RT Audience Score Rigged Again

Yes, something is up with TLJ. A sizable portion of the Star Wars fan base did not like it, and a portion of the fan base who did not like it hated it.
We're definitely not looking at Batman and Robin type of event, which is how the narrative is presented in media, social media, and on forums, however.
It's not really the case that most everyone, or even half of everyone, walked thinking, "What the [beep] was that?!".

The thing that self-elect scoring systems are good at showing you is what kind of emotional reaction the fan base has over a film, and what kind of reaction film snobs have over a film (people who sit around and rip films apart as a hobby - I don't mean they inherently hate all films, I mean they are inherently hyper critical and a bit jaded; I'm part of this demographic, or...used to be when film was my everything in life).

I don't have any problems saying that TLJ was received less well than TFA, but it's not a cataclysmic gut punch of a cultural moment that it is often painted as in the fan base circle.

This is anecdotal, so I can't say it's evidence, but I like polling cash register clerks at stores about big films like this; it's just interesting some of the responses you get.
When it comes to TLJ, there's a small pile of, "Oh, I haven't seen that yet. I haven't watched any of the new ones", and a majority of, "It was pretty good. A bit long. Aren't they making another one?"
A couple of times I've had to make corrections about how Solo isn't SWIX - it seems that some of the unaffiliated may be getting a tad confused.
One person said they were trying to get caught up, but was having trouble making sense of the first two trilogies and how they relate to each other, and was further confused about where these new movies fit in, and then after I helped navigate through that, they then wondered where that "other two" fit; they meant Rogue One, and Solo. They were pretty confused.

In fact, that person, and a few (not very many) expressed general daunted fatigue with trying to keep up with Marvel already, so trying to jump in and play catch up and sense with Star Wars was further frustrating for a demographic who aren't really super interested, but just responding to people dropping jaw at the fact that they're not following along.

A bit of a tangent there, but yeah, TLJ has a reception problem amongst the fan base. Easily.
I don't think it's a Schumacher moment, though.

That would be way down in the gutter in my model because not only does it have a very low RT score (10%), but it also drove people away from watching the film and you can see that reflected in the box office results. The multiplier in box office records between the gross domestic and the budget is 1.9...phew...that's rough.
TLj, by comparison is sits at 2.4.
By comparison, a smash hit like TFA sits at 3.2.
Rogue one was 2.5.

So yes, I can easily agree that something happened, and I can go further and say that the something is that a portion of fans jolted their neck.
What didn't happen is that it didn't suffer a nearly universal dislike by the general audience; not even close.

Maybe, but that feels a bit strong to say no less than 30%. 30% or less? I might think that's a tad high, but I could see that...but no less than 30% of the general audience seems a bit strong.
When I did this originally back in the TLJ section, I first ran with a very hard setting. I set it such that I assumed everyone watched it an average of 3 times, rather than 1.5 times. This has a net effect of reducing the general population size considerably in the model, and even at that extremely hyperbolic setting, the film came in at 77% of the general audience approving, which means that it's really just not likely to get this many ticket sales and have a 30% or greater fall out.
If you have that bad of a general public reaction, your legs won't just trickle downward in trend, they'll just simply get amputated outright.
Batman and Robin, for example, had 2.5 for domestic legs.
Wow. Ouch.

TLJ was 3.1 (this is the legs multiplier; now I'm not inherently a huge fan of this while a movie is going, and not a big fan of it in general - it's just taking the gross and dividing by the opening weekend and then saying the narrative is that more people liked what has a bigger multiplier; a 0.5 shift in this is pretty big since it's a multiplier).

Jumanji had a big multiplier of 7.6. That's a sleeper hit. Few saw it at first, but word spread fast and the butts in seats followed.

TFA was 4.6, Rogue One was 3.4.

So TLJ wasn't a film where anyone spread the word like wildfire that you needed to go see this film, and it didn't catch fire in the cultural zeitgeist and media that it was a cultural event moment.

You just don't get a 3 leg multiplier with a lot of people disliking the film. It's low for a Star Wars film, but it's not low; it's not even the lowest in Star Wars.
AOTC had a 2.8, which probably stands as the worst on record for the series.

Anyway, it's mainly the point here that I think that's a bit rough. I could see 30% or less; I'd still think that was strong, but with the "or less" I could nod at it, but "no less than"? That's just too strong.

I don't want to have anyone think that I'm expressing that you can assert that from Cinemascore because you simply cannot.
You can't say anything about percent of the population based on Cinemascore. You can say that average review of the representative sample population was a given grade, and that higher grades are better than lower grades in opinions. That is it.

