For use of tomatoes against performers, see Tomato. Rotten Tomatoes is a website devoted to reviews, information, and news of movies. The name derives from the historical cliché of throwing tomatoes and other produce at stage performers if a performance was particularly bad.
History
Rotten Tomatoes was launched on August 19, 1998 as a spare time project by Senh Duong.[1] His goal in creating Rotten Tomatoes was "to create a site where people can get access to reviews from a variety of critics in the US".[2] His inspiration came when, as a fan of Jackie Chan, Duong started collecting all the reviews of Chan's movies as they were coming out in the United States. The first movie reviewed on Rotten Tomatoes was Your Friends & Neighbors. The website was an immediate success, receiving mentions from Yahoo!, Netscape, and USA Today within its first week of launch; it attracted "600 - 1000 daily unique visitors" as a result.
Duong teamed up with Patrick Lee and Stephen Wang, his former partners from the Berkeley, California-based web design firm Design Reactor to pursue Rotten Tomatoes as a full-time start-up company, officially launching on April 1, 1999.[3]
In June 2004, IGN Entertainment acquired Rottentomatoes.com for an undisclosed sum.[4] In September 2005, IGN was bought out by News Corp's Fox Interactive Media.[5]
The site is one of the most heavily trafficked on the Internet, ranking in the top 1,000 websites visited according to Alexa Internet. The current Editor in Chief is Matt Atchity and the Vice President and General Manager is Shannon Ludovissy
Description
Rotten Tomatoes staff search the Internet for as many websites as possible that contain reviews of particular films; from the amateur to the professional. The staff then determine for each review whether it is positive ("fresh," marked by a small icon of a red tomato) or negative ("rotten," marked by a small icon of a green splatted tomato).
The website keeps track of all of the reviews counted (which can approach 250 for major, recently released films) and the percentage of positive reviews is tabulated. If the positive reviews make up 60% or more, the film is considered "fresh" in that a supermajority of the reviewers approve of the film. If the positive reviews are less than 60%, then the film is considered "rotten." In addition, major film reviewers like Roger Ebert, Desson Thomson/Stephen Hunter (Washington Post), and Lisa Schwarzbaum (Entertainment Weekly), are listed in a sub-listing called "Top Critics," which tabulates their reviews separately, while still including their opinions in the general rating. When there are sufficient reviews to form a conclusion, a consensus statement is posted which is intended to articulate the general reasons for the opinion. The ratings favor recent releases and films with large numbers of reviews over older films, due to the scarcity of archived reviews for such older films. Rotten Tomatoes members are also able to comment on individual critics' opinions, as well as rate the films themselves.
This rating in turn is marked with an equivalent icon when the film is listed, giving the reader a one glance look at the general critical opinion about the work. Films that are considered "fresh," have many reviews to base the "freshness" on, and have an excellent average rating (at least 75%) receive the "Certified fresh" label as well as the red tomato. Films with just 55-60% can have the certificate if there are many reviews and an excellent average (indicating that even "rotten" reviews were fairly supportive). There are films with 100% which don't have the certificate due to a rating average that is "good" but not "excellent" or because there are not enough reviews to be sure of the freshness.
There are several films that have received a 100% freshness rating with fewer reviews including The Wizard of Oz, The Terminator, Toy Story 2, Dr. Strangelove, The Godfather, The Killer, and Airplane!, and there are over 200 films that have so far received a 0% freshness rating. The site has recently included a list of the "100 Worst Reviewed Films of All time." The top movie on that list is Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever.
In additions to reviews, Rotten Tomatoes hosts message forums, where thousands of participants take part in the discussion of movies, video games, music and other topics. In addition, users are able to rate and review films themselves. Every movie also features a "user average" that calculates the percentage of users that have rated the film positively in a manner similar to how the critics' reviews are calculated. However, it is possible to more specifically rate the users' ratings as the users are able to rate the movie on a scale of 1-10 (compared to critic reviews, which usually use 4-star ratings and are often even unrated). Like the critic's reviews, a score of 6 or higher is considered "fresh".
Correlation with profits
According to a non-scientific study by Erik Lundegaard, films released in 2007 which are scored "fresh" make, on average, $1000 more per screen than films which are scored as "rotten".[6]
Another study by USA Today in 2003 also produced similar results: "the better the reviews, the higher the box office." The newspaper found that, contrary to popular belief, film critics and moviegoers agree more often than not. [7]
International
Localized versions of the site are available in the UK and Australia. Readers accessing Rotten Tomatoes from a European IP address are automatically redirected to the UK version of the site that provides local release dates, cinema listings, box office results and promotes reviews from UK critics. There is currently no way for European users to view the US version of the site. The localized versions of the site contain all of the US editorial content, reviews and film lists and are augmented by local content maintained by editors based in London and Sydney.
In Wikipedia
Rotten Tomatoes is frequently cited by wikipedia entries referring to critical reception of movies to portray viewer opinion, rather than that of critics.
References
See also
- Metacritic a website that collates reviews of music albums, games, movies, TV shows, DVDs, and books.
External links
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