Brett Ratner: “Rotten Tomatoes is the destruction of our business”

Regisseur en producent Brett Ratner liet zich recentelijk uit over de recensie-website Rotten Tomatoes. Hij noemt de site een vernietigende kracht in Hollywood. Tijdens het Sun Valley Film Festival maakte de Rush Hour regisseur duidelijk dat hij respect heeft voor de traditionele filmrecensenten. Hij vindt echter dat het reduceren van honderden recensies tot populaire verzamelscores als vergif werkt. Ratner zei:

“The worst thing that we have in today’s movie culture is Rotten Tomatoes. 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.”

Regisseur Zack Snyder’s Batman v Superman koste ongeveer $250 miljoen en haalde bijna $900 miljoen wereldwijd op, ondanks dat de film werd gezien als een flop. Ratner vervolgde:

“People don’t realize what goes into making a movie like that. “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.”

Entertainment Weeky vroeg Rotten Tomatoes naar een reactie op wat Ratner zei, en Jeff Voris gaf onderstaand antwoord:

“At Rotten Tomatoes, we completely agree that film criticism is valuable and important, and we’re making it easier than it has ever been for fans to access potentially hundreds of professional reviews for a given film or TV show in one place. The Tomatometer score, which is the percentage of positive reviews published by professional critics, has become a useful decision-making tool for fans, but we believe it’s just a starting point for them to begin discussing, debating and sharing their own opinions.”

De regisseur onthulde tevens dat Rush Hour 4 nog steeds mogelijk is:

“I think it will happen; we’re talking to writers. We could call it Grumpy Old Rush Hour.”