To infer a population volume from Cinemascore would pretty challenging because unlike something like RT, you don't have a percent representation, and you cannot reverse engineer percent bins of ratings from an average rating value that was given - that's impossible.

The most you could try to do is toss a bunch of numbers around in excel, setting up Cinemascore ratings and filling the bins with numbers of reviews until you satisfied 65% of total polled (Cinemascore's average response rate) and achieved an average score matching Cinemascore's average rating, but I know that you are aware that there's multiple ways to get that average - you could put it all in two ratings bins and achieve it, or you could spread them out, or...etc...

So I can't say one thing about how many people liked it in terms of percent based on Cinemascore ratings. No one can.

Definitely not interested. I mean, I was being a bit cheeky there when I responded previously to this part.
The reality is that you don't compare an X and Y correlation test using trend lines. You don't find any null hypothesis in a paper tested that way.
You use either a T-test or a correlation coefficient (depending if you're asserting that there isn't a correlation - t-test, or that there is a correlation - correlation coefficient).

For instance, when I wrote my paper on a model for cataloging astrosphere estimates, I compared atomic proportions to stellar proportions to test viability for borrowing them as an input into the model's engine (somewhat like I did with RT's scores in this model), and the test I ran was a t-test because I was asserting that there wasn't a correlation between the two data sets, so if the p value returned back at less than 0.05 then the atomic proportions would not be viable for employing into the stellar proportion baseline model. The return was 0.33, so it's easily a fairly strong match and I could accept the null hypothesis (in this case, we accept the null hypothesis and not reject it because we assert that there is no correlation as the hypothesis, and the null hypothesis is therefore that there is a correlation - it's a bit backwards, but for the purposes used it was fine because it didn't matter how tight that correlation was exactly - correlation coefficient - only that there wasn't a case of not matching well at all).

With the type of set up he was doing, he should be using a correlation coefficient and the null hypothesis should be that there is no correlation.

No one ever slaps a line on a graph and produces an R value to prove correlation. That's not what trends are for (to help you through it!...oh...sorry, nerd joke).
R scores tell you how well fit a trend line actually represents your data. It doesn't tell you how well the X and Y match each other or correlation.
R scores aren't for any other purpose than to let you know if you can use the given line to represent the data's motion in one axis over the periods of the other axis in aggregate function.

Oh, no. That's actually a large move.
That's only the average estimate, you then have to take into account the standard deviation and the error margins, which bottom out around 80% when you apply that change.

But here, now that we're on the topic.
Look at it this way; let's leave everything as is and chop the legs out from it that you're worried about - the box office.

So, firstly, let's do this - I'm going to double the review audience values so that the RT percent values are worth more by two-fold; that's a very heavy helping hand, but let's just do this.


Alright, as you can see, it's still sitting very well - Yes, it's on par with TPM in the general population, and not TFA.
Cool enough, honestly. Because the problem with TPM wasn't that value, it's that value was the OPENER.
Your opener should blow the roof off because of the antici .... pation (thank you Tim Curry) that you get from it being the first Star Wars in decades.
To pounce out of the gate with TPM's results is still a win economically, but I think it's pretty telling about the fall out that it didn't reach the same levels that TFA did, or even come close to that.

Now, again, TLJ is not going to hit TFA levels. We're not 30+ years in the future with rose tented glasses on; giving reviews on films of our youth here.
So there's no way in hell we're going to reach the "holy trinity's" values and averages, but seeing the second film hit the FIRST film of the previous trilogy's faring is pretty decent.

Now, let's REALLY push this thing uphill and as far behind the 8-ball as we can.
Not only am I going to double the review pool, I'm also going to cut the general audience pull almost in half. I'm going to position it that EVERYONE sees the film twice. Everyone.
Now that means we only have about 74 million heads to buffer down against a reviewing audience of 1.3 million, which inferentially represent a disapproval pool of over 22 million.

Alright, everything's very much against us.
How'd things turn out?



So basically still alright.
By no means is this great, but this is why I think it's a bit harsh to say 30% or greater rather than 30% or less, because you actually really have to bend and twist the data to a hard weight downward in a lot of ways to get it down this far. You have to shrink the audience pool by half, and double the calculated disapproval pool simultaneously.

And even at that, it's not an outright fail or universally hated, or anything of that nature.
It still comes out at 70%. That's still almost three quarters of the viewing population.
It's not like AOTC, where there - again, under this extreme and fictional model - almost half of the population disliked the film (again; fictional reality here).

