The Rotten Tomatoes website is constantly mentioned when talking about entertainment. It could be stated that the majority of cinema and television fans go to the website to see how their favorite or highly anticipated productions are doing. A great factor about it is that both critics and audience scores are shown, and potential moviegoers can read both. The entertainment industry is constantly reinventing itself, from streaming services hitting the big awards to review sites that changed the game, like Rotten Tomatoes. It's an ever-evolving industry that, if not caught up with the times, can suffer greatly.
Updated September 9, 2023: After the recent news surrounding critics being paid to submit positive reviews to Rotten Tomatoes, this article has been updated with additional information by Jack Deegan.
Here's a bit more about the unique history of the website that has been extremely popular in these past decades. It has influenced, and still influences, the industry today. But a recent report might taint the website's legacy forever and now puts the future of its validity in doubt.
How Rotten Tomatoes Started
The foundation of Rotten Tomatoes goes back to 1998. Made by a small team with a majority of Asian Americans, the website stood out from the other startups that were popping up everywhere at the time – especially moving into the 2000s. The goal with which the website started couldn't be further away from the cinema authority it is now. The movie that made it all happen? Rush Hour.
Rotten Tomatoes was created by Senh Duong as a hobby. Duong was born in Vietnam but is ethnically Chinese and was living in the United States; representation on the screen was something he sought — “Seeing someone like that on screen, subconsciously it makes you feel more accepted,” said Duong in an anniversary retrospective. A movie lover, especially regarding action movies, Duong liked to read reviews to have a better understanding of what the movie was about before going to the theater. Some of his favorite actors were Jackie Chan and Jet Li. Chan's first big movie that went to the big screen in the US was Rush Hour – and the longtime fan couldn't be more excited about it. Duong started to search for what critics were saying about the movie, and he noticed that the only place he saw some reviews together was on the movie posters. That's when the idea for a hoarder review website sparked.
Related: 20 Movies with a 0% Rotten Tomatoes Score That Deserve a Second Chance
Duong presented his concept for the website to two friends: Patrick Lee and Stephen Wang, all former UC Berkeley classmates. They worked in the same startup and decided to create the website. Stephen stated, “He collected all the news articles and film reviews in the weeks preceding the movie’s release and put them on a single page. In reality, while he meant to build a site for Rush Hour since the film’s release got delayed, he actually continued the process for other movies about to release.” The site was then created with Design Reactor, whose brand was to create websites for film and television clients.
The first movie reviewed on Rotten Tomatoes was Your Friends & Neighbors. Doung explained how he gathered the first reviews, “On the very first day, it had about 100 views, [...] I got that from posting in Usenet movie groups telling people to check it out. A few days later, it was picked by Yahoo! as the site of the day, which got the site a couple of thousand views. In the following week, it was spotlighted by USA Today and Netscape, which was huge back then.” Since then, thousands of movies have become a part of the website.
A turning point was Pixar's Toy Story and A Bug's Life, as people went to check the website ratings before going to the movies. While they hit some rough patches during the next years, the website slowly started to become recognized in the industry, reaching what it is today.
How Rotten Tomatoes Ratings Work
.jpg "History of Rotten Tomatoes, from Jackie Chan Fan Site to Trusted Movie Authority (2)")
But how does their scoring work? While many view the website daily, some may not have taken the time to fully understand it, or maybe someone is new to this particular industry and doesn't know how it works. Bear in mind it's nothing too complicated. Gathering reviews posted online by renowned critics and fans/normal audiences alike, the website balances their negative and positive reviews, reaching an approval number.
To separate critics (that were approved in a number of criteria established by the website) from the everyday audience, they use different symbols: tomatoes for the professional reviews and a bucket of popcorn for the audience. If the critics' ratings have an average of 60% positive, a red tomato appears on their scoring; if it is 60% negative, a green splat is displayed. Fairly similar, a full red bucket of popcorn represents 60% 3.5-star ratings or higher by the audience, and a green tipped-over bucket represents when less than 60% gives 3.5-star ratings or higher.
