I don't care much for the tomatometer, but I do value the critical average rating that each film gets on RT by a decent margin. I find it to be more accurate than the tomatometer as, instead of just showing the percentage of the critics who gave the film a positive review, it shows the average rating which each film got, serving as a better reflection of how much the critics liked or disliked the film in question.
Agreed. There are films with like a 78% but the average score is like a 6.2/10. And something like
Joker is an interesting example of the reverse, where it is 68% fresh, but the critic score is actually 7.3/10.
Of course there are! But my original point, in the context of which I referenced RT in the first place, is that the reviewers who think promoting progressiveness are clearly ‘winning’ and are represented more widely, seeing as the ratings for Carol and other such films are very high as per aggregators.
Again, I find this to be a questionable assumption. You are assuming that because
Carol has a higher score than you think it should have, it must be because all these progressive reviewers are giving it points just for having lesbians. I mean, are you really asserting that
most people are letting their interest in "promoting homosexuality" be the deciding factor in whether or not to recommend a film? (And if this is the case, how do you explain the lower critical scores for
Rent?)
Isn't it possible that a lot of critics felt the film was worth seeing (not perfect, not a "grade A" movie, just worth seeing), and for reasons not just because of the LGBT content?
I thought that the film had flaws, but if someone said, "Hey, I was thinking about watching
Carol, is it worth checking out?" I would say yes. Wouldn't you?
If it is acceptable for a reviewer to say Joker shouldn’t have been made because it’s misogynist, the reviewers who like Bridgerton for offering ‘a refreshing take’ on British history must say, ‘Because I think promoting diversity at the expense of historical accuracy is laudable’ and not just assume that everyone thinks that way.
We all understood that it was fun and historically inaccurate when the characters had a dance party to Queen music in
A Knight's Tale.
Bridgerton is fluff, and being fluff means that incorporating a more diverse cast is a perfectly fine step to take and one that makes it appealing and accessible to a wider audience. Historical accuracy is clearly not a very serious aim of the series, and I don't understand all the hand wringing about it. By that metric, the romantic leads in period pieces should have crappy, non-straightened teeth and some of them should be covered in smallpox scars. I would imagine most reviewers praising the "refreshing take" in
Bridgerton would mention the diversity explicitly in their review, but I'll admit I have not read many reviews of it.
After like the second episode of
Bridgerton you just settle into the characters, and the mild jolt of seeing more diverse gentry in that period setting falls to the background. But, yeah, for me a big selling point of the film was seeing different demographics in those roles. It was fun.
I feel as though you think it's a bit of a gotcha that people are explicitly praising diversity, but, yeah, they are! Diversity is a selling point. And if you are trying to tell someone about a show you watched and why it spoke to you or interested you, you will mention the thing that made it noteworthy. And if a show/movie is doing something different, more people will want to check it out.
A very small subgroup of my friends were over the moon about the film
Straight Up because it was a romantic comedy featuring a lead grappling with some degree of asexuality. It's not that being diverse makes something a good movie on its own, but it does make it noteworthy and, for some viewers, something that will draw them to it. Any reviewer doing their job is going to want to highlight such elements.
To sum up: I think that saying that movies are getting high ratings
just because they are diverse is incorrect. A critic praising diversity in a film and also ultimately giving a film a high score is not some A -> B correlation. I frequently mention diversity in my reviews and it is something I am sensitive to as a viewer, but I'm not out here giving away
for every film that drops a diverse cast into the mix or features a gay character.
And if RT's metrics are the sign of anything, it's that glowing reviews aren't going to hugely sway an audience. Just look at the gap between the critic and audience scores for
The Witch. If anything, overpraising a movie tends to lead to backlash, so reviewers hyping LGBT content that is unworthy would just be setting those films up for harsh backlash from disappointed viewers.