So you can see that it's pretty easy to move these models around, and their assumptions, and regardless how hard we try, it's not likely to spit out that TLJ was a very hated film.

The only point I was making there was that there would still be flaws; not that it wouldn't be superior (however, unlikely that anyone will ever do this method because it's not fast enough - which is the reason Cinemascore does it at the theater).

Yes, there's a bias at the theater. There's always a bias at the theater. It's also one they account for in their calculations because they don't just hand over an unweighted average. They actually use standard population representation methods.
Again, it's not perfect, but it's not like they're college kids taking a whack at this for the first time - Cinemascore has been doing this for a very, very long time.

I'm not stating that folks should only listen to Cinemascore, or that it's infallible.
I am stating, however, that it's the closest we have to a scientifically controlled review poll, and by comparison, the method (not the results; as this is the point that I was getting at in comparisons originally...method) is superior to online self-elect sites which not only have a poor data collection method, but tend not to weight that data collection either. Double-whammy.

What these sites are good at telling you, as I wrote above, is the wind of the zeitgeist in the fanbase.
Now, that doesn't mean 47% of fans liked TLJ and the rest of fans hated it; no. What that RT score tells you is that fans not liking TLJ is definitely a topic amongst the fan base.

And it was, and is.

That's about it.
Just like you can look at Batman and Robin's 10% RT score and safely assume that Batman fans definitely talked about fans not liking the film at the time.
How many fans didn't like it? No clue. We can't actually tell that.

It won't self-correct.
I've never seen that behavior in online scores unless scores are removed by the site.
That mass vote dump before a film releases will always weigh down on the film. The mass dump and spikes (like those visible in RT's data on the low end) still weighs the score down on the overall picture.

When you rally up a bunch of people and charge in to get hundreds of votes into the negative, it will always leave a mark in the review.
This isn't normal negative mark behavior and the system doesn't account for this abnormal social behavior.

Normal negative mark behavior would self-correct and absorb over time by the volume of counter-positioned votes; absolutely.
However, that won't happen when it's a campaign to specifically lower the vote by rallying hundreds of people to go deliver the lowest vote possible, and it wont because that will always be there, and it will be in a pattern of behavior outside of the normal pattern of rating behavior for an RT rating.

People aren't doing that normally; no one goes and rally's up a bunch of people and encourages them to get out and vote on RT for films.
That's not what ratings are normally comprised of within RT. That's why they have those data spike issues in the low end and not a pile; because it's vulnerable to hysterical campaign voting.

They should correct against this, but they don't seem to see a need and let it represent as it is. In some form, sure, I can see the value of it from the perspective that if people felt that strongly, then it should be retained and reflected, but on the other hand - from a data analyst point of view, no; because the rest of the system - the math - doesn't assume that behavior so there's no proper weight set in there to control for that variable.
That is bad. Normally, in papers and things of this nature, this would mean that you would have to throw that out and start over to account for that variable, or at least explain the flaw in your model; show the estimated damage that flaw has upon your model, and note that a follow up is required to repeat the test with the variable controlled for.

RT shows no interest in this, so I can't agree that it will self-correct.

Cheers,
Jayson

 

It is not important does someone love TLJ or hate it. The problem is that film caused division, and backlash.and that is undesputable fact, TLJ caused division and backlash, and instead rising the anticipation of upcoming films it caused insecurity, and even loss of interest.

The provocative nature of art is generally a singn of quality. But provocative nature of a ship in a fleet, which episode should have been, is destructive for the cohesion of the fleet, in this case for Star Wars franchise.

TLJ was to radical, to divisive, to provocative.Simply to much, without a sense for good measure.

TLJ was like a machine with entrance in which reads: "put here your expectation - X " , and on the other side exit opening reads: "pick up your subverted expectation, thank you and have a nice day."(and dont forget to give us a money).

 

It's

A

Movie


Seriously, I really don't care about the psychological, or sociological welfare of the conceptual cohesive unity for some group of people somewhere controlled, apparently, by whether they liked a commercially produced pretend time light show.
And I certainly don't want people making pretend time cerebral noodle food based on whether or not it's going to hurt cohesiveness amongst people who like the idea of the same imaginative fantastical landscape.

Just make a movie, and do it to the best of your ability.
If I like it; cool.
If not; oh well.

Also...does anyone still remember how friggen hard it is to make a film?
Just watch the documentaries of films being made...it's a miracle every time one of these big films makes it out the door at all.

