The Professional Critics and the Moviegoers: Clashing Scores on Rotten Tomatoes

I remember that not so long ago we generally expected critics to be tougher on movies than the general audience, and that there seemed abundant reason for this. One was that professional critics were people who had, formally or informally, spent a lot of time studying film (often had been doing so before they took up their reviewing job), giving them a bigger frame of cinematic reference and making them alert to a lot of things to which the general audience is often oblivious, so that less would strike them as very fresh and new and surprising and impressive, in contrast with a public that had simply seen less films, and none at all of certain kinds of films, and watched the films it had seen with less attention, and less of the benefits of instruction in the medium. Another was that, again as professional critics, they were given to reflection on their reactions, to actually explaining and defending their opinions, in contrast with an audience not much given to such reflection. And still another was the fact that, where the general audience picks and chooses the films it is most expectant of enjoying critics see a great many movies they expect to dislike (often correctly), and then having to actually write about them. All of this could be expected to make them less easily satisfied--in fact, leave them a jaded, grumpy, demanding bunch--and going by their reviews, and their endless griping about their jobs in the interviews they gave, this did indeed seem to me to be the case. It also seemed the case that big, splashy, high-concept blockbusters did especially poorly with them because, by the standard of traditional storytelling, in its cinematic or any other form, an action movie is simply not likely to be very good because of what it must do as an action movie. Thus would even a rather better-than-average action film typically rate two stars out of four by the old reckoning, or maybe two-and-a-half--a score of 50-60 on a 100 point scale, often for films that the general audience would rate much more highly.

Now it seems a 60 is about average on Rotten Tomatoes--a considerable jump from what the average had been in the '00s--even as the kinds of movies critics typically rate poorly became more common rather than less, and that without getting better (and perhaps worse). Indeed, even when big action movies are at issue the critics' rating now often approximates that of a general audience that may be growing less, not more, discriminating--and even exceeds it.

Consider, for example, the four big action movies of this past summer--Top Gun 2, Dr. Strange 2, Thor 4, and Jurassic Park 3 (or 6, depending on how you count them).

The critics gave Top Gun 2 a near-perfect 96 percent score, nearly 40 points higher than their predecessors gave the original Top Gun (which, consistent with the earlier tendency to the 50-60 percent range, landed just a 58 percent score, in spite of its having been pretty much the same thing, and also done it first); while this is almost as good a score as the 98 percent score the general audience gave the movie (and the 99 percent score from the "verified" audience whose ticket purchases were electronically confirmed).

Dr. Strange 2 got a less exuberant but still very solid 74 percent score from the critics, not far behind the 77 percent score the general audience offered (and even the 85 percent score of the verified audience).

Thor 4 got a 64 percent score from critics, actually higher than the general audience gave it (63 percent, with even the verified audience's 77 percent not much better).

Only with Jurassic Park 3/6 did we see the old pattern, with critics giving the movie a really below-average 29 percent (a good old-fashioned one-star rating), in contrast with the general audience's 69 percent (and the verified audience's 77 percent).

Of course, one may in considering all this note that the so-called "Top Critics" (who get their own score) are often less enthusiastic than the critics generally about most films. Still, the differential is usually just a few points--and in the case of Top Gun 2 they were actually more enthusiastic than the broader group (giving the movie a score not of 96 percent, but 99 percent, as good as what the verified audience accorded it).

The result is that, however one explains the fact, there is plenty of quantitative evidence indicating that the bar has been lowered considerably--not equally for every project (the media was basically a cheerleader for Top Gun 2, and eats up anything Marvel, contributing to the success of all those films), but certainly on the whole, so much so that on the rare occasions when they seem to think it "safe" to give a movie a bad review they can seem the more ready to do it simply to shore up their credibility.