Editorial: Why Petitioning Rotten Tomatoes Because of Bad DC Movie Scores is Misplaced Internet Stupidity
It's time for a little venting.
Some fans are pissed at the aggregator website RottenTomatoes.com because of course they are. They're angry at the site — which takes hundreds of reviews from across the web and averages a percent creating a consensus score of how good or bad a film is. It's an imperfect concept which has dominated the Internet review landscape for a very long time and isn't going away.
Lately, critics haven't been happy with Warner Bros. offerings of DC super hero movies and it has left some fans petitioning RottenTomatoes to shut down. Hold on... I have to laugh at this for a moment.
Hahahahahahaha.
This is hilarious because a website who has a worldwide web traffic rank of 633 (per Alexa.com) and brings in millions of web hits per months is not shutting down or going away. RottenTomatoes is not at fault. This is not the fault of the reviewers, either. This is the fault of studio executives and creatives who green light write these movies.
A review is nothing more than one person's opinion and personal opinions (often) do not line up with your own as much as you want it to. My personal opinion definitely does not line up with reviews of many films I enjoy, but I don't hate on RottenTomatoes or reviewers because our opinions don't match. I just ignore it and enjoy what I like to enjoy.
To think bad reviews, as well as a lower percentage on RottenTomatoes, hurts box office potential is laughable. BATMAN V. SUPERMAN was panned before its release, and if reviews hurt the box office potential it would not have brought in $420 million worldwide in its opening weekend. Sure, there was a big drop-off after its opening but that's more about a movie not being as good as it should have been than falling off due to bad reviews. Well written movies and story arcs bring return views while bad plots are mostly one-and-done viewings. Blame the studio execs for not asking for a better script and story.
The reason this petition is so damn dumb is the fact no where is it mentioned how site's like RottenTomatoes, as well as reviewers, absolutely loved Christopher Nolan's DARK KNIGHT TRILOGY. BATMAN BEGINS got an 84-percent, THE DARK KNIGHT a 94 and THE DARK KNIGHT RISES had an 87. They loved Nolan's Batman movies so much the current claim is nonsense.
If you see problems with scores like: MAN OF STEEL and its 55-percent, BATMAN V. SUPERMAN with its 27 score and SUICIDE SQUAD currently sitting at 34-percent (at the time this post was published) then maybe you should point your finger at Warner Bros. executives for not expected more from their DC Extended Universe filmmakers and creatives.
The Internet can be such a wonderful thing, but it can also be so very stupid. This is just the latest example of misplaced stupidity targeting those who provide personal opinions (a.k.a. reviews) as well as going after a website who collects them into an average score.
Oh... and one very important thing about RottenTomaotes nobody seems to realize, even though it can be easily Googled and/or Wiki'ed, is that its parent companies are NBCUniversal, who owns a 70-percent stake, and Time Warner / Warner Bros., who own a 30-percent stake. No way Warner Bros. would want a company they own a 30-percent stake in to shut down because of bad scores for their own movies.
If anything Warner Bros. should be applauded for being so impartial while a company they have ownership of gives their movies bad scores.
Warner Bros. is the one who deserves your bad review scores finger-pointing because they need to do better when it comes to developing their DCEU movies. Just saying.