Spotlight: 100 percent "Fresh tomatoes" rating ferments controversy over movie rating websites

by Julia Pierrepont III

LOS ANGELES, Dec. 4 (Xinhua) -- It turns out that "Lady Bird," a funny, moving film about a struggling, dysfunctional family fallen on hard times while living in the shadow of Disneyland on the fringes of society, is not just fresh. It's the "Freshest."

Sunday, the plucky indie, broke "Toy Story 2's" Rotten Tomatoes approval record of 163 "Fresh" reviews. It also blew out the Tomatometer scoring system to nab a perfect and unprecedented 100 percent approval rating from 186 film critics.

However, as more and more films are vying to set the 'Freshest' record, there is a growing concern if simplistic online ranking systems, which have grown to dominate the entertainment industry, are not as fair as professional film critics are.

ON THE CUTTING EDGE -- THE AGE OF AGGREGATORS

Web-savvy filmgoers are increasingly turning to aggregated online film review sites to get a sneak peek at film ratings before deciding which movie to watch. This has made rating sites a growing force in the entertainment industry.

Rotten Tomatoes, Metacritic.com and CinemaScore are leading film review aggregation sites in the U.S., and have gained popularity and influence over the years.

Founded in 1998, Rotten Tomatoes is the top U.S. site for movie reviews and rankings, and the fourth most frequently visited film site with 17 million unique monthly visitors.

The website rose to prominence by tightening their belts during the dot.com crash aftermath and making smart strategic alliances with giants like with Apple, Google and Ask.com. Their ratings are also included as routine coverage in two Hollywood trade industry magazines: Variety and The Hollywood Reporter.

Their top rival, Metacritic.com, was launched three years later to fill the gaps in Rotten Tomatoes rating coverage and include video game ratings, an area in which Metacritic now dominates.

Metacritic was sold to CNET in 2005. CNET and Metacritic are now owned by the CBS Corporation. Their sliding scale that ranks reviews on a sliding numerical scale, which gives their ratings more critical nuance than Rotten Tomatoes' binary "Rotten" or "Fresh."

CinemaScore is the granddaddy of movie rating companies. It is also the industry leader in measuring movie appeal among actual theater audiences via exit polls. Since 1978, CinemaScore has been polling moviegoers at major movie releases on opening night to collect demographic information and calculate a distinctive grade. Their ratings are based on an A to F style report card.

NO ABSOLUTE OBJECTIVITY

But these film rating-aggregators have not been without controversy.

Last month, the delay of the release of "Justice League" review on Rotten Tomatoes raised suspicions that Warner Brothers, co-owner of Rotten Tomatoes' parent company Fandango, might have colluded to conceal the movie's underwhelming rating of just 43 percent.

Rotten Tomatoes explained later that it made the decision itself without Warner Brother's knowledge to promote the movie. But it raised questions about fairness and unbiased reporting, and the need for greater transparency on such influential rating sites that might make or break a film's box office potential.

Many movers and shakers in Hollywood are up in arms about the growing impact of movie scoring sites, as well as the detrimental influence that their oversimplified, aggregate scoring might make on the movie business and the film critic profession. This has prompted dozens of petitions on Change.org, which demand those sites to be closed down.

Armond White, former chairman of the New York Film Critics Circle, said "By dumping reviewers onto one website and assigning spurious percentage enthusiasm points to the discrete reviews, the Internet takes revenge on individual expression -- the essence of criticism, if not a definition of democracy itself."

But Tom Cox, a writer at Creators Co., thinks the criticism may be an overreaction: "Hollywood blaming their bad year on a review aggregate implies that they believe they would make more money if the audience didn't know ahead of time the quality of the movie... and through collecting the review links into one place, it will actually help boost writers' traffic."

ART OR COMMERCE?

Some leading cinema artists believe that such reductive ratings attempt to impose a purely economic sales model on art and culture that better suits the selling of shoes or appliances.

Film director Martin Scorsese dismisses those sites. "They have everything to do with the movie business and absolutely nothing to do with either the creation or the intelligent viewing of films. Filmmakers are reduced to content manufacturers and viewers to unadventurous consumers."

As more film review sites are snapped up by ticket sales sites, such a box office skewing phenomenon is likely to increase.

For example, last year, Rotten Tomatoes was bought by Fandango, a leading online ticketing site. Fandango also bought Movietickets.com, another leading online ticketing company, which makes Fandango cover 40,000 screens worldwide.

Moreover, industry analysts have noticed that China, the world's second largest film market, is entering the fray with its own aggregated film review sites -- primarily owned by China's top ticket sales companies.

As online ticketing continues to dominate film ticket sales in China, those sites are likely to exert more influence on the box office of the country. Enditem.