How can the recent change in algorithm change viewers’ perceptions?
The Big Picture
- Google now shows Rotten Tomatoes audience scores for movies by default, which can influence viewers’ decisions.
- The possible connection between box office flops and bad critics’ scores may have prompted this algorithm change.
- Concerns arise about potential manipulation of audience perceptions, impacting filmmakers and movie discussions.
You must have done this at least once: You’re curious to see how the reception of a new blockbuster movie was, so you take a quick look at Rotten Tomatoes to see its average score. If it’s below 50%, you decide that maybe you can wait to watch it at home later. If it’s higher than that, you start considering the possibility of checking it out on the big screen. If it’s up to Google and Rotten Tomatoes themselves, though, you’ll lean towards the latter decision a lot more often from now on. Users realized that a new change in the platform’s algorithm prioritizes the audience score and shows it by default when you search for the title of a movie, as opposed to showing the critics’ score as it did previously.
The reasoning behind this change is yet to be fully explained by Rotten Tomatoes, but it’s hard not to see a connection between the box office performance of recent flops like Madame Web and how it earned a bad rep by critics’ scores as soon as premiered. In the home releases, the abysmal critical reception of movies like Rebel Moon (both installments) didn’t help the lukewarm reception that the Zack Snyder project received from Netflix subscribers. By showing the audience score of movies by default, Google has the chance of boosting interest in some movies — for example, Marvel Studios’ Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania’s critics score is rotten at 46%, but its audience score is pretty high: 82%. This means that a person who searches for the movie on Google might be more inclined to watch it based on its bigger score.
At the same time, the new development fuels the possibility of audiences manipulating the perception of a particular movie by bomb-reviewing at Rotten Tomatoes. Back in 2019, Captain Marvel became famously ill-rated by audiences due to the fact that a portion of moviegoers considered it to be the kind of movie that pushed forward the “woke agenda.” The Brie Larson-led blockbuster is currently “rotten” with a 45% approval rate from the audience score, while the critics’ score is pretty high at 79%. If fans or haters start taking advantage of the new change — and if Google will address it — remains to be seen. Users have also reported that, in some browsers, the Rotten Tomatoes website has either forced users to click a link to find out a critics’ score for a movie or scrolling all the way down to find it, which may underscore what is the platform’s ultimate goal with the changes.
The Website’s System Was Rotten From The Start
The issues with Rotten Tomatoes’ scores far predate the most recent changes. Critics and journalists have long complained that the website’s binary system (Fresh x Rotten) of rating eliminates the nuance from the conversations around movies. The website’s algorithm qualifies both critics’ and audiences’ reviews as either “good” or “bad,” which blatantly ignores the fact that a review might cover both aspects of a movie.
We can’t ignore, though, that Rotten Tomatoes is not the cause of the reduction of nuanced conversations around art and culture, but rather a product of it. Google’s recent change is just the latest of a series that prioritize at-a-glance information that’s designed to cater to readers’ ever-reducing attention span while online. At the same time, as some users have already pointed out, the change in how Google shows the movie score can punish filmmakers whose work tends to be polarizing. For example, if a movie has a high critics’ rating and a pretty low audience score (or vice versa), chances are you’ll be at least curious to find out why there’s such a disparity. Erasing or omitting critics’ voices is certainly not the way to stimulate that curiosity.
This article was originally published on collider.com