I think we're getting too jaded and taking things for granted, because we see to be more and more acting like we deserve or have the right to something regarding films...we are lucky to have films. It's a miracle of humanity that we can accomplish them at all.

We could all use a little more humility and just accept them for what they are instead of blowing films...films...way out of proportion.

Cheers,
Jayson

 

I don't think the reception of TLJ caused any real negativity towards Solo. I loved TLJ, and I wasn't looking forward to Solo. Most of my friends liked TLJ, and they weren't looking forward to Solo. You could argue that it's too much Star Wars in too short a time span, as the non-Disney films were always spaced years apart, but then you have the trio of TFA, R1 and TLJ doing so well and then you also have Marvel Studios putting out films three times per year.

Anyway, if you hated TLJ, maybe it dampened your enthusiasm for Solo. This makes little sense though, as it is written and directed by different people, and tells a totally different story in a totally different way. But I get that it kills your Star Wars boner. But how do you explain that most people who loved TLJ also were not coming out in droves? The Solo box office numbers can't account for that when TLJ had so many people that liked it, and many that loved it, if TLJ was as divisive as it could possibly be (50/50 split) and every single person that disliked it stayed home, then Solo at the least would have still opened higher. And if you are invested in a franchise so much that TLJ inspires such fierce negative emotions I would say there's a better chance you're one of the few who went and saw Solo opening weekend anyway because you are such a hardcore fan. I know of very few people, regardless of their opinions of TLJ, who were actively hyped for this movie in any serious way. All those people that liked TLJ didn't bother coming back for Solo. It just wasn't marketed well. The other distracting things happening opening weekend seemed more interesting, and now in it's second weekend whatever momentum it had going in has deflated.

Anyway, even if only 50% of the audience liked TLJ, which is completely unbelievable but lets say its the most extreme it could possibly be in terms of division, so only the 50% of the audience that liked it came back for Solo, Solo still should have had a 3-day opener of $110mil and not $83mil . So that means tons of people who liked TLJ also didn't bother with this. So, if a huge amount of the fanbase that liked and loved TLJ did not show up for Solo, that tells me the negative reaction of TLJ is playing a small role (if any) with this. And if it's franchise fatigue, how do you explain Marvel, and the fact that getting a new Star Wars film every year worked just fine up until now?

So, it's not that people disliked TLJ, or that people are tired of the franchise. And I don't buy the whole "crowded market" explanation, because Deadpool 2 is R-rated and won't be seen by a huge amount of the demographic. These may have been factors on a small level, but they only should have put a small dent. It's simply that people didn't want to see Solo either because they didn't think it looked good, or because they simply weren't excited by the basis of the movie. The marketing failed to create the adequate hype for a big box office number. To be honest, a lot of people in the general population were only vaguely aware that the movie was coming out, based on my own experienced. The film really wasn't shoved down peoples throats the way other Star Wars films are. And even then, a lot of fans who watched the trailers weren't enthused, myself included (I would say the trailers don't reflect how "halfway decent" the film actually is).

 

I think the issue is marketing and logistics, more than anything.

They didn't give themselves that many months to advertise for Solo, and the logistics is that TLJ only had wrapped about a month before Solo came out.
That's incredibly close together. TV series have breaks during season that take that long, and this is the amount of time between two films of the same franchise.

Then there's the issue of a lot of people likely being hesitant to think of the experience of anyone other than Harrison Ford playing Han, and feeling that moment when you cringe because the character just didn't work because of a casting choice.

Cheers,
Jayson

 

I think this very accurate. And, I am definetely not saying it was on the level of Batman and Robin in reception. That particular movie was just utter trash for most people out of their prepubescent years, and well off in scores no matter how you look at it. I can also see why some would love TLJ simply for the direction it took while overlooking it's flaws, even to raise above the OT. They do this based on some the same reasons why some, including me, despise it. They gained the devotion of some, paying the cost in the other end. If that was a wise decision on an economical standpoint is a discussion for another day.

I would also like to believe that your anectdotal remarks could be a reflection to the general mental state of some movie-goers. The rate they are pushing SW films out was clearly also a factor in Solo bombing. It pays off a lot more to have the continuation going for SW then for Marvel....the connection between the many *supes" aren't that strong...at least til Infinity War. I can understand people wanting to "catch up"....but that is why I also have a distinct feeling that the "goodwill" one gets by having a generally good reception the the previous movie carries over to the sequels.

