Should You Trust Rotten Tomatoes Anymore? Inside the Scandal Rocking the Review Aggregator
Rotten Tomatoes reviews can often help make or break some movies and TV shows—but now trust in the aggregator has been called into question.
A study found that about 36% of moviegoers check a film's Rotten Tomatoes score before buying tickets at the box office, which means that for better or worse, Rotten Tomatoes can play a big role in whether a movie makes money. (That said, there are plenty of audiences that don't care about Rotten Tomatoes reviews, considering that The Super Mario Bros. Movie did gangbusters at the box office and scored well with audiences and not critics!)
Find out exactly what happened with Rotten Tomatoes reviews to make people question the authenticity of the site's scores—and what William Shakespeare has to do with it. (Yes, really!)
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How trustworthy is Rotten Tomatoes?
A new report from New York Magazine suggests that Rotten Tomatoes scores can be easily manipulated, alleging specifically that a public relations firm, Bunker 15, has paid low-level, often self-published reviewers for positive write-ups as a way to game scores. One alleged example from the exposé involved the 2018 movie Ophelia, a reimagined take on Shakespeare's Hamlet told from the point of view of his girlfriend, played by Daisy Ridley. The film reportedly had a 48% rating, but after the PR company's alleged paid reviews, that was bumped up to 62%—taking it from a green "rotten" tomato score to a red "fresh" one.
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Bunker PR denied the alleged manipulation, telling New York Magazine in a statement, "We have thousands of writers in our distribution list. A small handful have set up a specific system where filmmakers can sponsor or pay to have them review a film." Rotten Tomatoes also said in a statement that they take "the integrity of [their] scores seriously" and "do not tolerate any attempts to manipulate them."
That said, there are ways that studios themselves can strategize their rollouts to manipulate the scores, though not always intentionally, and sometimes to their own detriment. By way of example, New York Magazine points out the scores for Blonde and The Whale: Festival crowds overseas loved them, boosting their Tomatometer scores for weeks in the 80s, but when American critics and audiences were finally able to screen the film, The Whale landed at 64 and Blonde at 42. Conversely, Disney's Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny initially had a low rating of 33% after premiering at the "snootiest" Cannes Film Festival for six weeks before its screenings stateside. After that period, its score actually rose into the 70s, but the damage was done, and the film turned around disappointing box-office numbers.
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What does it mean to be 100% on Rotten Tomatoes?
Ostensibly, it means critics unanimously think a movie is really good. A score of 75% of higher on Rotten Tomatoes will get a movie "Certified Fresh," complete with a glowing red tomato icon.
Is it good to have 100% on Rotten Tomatoes?
Yes! It means critics across the board loved a movie. That said, there are plenty of films and TV shows that have gotten significantly lower—sometimes even "rotten"—scores that have made a ton of money and satisfied audiences.
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Is 65 Rotten Tomatoes good?
According to the Rotten Tomatoes "Tomatometer," anything above a score of 60 is considered "fresh," which is theoretically good. Of course, taste is subjective.
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How is something certified on Rotten Tomatoes?
Rotten Tomatoes certification math is, for better or worse, relatively simple: Every review is categorized as either positive or negative. The number of positive reviews is divided by the number of total reviews. For example, if a movie had 50 good reviews out of a total of 100 reviews, it would score a 50%. If a movie had 10 good reviews out of a total of 11 reviews, it would score a 91%.
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Is Rotten Tomatoes biased?
In theory, no, but in practice, it might be. In 2019, the Columbia Journalism Review found that most Rotten Tomatoes reviewers skewed white and male, which reportedly tended to negatively impact overall scores of films that women critics liked. Rotten Tomatoes has since reportedly added more women, BIPOC, minority and LGBTQIA+ reviewers to its roster—but the majority are still cishet white men. Interpret that data how you will.
