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Rotten Tomatoes

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Rotten Tomatoes
File:Rt-logo.svg
Type of site
Film review aggregator and forum
Owner
[1]
Created bySenh Duong
URLrottentomatoes.com
CommercialYes
RegistrationOptional

Rotten Tomatoes is a website devoted to reviews, information, and news of films – widely known as a film review aggregator. Its name derives from the cliché of audiences throwing tomatoes and other vegetables at a poor stage performance. The company is currently owned by Flixster, itself owned by Warner Bros. since May 2011.

As of 2010, the website's editor-in-chief is Matt Atchity.[3]

History

Rotten Tomatoes was launched on August 12, 1999, as a spare time project by Senh Duong.[4] 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."[5] 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 by Yahoo!, Netscape, and USA Today within the first week of its launch; it attracted "600 - 1000 daily unique visitors" as a result.[citation needed]

Duong teamed up with University of California, Berkeley classmates Patrick Y. Lee and Stephen Wang, his former partners at the Berkeley, California-based web design firm Design Reactor, to pursue Rotten Tomatoes on a full-time basis, officially launching on April 1, 2000.[6]

In June 2004, IGN Entertainment acquired Rottentomatoes.com for an undisclosed sum.[7] In September 2005, IGN was bought by News Corp's Fox Interactive Media.[8] In January 2010, IGN sold the website to Flixster, which produces the most popular movie ratings app for the iPad and other mobile devices.[9] The combined reach of both companies is 30 million unique visitors a month across all different platforms, according to the companies.[10] In May 2011, Flixster was acquired by Warner Bros.[1]

Rotten Tomatoes users can create and join groups that allow them to discuss different aspects of film, and one group - "The Golden Oyster Awards" - has its members vote for their winners of different awards, much like the Oscars or Golden Globes. However, when Flixster bought RT, they disbanded the groups, saying: "The Groups area has been discontinued to pave the way for new community features coming soon. In the meantime, please use the Forums to continue your conversations about your favorite movie topics."

As of February 2011, new community features have shown up and others have been removed. For example, users are no longer able to sort out fresh ratings from rotten ratings, and vice versa.

Description

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 splattered tomato). At the end of the year one film will receive the "Golden Tomato", meaning it is the highest rated film that year.

The website keeps track of all of the reviews counted (which can approach 270 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 majority 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, and Lisa Schwarzbaum, 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.

File:Certifiedfresh.png
A Certified Fresh logo.

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. Movies with a "Tomatometer" of 75% or better and at least 40 reviews from Tomatometer Critics (including 5 Top Critics) receive the "Certified Fresh" seal.[11] As a result of the requirements for quantity of ratings, there may be films with 100% positive ratings which don't have the certificate due to insufficient reviews to be sure of the freshness.

In addition 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, this score is more specific as the users are able to rate the movie on a scale of 0-10 (compared to critic reviews, which usually use 4-star ratings and are often simply qualitative). Like the critic's reviews, a score of 6 or higher is considered "fresh". In January 2010, on the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the New York Film Critics Circle, Armond White, its chairman, cited Rotten Tomatoes in particular and film review aggregators in general, as examples of how "the Internet takes revenge on individual expression" by "dumping reviewers onto one website and assigning spurious percentage-enthusiasm points to the discrete reviews"; according to White, such websites "offer consensus as a substitute for assessment."[12]

"Fresh"/"Rotten" extremes

100% "Fresh"–rated films

(These ratings are subject to change.) There are many films that have received a 100% freshness rating, though many of them have fewer reviews counted than more recent films:[13]

0% "Rotten"–rated films

There are over 300 films that have so far received a 0% "Rotten" rating, including: (These ratings are subject to change.)

Criticism of methodology

A film's score is based on the number of positive reviews it has received, but ignores the strength of these reviews. Therefore, a film could be "100% Fresh" without receiving any outstanding reviews, simply because it has received no negative reviews. If a film receives only a handful of reviews and all of them are average, a film can easily score above 90%. Examples of this include Tokyo Gore Police and Borderland. Conversely, even if 70% of reviewers rated a film exceptionally highly, it could be given a low freshness rating if the remainder of reviewers disliked it.

The site includes a list of the "Worst of the Worst."[14]

International

Localised versions of the site are available in Britain and Australia. Readers accessing Rotten Tomatoes from France and Germany are automatically redirected to the British version of the site that provides local release dates, cinema listings, box office results and promotes reviews from British critics. The US version is available via a "US site" button on the homepage. 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.

Apple TV

In September 2010, Apple Inc.'s Steve Jobs announced and premiered the second Apple TV device due for sale in October 2010. It integrates the Rotten Tomatoes review syndication and ratings service under each title available for users to rent on the device.

The Rotten Tomatoes Show

Rotten Tomatoes
GenreMovie Review Program
Humor
Created byCurrent
Written byMark Ganek
Ellen Fox
Joel Church-Cooper
Presented byBrett Erlich
Ellen Fox
Country of originUnited States
Original languageEnglish
No. of seasons2
No. of episodes77
Production
Executive producersJeffrey Plunkett
Brett Erlich
ProducersBen Stein
John Lichman
EditorsDan Stoneberg
Szu-Hua Wang
James Stanton
Running time22 minutes
Original release
NetworkCurrent Television
ReleaseMarch 5, 2009 –
September 16, 2010
Related
At the Movies

In early 2009, Current Television launched the televised version of the web review site, The Rotten Tomatoes Show, which is hosted by Brett Erlich and Ellen Fox and written by Mark Ganek. The show aired every Thursday at 10:30 EST on the Current TV network.[15] Depending on when an episode is filmed and originally aired, ratings of movies might differ from ratings currently found on the website. The last episode aired on September 16, 2010, although it did return as a much shorter segment of InfoMania.

See also

References

  1. ^ a b "Warner bros. - press release". Cision Wire. Retrieved 2011-05-04.
  2. ^ "Rottentomatoes.com Site Info". Alexa Internet. Retrieved 2011-08-04.
  3. ^ Matt Atchity on The Young Turks Show
  4. ^ Lazarus, David (2001-04-26). "San Francisco Chronicle, 2001". Sfgate.com. Retrieved 2009-12-04. [dead link‍]
  5. ^ "Senh Duong interview, 2000". Asianconnections.com. 1999-08-19. Retrieved 2009-12-04.
  6. ^ Ryan, Tim. "Rotten Tomatoes Oral History". Rottentomatoes.com. Retrieved 2009-12-04.
  7. ^ "Hollywood Reporter". Hollywoodreporter.com. 2004-06-29. Retrieved 2009-12-04. [dead link‍]
  8. ^ "Hollywood Reporter, 9/9/05". Hollywoodreporter.com. Retrieved 2009-12-04. [dead link‍]
  9. ^ Graser, Marc (2010-01-04). "Flixster buys Rotten Tomatoes". Variety. Retrieved 2010-01-04.
  10. ^ http://techcrunch.com/2010/01/04/rotten-tomatoes-flixster/
  11. ^ "Frequently Asked Questions". Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved 2009-12-04.
  12. ^ White, Armond (April 2010). "Do Movie Critics Matter?". First Things. Retrieved 201-03-26. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help)
  13. ^ "American Radical on RT". Retrieved 12 April 2010.
  14. ^ "Worst of the Worst 2000-2009". Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved 2010-03-26.
  15. ^ "The Rotten tomatoes show on current". Therottentomatoesshow.com. 2009-11-23. Retrieved 2009-12-04.
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