Headed to the theatre this weekend? Were you intending on seeing The Counselor? Prior to purchasing tickets, I bet you logged on to Rotten Tomatoes before making the final decision. And there it sat a 35% rotten rating like a sore thumb on a new releases list with four other film deemed “fresh.” If that number dissuaded you from seeing the film then this next installment of Critic Speak is for you.
Critical debate regarding The Counselor has been raging back and forth this weekend with critics drawing lines in the sand over who “gets it” and who “hates it” with the ferocity reserved for a Lars Von Trier release. With all these feuds now is as good a time as any to address one of the stranger aspects of film criticism in the post-modern era: the obsessive pursuit of critical consensus.
Fortunately, A.V. Club’s Jesse Hassenger took the time to address the issue. Readers look at sites like CinemaScore! and Rotten Tomatoes and then place an (undeserved) importance on the A+ or 99% approval, so much so that films that are almost universally praised can end up dismissed after four or five critics out of a 100 decide not to go with the flow.
“This is symptomatic of a strange cultural deflation that sometimes places the bar for success ridiculously high: A- or better on CinemaScore! 88 percent or better on Rotten Tomatoes! $200 million or bust! Accept nothing less, and report it as even less than that. When Iron Man 3 came out earlier this year, several publications referred to its predecessor as “critically panned,” despite its 73 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes.”
Iron Man 2 was hardly an excellent film, but when nearly 3/4 of critics approved of the movie, dismissing a film as “critically panned” is hardly being honest. Baggage Claim and Little Fockers received As and Bs from CinemaScore and Killing Them Softly famously received an F from the same site. Little Fockers isn’t necessarily a better film than Killing Them Softly (I wouldn’t watch it again anyway), but because that film doesn’t challenge viewers’ perceptions, the grade is higher.
And that is why select cinephiles pull their hair out with the mention of a Tomatometer, quantitative measures for a qualitative medium not only don’t work, they don’t make sense.
“The question, then, of why we want to quantify something as diverse, messy, and varied as the general public’s opinion of a movie connects to the question of why we want to find a cultural consensus at all. It’s the same instinct that causes some readers to report a movie’s Rotten Tomatoes “score” as if film critics all had a meeting and agreed to assign a particular movie a particular grade. Even those who understand the actual metrics of the Tomatometer—it includes a lot of critics, good and bad, it relies on a binary thumbs-up/thumbs-down verdict that doesn’t allow for much nuance—may still find themselves referring to it. (Or they’ll talk about the superior accuracy of Metacritic, which ultimately still converts specific human reactions into semi-meaningless data). I know I do, even while understanding that a movie’s Tomatometer number has relatively little correlation with my enjoyment of it.”
An individual’s review can be filled with the little subtleties of a film, but when group-think gets involved then the conversation made up of authorities on film tends to lean toward absolutes. The film can either be terrible or awesome with no room left at the middle. Very quickly these scores are used as a barometer for what is socially acceptable to see and films that dare to challenge find themselves on the outside, and this week The Counselor is that victim.
A film like The Counselor is excellently crafted, but its subject matter is not going to lend itself to happy feelings, thus a sizable portion of the negative ratings. Art should not be judged by numbers, and it sure as hell shouldn’t define the conversation. A majority of critics deciding a score does not mean that there aren’t others with opinions just as valid. So the next time you see a 35% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, don’t write it off immediately.
As Hassenger says in the finale of his essay “…don’t trust the CinemaScore or the Box Office Mojo or even the Tomatometer. Go experience it for yourself.”
10 thoughts on “A.V. Club’s Jesse Hassenger Questions the Importance of Review Aggregators”
The problem I have with this article is that it’s using a subjective equation to somehow equal objective analysis. Maybe Little Fockers is a better movie than Killing Them Softly, in the minds of some critics, or cinephiles. I don’t see the point in discussing criticism, which is entirely subjective, and then couching a subjective statement like “Little Fockers isn’t a better film than Killing Them Softly” in an objective manner to support what is essentially a subjective argument masquerading as an objective argument.