Perhaps it is coming off a little strong. (From someone feeling brain cells pop and die during the movie while having a dagger thrust through my SW heart) I can see from you model tweaking that it would be less likely that it suffers a 30-40% dislike.

A side point: We do have to take into account one more thing in regards of the multipliers. They can work a little different for franchises and/or front-loaded films. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows had a multiplier of 2.3....but with it's opening it was still more of a financial success, and it was rated even higher then part 1 by fans/critics. It was frontloaded, for obvious reasons...

Very interesting. I think it was a perfectly logic way to use the null hypothesis.

My critique of your model was mainly how the reviews were interpreted in regards to "actual" negatives. I think the model is more robust giving them more worth. A few years from now as reviews pile in, staying within the same ratio, I guess it will hold more true still. Essensially I figured the reviews could represent everything between 0.5-5% of actual negatives. Your other chart where you "really" go far to test it, seems to be too unrealistic with the changed variable in regards to people watching it twice. Though I am well aware of why you stresstest it, and I appreciate the effort. It makes "sense" that VIII would be closer to PM then to other installments, even though I think we for PM would see a different ratio forming the negatives....with fewer bottom scores, fewer top scores, but a lot of "meh" scores. (Haven't checked this though)

I also think it is a strenght that it and the other moves away significantly from the fan-tinted glasses of the 600 reviewer on opening night. Now, the OT will always be "untouchable" I think, either way you calculate...for reasons you have delved into and makes a lot of sense.

I agree with the initial method, it is superior. The sample selection they use for it is not though....in my mind, a lot comes down to timing. It would be strenghtened to gauge general views simply by not having it done on opening night...or at least have it taken on different times/and or switch sample cinemas from time to time...and getting a larger sample size. Especially to avoid getting it rated by people who actually worked on it/had some relation to ones that did. (Or movie critics....who sometimes do not agree with the average movie goer in some instances at all)

I understand your reasoning. By self-correcting, I'm not saying that it won't affect it at all..certainly it will as long as the score is not removed. Just that this particular "rallying" will ultimately fail to impact that much due to this combination:

A) Mass actions like these are fairly short lived. Sooner or later people get on with their lives. I refuse to believe that these campaign can make much of a difference over time. Not discounting that we will see quite a few bad reviews still over the years...quite frankly I expect that to continue...but they will do so based on what they saw and experienced, not because they were rallied by a youtuber video hating on Kathleen Kennedy. Now, please don't think that I look away from what we discussed previously with human behaviour/method behidn RT. We agree that is is much more likely that reviews will get posted when you really hate/love something in a self-elected pool, that imbalance will never change, and makes RT unreliable.

B) Any mass action should should diminishing returns as the reviews get a high count. They will be able to influence films with smaller audiences to a larger degree, but ultimately not the big box office hits that millions and millions ultimately see. They may drop a few percent....but not something that will be very significant over time.

TLJ started high (relatively as to where it finds itself now) on the tomatometer/averages shown. This when the review count was low. It dropped substantially with time. (I believe I saw it fall from 59% to 46%, dipping between 46-47 for a long time...seeming to be stable now as expected as it will be harder to change) Metacritic, RT, Imdb etc. showed a similar pattern. I also like to think Amazon tells us something when you read reviews from people who purchased it post box-office. Seems very polar, fitting with the pattern we can discern from a multitude of sources. Even here on this site.

I expected Solo to go in the opposite direction, rising from low scores when the non-agenda driven reviews came in. It is my belief that the first was upvoted because of anticipation/automatic SW fanboy love etc, and the second was weighed down from the start by angry SW fans on accord of TLJ....before that effort got crushed. They simply can't repel numbers of that magnitude, to try a joke. It is my belief that the reviewers who simply hated/loved a movie will in time form a substantial majority in the review pool, making concentrated efforts hard in the long term(Provided bots are prevented). I can provide you no real evidence for this, but it is what I would expect in a "numbers game" like this. To estimate how many % this behaviour effects it will be tough...but I find it logical that it will be negligible with time for the really "big" movies.

Always a pleasure,
-Shadow

 

@Shadowblade

I think we're pretty much on the same page.
A couple of things to note.

The Cinemascore, while the pool size is what it is (though they do weight and correct for that as is appropriate), the issue of theaters is actually attended to.

