Movie Rankings: Rotten Tomatoes

This is part three in a series where I look at how various Internet resources have rated movies that I have bought over the years.  The original article contains my reasoning behind devoting so much time and effort to this series, while the second article looks at the ratings from the Internet Movie Database (IMDb).

The article today looks at how the rankings and reviews from Rotten Tomatoes feel about the movies that I have purchased.  Specifically the "Tomatometer" rating as opposed to the Audience Rating, but not because I hold established film critics to a higher esteem, but there is less of chance of critics review bombing something because they were butt hurt over their favorite character being killed off, or that a person of color was cast.  Some quick context, is that I am generally not a fan of the Rotten Tomatoes site and how they score movies.  I guess I do not really mind their titles for what they consider to be a bad movie, only that over the years, I have found that some of my favorite movies (Waterworld, Event Horizon, Suicide Kings, and Willow) are all considered to be "Rotten" and apparently not worth your time if you want to watch any movie since 1895.  I honestly get so worked up when reading some reviews that I feel like the person reviewing/rating the movie would rather be doing anything else and how in the bloody loving hell could I (meaning me) ever enjoy something so boring and bland as Mallrats.  "The fatal flaw in plotting the material is that we don't care."  You know what, fuck you Roger Ebert!  I love Mallrats.  Maybe it is just me, but Rotten Tomatoes, as a whole, seems to put itself up on a gold-pressed latinum pedestal as the only worthwhile source for what movies you should actually like.

Ugh!  But anyway.

But I knew that I could not do this series without including Rotten Tomatoes because it would be like covering video games without ever talking about Xbox Games (which I know we do not do a lot of here, but that is because neither Dr. Potts or I are made of money so we do not have the resources to have one of each console in order to be a more complete site).  I should mention though, that Rotten Tomatoes' library of rated movies was not nearly as complete as I would have hoped as there were, as of June 4th, 2019, nine movies that were not listed or had ratings.  These missing movies included the following:

• Ju-On: The Grudge (2000)
• Jackhammer Massacre (2004)
• Shrunken Heads (1994)
• Shikoku (1999)
• Uncovered (1994)
• Dead Space: Downfall (2008)
• The Ring Virus (1999)
• Pet Shop of Horrors (1999)
• The Gamers (2002)

Top 5 Films (Hypothesized)

• Aliens (1986)
• Akira (1988)
• The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003)
• Seven Samurai (1954)
• Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back (1980)

Rotten Tomatoes Top 5 Films That I Own

• The Terminator (1984)         [100%]
• Seven Samurai (1954)           [100%]
• The Crimson Pirate (1952)   [100%]
• Captain Blood (1935)             [100%]
• The Hidden Fortress (1958) [100%]
• Sanjuro (1962)                        [100%]

Surprise!  I decided to include six movies for the sole reason that they were all ranked at 100%, and I could not decide to leave any off, not because I love them all (I do not think I have actually seen The Crimson Pirate), but because I wanted to be impartial.  But as for the top six here themselves, I love that The Terminator is ranked higher than Terminator 2: Judgement Day (which has a score of 93%) since I am in the camp that enjoys it more than T2.  I was kind of surprised to see three Kurosawa films all ranked 100%, but then at the same time not.  His movies, or at least the ones I have seen, are well shot, edited, and follow characters that you genuinely develop an interest in.  I had thought that Rashomon would have ranked higher than either The Hidden Fortress or Sanjuro, but I guess those two movies have had a greater influence on Western cinema than Rashomon, but that is just an assumption.  Again, The Crimson Pirate I have actually never seen so I cannot really comment on whether or not I agree that it is a perfect film by tomato standards.

Bottom 5 Films (Hypothesized)

• Beowulf (2007)
• The Happening (2008)
• Jackhammer Massacre (2004)
• The Postman (1997)
• Waterworld (1995)

Rotten Tomatoes Bottom 5 Films That I Own

• Resident Evil: Apocalypse (2004)     [20%]
• Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008)  [18%]
• The Happening (2008)                        [18%]
• Thir13en Ghosts (2001)                        [15%]
• The Postman (1997)                              [9%]

Here we go, this is what I am talking about!  Except Star Wars: The Clone Wars, which did receive a brief theatrical run.  I agree that by movie standards it is not the greatest example of Star Wars or a storytelling in a movie-type format, but when viewed in the context of the show and as a four part mini-series, I do not understand where the very obvious hate comes from.  Everything else on this list I can understand why they are there.  Resident Evil: Apocalypse is a video game movie (although one that I thought was significantly better than the first Resident Evil movie mainly because it had a lot more shots that were reminiscent and derivative of the Resident Evil game series) and probably could have been a very well financed feature on the SyFy channel.  The Happening.  Yeah, I own it.  @ me if you want.  Thir13en Ghosts is not a good movie, but the make up effects, the sets, and the backstory for each of the ghosts, which is hardly covered at all in the movie, are all very well conceived and executed.  And last is The Postman, which coming off of Waterworld's heals, is no surprise that this movie tanked amongst critics.  Sure, if you already are on the fence with Kevin Costner, are not a fan of three hour reimagined western-style epics, then there is a good chance that you too would probably not want to see The Postman.

So this was Rotten Tomatoes.  Probably my least favorite site to go to to look up information about movies.  I think it is all because I view Rotten Tomatoes as a site that tells you which movies are worth viewing and which ones you should definitely stay away from.  I realize that is the whole point of a movie critic, but it is just how I view this site.  I could very well be wrong in my interpretation, but there it is.

For Friday, I will look at the ratings from Metacritic, which I only really came into knowing about through video game scores, which seem to heavily rely on Metacritic ratings to help determine if a game will be profitable and/or receive any sequels/prequels in their future.  So that is where we will be at the end of the week.



~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
We're In For Nasty Weather