someone who has no deeper understanding of film than their personal preference. People make decisions about what to see based on an often misleading aggregate score–and yes, some good movies are destroyed.
How does it ‘destroy’ movies? Many extremely poorly reviewed films have been huge box office successes, and vice versa.
The vast majority of the audience for films like Batman vs. Superman or Transformers or Adam Sandler’s latest vacation don’t care about reviews. They go off word of mouth from friends and family.
The death knell for these types of movies is being boring. They can be stupid and formulaic and poorly directed and just generally garbage, but they can’t survive being dull, because that goes beyond personal taste. BvS did pretty well it’s first weekend, then attendance dropped off a cliff. That’s not about reviewers, that’s about audience reactions.
He says it hurts movies like BvS, but does he realize that Warner Brothers owns Rotten Tomatoes? NBCUniversal owns 70% and WB owns the other 30%.
He’s full of it. Batman v Superman was roasted because it was awful, plus the fact that most people weren’t interested in anymore Cavill as Superman. Suicide Squad was soundly roasted on RT, yet did very well anyway. Its nothing but sour grapes.
Besides, RT never convinced me to see a movie I wasn’t interested in and never dissuaded me from seeing a movie I wanted to see.
@Myhiddles Not interested in Cavill as Superman? Hardly not, you must mean Affleck as Batman which he surprisingly handled well IMO, but Cavill is perfect. I think RT is also where haters just go to hate too, people and “critics” with serious personal issues which is why IMDB had to stop their message boards, crazy.
well, well, looks like the sour grapes are real.
Rotten Tomatoes isn’t without its flaws (all that 90+ rated awards bait garbage that’s unwatchable without its hype) but I think it’s rich that someone whose movies were rated poorly by everyone from critics to audiences, is whining about the mere aggregator system that makes it evident how panned they are.
And I see no one even brought up Metacritic (far more selective about the critics whose scores it counts, and his turd of a movie is panned there too!)
Before this middle American spends $20 for a ticket and sits through 45 minutes of commercials before the movie starts, I read the movie goer reviews to make sure I will actually enjoy the movie.
I agree too. The idea behind RT is awesome, but the system is deeply flawed.
For one, the rotten/fresh score is the most visable number, but the avarage rating (from the same critics, cited next to the rotten one) is more accurate and rarely gets reported or even noticed.
Two, while some critics write in-depth reviews, most do not. Some write as little as 2 sentences. And huge movies have 200+ reviews, nobody reads all of them.
Three, most people do not read reviews. Writers on blogs like this and people who see many movies, sure. But an avarage Joe (the majority of the population) who only goes to the cinema once every 3 months doesn’t.
Four, BvS was a bad film and it was only successful because DC has an in-built audience. RT itself could destroy a film without that only because of the score.
So so True which is why I no longer give them any real credibility: too much bias and when these “critics” have an issue with an actor/director/producer they become blind and will trash a decent body of work only to turn around and praise a turd. RT is in raspberry category, started out with legitimacy that’s long gone.
Lol at the sad batfleck pic!
I love RT, but it’s no good for tv shows or for comedy.
I don’t think critics have ever been kind to comedies.
truth.
Like 30% on RT is decent for a comedy, but metacritic is no better, and i haven’t found anything else reliable.
God, you are SO RIGHT, Brett!!
Like, people talk about consistent whitewashing, absence or marginalization of LGBTQ/POC actors/producers/directors or pay disparity between female and male actors, and god when are those ladies going to stop whining about sexual harassment on the set?? It’s just a joke! But they don’t seem to understand that a website that aggregates user opinions on the movies they seen is the REAL ENEMY.
Like, how do you sleep at night knowing that the bloated, poorly written, poorly directed and probably wholly unnecessary “blockbuster” you’ve heaved out into the multiplexes hasn’t created instant fawning adoration (that you still made MILLIONS of dollars for doing)? What if the studio only green lights three more of them instead of four?
My god, the struggle is so real.
Love your snark. Agree totally. Why whine about things of importance when I can whine about nothing of substance.
These issues do not exclude each other, complaining about both is possible – and legitimate.
He’s a producer and a director. If he backs up a 200 million dollar film and it flops, it’s he that takes the hit. Several major flops and he could be out of business. So of course he’s concerned about – what he percieves as – unfair rating that can ultimately destroy him.
But he’d be blaming the flop on a website that simply aggregates critic’s reviews. Maybe he should look at the quality of his films rather than the critics.
Well, there’s a film called Brimstone where Ratner’s Ratpac is involved, I think, and it has a poor (36%) critics score that I think is far from justified.This is seriously affecting it’s sales. The critics wrote the weirdest reviews I’ve seen in a long time, clearly not understanding the film. But that’s another topic, my point is that there’s been a lot of films over the last years that I thought were scored unfairly (some too low, some too high), and I’m sure you can think of some too. It’s all a matter of taste, sure. But that’s easy for me to say. I have no money in the game, so I can afford to just shrug at the “wrong” score when I see one. But for a producer that is a big deal.
