Editorials featured in the Forum section are solely the opinions of their individual authors.
Whenever I saw movie trailers on TV as a kid, they would always be accompanied by a variety of “good” reviews from “reputable” film critic sources. Sure, it may be an indicator of a good movie, but are these critics even watching a movie for the same reason I am?
Enter platforms like Rotten Tomatoes and Letterboxd. Both websites let users rate movies and leave reviews. I find audience reviews much more valuable than some movie critics’ reviews. Take, for instance, a movie like “Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire” that came out at the end of March. On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has a 54 percent rating from critics and a 91 percent rating from the audience. So, who’s right?
I haven’t seen the movie, but both are right for different groups of people. When I watch movies, I’m pretty uncritical, and if I had a good time watching it, then I’ll probably give it a good review.
Critics are called critics for a reason; many of them are paid to critique a movie, so they’re looking for flaws and thinking about what they are going to write about while watching. I think some people definitely get value out of movie critic reviews, but I’m not one of them.
But that doesn’t mean I don’t find them important! These people are film critics for a reason. I might not trust their review fully (see: the “Five Nights at Freddy’s” movie), but I still find their overall sentiment to be pretty accurate.
I might not worry as much about smooth dialogue, or the background design, but the critic’s underlying sentiment about how good the movie is can usually be a good indicator on if I should possibly spend money to watch it in theaters, wait until I can watch it at home, or if I should simply forget about it. Pairing together these critical reviews with audience feedback creates a good balance for people like me, who aren’t too critical but want to know if a movie is good.
However, I think these platforms have a few side effects. We see variations on who is using what platform, and there is more of a blend between the audience and critics. Depending on where you look, you’re going to see pretty different ratings for movies.
This weekend, I saw “Problemista” in theaters and really enjoyed it, putting it at 4.25 out of 5. Rotten Tomatoes gave it an 83 percent audience score, Metacritic gave it a 5.7/10 audience score, Letterboxd gave it a 3.9/5 audience score. While translatable, each platform uses a different scoring system that I think plays some role in how they perceive their rating of the film.
I think the interesting part is how each platform is used by its audience. Rotten Tomatoes has short audience reviews like “Hilarious and silly! Very fun and unique story” and “Stupid and annoying. I walked out early.” Letterboxd reviews typically are funnier and vary much more in length, some as short as “tilda swinton as meryl streep in the devil wears prada if she were constantly on cocaine” and some with paragraphs of opinion. Metacritic has much fewer reviews, but all of them are paragraphs long.
People treat each platform as a space for different kinds of reviews, and it’s just as easy to get trapped into a sentiment about a movie depending on how much you’re reading into the reviews.
Honestly, I don’t even check reviews for movies that often. I mostly rely on my friends’ opinions to go see movies or the occasional “I heard this movie was good.” I feel like having an opinion on a movie before a watch taints the viewing experience, but it’s still nice to hear the professional and audience perspective after the fact. I’m not watching the movies to judge them — I’m watching them to have a good time!
Leave a Reply