For some time, we've been fixated on how enjoyable but fast-food-quality-level drama series on Starz, such as the overwrought wrestling-themed Heels, could end up with Rotten Tomatoes scores meeting or surpassing serious, all-time classic benchmark-setters like The Sopranos.
Wednesday's Vulture exposé of the Web 1.0-era critics aggregation platform, now controlled by Comcast operating units Fandango and Universal Pictures, laid bare why our obsession is wasted on Rotten Tomatoes metrics that hold way too much sway not just in the theatrical motion picture business, but also streaming in general.
The article begins with a recounting of how, in 2018, a boutique Hollywood marketing firm, Bunker 15, allegedly drummed up extra positive reviews in order to prop up the 46% Rotten Tomatoes score of its client's film, a "a feminist retelling of Hamlet" titled Ophelia.
The alleged scheme felt not too cynically dissimilar to former President Donald Trump calling Georgia election officials in the wake of his 2020 election loss and asking them to "find" him 11,000 more votes. Bunker 15, according to Vulture, recruited "obscure, often self-published critics who were nevertheless part of the pool tracked by Rotten Tomatoes," and asked them to craft positive reviews for the Ophelia.
Bunker 15 was also accused of getting critics to "quarantine" their bad reviews on sites Rotten Tomatoes didn't track.
Rotten Tomatoes, the report contends, has become easy for Hollywood to hack, especially since the platform opened its ranks to self-published critics several years ago.
“Audiences are dumber. Normal people don’t go through reviews like they used to. Rotten Tomatoes is something the studios can game. So they do,” filmmaker Paul Schrader told Vulture.
