Of all the Hollywood directors/writers/producers who are scorned by high-minded artistic elitists, I don’t really care enough about Brett Ratner to hate him. Like, I’ll pour my hot sauce of hate on people like director Zack Snyder, or hack supreme Damon Lindelof (it still makes me shake with rage that he’s allowed to work in Hollywood). But Brett Ratner? I don’t know, man. Ratner has directed films like: Rush Hour, Rush Hour 2, Red Dragon, The Family Man and Tower Heist. He’s produced films like: Black Mass, I Saw the Light, The Revenant, War Dogs and more. Is he sort of hacky as a director? Sure. But as you can see from his IMDB, he actually is accumulating an impressive CV as a producer.
So while I’m rather “meh” on Ratner in general, I can’t defend him when he says something dumb. He’s one of those Hollywood people who hates Rotten Tomatoes. Rotten Tomatoes is merely a critical-aggregate site which compiles reviews and assesses whether films are critically “fresh” or “rotten.” Hating RT is like hating math and statistics. But Ratner does have an issue with Rotten Tomatoes.
Director and producing mogul Brett Ratner says film critic aggregation site Rotten Tomatoes is a destructive force in Hollywood. Speaking at the Sun Valley Film Festival last weekend, the Rush Hour director wanted to make it clear he has plenty respect for traditional film critics. But he says reducing hundreds of reviews culled from print and online sources into a popularized aggregate score has become a toxic and often inaccurate label.
“The worst thing that we have in today’s movie culture is Rotten Tomatoes,” said Ratner, whose company RatPac Entertainment co-financed Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice (among dozens of other Warner Bros. titles). “I think it’s the destruction of our business. I have such respect and admiration for film criticism. When I was growing up film criticism was a real art. And there was intellect that went into that. And you would read Pauline’s Kael’s reviews, or some others, and that doesn’t exist anymore. Now it’s about a number. A compounded number of how many positives vs. negatives. Now it’s about, ‘What’s your Rotten Tomatoes score?’ And that’s sad, because the Rotten Tomatoes score was so low on Batman v Superman I think it put a cloud over a movie that was incredibly successful.”
Directed by Zack Snyder, Batman v Superman cost about $250 million to make and grossed nearly $900 million worldwide — despite being considered a disappointment (with a 27 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes).
“People don’t realize what goes into making a movie like that,” Ratner continued. “It’s mind-blowing. It’s just insane, it’s hurting the business, it’s getting people to not see a movie. In Middle America it’s, ‘Oh, it’s a low Rotten Tomatoes score so I’m not going to go see it because it must suck.’ But that number is an aggregate and one that nobody can figure out exactly what it means, and it’s not always correct. I’ve seen some great movies with really abysmal Rotten Tomatoes scores. What’s sad is film criticism has disappeared. It’s really sad.”
[From EW]
When people like Ratner complain about RT, I wonder if they’ve actually gone onto the site and checked out how user-friendly it is. I’m sure some people just look to see the RT rating – which, again, is merely a score based on an aggregate of top critics’ reviews – but a lot of people actually click on the individual critics’ names and read the full reviews. I do that all that time, and I believe a lot of people do the same thing. RT actually makes accessing professional film reviews a lot easier for people.
Now, all that being said, Batman Vs. Superman was a disaster and the fact that it managed to get 27% on RT is a joke. Ratner’s not mad that the film’s RT score was so bad, he’s mad that critics recognized the film as a flaming pile of garbage.
#NeverForget Ben Affleck’s reaction to BvS’s bad reviews. SAD BATFLECK.
Photos courtesy of WENN.
Source: celebitchy.com
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