The Projector #54: Tomatometer on the Blink? (Patreon)

by Keith Phipps

We like to steer you toward interesting pieces via this newsletter, but occasionally one needs singling out for further comment. The Ringer just published an extensive, data-driven look at the effect of Rotten Tomatoes on box office scores co-written by Ben Lindbergh and Rob Arthur, and I’m not sure what to make of it. That’s partly because numbers and statistics make my head spin, but also because it reaches such a grim conclusion.

In one key section, the piece traces studios’ panic over a Rotten Tomatoes score’s perceived ability to depress its earnings, a concern that peaked around 2017 spurred in part by the failure of films like Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets and The Dark Tower. One result: a company called Fizziology started consulting to help “its studio clients pinpoint the optimal time to lift review embargoes to maximize the benefit or mitigate the damage of positive or negative scores.” Hence all the unusual embargo activity of the last year that’s occasionally resulted in reviews posting at, say, 3am on a Tuesday. (Another interesting take on the subject: The Verge looked at how RT reshaped the Oscars race in 2018.)

Did that work? Probably not, if I’m reading the article correctly. But I know I’m not misunderstanding its conclusion, which is basically that the pandemic changed everything in ways we may not understand for a while. That’s in large part because viewers treat reviews differently when they don’t involve decisions around whether or not to leave the house to watch a movie.

So what does that mean for those of us who labor in the fields of movie opinion-making? That’s a big TBD, especially since the piece is so pessimistic about the idea that theaters can come back from COVID-19, suggesting a nation of moviegoers might now be a nation of movie watch-at-homers. A moment in Rotten Tomatoes’ influence, and maybe in filmgoing in general, might have ended with Birds of Prey. (My own take on that: we won’t go back to the way things were, but it’s just too soon to tell what the long-term effects on moviegoing will be post-coronavirus.) 

But maybe there’s some cause for optimism. One of the most troubling aspects of Rotten Tomatoes — a site I use a lot, to be fair — is its binary aspect. Though it takes the tone of a review into account, a film is either fresh or rotten. You should see it or not. It may be a chicken-or-egg question, but it seems similar to the lack of nuance that’s come to define online discourse around film (and other aspects of culture). You love it or you hate it. And sometimes you just don’t love it enough, as evidenced by the recent swarming of critics who dared to give Taylor Swift’s Folklore anything but the highest possible rating. But if we’re shifting toward a moment in which more moviegoers are comfortably sampling a wider array of movies in a lower-risk environment, maybe it will result in a broadening of tastes and an understanding that dubbing films “good” or “bad” doesn’t really capture them in their fullness.

Maybe. I don’t know. Give it a read.

There’s more to read below. But, as always, be sure to check out our podcast. We took a week off this week, but we’ll be back with the first part of a two-part Charlie Kaufman run covering Being John Malkovich and I’m Thinking of Ending Things. I missed those episodes, but our old pal Matt Singer took my place.

• Speaking of Matt, over at ScreenCrush you can read his (kind of chilling) first-person account of going make to a movie theater for a private screening.

• I’m Thinking of Ending Things will undoubtedly generate many fine pieces. Here’s one: a review from Angie Han at Mashable.

• At the New York Times, Kyle Buchanan talked to the film’s star, Jesse Plemons.

• At Uproxx, Brian Grubb offers some thoughts on the weirdness of The Great Muppet Caper, because why not?

• At Vulture, Joe Reid contemplates what the 2020 movie year might have looked like if the pandemic had never happened.