Do rotten tomatoes scores actually ruin movies for people before they even watch them or are we just blaming the score when we secretly went in with expectations?

I just wished people understood what the score actually means. 100% does not mean the movie was universally loved.

Rotten Tomatoes doesn't do anything unique in terms of preconceived notions of a film. Even before the site existed, I'd skip movies my friends all said were bad only to discover (much later) that I really liked them and vice-versa. The best example I can think of is everyone telling me *There's Something About Mary* was the funniest movie ever and me being disappointed that it was funny, but nowhere near the funniest I'd ever seen. As for the last question: no, I've never had a Rotten Tomatoes score impact how I already felt about a movie. I've seen movies I really liked, gone online, and saw they had a 28% or some shit and thought "what is wrong with those people?"

People are fickle and let a random stranger dictate their own personal tastes.

The trick, William Potter, is not minding.

I wish folks would quit putting so much stock into RT scores, and just make their own decision. So tired of hearing about that site. The opinions of my friends I trust far more than what some critic or random person thinks of the movies.

I'm a professional film critic who is RT approved and I still trust Letterboxd over RT. I've witnessed too many instances of not only studios and creators paying for favorable reviews but also bot manipulation on the audience side. Letterboxd isn't immune to this either but the actual five star rating system that includes critics and the audience together is usually far more accurate a picture of a movie's overall quality.

The first thing to say is, you can't rely on them. Not the critics' scores at least, and I think they also now do some jiggery-pokery with the audience ratings. I won't be taking any notes from lefties on this, but the plain fact is that critics boost (often very significantly) their rating for films & shows based on how progressive the piece is. Pretty clear example is Sinners but there are many. Critics now use their reviews to virtue-signal their own progressive credentials, rather than, as best as possible, to rate work objectively. In a way that's their business but it's happened more than once that I've paid money for something on the basis of great reviews only to realise 5 minutes in why the reviews were so great. I in fact now feel that I have to ignore anything that smacks even slightly of progressive values -- race, gender/sex, immigration, climate, politics ofc. You simply cannot trust critics on any show or film where themes or story or even cast/ creatives have some link to leftist sacred cows.

not once i've check the scores before watching a movie. That's a lie. I watch alot of B movies, so if they are like 2 or 3 out of five, I know is gold . for any mainstream i don't care

sometimes i walk in with preconceived notion based on an RT score. But ultimately i never use it to quantify my enjoyment.

I don't look at any reviews, scores or aggregate scores until after I've seen the movie. I think expectations can have a huge impact on movies. A friend said he didn't enjoy Project Hail Mary as much as he expected, after it was hyped so much, and it really drove home how important it is to consume art with as little external influence as possible.

People’s perception are constantly swayed by all opinions. Tomato meter is no different than the stupid shit everyone posts on this sub

This is about the new Super Mario Galaxy movie, isn't it? In this case, I was wary because of the first movie and how absolutely bland and soulless it was. I wanted to see the second, but the reviews are letting me know loud and clear I shouldn't bother. Sad.

RT used to be a site I visited regularly to see what movies were coming out and their general rating. This was over ten years ago. The site soon lost its credibility with me when I sensed that the reviews/reviewers were no better than paid sheep, reviewing movies based on whatever is the most fashionable sentiment to back. Hey maybe I got the wrong impression but for me - an arts & humanities graduate who spent 5 years running a volunteer arts magazine managing a roster of reviewers myself - I increasingly disagreed with the RT “ratings” and soon lost all respect for it. I never visit the site any more. For the record I also take ratings like these on IMDB with a pinch of salt after learning who owns these sites.

90% of reviewers felt it was a generally positive experience. Most of those reviewers could have given it a middling rating but because it only grades on a pos vs neg scale it gets a 90%. It’s actually a measure of agreement, not a quality rating. A film with a 55% rating on RT might be a fantastic film, but polarizing. basically an RT score means essentially nothing, in my opinion. I do miss Roger Ebert. I liked his style of reviewing a movie. He was not a snob or highbrow about films, he could enjoy a schlocky horror film made well just as much as any of us.

