Vulture has published an article that alleges Bunker 15, a movie-publicity company, has been manipulating Rotten Tomatoes and some of its Tomatometer scores for the last few years by paying off reviewers for positive reviews. The idea of this is nothing new and has been speculated by many for quite some time, but according to some of the critics that Vulture spoke with, some “reviewers” are doing this for as low as $50 a review. Ophelia, a feminist retelling of Hamlet that stars Daisy Ridley, is one of the movies that benefited from this arrangement, Vulture reported. (Rotten Tomatoes appears to be have scrubbed its page and reviews for Ophelia completely.)
….Bunker 15 takes a more bottom-up approach, recruiting obscure, often self-published critics who are nevertheless part of the pool tracked by Rotten Tomatoes. In another break from standard practice, several critics say, Bunker 15 pays them $50 or more for each review. (These payments are not typically disclosed, and Rotten Tomatoes says it prohibits “reviewing based on a financial incentive.”)
Between October 2018 and January 2019, Rotten Tomatoes added eight reviews to Ophelia’s score. […] Ophelia climbed the Tomatometer to 62 percent, flipping from rotten to “fresh.” The next month, the distributor IFC Films announced that it had acquired Ophelia for release in the U.S.
Discussion (5 replies)
Join Discussion →Many good films have scores that are far lower than they should be while some absolute garbage has scores much higher than what would seem reasonable. Of course, most would argue that films are entirely subjective (though I disagree with that thinking to some degree), though many revered films don't necessarily score as they should and vice versa.
This should really surprise no one.
It's been going on for years I'm sure.
The only score I believe is the one I gave. Regardless if it is a movie or a game.
They always make a fuss about negative review bombing, but we knew the opposite has been going on for just as long if not longer.
How much you enjoy something is entirely subjective. But you can also make objective observations about some specific parts, like VFX quality, cinematography, story details, realism, historical accuracy, etc.
That's exactly my point. You can like The Last Jedi. However, I think I can make a good case for the film being objectively bad from a writing standpoint. I think there are also valid critiques for how many scenes were shot and the choreography in the lightsaber fight scenes is abysmal. While Star Wars has always gone for the WWII in space style with the physics, TLJ is completely farcical on a level that should never have happened on a movie with that kind of budget and history.