Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker

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I think its kinda silly people need to see what Rotten Tomatoes says or some places to go see a movie. Its simple watch the trailers and if like them you go see the movie. The person should know if what they see is appealing to them. Now its probably true that not all trailers means the movie will be good.


Movie going is gamble if a person will like it and todays ticket prices i get people wanting to not blow there money. But a review score that mostly negative can be suggestive and people dont go see the movie and when see it later on dvd they wished had seen it.


Rotten Tomatoes least got rid of the agenda people who wanted the movie to tank for whatever toxic reasons. cause now to leave an audience review you have to show went to see movie proof.



The issue is, and it's a genuine issue, the decreasing credibility of reviewers.

In the past few years, critics have increasingly viewed films and series through their ideological lenses. It's a disease that has affect most forms of journalism, but I would like to keep this discussion confined to movies.

A site like Rotten tomatoes is important to a lot of people. It's makes it easier to choose which movies you want to see. So its diminishing quality and decreased credibility is unfortunate.

I share @gandalf26 's concern.



We've gone on holiday by mistake
I watched a video the other day that said RT is owned by x who is under z umbrella who is under y umbrella, can't remember if it directly led back to Disney but theres a former Disney exec running either RT or its direct parent company.

RT has fixed walls of audience reviews for Last Jedi, presumably to maximise DVD/Digital sales, removed the "want to see" rating in regards to Brie Larsson/Captain Marvel backlash and now looks to have fixed Rise of Skywalker audience score.

Instead of some sloppy corporate KGB espionage to rig the review game how about focus on decent content.
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The overwhelming majority of people who watch and rate movies online are not on subreddits or forums or what have you, so it's perfectly plausible that the view of someone who is isn't the majority view at all. It happens all the time. Fandom is completely dwarfed by the public at large (nevermind a particular strain or sub-culture within that fandom), so far from requiring a conspiratorial explanation, this kind of dissonance is to be expected.

A better question, perhaps, is why it would be important to anyone to believe that they speak for some silent majority when expressing an opinion about a sci-fan fantasy epic.



Rise of Skywalker has sat at 86% every time the site has updated. Never 85% never 87%, just sitting completely still. Now you can say this isn't impossible but with other sites showing a much more mixed audience reaction, Metacritic 5.0, Cinescore B+ (worst ever cinescore for Star Wars) this 86% is very suspect.
Well, yeah, it definitely isn't impossible, because the numbers are quite large: they've got almost 70,000 reviews. Throw in the fact that there's no decimals and the number is rounded, and it means you could literally have hundreds of new scores that were literally 0% and it wouldn't move the number. You don't have to trust me: do the math. I just did. Given that most audience scores aren't going to be anywhere near 0% even if they strongly disliked the movie, it would take an incredible number of even meh ratings like 40% to actually change the number after this kind of score accumulation.



We've gone on holiday by mistake
Well, yeah, it definitely isn't impossible, because the numbers are quite large: they've got almost 70,000 reviews. Throw in the fact that there's no decimals and the number is rounded, and it means you could literally have hundreds of new scores that were literally 0% and it wouldn't move the number. You don't have to trust me: do the math. I just did. Given that most audience scores aren't going to be anywhere near 0% even if they strongly disliked the movie, it would take an incredible number of even meh ratings like 40% to actually change the number after this kind of score accumulation.
Of course its possible as we have both said, but this number has sat at 86% following every data update, 300,800,2000,4000 etc etc etc. So yes it's much less likely to change the bigger the number gets, I understand, but what's the math like for this number to remain unchanged ever, even by 1% through all 20+ updats. It would be much more plausable to see early fluctuations before settling on a difficult to budge number. . Metacritic by contrast has around a 40% like, 40% dislike, 20% mixed, so even if we gave benefit of doubt to the mixed that would translate to about a 60% score not 86%.

Seems fishy.



We've gone on holiday by mistake
The overwhelming majority of people who watch and rate movies online are not on subreddits or forums or what have you, so it's perfectly plausible that the view of someone who is isn't the majority view at all. It happens all the time. Fandom is completely dwarfed by the public at large (nevermind a particular strain or sub-culture within that fandom), so far from requiring a conspiratorial explanation, this kind of dissonance is to be expected.

A better question, perhaps, is why it would be important to anyone to believe that they speak for some silent majority when expressing an opinion about a sci-fan fantasy epic.
Again of course tiny % of movie watchers/reviewers have an Internet forum presence. Is it a huge stretch to think that corporations would try to skew the online review sites in their favour with billions and millions at stake?

