OT: Mad Max

[Penfield]

@TasteofUConn ...were you at the 8pm show Saturday night in Branford yelling "Oh come on!!! WTF was that?!?" a few times?

I loved the dudes on the fishing poles. But didn't get "People Eater". The guy with the elephantiasis foot. What was his deal?

***** SPOILER ALERT **** although possibly minor

Immortan Joe - represents Religion - he controls the water
The People Eater - represents Corporate Greed - he controls the oil. I think his legs were like that due to his weight not elephantiasis.
The Bullet Farmer - represents War - he controls the ammunition

at the beginning of the film when Immortan Joe went looking for his women someone had written on the walls "Who Killed the World?" I would say these 3 men represent what killed the world.

 

[TasteofUConn]

Just clarifying that aggregating professional reviews was the purpose of Rotten Tomatoes... when someone says a number from there, that's what they're referring to.

True, mostly, I'd guess, but certainly not always. I never refer to the pros score.
I'd guess that most people would find the audience number much more informative than the 200 or so pros number, which can often be 20% or more different. By definition, of course, a random audience member is going to be much more likely to agree with the audience number than the pros number, and particularly for artsy films (Eraserhead), political films (Selma), and favored directors/producers (A Simple Man). Pros are busy looking for angles and lighting and color and other things you may learn at film school. People are looking to be entertained. Which is what I am.

 

[Leebo]

There are lots of times when I disagree with the audience, and lots of times when I disagree with reviews... I almost never look at them for any entertainment decisions I make.

But if I want to hear someone talk about why they enjoyed something, most random people are terrible at explaining themselves. Sometimes you want more than "it was good!" or "it sucked."

 

[Letsgohuskies11]

True, mostly, I'd guess, but certainly not always. I never refer to the pros score.
I'd guess that most people would find the audience number much more informative than the 200 or so pros number, which can often be 20% or more different. By definition, of course, a random audience member is going to be much more likely to agree with the audience number than the pros number, and particularly for artsy films (Eraserhead), political films (Selma), and favored directors/producers (A Simple Man). Pros are busy looking for angles and lighting and color and other things you may learn at film school. People are looking to be entertained. Which is what I am.

i dont like critics reviews of comedies, usually they have no sense of humor or take the movie way too seriously. Stuff like Dumb and Dumber got rated like a 30% on RT, but stuff like action movies, i'd have to go with what they think. Especially how many big budget action movies absolutely suck today.

 

[Kitaman]

Just clarifying that aggregating professional reviews was the purpose of Rotten Tomatoes... when someone says a number from there, that's what they're referring to. Countless sites let random people vote for stuff.

There's nothing wrong with holding in higher regard tens of thousands of people just picking a number from 1 to 10 versus several hundred professionals expressing their thoughts in words, but different sites have different approaches.

You know it seems really overblown anyway.

Its either:
you liked it (glad you paid to see it and would recommend it)
didn't like it (would have preferred to see somehting else or did something else)
it was so-so (no regrets or bad vibes)

Also there's a culture/age/sex/intelligence basis involved as well. I've enjoyed many movies that were reviewed 'poorly' and was disappointed with great reviewed movies. Women like movies differently than me, youngsters as well, druggies, etc.. Wow maybe they are not overblown and are somewhat complicated to ascertain whether its worth seeing or not.

Anyway do professional movie reviewers pay to see the movies they review, or they get in free (to me that does makes a difference)?

 

[TasteofUConn]

Stuff like Dumb and Dumber got rated like a 30% on RT,

That used to be the number! It got sanitized by RT.com to 66% (by the pros). Was surprised when I looked it up earlier. I guess RT didn't want to have a 50% difference between the pro number (about 50 reviews!) and the 84% of the over 1 million user reviewers who rated it positively. Internet is Orwell's dystopian wet dream - much simpler to change history than tubes and paper and such.

 

[CallMeBruce]

Interesting. I find exactly the opposite. People who do it for a living want inside access and want to maintain connections in the industry. If you poorly rate a movie before it's released, or immediately after it's released, you will cost the companies money, and, obviously, they will not want to deal with you. Audience members have no such conflict.
What bias do you see?

This is nonsense. What "dealings" do movie reviewers require? They need to see the movie. That's it. They don't rely on movie advertising dollars, like gaming journalists do.

 

[TasteofUConn]

This is nonsense. What "dealings" do movie reviewers require? They need to see the movie. That's it. They don't rely on movie advertising dollars, like gaming journalists do.

Geez. Dude calls the Gibbs transfer and suddenly he's a monster.
There are a lot of biases.
See - http://eml.berkeley.edu/~sdellavi/wp/movieratings11-09-07.pdf
They also have a approved screening lists, which is a privilege, not a right.

 

[CL82]

I fully expected this suck. The original series worked despite being quirky. Ussually that's tough to replicate, but based on the board's opinion, I'll likely give it a shot.

Definitely, see the originals if you haven't, they are great. You've probably unknowingly heard references to them for years:

"Two men enter, one man leaves"

"Bust a deal, face the wheel"

"Well ain't we a pair, raggedy man!"

"Master Blaster"

 

[Palatine]

This movie is off the hook, tremendous fun and imagination. Relentless action that blends perfectly with a plot that gives you a rooting interest.

You have to be dead not to enjoy this film. Best action movie of the last few years.

Doof Warrior, are you kidding me? Awesome!

 

[Jay-Bone]

The "freshness" score of reviews is kinda the whole framework of rotten tomatoes.

IIRC, it's not an average, it's the percentage of positive versus negative.

I never really saw the credence behind RT's ratings, however I will admit I follow them judiciously as they've monopolized the system. Basically all it is is a percentage of how many people thought the movie was good or bad. That's why animations are hardly ever not in the 80th or 90th percentile. Nobody ever says Wall-E is bad.

As far as early scoring....I've noticed that some movies prior to release will have 5 or 6 really good reviews and hence be a 100%. Then after being released that number falls off a cliff. My take on that is that the producers send pre-release copies to critics that they know will stack the books to generate hype.