Ever since, the review aggregator site, which assigns a score to films, has been the source of a lot of debate, resulting in plenty of questions posed by both the film industry and moviegoers alike. Does a film with a low score mean it will bomb at the box office? Or is Hollywood just blaming the site for its blockbuster flops?
Ratner, for one, is still not a fan of the divisive website, which labels movies with a green or red tomato based on critics’ reviews. The filmmaker behind such films as “Rush Hour” and “X-Men: The Last Stand,” clarified his stance in an interview with HuffPost ahead of the Concert For Charlottesville on Sunday.
“I’m not a fan, not just because of the impact it has on me. It’s just the impact it has on the business. It wasn’t a personal thing,” he said of his earlier comments at the Sun Valley Film Festival. “It’s a complicated thing.”
Ratner, 48, also revealed that he wants to help “fix” what he claims Rotten Tomatoes has done to the industry.
“I think there’s a way to fix it, and hopefully I’m going to be one of the people that they ask to try to help figure it out,” he said.
A longtime player in the film industry, Ratner got his start directing music videos in the late 1980s, eventually moving to the big screen as both a director and producer.
“I grew up with film criticism, and there was an art to film criticism itself and it was inspiring for me to read a review of an important critic. It was thought-provoking. It didn’t make me not want to go to the movies,” Ratner said. “If it was a bad review it actually made me want to go see this opinion because it came from an intellectual perspective. It wasn’t just, ‘Let me just slam a movie.’ Now it’s all about a number. It’s just the nature of the world we’re in now. It’s like ... you have a low Rotten Tomatoes score, kids or people don’t want to see the movie. That’s where I thought there could be some change there.”
Ratner doesn’t think the site should come down though. “There is probably a place for it,” he said.
(Photo: Michael Tran via Getty Images)
It’s still up for debate whether Rotten Tomatoes has an impact at all on how well films perform at the box office.
University of Southern California’s Entertainment Technology Center analyzed film data dating back to 2000 to see what kind of effect, if any, the movie review site has on box office success. What they found might leave some folks in Hollywood scratching their heads.
“Rotten Tomatoes scores have never played a very big role in driving box office performance, either positively or negatively,” wrote Yves Bergquist, director of the Data & Analytics Project.
If that research holds up, then something else might actually need fixing in the movie business.
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"The Lovers"
Here's an unconventional romantic comedy if there's ever been one. "The Lovers" begins as a divorce dramedy, Debra Winger and Tracy Letts playing a sedentary married couple who reignite an unlikely spark in the midst of steady affairs. They are lovers, cheating on their lovers by becoming lovers. Azazel Jacobs' charismatic flurry is about the ripening of middle age and the ambiguities of elapsed time, expressed in small gestures, like whether to share a bottle of wine one evening or retire to separate quarters as usual. Winger and Letts bear every complicated crease of a life spent together, wistful for the past and marching toward a farcical fresh chapter.
"Wonder Woman"
This year is doing a number on my superhero agnosticism. I quite liked the gritty Western stylings of "Logan" and the clever high school humor at the core of "Spider-Man: Homecoming." But it's "Wonder Woman" -- part comedy of manners, part espionage saga -- that convinced me Hollywood's domineering genre finally has something to offer. Patty Jenkins' film bypasses the self-pity that defines some of Wonder Woman's male counterparts, instead giving our Amazonian champion a dignity and wherewithal that runs circles around Batman's hardened vigilantism. It's a story about altruism, virtue and a fish plucked out of her remote island's water and into the chaos of London during World War I. It's what future comic-book spectacles should be modeled after: actual movies.
"The Lost City of Z"
In the 1920s, British military vet Percy Fawcett and his teenage son vanished while mapping an ancient civilization in the Amazon. In the hands of "We Own the Night" and "The Immigrant" director James Grey, Fawcett's (Charlie Hunnam) is a yarn about nature's compelling power and the need to preserve one's legacy. Lush greens crackle, World War I battle sequences glide by, and fragile family drama anchors "The Lost City of Z," making it a well-rounded hallmark that's both adventurous and serene.
"The Big Sick"
All great romantic-comedy leads need a hurdle to overcome. "The Big Sick" has two. Cultural differences pull the central comedian (Kumail Nanjiani) and budding therapist (Zoe Kazan) apart, and the latter lands in a coma, complicating any possible reconciliation. Written semi-autobiographically by Nanjiani and wife Emily V. Gordon, Michael Showalter's gem is the rare movie that navigates incessant tone shifts without sacrificing nuance or delicacy. Its jokes are constant and airtight, and its story of exchanging ancestry for personal identity is reverential and progressive. They don't make rom-coms like this anymore, but then again, they never really did to begin with.
