Insider viewpoints are interesting to hear.
Lets talk all things Star Wars
Insider viewpoints are interesting to hear.
CB2001
Master Member
Oh, I thought you were being funny. Which is why I about the Holiday Special’s rating. Nevermind.
Joek3rr
Master Member
The using of Rotten Tomatoes scores is pointless these days. I remember people point to the critic score as proof that TLJ was good. While others pointed to the audience score of proof that it was bad. But then Episode IX came out. And the opposite was done. People used the critic score as proof that IX was bad. And the audience score, as proof it was good.
So yeah... All together the scores are pointless.
Just being sarcastic on the folk that were reviewing the wrong show. But like Joek3rr said, RT scoring is pointless
Well, I personally like to point to the Rotten Tomatoes Score only when it supports my own personal POV; it’s one of my gifted insights that I freely share.
CB2001
Master Member
Ah okay. That’s probably why I thought you were being funny with your previous post. Rarely have I picked up on sarcasm via text, but it looks I was still off the mark myself. But yeah, as I’ve mentioned before, I haven’t trusted RT for a long while now.
Bloop
Sr Member
I don't want to veer off-topic too much, as this thread is supposed to be "all things Star Wars," but I wanted to touch on Rotten Tomatoes and online review scores.
First, as I understand it, and based on the Vox article I linked below, the way RT works for the "official" critics' scores isn't exactly what people think - the overall rating isn't an average of all the critics review scores. RT assigns a rating of "fresh" or "rotten" to critics' reviews. Part of the reason for this is that critics will use different ratings systems - some use 5 stars, which tends to be more common, some use 4 stars, some use a 10 point scale, etc. Sometimes critics submit everything to RT, including whether they think it's "fresh" or "rotten," but often RT employees as tasked with reading the reviews and deciding whether the review is positive or negative. If they're unsure which way to go, sometimes they reach out to the reviewer to get clarification.
So you can get a review of 2.5 out of 5 stars being rated "fresh" by RT, but another review could be 5.0 out of 10.0 and be "rotten." It does make some sense - I always say "read the review" vs just looking at the rating. And score systems can be interpeted differently by different reviewers - you often get sites that employ different reviewers that assign review scores differently than each other. As an example from some years ago, I recall IGN getting flack for giving "perfect" 10.0 ratings for games, but one of the editors defended it, saying "10 doesn't mean the game is perfect."
So RT decides whether a review is positive or negative. But even if they ask every reviewer to assign a "fresh" or "rotten" rating to their own reviews (which they may do, at this point - the Vox review is several years old), it takes all nuance out of reviews and makes it completely binary. So a reviewer that thinks something is just average, like "it's not great but not terrible" type reviews, is forced into a "is this thing good: answer yes or no" situation, which pretty much defeats the purpose of the written review.
At this point, RT has all these binary review scores, which they then average out on a 100 point scale. So it brings back the idea of review scores without actually taking any of the critics' own review scores into account. So you can end up with a very misleading percentage score. For example, say 100 critics review a movie - none of them think it's great, but they all think it's just okay, and let's also say they all use the 5 star system in their own reviews and the combined average of all their reviews ends up being 2.5 out of 5 stars. But since they all leaned positive, every review gets put into the "fresh" caregory. The RT score for the movie is now 100%, based on 100 critics, despite it being an average, 2.5 star film.
That's obviously an extreme example, but shows how the RT aggregate rating is flawed. Now lets look at their "audience" scores. Anyone can sign up and give a review, regardless of even having seen the movie or show. RT has criterea for being an official "critic," and you can generally assume every critic has at least seen whatever they wrote a review of, but no critera exists for audience reviews. And people generally post reviews only when they have strong feelings on something - either love or hate (especially hate), and are more likely to give review scores on RT at either extreme (5 stars or 0 stars) rather than give more nuanced, thoughtful scores. So audience scores on RT are much more subject to extremes and getting "review bombed" by a lot of people who don't have an objective perspective.
So both sides of RT - critic and audience scores - are flawed. Shows like "The Acolyte" are extremely divisive and draw much more ire from "fans" so they end up being the most skewed review results on sites like RT. I'm not saying Acolyte doesn't deserve criticism (far from it), but using Rotten Tomatoes scores - critic or audience - to support your views isn't helpful.
www.vox.com
First, as I understand it, and based on the Vox article I linked below, the way RT works for the "official" critics' scores isn't exactly what people think - the overall rating isn't an average of all the critics review scores. RT assigns a rating of "fresh" or "rotten" to critics' reviews. Part of the reason for this is that critics will use different ratings systems - some use 5 stars, which tends to be more common, some use 4 stars, some use a 10 point scale, etc. Sometimes critics submit everything to RT, including whether they think it's "fresh" or "rotten," but often RT employees as tasked with reading the reviews and deciding whether the review is positive or negative. If they're unsure which way to go, sometimes they reach out to the reviewer to get clarification.