Here's their method:

I'm not certain how familiar you are or not, but the logistics of this is pretty astounding. It costs a lot of money to organize and operate this frequent and scope of a polling system. Consider that they are doing this for multiple films and not one. That's 400 to 600 ballots per film, and they are running algorithms for random selection, so you have to move quickly. You can't just re-use the same small sample over and over.
That's a lot of people on the ground, and a lot of computational and networking power and logistics taking place.

Also keep in mind that they aren't a free services; they deliver to the industry at charge, so they can't wait around. They need to get in there as soon as possible and get data produced fast because the studios will want those results as soon as possible to keep tabs on how things are going with the film; for their internal forcast models.

I think they're about as good as it's going to get, reasonably.
Most countries don't even have a solution like this. Last I checked, the UK doesn't have a parallel to Cinemascore, for instance (someone correct me if this isn't correct still).

As to Solo.
I've talked about this variously on the forum, but the problem isn't TLJ haters.
The principle problem is very poor marketing.

The easiest way to show this is just to point this out: the next time that you walk into your local grocery store, look around for Solo materials, and think back to what it looked like during the other films. It was likely plastered everywhere with the previous films. Grocery bags with the film items plastered all over it, banners, cardboard cut-outs everywhere, TV's on constant rotation of the trailer with products surrounding it to buy, kiosks splattered everywhere with the film's images and relations plastered all over them in various forms, cereal boxes every couple of feet covered in it, clothing out in the open, bed blankets and sheets, pillow cases, stuffed animals/toys, drinks, etc...

I found one box of plates for the SOLO brand picnic plates with Solo on it, and one magazine at the front.

Ironically, while I didn't see any stuffed animals, blankets, sheets, or pillows for Solo, TLJ was still being advertised in all of those forms, and at the end of the registers sat the kiosks for TLJ's bluray discs with no accompanying display pitching Solo. No TV's were rotating Solo trailers, though they were rotating TLJ to pitch the discs. I waited through their entire reel; no Solo.

I don't know for certain, but my guess here is that because Solo went heavily over-budget, they cut back on marketing campaign costs and bet on residual marketing spill-over from TLJ; assuming that the freshness of TLJ, and thereby Star Wars, in the mind of the consumer (especially with TLJ still being advertised everywhere), that Solo would pick up marketing by proxy with only a little bump needed to be spent to put the label in the zeitgeist briefly, and then balance the books off so that the net expense was still the same with more on production than marketing as a result.

If that's indeed what happened (and I strongly believe that is, based on observational evidence) I have a hunch they won't be trying that idea again...not any time within memory of anyone currently working in the theatrical section of Disney, at least.

Cheers,
Jayson

 

View attachment 47796

There's plenty of Solo cups in stores. I see them all the time

 

sometimes, the simple joke is the best joke.

 

I'm so fed up with this.

TLJ was never rigged and Solo wasn't either.

Solo is sitting at 70% (critic), 59% (top critic), and 65% (audience) on RT (relatively consistent)

TLJ is sitting at 91% (critic), 96% (top critic), and 46% (audience) on RT. (don't pretend those critics don't get perks from Disney)

The next movie, Solo, bombed. People don't like what they're doing with these movies - it's plain and simple and TLJ audience score reflects this. Numbers talk.

 

If the numbers are meaningless then why is everybody complaining all over YouTube and on nearly every news article's comments section about how bad TLJ was? Nobody supports this film anymore - Then Solo was released and performed poorly. There appears to be a direct correlation.

My only point is that Rotten Tomatoes is not rigged. If it was I'm sure Solo wouldn't be at 70%.

 

If it is rigged, it is rigged all over the world and the bots ( we don't know why ) don't work anymore because Solo has a good rating here in France too ( 3.7 / 5 and 2.8 for TLJ ).

 

It only seems "rigged" if you disagree with the rating. And I don't. Why would Rotten Tomatoes allow their ratings to be rigged? They want to be a trusted source of information, not a source for trolling and protests.

 

People who really hate something are much more likely to speak out.

 

It's not like it's an intended feature... there's just a relatively way to exploit the system.

 

In one way or another ...

But there isn't only Rotten Tomatoes and the USA to consider.

 

Its also about the cost/benefit to make a meaningless metric be stricter. By meaningless, for the most part audience score is just something to be curious about. Not something to make major decisions on or use by fans arguing one way or another. RT did after TLJ make it more difficult for bots to exploit the system, because it is relatively cheap to do so. They didnt change that people can simply create new accounts willy nilly for reviews.

 

Not sure why you're fighting this.

It's pretty clear RT did indeed sway TLJ, as it's done for many other films.


No one is saying your obsession with disliking this film is invalid because of it.