Although not yet confirmed as a permanent change, it looks as though the Rotten Tomatoes score is about to get even simpler.
According to a report over at World Of Reel, it looks like Rotten Tomatoes has simplified its review aggregation by removing all average ratings from its site, including those from film critics. While it’s never really been the site to visit for nuanced takes on all things cinema, the average ratings score did at least provide some context to the overall ‘tomatometer’ score that each film is badged with.
By reflecting just how strongly critics actually felt about a film, the average score could be used to look a little more deeply into whether praise for a film was mild or strong, allowing users to (in some degree at least), work past the rather binary way in which the site aggregates its scores, something we’ve offered opinions about before on this site.
Having broken the story, the outlet also offers the rather sinister hypothesis that this could be a studio-mandated change, arguing that more and more people having been referring to the more nuanced critics’ average rating when chatting about films online. Most likely because it was the most useful data metric on the site given that the freshness rating or ‘tomatometer’ is only calculated from averaging whether critics or users gave the film a binary ‘thumbs up’ or ‘thumbs down’.
The site seems to have confirmed via its FAQ section that this isn’t a bug or a temporary change and as such, it’s a shame to see one of the most widely-used film review sites on the web voluntarily elect to strip away valuable context from its offering.
With that particular metric now seemingly a thing of the past, it will become even more difficult to see beyond the overly simple binary opposition of ‘I liked that film more than I didn’t’. surely not an ideal step forward for film criticism given that Rotten Tomatoes is one of the most visible movie review sites on the planet. We’ll bring you more on this story as and when we hear it.