If I am interested in a movie, a bad score is not going to stop me seeing it for myself. Take that most recent Silent Hill movie. Pretty immediately it got terrible reviews and scores across the board. I still wanted to see it for myself. And I did. And it sucked.

I dont really trust a RT score anymore. Im more likely to check subs for comments, or just wing it if im interested in the movie.

I rely on these ratings to whether I even start watching a movie what happens you miss out on a lot of good movies by filtering that way because some of the best have the lowest ratings.

I don’t think the score “ruins” movies on its own. It just amplifies whatever mindset you already have. If anything, the real issue is how much weight we give to a single number instead of just using it as a rough guideline. At the same time, without something like Rotten Tomatoes, discovering movies would be way more hit-or-miss. So it’s useful but only if you don’t let it decide your experience for you.

I consider it a percentage chance that I will like the movie. If you watch 10 movies with a 90% rotten tomatoes score, statistically you will dislike one of them. If you watch 10 movies with a 10% rotten tomatoes score, you will probably like one of them.  It's not actually that weird to disagree with a rottentomatoes score, but people will see one movie they like with a 30% and be like "see, this proves movie critics are morons and reviews are useless. The audience score is what really matters!" Even though aggressive anti-review bomb measures mean that basically any movie now has a high audience score no matter how bad it is.

Not to be edgy, but I never look at ratings before deciding to watch anything. I do sometimes check afterwards, just out of curiousity.

Rotten Tomatoes (like anything that came from the internet) allowed users easy access to one thing: information. On paper, this sounds like a universally fantastic idea. However it’s incredibly common for humans to misread or over emphasize said information. We all know that one person who misinterprets a study and posts about how that justifies they already thought. We’ve all seen people refuse to accept new information and attack the source instead if the info conflicts with their beliefs. We’ve seen people interested data in ways it was never intended to, etc. And that’s for information on the scientific, objective side. For art/subjective it’s even more messy. Everyone has their own opinion, but critics can often help cut though the noise to reflect what a general consensus of the piece of media is. At the same time, critics are constantly consuming media at a higher rate than the rest of us (it’s literally their job), so they’re more sensitive to unoriginal ideas since they’ve seen them happen so many times. There might be a played out trope that the critic has seen a hundred times, while the general audience has only seen it 2 or 3 times, so it’s more fresh to us. The best thing to do is to find a handful to critics who you generally agree with (especially in terms of critique/criticisms) and listen to them over following rotten tomatoes scores. They’ll more likely to to guide you to things you’ll like, but it’s still ok to disagree with them. IDK, I guess what i’m trying to get at is that is TL;DR: use rotten tomatoes for the extreme ends, but find specific critics you agree with and follow them instead.

What people these days fail to understand is that film critics do not exist to tell you whether or not you will like a movie. There is no such thing as an objectively "good" movie that everyone will like. You are supposed to read the actual reviews, learn what the movie is about, learn how specific critics think about movies and what they like, and use all of that information to determine whether or not you should go see it. Rotten Tomatoes boils this all down to positive vs negative and then adds up all the positive reviews to get a numerical score. It's somewhat useful at a glance, but that's about it.

Their scoring system is stupid and I don't put any stock into what the score means to me.

People using Rotten Tomatoes wrong may be a problem, but it's not Rotten Tomatoes problem.

I stopped looking at aggregated review scores years ago and my experience watching movies has drastically improved

RT is far less trusted these days than it used to be - due to how its changed its Audience scores and whatnot. The star wars sequel trilogy movies got their scores heavily sanitized. ALso, keep in mind that RT is owned by Warner Brothers/Discovery. Can you say conflict of interest?

High expectations can definitely be a problem. I saw Everything Everywhere All At Once early and enjoyed it, but if I had seen it weeks later, the glowing reviews would have had me expecting a Lawrence of Arabia-level cinematic accomplishment, and then I would’ve left the theatre thinking “it ain’t all that” instead of “that was fun!”