What is Rotten Tomatoes?
Rotten Tomatoes is the most popular movie review website on the internet.
They self-describe as "The world’s most trusted and recognized source of movie and TV reviews, Rotten Tomatoes and the Tomatometer score have served as the most reliable home of entertainment recommendations for over 25 years. We offer authentic reactions in a broad range of reviews from professional critics and everyday fans alike in addition to helpful, easily digestible what-to-watch roundups."
The website is highly influential, with many saying it directly affects how well a movie does at the box office or on streaming if it gets positive reviews on the website.
How Does The Rotten Tomatoes Website Work?
Rotten Tomatoes gathers reviews from certified film and television critics.To become a certified critic, individuals typically need to be members of recognized film critic associations or guilds.
They could also have a large following on social media, but those people usually are part of critics associations as well, especially if its their main job.
All of those reviews are then fed through The Tomatometer, an algorithm they use to determine if a movie is fresh or rotten.
In their words, "Rotten Tomatoes has a team of curators whose job is to gather thousands of movie and TV reviews weekly. The team constantly collects movie and TV reviews from Tomatometer-approved critics and publications generating Tomatometer scores. Our curation process considers these reviews, noting if they are Fresh or Rotten, and our curators choose a representative pull quote. Tomatometer-approved critics can also self-submit their reviews."
The Tomatometer
The Tomatometer is the percentage of positive reviews a film or TV show receives.
If a film has 60% or more positive reviews, it's considered "fresh" and gets a red tomato icon.
If it has less than 60% positive reviews, it's considered "rotten" and gets a green splattered tomato icon.
A movie with a 100% fresh rating does not mean every critic gave it a perfect score, it means every critic gave it a positive review. And therein lies the nuance.
Certified Fresh
A dream of mine is to have a Certified Fresh movie on Rotten Tomatoes because that basically means you gave universal acclaim.
They use the status to award the best-reviewed movies and TV shows.
In order to be called this, you have to have:
- A Tomatometer score of 75% or higher, with at least five reviews from Top Critics.
- Films in wide release must have a minimum of 80 reviews. This also applies to films expanding from limited to wide release.
- Films in limited release must have a minimum of 40 reviews.
- Streaming movies must have a minimum of 40 reviews.
- Only individual seasons of a TV show are eligible, and each season must have a minimum of 20 reviews.
- Theatrical releases that premiere at festivals must have an announced release date.
Popcorn Rating
Another thing people talk a lot about on the site is the popcorn rating, which is basically what the audience thinks of the movie, not the critics.
Oftentimes, some titles have a really high rating with audiences, even though the critics didn't love it.
How do you get a good popcorn rating?
When at least 60% of users give a movie or TV show a star rating of 3.5 or higher, a full popcorn bucket is displayed, meaning it has a good popcorn rating.
Of course, this can go both ways.
When less than 60% of users give a movie or TV show a star rating of 3.5 or higher, a tipped-over popcorn bucket is displayed, meaning they didn't like the movie.
Summing Up Rotten Tomatoes
Hopefully, now you understand that Rotten Tomatoes is an aggregator. It tallies the percentage of positive reviews for a score and does not make an average of the quality of the movie.
It offers lots of different ways to check in on a movie, with features like the popcorn bucket and the 'Certified Fresh' banner.
I still think it's a useful website to look up what you want to watch, and it has undeniable power within the industry.
Let me know what you think in the comments.