I’m late to comment. BRILLIANT!
Mostly I like Rotten Tomatoes. I like reading reviews. But I do question how they rate some of their reviews. Sometimes somebody gives a bad review but still rated Fresh and the reverse is also true. Love Sad Affleck. It’s amazing how he’s like a statue but Henry is so animated.
Rotten Tomatoes? I think he’s got a case of Sour Grapes instead.
I find RT useful. The last time I disregarded a low RT score and paid to see a film anyway, I regretted my decision. Passengers, anyone? It was so bad. . . .
I actually check the RT audience scores on RT low-rated movies – if the critics hate it but the audience score is 70+, I’ll give it a chance it might be enjoyable cheese.
I mean, Dirty Dancing Havana Nights is at 22 percent on RT but I love it anyway. Step Up is at 19 and I love that too – and they both have decent audience ratings from RT users.
I don’t let RT make my movie choice for me. They gave Get Out a high rating and that movie was not good at all.
WHAT??! I’m going to walk away…
But Rotten Tomatoes didn’t give Get Out a high score. 216 out of 217 positive reviews gave it a high score. I, for one, enjoyed Get Out and according to Rotten Tomatoes so did 89% of people who saw it.
I enjoyed Passangers a lot. Seems to me that the critics did not like the basic premise of the film with Pratt’s characters actions. But the ethical dilemma and the question what is forgivable and what you would really do in such a depressing situsation that turn you suicidal is what made the film interesting. And the “being stuck in the mall after hours” vibe was kind of fun. It was it a perfect film and I get if you don’t like it but its far from terrible by any standard.
Wtf is he talking about? The example he used couldn’t have been worse. BvS was TERRIBLE and earned every low rating, and still made nearly a billion dollars. What’s his point? That people should just smile and nod and pretend it was good?
I’d venture to say the worst thing in Hollywood culture is the lack of equality, both race and gender, and treating people badly- something Ratner knows all about.
You know, for all the “we made it for the fans!” talk, it’s pretty evident the poor reviews and general known-to-be-shittiness of BvS really did get to its makers.
They knew they’d make money but they wanted a film people spoke of as positively as they did of the Nolan Batman or the Avengers. And it chaps their hide they didn’t get it.
Right? This much time later, he’s still pressed that most people hated BvS.
I think you are right about them expecting it to be comparable to Nolan’s franchise.
Agreed–he’s protesting way too much for this not to have gotten to him. And I thought Trump was bad at holding a grudge when justifiably criticized. 😉
Omg Sad Affleck makes me laugh every time.
They shut down IMDB message boards, now they want to shut down RT too
@Kiddo: I’ve been wondering for a couple weeks now where IMDB boards went (I’ve been lurking-without posting-on them for well over a decade) but have been too lazy to find out what happened. I miss them!!
they made an announcement about a month (maybe a little less) before they closed the message boards. Something to do with not being a positive place to discuss movies anymore (which fair enough, there were a lot of trolls out there). But I really miss it. I don’t really check imdb that often anymore (unless I’m curious about whos in a film). I liked going to see a movie and then being able to discuss it afterwards.
I don’t understand why they had to delete all the old discussions too. They had value and would have been really that hard to just leave them there?
I almost never go to imdb now. Usually, only to see who played that secondary character in a film I liked. The message boards were one of the main draws.
Now that Amazon got rid of the message boards I don’t go to IMDb anymore.
There was some good info hidden away in the forums relating to old classic movies and old time movie stars. Genuinely good discussions. It’s a shame it all got deleted.
Even the “respected” critics hated Batman vs Superman. That movie was awful and he should feel happy that piece of crap made as much money as it did. Guess he’s whining cause it would have made even more money if not for the bad reviews on RT? Entertainment Weekly does something similar in critiquing movies, why not blame them as well? Most people don’t even pay attention to movie reviews or RT ratings. If it’s a movie you really want to see, then you’re going to go see it regardless.
Sorry but he’s wrong. The only way RT affects the box office of a film is if it’s an original film. For example, I can bet you that had Passengers gotten good reviews it would have made way more money than it did. But because it didn’t get good reviews, folks stayed away. In the case of a film like BvS….RT had nothing to do with the performance of that film. That movie opened to $170M OW just in the USA and then only managed to make $330M. Those are some god awful legs for a film and it’s because word of mouth killed it. People didn’t like BvS. I’ll go with another superhero movie. Deadpool. It wasn’t the highest rated. It got 84%. But because it had good WOM…it’s legs were great and it had a great OW.