Not sure I understand the second paragraph of your post. Who is the "anyone".



Of course its possible as we have both said, but this number has sat at 86% following every data update, 300,800,2000,4000 etc etc etc.
Wait, you're saying you've been tracking it personally since there were just 300 audience scores?

So yes it's much less likely to change the bigger the number gets, I understand, but what's the math like for this number to remain unchanged ever, even by 1% through all 20+ updats.
If all 20 of those updates came after it had tens and tens of thousands of scores already (without even getting into how you were tracking it and whether you could've missed any), it's plenty likely.

It would be much more plausable to see early fluctuations before settling on a difficult to budge number.
Correct, which is why I'd like to know exactly what you're claiming to have tracked, and how. It's not entirely clear.

Metacritic by contrast has around a 40% like, 40% dislike, 20% mixed, so even if we gave benefit of doubt to the mixed that would translate to about a 60% score not 86%.

Seems fishy.
It really isn't. They specifically have ratings meant to exclude people who haven't verified they've seen the film. It'd be weird if those numbers weren't different.



Again of course tiny % of movie watchers/reviewers have an Internet forum presence.
I'm glad we agree. The next step is to draw from this fact the natural, logical inference that there's no reason to expect overall audience scores to jibe with any particular sub-set of fandom, and therefore it's not "suspicious" or "fishy" when they diverge, even by a fair bit.

Is it a huge stretch to think that corporations would try to skew the online review sites in their favour with billions and millions at stake?
There are a couple things wrong with this question, I think.

First, the premise is flawed: millions and billions are at stake for the film, but that doesn't mean millions and billions are at stake depending on the audience score on Rotten Tomatoes. An audience score which isn't even the topline number on the main page, by the way. A score that, if they were caught manipulating it, would result in a massive scandal that would probably cost them those very millions or billions.

Second, the evidence you cite has led you to the standard conspiracy conundrum: simultaneously believing in far-reaching, high-level scheming, while also claiming the evidence is obvious and easy to spot, even though these are nearly mutually exclusive ideas. As always, the conspirators are either clever and insidious or incompetent and obvious depending on which aspect of the issue we're talking about.

You're framing this as "don't you think people will lie and cheat for billions of dollars?" Of course they would, but that's not actually what you're implying. What you're implying is that billions rest on the score (and not even the topline one!), and that they're actively manipulating it, but also doing it so badly that you can spot it just by looking at the number now and then. And yes, that is indeed a huge stretch.

Not sure I understand the second paragraph of your post. Who is the "anyone".
Anyone who repeatedly pretends to a) speak for fans in general and/or b) seems to require the reassurance of believing there's some mass of Real Fans who agree with them.



We've gone on holiday by mistake
No of course not but I've checked into RT and Metacritic several times to see how it's doing. I did watch a you tube vid of someone who has tracked the score (or they claim to) through all updates.

My understanding is it updates like twice a day or something, for example it will be at 300, then several hours later it will be updated to 800, and so on, not like a fluent thing where you could refresh the page every few minutes to get latest reviews.



Can you link me to that video?

The only claim worth considering at all here, numerically speaking, is that the number has been at 86% all the way from 300 scores to 70,000. If you personally have checked a few times when it was already into the tens of thousands, there's nothing remotely suspect about that.



We've gone on holiday by mistake
Can you link me to that video?

The only claim worth considering at all here, numerically speaking, is the number has been at 86% all the way from 300 scores to 70,000. If you personally have checked a few times when it was already into the tens of thousands, there's nothing remotely suspect about that.
Not sure how to link YouTube on phone, but it's you tube channel "the Quartering", Rotten Tomatoes EXPOSED...., its 14.33 minutes long and has 300k ish views.

I'm not citing it as undeniable proof or anything but RT appears obviously corrupt to me lately.



We've gone on holiday by mistake
Regardless, it definitely updates more frequently than that. I've seen it change twice since this morning.
I really don't know how often, my understanding is simply that it mass updates rather than everytime a single review is verified etc. Maybe they are mass verifying so that's why.



Not sure how to link YouTube on phone, but it's you tube channel "the Quartering", Rotten Tomatoes EXPOSED...., its 14.33 minutes long and has 300k ish views.
Thanks. I'll take a look.

I'm not citing it as undeniable proof or anything but RT appears obviously corrupt to me lately.
I can see that, but from where I'm sitting it seems to be based on finding entirely normal things "fishy" simply because they don't align with your view of a film. There's no reason to expect critical scores to match audience scores (there's a major selection bias with audience members, for one), and there's no reason to expect verified audience scores to match non-verified ones, either, without even getting into manipulation the other way, which is actually on record as having taken place.

