I can never trust another Rotten Tomatoes score again. Rotten Tomatoes is coming under heavy fire after a Vulture expose piece completely tore apart and exposed its critical review system to be ripe with corruption and fraud.
We all knew those scores were fishy, but I didn’t know how corrupt the system truly was.
In what has to be the biggest reputational hit to the biggest aggregate movie and T.V. site in all of cinema entertainment, Rotten Tomatoes has just been MASSIVELY EXPOSED for essentially being a hack website as it’s critical review scores can (and are) be bought and paid for. And, to be honest, I’m really not surprised.
Now, before I really go into depth on this subject, let me just shoutout the Vulture article (I’m leaving a link here and down below) for exposing the fraud, deception, and corruption we’ve all known these review aggregate websites, such as Rotten Tomatoes, to have in the last 5-8 or so years. It’s a very long article, but I definitely recommend everyone checks it out as it’s extremely compelling.
Alright, as for the content of the article itself, the writer behind the article and Vulture as a company are pretty much accusing Rotten Tomatoes of being a disingenuous, corrupt review aggregate website that has been “hacked” by corrupt Hollywood review-baiting companies and used to promote bad films as better than they truly are. And, the main example this article gives is the 2018 film Ophelia and the Hollywood PR company Bunker 15.
According to the article, Ophelia, a crap modern retelling of Shakespeare’s classic Hamlet that used to sit with a 62% critical fresh on Rotten Tomatoes before it was TAKEN DOWN (gee, I wonder why?) after this article was published, originally had a “rotten” critics score (or anything below 60%) and might not have been picked up for mass US distribution for its June 28th, 2019 release date.
Yet, that’s where Bunker 15, a PR firm for these Hollywood studios, went to work as between October 2018 and January 2019, they supposedly paid off seven minor, little-known critics a grand sum of $50 each (what a huge fee to sell your movie critic soul for) to leave new positive reviews for the movie, which allowed Ophelia to flip from below 60% and a “rotten score” into the 60%< category of “fresh”.
And, according to this article, the film distributor IFC Films picked up Ophelia “the next month” (which must mean February 2019) for a mass US theater distribution and gave it the ability to bleach our eyes with its crappiness in a theater near us. Can you see how this is a major issue?
The article goes into depth about how the Tomatometer (or how Rotten Tomatoes reviews the movies) works, how it may or may not have ruined the days of classic film reviewing, and how classic film directors hate the site, but I’m going to focus in on how abhorrent the very notion these major and minor Hollywood studios are using propaganda “PR firms” (more like propaganda tools) to ACTUALLY pay off film reviewers and trick audiences and film distributors into picking up and watching their crap, bad films.
I’m not sure if it’s even legal or not to knowingly bribe critics into deceiving audiences and film distributors into watching/picking up films for mass distribution when they simply don’t hold up to the usual critical standards warranted for such nation-wide viewing, but that’s beside the point.
The point is that it’s beyond morally and ethically wrong for “PR firms” and Hollywood studios to bribe these critics into overhyping their movies on these review sites and systems when they know these very systems are some of the most important factors in how their movies are portrayed, viewed by audiences, perform at the box office, and distributed across the US and world theaters.
Essentially, these hack studios and firms are not only lying to us and tricking us into watching their unworthy movies, but they’re also stealing theater spots away from movies that ACTUALLY deserve mass viewership and distribution. That’s the literal definition of unfairness and crony corporatism…which is funnily enough what these Hollywood studios and crony movies all claim they’re against.
(IFC Films-Ophelia-Official Trailer)
Even though Rotten Tomatoes has removed most of the Bunker 15-backed films from their website and review scores, the reputational damage still remains as a stark reminder of how corrupt these critical review aggregate websites truly are when the Hollywood studios are involved in and around critics.
I just don’t see how anyone can ever trust a critical-based review system again when the guardrails to prevent this corrupt behavior clearly are not being enforced or have been removed to the benefit of people involved behind the scenes. I guess it’s time to only look at IMDb and Metacritic, two solely mass audience-aggregate review sites, for movies and shows.
Images Source: Featured Image: (IFC Films) (Ophelia Ft. Daisy Ridley, Naomi Watts & Clive Owen – Official Trailer I HD I IFC Films – YouTube)
In Text Image 1: (IFC Films) (Ophelia Ft. Daisy Ridley, Naomi Watts & Clive Owen – Official Trailer I HD I IFC Films – YouTube)
Other Sources: (Vulture.com) (Rotten Tomatoes Still Has Hollywood in Its Grip (vulture.com))
