Martin Scorsese on Rotten Tomatoes and Box Office Obsession

I am always fascinated when he talks about the industry and cinematic history. It is a shame that nothing can be enjoyed anymore without constant criticism, particularly online.

 

Good points. When deciding to watch a movie at the theater I need to unfortunately check the rotten tomatoes rating if I'm going to fork over that much money (excluding something I definitely want to see in advance) but i think the audience rating is much more in line with what most people I speak to and myself generally feel . This is especially true in comedies, sometimes the "critics" just don't get it.

 

This is true, but it applies to the movie making process as well. Many movies now are safe bets, resurrected old franchises, and mined comic books made purely to make money if not in the US than worldwide.

 

The man.

 

As much as I agree with his sentiment that the critical failure of certain films is met with glee by fans and pundits, whenever a dogshit franchise that was put together by clueless studio execs falls on its face, I think the only appropriate reaction is celebrate. We need better entertainment.

 

I’d argue there’s never been a better time to be alive for great entertainment. There’s too much to even keep up with.

 

Perhaps that's the problem then, maybe it's just too competitive out there, resulting in the criticism going hand in hand with the movie itself.

 

I’ve never had a problem with RT, but a few of my friends have decide to not watch a film because it has a low RT score which has resulted in me going to a cinema by myself.

There are many movies that I love that have low scores and many movies I can’t watch that have high scores. It’s not convenient to judge a film based on opinions from critics. It’s apparently more of an issue in the US than it is anywhere else.

 

I just don't see it. If you're referring to television, sure, it's been phenomenal for the past few years...possibly all the way back to the last decade and a half. But these last two years' worth of blockbuster movies have left me baffled as to how most of these things ever got past the initial pitch process. A few manage to shine through the muck as always, but hardly anything that gets a wide release makes me feel like rushing out and watching it in theaters. Especially when I know that if it's even remotely good it will never have a definitive ending.

 

I definitely pay attention but really only to the extreme highs and lows. I would say anything from 40-60% you need to see for yourself as it's pretty clear there's a split. If you only see the freshest movies and decide everything not fresh is doo doo, then you're doing yourself a disservice.

I will say though that I think the movie industry just like music, is being hit by a sense of entitlement from the consumer that is more worrisome than what rotten tomatoes is doing (which honestly just complies options that people could find themselves with research). So many people I know solely pirate their shows, music, movies and honestly don't see or understand that the content they're viewing cost money to make and those artists are due their compensation for it. There is a balance to achieve regarding a fair price for that work, but so many people are now unwilling to pay anything, especially if it's not a rotten tomatoes/blockbuster darling. All music/movies/televisions, even ones that turn out to be mediocre, deserve compensation and that's lost on so many people.

 

I think your comment about blockbusters goes back to the original point. There's a surplus of fantastic movies released that aren't blockbusters and if that's all your judging the worth of movies on, you're missing out on so much and helping foster the environment that produces the crap you hate so much.

 

No, I definitely don’t intend to be judging the current output solely on those types of films. The fact is, those are what’s keeping me away from theaters in the first place. I’m afraid my original point is getting lost in my attempt to chastise the cynicism of modern-day studios, but I was simply trying to say that there are certain approaches they take to moviemaking nowadays that need to be stamped out and met with poor performances so they can get back to focusing on giving us more Baby Driver, Gravity, The Big Sick, etc. And I don’t mean sequels haha.

 

I honestly don't think I've ever even been on Rotten Tomatoes before.

 

100% this, its unfortunate but if i am going to shell out $20-30 for a single movie theater experience, I need to do my research first to see if its worth it.

 

Lately I think when it comes to television, 100% on the nose here. I actively ask people to STOP giving me recommendations on new shows because I just can't keep up. Every time I log into netflix or hulu theres something new that I want to see that ends up being great.

When it comes to movies though, I am less enthused with the output. It's very easy to say that movies are doing so well because we don't go 2-3 months without a new marvel movie, or a full year now without a new star wars, but if you think outside of major franchises, it seems so rare so get a hit these days at the movies, but that is also completely taste based and preference oriented.

 

I completely stopped giving a shit about movie reviews as soon as Roger Ebert passed away. He was the one critic whose opinion I'd really trust on any movie, though there were certainly times where I completely and utterly disagreed with him. I never bother checking Rotten Tomatoes because I'd rather go into a movie with zero expectations and come out with an unbiased opinion rather than have any sort of preconceived notion about it.

 

I'd consider entertainment everything from TV to podcasts to books to video games to movies to music to mini-series to comic books to YouTube and back again. There's more great entertainment out, on a daily basis, than I think most people have time in the day. I can't read/watch/listen to everything I want by a long shot.

 

i see RT as a symptom rather than root of the problem; it's just the natural conclusion of quantified reviews in the first place, and i'm inclined to prefer it to the previous standard of using box office to dictate worth (which is still the juggernaut)... it's just the unfortunate consequence of the commodification of art, is that consumers then want metrics to validate their purchases