Note the nexus we've got set up here: if the critics are higher than the audience, it's suspicious and they probably pressured critics. If the audience is higher than the critics, it's suspicious and they probably manipulated the score. And I imagine if they were both high that'd be doubly suspicious.

So literally the only thing you don't find inherently suspicious is if you hate the film and both the critical score and the audience score reflect that. All disagreement is suspicious.



I really don't know how often, my understanding is simply that it mass updates rather than everytime a single review is verified etc. Maybe they are mass verifying so that's why.
Oh, for sure. It'd be straight-up dumb from a technical perspective to update continuously. I'm just saying, in case you were curious, it seems to be more frequent than that. It might not be on a schedule, it might update every X number of scores. I dunno. I just know it went up twice since this morning.



Gandalf26 your trying to push your agenda about fishyness but your just coming off like you need the film to have a poor score to push whatever opinion you have of the film.


Movie Goer scores often are bogus because there is no way to check if person seen the film. You get quite often people pushing the positive agenda and negative sides. With neither even maybe seeing the movie.


Rise of Skywalker Got average critic score mostly because critics now are filled with youtube channels who loved or hated the last jedi and This film more is being torn here or there because of the one side vs the other more then really if film was good or not.



One thing I have noticed about Rotten Tomatoes is the reviews by critics don't always match their positive or negative ranking. I have read some and thought, how could they call that a positive review? But I think it's more likely someone employed by RT is making a rash judgement based on reading just a line or two of the review than an external influence is at work. Do that many people base their movie-going, especially for "blockbusters," on RT or similar websites?



We've gone on holiday by mistake
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First, the premise is flawed: millions and billions are at stake for the film, but that doesn't mean millions and billions are at stake depending on the audience score on Rotten Tomatoes. An audience score which isn't even the topline number on the main page, by the way. A score that, if they were caught manipulating it, would result in a massive scandal that would probably cost them those very millions or billions.
Maybe many millions are at stake, of course billions probably not, but the difference between the film staying in the millions worldwide or getting into the billions, maybe. If we weren't seeing all these dubious 10/10 "fantastic end to the saga" etc, and the score flatlined at a 5/10 or something people would stay away. I can believe that people liked it, but I'm not sure I believe the volume of perfect scores I'm seeing.

It's hard to say how many people are using online reviews these days, not just for movies but anything you buy.

Would it be a massive scandal? how? everyone's under locktight NDA's and are journalists really gonna go after Disney, Disney owns loads of them anyway. They can just deny it, the worst that could happen is RT collapses, and so what? there will be other review sites.

Second, the evidence you cite has led you to the standard conspiracy conundrum: simultaneously believing in far-reaching, high-level scheming, while also claiming the evidence is obvious and easy to spot, even though these are nearly mutually exclusive ideas. As always, the conspirators are either clever and insidious or incompetent and obvious depending on which aspect of the issue we're talking about.
I think there's clear evidence of high level scheming, to put on a propaganda front that the Emperor was always gonna be there (despite no mention prior), to pretend that the story was planned out (it wasn't), to deflect TLJ criticism into some kind of "they hate women, rascist trolls etc", now to rig scores in their favour, it's happened before on RT with the frozen wall of glowing reviews right around dvd release time. If they've no problem lying and hiding (KK) from their failures, sure why not outright rig the game.

They've been clever and stupid, but mostly stupid.


You're framing this as "don't you think people will lie and cheat for billions of dollars?" Of course they would, but that's not actually what you're implying. What you're implying is that billions rest on the score (and not even the topline one!), and that they're actively manipulating it, but also doing it so badly that you can spot it just by looking at the number now and then. And yes, that is indeed a huge stretch.
As talked about previously, are the 99% of casuals gonna look any deeper at the score?

Maybe it isn't the score at all that's suspect, only the over the top new account glowing reviews being pumped out to counter the bad reviews keeping the score steady.

I wouldn't put it past them.



We've gone on holiday by mistake
One thing I have noticed about Rotten Tomatoes is the reviews by critics don't always match their positive or negative ranking. I have read some and thought, how could they call that a positive review? But I think it's more likely someone employed by RT is making a rash judgement based on reading just a line or two of the review than an external influence is at work. Do that many people base their movie-going, especially for "blockbusters," on RT or similar websites?
That's a big question, who can say for sure. I think people are checking stuff out these days. just like you can check instantly on your phone what the weathers gonna do,so if ur gonna spend 3 hours+(travel, adverts etc) and $$ going to see a film why not spend seconds checking if its any good.