Filter to 1-star and note how many reviews are direct copies of each other - many referencing that the Obamas are executive producers.
Filter to 1-star and note how many reviews are direct copies of each other - many referencing that the Obamas are executive producers.
For a few years now, I’ve purposely sought out movies and TV shows on RT and Metacritic with very high critic ratings, and super low user ratings.
The only time this really happens is if reviews are brigaded. If the user reviews were honest, it’s pretty rare that you’d see more than 20-30% difference between critic and user score (MAX). So when you see a critic score of 95%, and user score of 1.8/10, then I know I’m in for a good time. Same with games to a lesser degree.
I’m not even kidding, this is almost always a sure way to find a film or show I enjoy. In fact, I wish they’d introduce a “Controversial” category with things that have a big gap between critic and user scores (though when it goes the other way, that is high user score to super poor critic reviews, it’s almost always PureFlix-style Christian propaganda garbage).
I’ve had the opposite experience. I often find that studio cash grabs that rely on nostalgia or low-effort pandering get high critic reviews (which makes me feel like they were paid to do so) and only the user ratings rightfully trash it. Movie reviews seem to be getting a lot more like video games reviews, where a AAA studio shits out a piece of crap, but it’s proclaimed a 8-9 out of 10 by big review companies (looking right at you IGN). Only by listening to the fans or less mainstream reviewers do you get the real picture.
Nostalgia has a bigger effect on user ratings than it does on critic reviews.
Only if it’s done right. If it’s done as merely a cash grab, most people can tell pretty quick. The new Super Mario Bros., or anything by Disney in the last 4 years are great examples. If you take out nostalgia, they’re pretty poor to mediocre movies. And I think most people are able to notice that.
Yes, and those movies end up with a reasonable gap between the two scores. It will have a lower user score than critic score, but it’s only ever below 2 or 3 if it’s been brigaded. This can be easily confirmed by just reading a few of the user reviews.
Can you give some examples? I’d love to discover some gems.
Word of warning - I usually find that movies on rotten tomatoes with low critic scores and high audience scores are hitting the midweek sweet spot for me. Low cerebral requirement, high distraction. If you get me.
I’ve found the same thing, critic scores are harder to use as predictors because there is too much variance between their individual special opinions about the importance of character development vs the average user enjoying a movie for what it is. Obviously crap is crap, but a 56% critic and 82% user score is usually more appealing than vice versa
Rotten tomatoes doesn’t get the average of all critics scores, they only look whether or not the review was positive or negative. It doesn’t look at their individual special opinions.
Their individual special opinions tip their score from ‘good’ to ‘bad’ for reasons that other people probably wouldn’t care about, is my point.
Another example of a movie where the audience score is higher than the critic score is Tommy Wiseau’s The Room. Not sure if this applies in general to movies “so bad they are good” (though personally, at this point I believe Tommy knew what he was doing because he’s been able to repeat that “so bad it’s good” despite knowing how they are received, whereas if it was really driven by his ego, I’m sure that same ego would have forced him to change it up to get the critical acclaim the was supposedly chasing.)
I’m not really of the mind that a piece of media can be “so bad it’s good.”
I understand the sentiment, but I generally do not agree. Maybe “so bad that it’s fun to laugh at with friends,” but “good”? Nah.
To be honest, I agree with this. It would be more accurate to say, “so bad it’s entertaining”, but it’s generally laughs at the media rather than with it.
Though since I think Tommy did that deliberately, I would argue that “so bad it’s good” does apply to The Room. Though the ethics are a bit questionable because I don’t think he let any of his staff or cast in on the joke. I also suspect those sex scenes were real sex and one of the big motivators for the movie.
Literally anything critical of Christianity (or anything that could even be perceived as critical of Christianity, we can’t actually expect them to watch it first).
I guess I should have kept better track over the years… Let me see if I can find a few.
An obvious one (video game though) that I can think of off hand is The Last of Us 2. Fantastic game, user scores brigaded everywhere “because gay/trans.”
In fact, I think The Last of US TV show was review bombed after episode 3. Again, “because gay.”
The TV show “The Watchmen” was brigaded by users (not sure if they’ve filtered those out, or if the score has been adjusted since, but when it originally aired, user scores were very very low due to review bombing). Anyone who’s seen the show could tell you exactly why that happened.
Here is an article about it happening to a film about the Armenian Genocide (I haven’t seen the film so I can’t say if it’s good, but I’m sure it doesn’t deserve 1-star)
https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/news/the-promise-film-christian-bale-armenian-genocide-imdb-turkey-oscar-isaac-a7378881.html
I will have to try to keep track from now on. Sometimes it becomes a cultural moment, like with TLOU, but lots of times it goes under the radar, and a show/movie/game gets quietly fucked over by idiots on the internet who have no interest in even trying the media first.