RT typically affects original films. Franchise films are now almost critic proof especially the opening weekend. Which is why analysts now look at the legs of a movie to see if it was well liked or not. If a franchise film performs poorly after it’s opening weekend it’s because the film itself sucked.
Batman v Superman still made a ridiculous amount of money….just not what they wanted. It’s opening weekend was huge.RT didn’t stop people from going, a crap movie stopped them from going back!
It’s not perfect. Hovering around 60% is an open question and I would encourage people to still see the film if they’re really keen. But under 30%? Yeah they’ve been pretty bad across the board. There is a difference though between terrible and enjoyable bad. Enjoyable bad gets word of mouth, BvS did not.
I get what he’s saying about the lost art of critiquing films. The point of reviews is to get an unbiased view of a film’s level of quality (plot, pacing, production, writing, direction, acting…). RT does offer reviews by “legit” critics, but it’s also filled with reviews from the everyday movie-goer. Not that that’s an all-together bad thing, but like it was mentioned above, can be very biased based on that person’s personal preference of genre & actors. They’re not the most subjective of reviews, is I guess what I’m trying to say. Of course people can choose to ignore those reviews, but then what would be the point of going on RT in the first place? I’m a bit backwards when it comes to visiting RT. I’ll check out the reviews *after* I’ve seen the movie, just to see if I agree with them. 😉
There are two sets of RT scores. One is by critics. The other is by the audience score. An audience rating can’t affect the critics RT score. So you can ignore the audience reviews and still use RT effectively.
More than half of actual “critics” there are hardly anything more than bloggers. Audience reviews are the ones you write on RT page itself. Outside links make you a critic.
For everyone whining about the credentials of RT’s critics – you do know metacritic exists, right?
Can’t stand this guy. The amount of times i’ve heard how he treats women like utter crap.
A friend of mine worked as an assistant in Hollywood for a couple of years before going into tech. He’s overall a pretty positive guy and generally only shared positive stories about his interactions with famous people
One of the few exceptions: Brett Ratner. I will forever and always remember getting together for dinner and my normally laid-back friend going into what I’m fairly certain was a half hour monologue about what an absolute ass Ratner is.
Pretty sure he was a complete jerk toward Serena Williams. After that I didn’t really pay attention to him anymore.
Imo, movie trailers make or break a movie. RT can influence but a high score does not guarantee I will enjoy the movie. I tend to become a contrarian especially when the movie is super hyped. I enjoy most of M. Night Shyamalan’s movies and a lot of Pixar films fail to move me.
Exactly! I feel like Hollywood pays more attention to RT than the general public.
orly? i thought it was BR and his brand of schlock movies with no point to being made except to try and grab the 14-24 yo male market. the begging for sequel types that relegate each player into the typical stereo type of hot gf, ethnic bff, white superhero BS.
lots of action lots of money lots of cgi.
this guy wouldn’t know good writing if it slapped his face.
What a whiner.
Why does the writer think Damon Lindelof is such a hack? I’m not his biggest fan ever but I didn’t know that was his reputation… I don’t think he’s directed many movies either! More of a TV showrunner- and I liked Lost and the Leftovers (maybe I’m in the minority there)!
A lot of people hate him for the ending to Lost. As a former Star Trek fan, I dislike what he and Abrams did to the Star Trek reboot.
Welcome to 2017, asshat. Newsflash–even if RT didn’t exist, people share opinions on social media and everyone’s a critic. Whether we like it or not, it is what it is.
“Ratner’s not mad that the film’s RT score was so bad, he’s mad that critics recognized the film as a flaming pile of garbage”
He’s not mad at that even. He seems to be mad that we, as non or lesser artists than himself, don’t understand the hard work this flaming pile of garbage was to produce. That somehow the number of hours put into something should be the main justification for its existence, not the quality of the final product.
He’s saying “I worked hard on this and I want recognition because it took effort to polish this turd into a twelve billion dollar box office take!”
I read RT reviews individually. I want to see a consensus of opinion, not just one critic who may or may not have different taste in movies than me and is possibly paid by the studios to print something favourable. Shut yer piehole Brent! The peasants have a voice.
On one hand, reviews in general are kind of silly, because we all have different likes and dislikes. We come from different walks of life and grew up with the different things. What one person likes, another person will not and vice versa. Unless you have found a critic that you always agree with, you have to sort of take reviews with a grain of salt. However, I also understand why the medium exists in the first place. Most movie theaters charge $10+ for a ticket alone, nevermind concession or the gas to get there. No one wants to waste their hard earned money on something they’re going to be bored by or hate for 2-3hrs.
I can’t get over that his defense of Batman v Superman is that people don’t understand what it takes to make a movie like that. Like, who cares? A shit movie is a shit movie. If a director doesn’t have the capability to make a challenging movie well, he/she shouldn’t get a free pass because it was just so “hard”. That really blew my mind that he thinks movies should be graded on a curve.