Related: Stanley Kubrick’s 10 Best Movies, Ranked by Rotten Tomatoes’ Audience Score
However, there are ones that stand out and have the classification everyone wants nowadays: Certified Fresh badge. This is for the productions that have outstanding reviews and have to follow a bunch of qualifications to gain them. They have to have the following: A consistent Tomatometer score of 75% or higher, at least five reviews from top critics, films in wide release must have a minimum of 80 reviews (this also applies for films going from limited to wide release), films in limited release must have a minimum of 40 reviews, only individual seasons of a TV show are eligible, and each must have a minimum of 20 reviews.
Rotten Tomatoes Influences the Industry
Rotten Tomatoes is not only considered the source of the most trusted recommendations for entertainment – as stated on its website – but it also has an influence on the industry. In 2011, Warner Bros. bought the website and sold it to Fandango, a website that sells advanced movie tickets to major movie theater chains, in 2016. In 2017, 36% of moviegoers in the US checked Rotten Tomatoes to decide which productions they were going to see.
Producer of Hidden Figures and Silver Linings Playbook, Donna Gigliotti, stated, “For a picture that doesn’t have a brand name and doesn’t have movie stars, Rotten Tomatoes scores can enhance the box office.” While the website scores do influence, they are not solely guilty of a box office success or failure, as their scores then help or hinder films with limited or small theater releases, while big franchises are not that influenced by it. It is impressive what this website was able to do, even if some (especially other critics) don't agree 100% with their rating method. Regardless, there is no denying it is a success story and something no one has been able to convey since.
With the Recent Controversy, Can it Still be Trusted?
While for the better part of two decades, Rotten Tomatoes has been the go-to movie review aggregate, its crown is starting to slip. A recent investigation from Vulture has uncovered a scandal involving critics being paid to give movies more positive reviews. This is centered around the company Bunker 15, a film-PR firm dedicated to connecting filmmakers to the right journalists for their films. While that sounds nice, how they've gone about this is very unethical and has put Rotten Tomatoes' credibility at risk.
It all started with the 2018 movie Ophelia, a retelling of the classic story of Hamlet from Ophelia's perspective. After its debut at the Sundance Film Festival to mostly negative reviews, Bunker 15 got to work to switch things up. While most PR firms seek out well-known critics from respected publications, the company focused on lesser-known reviewers who were self-published. They promised each critic $50 to review a film and not to disclose that in the review. They would seek these critics out and claim they were looking for "more input from different critics," which is basically another way of saying they were looking for positive reviews.
Related: Rotten Tomatoes in the Spotlight After Report Claims PR Firm Paid for Positive Reviews Boost
While this process didn't guarantee them completely positive reviews, they would ask anyone who thought negatively of the review to publish it somewhere that Rotten Tomatoes didn't see so it would not be logged and counted as part of the score. They had even lobbied people who thought negatively of it to change it to a positive review, knowing that Rotten Tomatoes could update it.
After Vulture asked Rotten Tomatoes about the issue, they delisted some reviews from the film and sent a letter to those critics about the integrity of reviews. Despite how troubling this is for the platform and the trust they've built up over the years, it doesn't mean the site is useless now. The site itself still works as intended; it's just an outside third party influencing the opinions of those in power for a very small selection of critic reviews on an even smaller group of films.
It's not a great look, but it is also worth noting the story has already been spun out of control. There has always been a conspiracy about studios paying critics for good reviews or paying them to give bad reviews to other studio films. Yet it is worth noting while certain online pundits might use this as a way to put doubt on, say, Captain Marvel's positive response, the truth is this is not concerning movies by big studios but was regarding a small film that likely most people had not heard of as a way to generate positive reviews to make it appealing to sell to a third party distributor.
The biggest thing to hopefully come out of this is that it will make people actually think about how to use Rotten Tomatoes. Instead of just looking at the Tomatometer, look at the actually reviews themselves by the writers who put the hard work into them and see what they think. A mid to positive review or a glowing review will be graded the same way on Rotten Tomatoes, as will a scathing review with a more mixed to negative review because it can't track nuance.
While sites like Rotten Tomatoes are helpful for suggesting what movie to watch, the most important thing is to see a film for yourself and make your own opinion. Your favorite film could be just one watch away. The website has always been a tool that many people forget how to properly use.
