Brett Ratner Isn't Wrong About Rotten Tomatoes

Okay, I know I'm late to the party on this; but, I have to talk about this. So, what's the story? Recently, infamous Hollywood punching bag Brett Ratner made a statement about how he thinks Rotten Tomatoes has ruined movies (if you want the full statement, click here).  Since then, the Internet film community has dogpiled on Ratner with either hasty defenses of their chosen occupation or hackneyed jokes about how he's never made a good movie in his life. First off, if you actually read what he said, he never brought up his own movies or their scores on the aggregate site.

Let me clarify something right off the bat. I don't like Brett Ratner. I don't particularly care for his movies much and he's never struck me as a particularly interesting figure in the industry. That having been said, I don't think what he's saying here should be outright dismissed; but, I don't think Rotten Tomatoes should receive the entirety of the blame. After all, you don't blame a tool for someone's misuse of it. While I do think the idea of chopping a film's quality down to a simple number is perplexing to say the least, I do think sites like Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic do have a purpose. The problem is people rarely (if ever) seem to use it for that purpose. Instead of seeing a Rotten Tomatoes score as "here's what the critics are saying, now draw your own conclusions", whether or not a film is Fresh or Rotten is now the be-all, end-all in regards to a movie's quality. The point is Rotten Tomatoes is partially responsible for forcing objectivity into something that's designed to be viewed subjectively; in Layman's terms, with the advent of aggregate sites, opinions are now regarded as facts.

Ratner isn't entirely correct in his words. I'll agree that Rotten Tomatoes has depressingly skewered how people view movies; yet, I doubt that they affect the actual movie industry. If negative reviews actually mattered in the grand scheme of things, then the Michael Bay Transformers movies wouldn't be making gobs of money hand-over-fist. Plus, you wouldn't here the words "I never trust the critics. They're too snobby." or anything of that ilk come out of the mouths of countless everyday people.

Rotten Tomatoes may not be killing the movie industry; but, it has undoubtedly ruined the realm of film criticism. Gone is the nuance and in its place we got nothing but meaningless numbers.