I sort of agree with him but it is the professional critics who I have the most problems with not the users on RT. There is the professional troll critic ( I forget his name. I just know he is a black man) but he makes a point to always go against the grain. Like he will always rate the latest of Adam Sandler excrement as 100% and go on about how amazing and insightful ‘Jack and Jill’ was. Then there was the time he had to give ‘Get Out’ a bad score just to lower the 100% freshness. There are a lot more examples of his antics.
More recently, though, I watched a very good movie called Brimstone. The subject matter is controversial and very uncomfortable, but it was a good story of fighting against evil and trying to survive. I saw that critics gave this movie 29%. I was shocked since this movie had been so well received in Europe. The performances (excluding Kit Harington whose American accent was atrocious), cinematography, score and so forth were excellent. I just don’t really value a lot of critics opinions anymore and now decide for myself what I think is or isn’t a good movie. If I do listen to reviews, I go on Youtube and check out RedLetterMedia. Their Starwars reviews for the prequels are on point and legendary. They know their stuff.
I think you mean Armond White. Yes, he goes against the grain but he’s sometimes interesting to read.
Wow, Millie, agreed! I too mentioned Brimstone a bit up, because it’s such a good example of how the majority of critics went like rabid dogs after a previously well-received film for the most bizarre reasons imaginable.
so, they dont make good movies
and then they complain when people point it out.
got it!
Rotten tomatoes is badly designed computer program that spews out an aggregate score using unqualified reviewer opinions. Its ratings are about as accurate as the results provided by political opinion polling companies for the US election and Brexit.
However it is very easy to use RT ratings for selecting entertaining comedy movies.
RT scores between 20% and 60% are mostly entertaining movies and can often be very funny.
RT scores in the 80-90% generally indicate absolute garbage and mostly are not even comedy.
RT scores below 20% – often garbage but can have some funny parts.
Funny is why I like watching comedies – strictly for the entertainment. Any critical review of a comedy that disregards funny as the primary criteria has completely missed the point. Computers are only as intelligent as their programmers allow them to be unfortunately.
I don’t agree with him about RT, it’s really helpful sometimes with all the movies available to see.
However, I think it can be argued that it’s not a completely fair measure of how good or bad a movie is. Sometimes I’ve noticed that reviews that show up as “bad” in the site, once you read them in their context it turns out they are not that bad, and same goes with the good ones. The dual fresh/rotten system can’t really capture the complexity of what critics are saying. But it doesn give at least some overall guidance.
I see his point, to be honest.
Two or three decades ago film critic as well as art critic was indeed a mixture of both academics and art.
Those who wrote about movies had often studied art and knew what they were writing about.
Whereas most movie review which you can read about today’s movies don’t go any deeper than “I liked it” or “it was boring” or “it was different than I expected and therefore bad”
( different than expected therefore bad: Ridley Scott’s “Prometheus”)
Plot, character development, style or even camera style are at best mentioned but hardly ever discussed let alone contextualised (context can be for example movie genre or history of the genre and more). Nor do these review make transparent how they evaluated the movie. Nor do they admit who they are: your education and background influences your “taste”. Therefore critics should make it transparent who they are so that you can estimate from where the judgement originates from.
Many reviews on Rotten Tomatoes aren’t even one page for a 90-minutes-movie. And yes, that is ridiculous.
That being said: people do have the right to use such sites as Rotten Tomatoes.
I never use it because I find such unreasoned opinion-pieces rather useless.
I love Rotten tomatoes. I’m fairly intelligent, but some critics are SO cerebral, sometimes I read a NYT review and don’t even understand it. And so many times I don’t agree with the critics, but I usually agree with the peoples’ scores. Don’t you hate it when every laugh in a comedy was in the trailer?! I trust the ratings in RT, and it makes it easier to choose which movie to see.
Well he is right. RT rated La La Land really high which my goodness was the most boring thing I’ve ever watched. While it rated Passengers really low which I found to be an incredibly amazing movie.
Now myself and my friends joke around RT like if it’s got a low RT rating, it’s gonna be an interesting movie!
Oh boy… So the guy who is responsible for X-men 3, the one that was so terrible they had to time travel to erase it from existence is now saying the reason BvS sucked badly is because of RT’s score?
LOL, that’s so freaking dumb.
The score was low because the movie sucked. The movie had 2 of the biggest icons so getting it to make that much money is in and of itself an abysmal failure.
And the idea that people got turned away because of the critics is absolutely flat out false. Just yell at any area “MARTHA!” and everyone will know what your’e joking about.
People went to see BvS. They just didn’t bother seeing it again (as opposed to usual blockbusters where repeated customers are a thing)
That, and the fact that people realized how bad it is probably most decided to watch it at home.
Here’s an idea, you want good reviews? Do a good movie.
And sucky movies Brett… don’t forget the shitty movies.