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Update: March 23, 2017
BATMAN V SUPERMAN Producer Brett Ratner Slams Rotten Tomatoes Over Film's Low Score
Director and producing mogul Brett Ratner says film critic aggregation site Rotten Tomatoes is a destructive force in Hollywood.
Speaking at the Sun Valley Film Festival last weekend, the X-Men: The Last Stand director wanted to make it clear he has plenty respect for traditional film critics. But he says reducing hundreds of reviews culled from print and online sources into a popularized aggregate score has become a toxic and often inaccurate label.
“The worst thing that we have in today’s movie culture is Rotten Tomatoes,” said Ratner, whose company RatPac Entertainment co-financed Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice (among dozens of other Warner Bros. titles). “I think it’s the destruction of our business. I have such respect and admiration for film criticism. When I was growing up film criticism was a real art. And there was intellect that went into that. And you would read Pauline’s Kael’s reviews, or some others, and that doesn’t exist anymore. Now it’s about a number. A compounded number of how many positives vs. negatives. Now it’s about, ‘What’s your Rotten Tomatoes score?’ And that’s sad, because the Rotten Tomatoes score was so low on Batman v Superman I think it put a cloud over a movie that was incredibly successful.”
Directed by Zack Snyder, Batman v Superman cost about $250 million to make and grossed nearly $900 million worldwide — despite being considered a disappointment (with a 27 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes).
“People don’t realize what goes into making a movie like that,” Ratner continued. “It’s mind-blowing. It’s just insane, it’s hurting the business, it’s getting people to not see a movie. In Middle America it’s, ‘Oh, it’s a low Rotten Tomatoes score so I’m not going to go see it because it must suck.’ But that number is an aggregate and one that nobody can figure out exactly what it means, and it’s not always correct. I’ve seen some great movies with really abysmal Rotten Tomatoes scores. What’s sad is film criticism has disappeared. It’s really sad.”
EW reached out to Rotten Tomatoes about Ratner’s thoughts, and Jeff Voris gave us a statement in reply — and it’s not as contrarian to the director’s stance as you might expect. “At Rotten Tomatoes, we completely agree that film criticism is valuable and important, and we’re making it easier than it has ever been for fans to access potentially hundreds of professional reviews for a given film or TV show in one place,” Voris wrote. “The Tomatometer score, which is the percentage of positive reviews published by professional critics, has become a useful decision-making tool for fans, but we believe it’s just a starting point for them to begin discussing, debating and sharing their own opinions.”
http://ew.com/movies/2017/03/23/ratner-tomatoes-scores/?xid=entertainment-weekly_socialflow_twitter
No one give a f about Rotten tomatoes. But he kind of jumps into his own mouth a bit there. Saying "When I was growing up film criticism was a real art. And there was intellect that went into that." and "put a cloud over a movie that was incredibly successful". So which one is it? Which one do you, Brett Rattner, value more? Success of the movie (usually associated with money) or quality (usually associated with positive criticism)? And then he goes completely off the rails saying "People don’t realize what goes into making a movie like that".
It's the ultimate get out of jail free card, basically saying "we worked hard, regardless of the outcome, and someone else is to blame".