So you can get a review of 2.5 out of 5 stars being rated "fresh" by RT, but another review could be 5.0 out of 10.0 and be "rotten." It does make some sense - I always say "read the review" vs just looking at the rating. And score systems can be interpeted differently by different reviewers - you often get sites that employ different reviewers that assign review scores differently than each other. As an example from some years ago, I recall IGN getting flack for giving "perfect" 10.0 ratings for games, but one of the editors defended it, saying "10 doesn't mean the game is perfect."
So RT decides whether a review is positive or negative. But even if they ask every reviewer to assign a "fresh" or "rotten" rating to their own reviews (which they may do, at this point - the Vox review is several years old), it takes all nuance out of reviews and makes it completely binary. So a reviewer that thinks something is just average, like "it's not great but not terrible" type reviews, is forced into a "is this thing good: answer yes or no" situation, which pretty much defeats the purpose of the written review.
At this point, RT has all these binary review scores, which they then average out on a 100 point scale. So it brings back the idea of review scores without actually taking any of the critics' own review scores into account. So you can end up with a very misleading percentage score. For example, say 100 critics review a movie - none of them think it's great, but they all think it's just okay, and let's also say they all use the 5 star system in their own reviews and the combined average of all their reviews ends up being 2.5 out of 5 stars. But since they all leaned positive, every review gets put into the "fresh" caregory. The RT score for the movie is now 100%, based on 100 critics, despite it being an average, 2.5 star film.
That's obviously an extreme example, but shows how the RT aggregate rating is flawed. Now lets look at their "audience" scores. Anyone can sign up and give a review, regardless of even having seen the movie or show. RT has criterea for being an official "critic," and you can generally assume every critic has at least seen whatever they wrote a review of, but no critera exists for audience reviews. And people generally post reviews only when they have strong feelings on something - either love or hate (especially hate), and are more likely to give review scores on RT at either extreme (5 stars or 0 stars) rather than give more nuanced, thoughtful scores. So audience scores on RT are much more subject to extremes and getting "review bombed" by a lot of people who don't have an objective perspective.
So both sides of RT - critic and audience scores - are flawed. Shows like "The Acolyte" are extremely divisive and draw much more ire from "fans" so they end up being the most skewed review results on sites like RT. I'm not saying Acolyte doesn't deserve criticism (far from it), but using Rotten Tomatoes scores - critic or audience - to support your views isn't helpful.
Rotten Tomatoes, explained
Does a movie’s Rotten Tomatoes score affect its box office returns? And six other questions, answered.
www.vox.com
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That and the fact that if you have $100,000,000.00 to spend on marketing a film and you DON’T use some is that to populate the internet with a a bunch of really positive reviews, you should be fired. It baffles me that there are people living in a world where you’re SURROUNDED by commercials (which is literally paying someone to say “I like this!”) and still somehow manage to believe marketing companies would never do anything as dishonest as that.
Jaitea
Master Member
I’ve been right all along about Cowboy Dave
J
Paul Andrew
Master Member
My favorite thing about the Star Wars fandom nowadays is that I get to like things and STILL be contrarian.
There's some Youtuber who has been following different Marvel and SW movies (maybe others too? IDK) and has been cataloging comments that appear to be bots. They all say variations on the same phrases and they pop up for both of those properties. Recently they popped up hyping Deathtroopers being in that new SW game like that's the most exciting thing in the world.
universaljoint
Member
That's a brilliant statement.
You realize that one can't be informed without actually reviewing the content, right?
At least watch it before making sexist comments.
ghostryder
Legendary Member
NakedMoleRat
Master Member
Are you new to the internet? Lol
You take risks with jokes and fine, that one didn't land. Oh well. I'm not Bill Burr. I'm just fed up with people getting so bent out of shape over nothing. It's my own fault for wading back into these discussions. I should know better by now. Modern fandom, along with modern culture, is obsessed with victimization and crusading for vain causes. It's sucked all the joy out of entertainment because there's no escaping either one.
It's been at least a decade since I've had a productive conversation about Star Wars. At this point, all I have left is to laugh at the whole thing.
"If my life wasn't funny, it would just be true, and that would be unacceptable."
-Carrie Fisher
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