"Get Out"
The buzz surrounding the year's surprise hit is justified. "Get Out" satirizes horror tropes by keeping us one step ahead of its conventions, until those conventions become charged and twisty enough to take us along for the ride. Proving that studios don't need splashy effects or pre-meditated sequels to attract blockbuster-quality profits, Jordan Peele's scalding directorial bow arraigns an America where black identity suffers at the hands of white posturing (and worse). Peele was able to accomplish that while making a boffo comedy with a hint of sci-fi surreality, turning "Get Out" into one of the most assured debuts in recent memory.
"Colossal"
2017 has given us a King Kong bummer, more noisy Transformers and a franchise-launching "Mummy" reboot. Forget all of it: The year's primo monster flick is Nacho Vigalondo's "Colossal," a clever dramedy that uses kaiju trappings to indict virulent masculinity. It's one of those movies where the twist is actually the premise, so the less said, the better. Anne Hathaway plays a down-and-out party gal who returns to her sleepy hometown, reunites with a childhood pal (Jason Sudeikis) and discovers an odd connection to a behemoth causing terror in South Korea. The right blend of quirk and thrill, "Colossal" zigs where every other beastly adventure zags.
"War for the Planet of the Apes"
When the "Planet of the Apes" trilogy began in 2011, who knew it would become the decade's finest franchise? In "War for the Planet of the Apes," director Matt Reeves conducts a symphony of existential strife, staking out a melancholy denouement that pits the simian population against the Homo sapiens who infiltrated their peace. "This is a holy war; all of human history has led to this moment," an unsparing colonel (Woody Harrelson) hell-bent on maintaining his race's dominance tells Caesar (Andy Serkis), our graceful protagonist. The ensuing battle unfolds amid snow-capped mountains and breathtaking serenity, tugging at our devoted emotions. Tentpole movies could learn a thing (or a dozen things) from these monkeys.
"The Beguiled"
And now presenting the quote of the year: "Bring me the anatomy book." Nicole Kidman, playing the Confederate headmistress at a Civil War-torn boarding school, hisses these words, preparing to operate on a wounded Union soldier's (Colin Farrell) leg after declaring she is no surgeon. The scene cuts to black, and we know that whatever will follow cannot be promising. "The Beguiled" is a genre piece from Sofia Coppola, the masterful director known for minimalistic plots and sun-kissed soul-searching. Those qualities are on display here, too, but they teem with a concise Southern Gothic carnality that morphs into summer's most slyly uproarious film. Come for the dinner scenes where the schoolgirls (including Kirsten Dunst and Elle Fanning) compete for the solder's affection; stay for the battle of the sexes that plays out in a candle-lit plantation home with scarce natural resources. This is "The Bachelor," 1864 edition.
"Okja"
Here's something alien: a summer movie with a thrilling midpoint action sequence that isn't cacophonous, where nothing explodes, where no superpowers are needed to thwart destruction. A band of animal-rights militants infiltrate the titular super-pig's abduction, telling its captors they come in peace. The ensuing chase across a South Korean highway and through an underground shopping mall may not be peaceful, per se, but it's so entrenched in human ambition that you'll hardly notice its clamor. Bong Joon-ho, who gave us haunting dystopian parables in "Snowpiercer" and "The Host," has crafted an epic of Spielbiergian proportions. "Okja" is a fable fixated on a young girl (Ahn Seo-hyun) and her colossal pet, thrust into a battle about corporate avarice, the meat-processing industry and the wealth of the human spirit.
"A Ghost Story"
Drawing parallels to "A Ghost Story" is a fool's errand. It has influences -- Terrence Malick meets "Poltergeist," if you will -- but David Lowery has made a singular masterwork that transcends its thin conceit and slips (nearly wordlessly) through past, present and future. No plot synopsis would do this film justice. A dead man (Casey Affleck) returns to the Texas home he shared with his wife (Rooney Mara), wearing a Halloween-style bedsheet with peepholes. But the central couple are almost beside the point: This is a tale about mortality's grip and the marks left on places and people we love. New tenants replace Mara's mourning widow, specters communicate through windows while awaiting darlings who will never return, and history suddenly melds with the hereafter. There is nothing like it.
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