I agree with the basic tenor of the article, but I think it is confusing critical thought with an aggregation machine. There’s no need to check out a site like Rotten Tomatoes or MetaCritic prior to seeing a movie. However, as an aggregation site that collects reviews from popular and well respected critics sites like Rotten Tomatoes and MetaCritic do serve a purpose. The fault doesn’t reside with Rotten Tomatoes or MetaCritic, it resides with the people who are foolish enough to allow what a website says decide whether or not they should see a movie. Critical consensus is a fallacy, but seeking out and imbibing critical thought is a must, in my opinion, for any serious film buff. People should be going to sites like MetaCritic and Rotten Tomatoes, but not for critical consensus, rather for easy access to the reviews that are one part of the life blood of critical discussion of film.
Yet those looking at CinemaScore would believe that Little Fockers is a better movie than Killing Them Softly, so the subjective statement was already lobbed into the field. I’m just stating that inherently trusting an aggregator for something as subjective as art is a bad decision. Yes, critiques should be read, but only after the viewer has seen the movie and can add something to the conversation.
That’s not what Cinemascore would have you believe, that’s what someone who didn’t bother to read their about page or mission statement would believe. Cinemascore goes out of their way to say that they are gathering audience response to the movies that people see. They do not state that they are providing grades of one movie against another, they are providing a grade of a movie based on what the polled audience thought of that movie. They aren’t saying, “Go and see Movie A instead of Movie B.” Rather, they are saying, “Here’s what people thought of Movie A and use what these people think to form a decision about seeing Movie A.”
The question of whether or not people should be using Cinemascore to see a movie is a different matter than the one raised by the article. And again, I would say this comes down to not the site itself, but the person going to Cinemascore, Rotten Tomatoes, or MetaCritic. In this case, the author of the article has decided what he thinks a site like CinemaScore stands for, and based on his inaccurate assumption has made an objective argument about a subjective process.
I don’t think the writer at A.V. Club misunderstands the point of CinemaScore, he’s simply saying that it can be misinterpreted by the moviegoing public.
I contend that he does misunderstand the point, as he is making the same mistake he is accusing the public of making, and the same mistake you made in this article.
I think it’s a little presumptuous to assume that you know what most all people (excluding bloggers like myself and yourself) use Rotten Tomatoes and CinemaScore for.
Actually, I have yet to make that argument, that was the argument of your article and the original article. I think most people who use aggregation sites aren’t using them in the way they are intended, but the argument the original article and your article made placed this at the feet of the aggregation sites. The problem is with the people and the way they use the sites, the sites themselves need to be removed from the equation because in the end they don’t matter. What matters is the way that people go about consuming their media, and the decisions they make when it comes to what media to watch. The aggregation sites have been set up as fall men for movie going behavior that has been present since the beginning of the medium.
I never placed blame at the feet of RT and CS. If you look at the article, I wrote “So the next time you see a 35% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, don’t write it off immediately.” That message is for the viewer as is the original article’s conclusion “Go experience it for yourself.”
The above reply makes a great point though, Colin. If the argument against the aggregate’s conclusion is (a) counter-opinion or (b) purely anecdotal, then it’s not a very compelling one. The argument against groupthink is sort of a “no duh” argument at this point, but it’s impossible to engage in example-based criticism of the aggregate’s conclusions without engaging in a different type of groupthink, i.e. the group of people who thinks KILLING THEM SOFTLY has more merit than a couple of broad mainstream comedies. By saying I don’t know anyone who wants to see this over this, that’s literally you thinking about a group’s reaction as justification for your own opinion.
There are obviously plenty of examples on any aggregate that will place far from an individual’s opinion. Yet the pro-aggregate devil’s advocate argument (I hate RT, for the record) is valid: for the majority of readers, the majority of the “Fresh/Rotten” designations will side with the majority of their own positive or negative reactions to a film.
I just think railing against aggregates is a totally awesome thing to do, but bringing up one’s person opinions as evidence against the effectiveness of aggregates is dicey at best. Since, as a reader, I know way more people who’d rather see a broad comedy than KILLING THEM SOFTLY again (I’d rather have a root canal than watch KTS again), and I personally felt the response against THE COUNSELOR was about far more than “a lack of happy feelings.” There’s plenty of valid negative criticism about THE COUNSELOR that doesn’t boil down to wanting something more cheerful.
Just my two cents. I love anti-aggregation rants, but i don’t love personal taste as counter-evidence. Cheers!
The late, great Roger Ebert said he came up with the thumbs up and down because that’s what most people care about. Should they see it or not? It’s true that it’s not a fair judge of a film’s cinematic merit, but if you’re Joe Popcorn it doesn’t matter. If you’re a film lover then you’ll either read the reviews or skip them anyway.