What is the fundamental problem lurking in "Rotten Tomatoes" certification that ranks movies in tomatoes in an easy-to-understand way?

Film ticket sales site Fandango has a work to evaluate in tomato "Rotten TomatoesA system called "The system is introduced, and it is used as a reference when many movie fans choose works. However, Vox has a big problem with the "Rotten Tomatoes" system and it is a fundamentally unsolvable problem.Why Rotten Tomatoes scores do not mean what they seem"I explain it.

Why Rotten Tomatoes scores do not mean what they seem - YouTube


There are many people who have seen stamps of "Rotten Tomatoes" with pictures of tomato in the commentaries of the movies.


The reason why Rotten Tomatoes is so useful and popular is due to the number of movie titles that have been increasing in recent years.


From the situation that there are too many films to be shown and they can not be seen very much, people began to think that they wanted me to recommend works recommended by ranking.


Rotten Tomatoes has appeared there, and there are also many works that adopt package designs that made the rank at Rotten Tomatoes crammed.


Rotten Tomatoes was invented by Senh Duong, a student at the University of California at Berkeley in 1998. It was created from the idea of ​​making sites that can read many movie reviews at once.


After that, Rotten Tomatoes which was accepted by movie fans grew bigger, and from 2016,FandangoIt is under umbrella.


So, when I tried to buy a ticket at Fandango, I had to see a tomato mark.


Rotten Tomatoes has three certifications.


Of the criticism against the movie, "Rotten (rotten tomato)" is given when the ratio of positive evaluation (Tomatometer) is less than 60% ... ...


"Fresh (fresh tomato)" is given to those with a positive evaluation of 60% or more.


Among Fresh, for works that satisfy the condition that the number of criticisms exceeds 80, the positive evaluation is over 70%, and there are five or more critiques from prominent film critic (Top Critics), " Certified Fresh "will be given.


As mentioned above, the number of positive evaluations determines the rank of the work.


Arisa Wilkinson who commented on the movie in Vox, saying, "There are more than 100 evaluations per work."


Wilkinson's criticism articles are automatically summarized in Rotten Tomatoes.


The Tomatometer of Rotten Tomatoes is a method of sorting all the criticisms to either good or bad, but criticism includes both good and bad parts and it is inconvenient that the subtleties can not be justified Wilkinson points out that there are sides.


For example, consider a work given the rank of Certified Fresh, "Alien: Covenant" by Director Ridley Scott and "Moonlight" by Director Barry Junkins.


Aliens: Covenant's production cost is 97 million dollars (about 11 billion yen)


On the other hand, the production cost of Moonlight who won the Oscar Award was only one twenty-fifth of the alien: covenant. I hide the rank of Certified Fresh for such difference in production cost.


Furthermore, Aliens: Covenant's positive criticism was 70% ... ...


The Tomatometer of Moonlight has a very high rating of 98%.


Even with a score of 10 points, the average score of alien: covenant was "6.4", whereas moonlight has an overwhelming difference of "9" on average.


However, what is given to both works is exactly the same as "Certified Fresh".


I will look at Christopher Nolan's "Dunkirk" and Jordan Peale's "Get Out". Both works are certified by Certified Fresh.


In fact, Get Out is above 6% at the rate of positive evaluation.


However, in Fandango's site, the 10-point rating is higher for Dunkirk. Dunkirk is not sorted by Tomatometer because of few critic's appraisals, but it has gained a high reputation in 10 stages.


In any case, the contents of criticism for these movies are covered by the same Certified Fresh mark.


To eliminate these inconveniences, other evaluation systems have also appeared, Metacritic is one of them. However, there is also an evaluation that it is very subjective.


Is there a more legitimate authentication program reflecting the correct evaluation?


Vox thinks that it is not practical to want it.


Because it is necessary to judge various elements finely in order to evaluate correctly. In the first place, Rotten Tomatoes was born in search of "certified" in order to understand too many works at a glance, so it is totally overwhelmed if judgment of evaluation becomes difficult.