Are film critics corrupt? And can rotten tomatoes even be trusted?

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   Stevennix2001posted 5 years ago

   Ever since the Joker toured it's last film festival in Canada I believe, there's been a lot of controversy about Rotten Tomatoes.   Apparently three stars out of five for movies aren't being consistently tallied on the site.  For some movies like "Spider-Man Far From Home" and "Avengers:  Endgame" for instance, the three star reviews from film critics were counted as fresh scores on their site, which equaled to a more positive critic on Rotten Tomatoes for both films. 
   
   Whereas with the new "Joker" movie, those same three star reviews it's been getting have been tallied as rotten reviews, which is leading it to effect it's overall critical score on the site.  And in some cases, the some of the same critics who gave the two marvel movies three out of five stars also gave "Joker" the same rating, yet for the marvel films it was counted as a fresh score, but for the joker is was counted as a rotten score, which means a deduction in it's critical rating.  Add in the fact that it's been reported by various sources that the people in charge of the site also used to work for Disney...and well you can see where I'm going with this.   The point is it doesn't look good.
   
   And to add even more insult to injury, Dave Chappelle's new stand up act on Netflix called "Sticks and Stones" is the subject of talk again, as now one of the creators of South Park has chimed in suggesting how film critics are being obligated to write bad reviews on Dave's new stand up special or risk being fired.  I'm not sure how true that is considering I have nothing to confirm it, but this is what he's been suggesting publicly.
   
   Honestly, I'm not sure what to think about the Rotten Tomatoes incident, but if they wish to maintain their credibility with audiences, they need to fix this problem asap before it's too late. 
   
   As for the South Park creator's suggestion, I wouldn't doubt it if some critics are being forced to write bad reviews on Dave's new comedy act.  However, I do think it's rather sad.  I do have other thoughts on this matter, but I won't bore you all with that, as it would just come off as ramblings of a mad man.  lol   Anyways, what are your thoughts on this?

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      Castlepalomaposted 5 years agoin reply to this

      I thought it was funny Sean Penn told South Park. The movie Team America can ruin the election for Liberals.
      
      A small dog thinks he is a wolf.

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   NessMovieReviewsposted 5 years ago

   Most ratings sites are inherently ‘rigged’ when films first come out. RT’s this year stopped allowing people to rate a film before it was even out to tilt the swing of voters adding stars to something before even seeing it based on what they ‘think’ it will be like.
   
   The thing is, both RT’s and it’s brother IMBd.com can’t be trusted when a film is new. But after a while the proper audience scores always adjust it to reflect a more unbiased rating. For example : I reviewed a film Altitude when it first came out in response to its score on IMBd. The movie is terrible yet held a rating of like 8 (from memory) back in 2017. Now (and I’m certain it began dropping shortly after) it’s a true reflection of the films quality at 4/10. More scores = more accuracy.
   
   Re: critics reviewing per instruction— who knows? But again any industry has levels of corruption. Sometimes it’s the filmmakers or PR ppl themselves who will hint or blatantly ask why you didn’t like something and/or to change something. Personally I’ve never caved as I always wanted to build content based on reputation. Like any budding entrepreneur should. I figure eventually if your corrupt-able you’ll be found out down the track.
   
   At the end of the day we still need these sites as they are great databases for information but trying to judge something like The Joker this early is definitely going to be prone to being incorrect.

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      Stevennix2001posted 5 years agoin reply to this

      I'm still looking into the rotten tomatoes incident as quite a few sources have reported this happened before with Jurassic world fallen kingdom where the exact same thing happened and the three star reviews were counted as rotten on the site instead of fresh like it did with avengers endgame and etc.   Not sure if they fixed that by now but like I said if they don't fix this problem then I can see this leading to bigger problems down the road.   
      
      It's sort of the same same thing with the Oscars.   If you know how the voting system works for the Oscars, then you know it's next to impossible for it to be rigged.    However when you have too many unanimous celebrities saying off the record how one didn't even see "12 years a slave" before voting for best picture it was nominated and only did it for it's content.   And another one saying crap like "I only vote for movies to win best animated feature based on what my kid likes", which basically means adult animated films that should have gotten nominated in the past like ghost in the Shell 2 are being snubbed in favor of animated films that don't deserve Oscar nominations like boss baby and that one fish movie with will smith who's name I forget. 
      
      However the problem with the Oscars isn't that it's allegedly rigged which it's not.    The problem with the Oscars is that's it's basically become a glorified popularity contest among Hollywood elites who don't take it as seriously as they should and that's their main problem.   
      
      As for critics being corrupt, I'm with you for the most part as I too used to be a film critic on hubpages.   Even got lucky to have some of my reviews published on the reel rundown a few times.   However I ended up quitting for awhile due to real life obligations and after a friend convinced me I wasn't very good as I thought I was, I just quit for years.  However a part of me wants to write again but I'm still not sure.  Still thinking about it.   Lol.  However that's another topic to discuss another day. 
      
      Sadly I do think some critics are probably corrupt which pains me to say.    I don't think all of them are but I wouldn't be surprised if some are.   For example.    I remember Disney banned the la times film critics from a lot of their early screenings just because some of them dared to even write a few bad articles they didn't like.   
      
      Therefore I wouldn't be too surprised if we're being honest.

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   NessMovieReviewsposted 5 years ago

   Oh, and I’m personally looking forward the The Joker Movie.

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      Stevennix2001posted 5 years agoin reply to this

      Me too.  It's actually my most anticipated movie this year along with JoJo rabbit

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   Stevennix2001posted 5 years ago

   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EE0_zktXNNk

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   Tea Cakeposted 5 years ago

   I don't really trust the voting metrics for RT or IMDb. They're too inconsistent, not absolutely bullet-proof, and you're not absolutely sure if financial backhanders studios and review sites are thrown in as an incentive for a good but rigged metric rating.
   
   As for corrupt critics; again I wouldn't be surprised if a small percentage were coerced into offering a good review, even though everyone else thought that film stank.
   
   And it really irritates me how the Roger Ebert site still churns out reviews by film critics, even though dear Roger passed away some time ago! How does that work then?

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