Rotten Tomatoes is something genuinely feared by today’s film industry.
The aggregator is known for collecting film critics’ reviews and creating a fresh or rotten score for the cinema-going public.
While this system hasn’t been proven to have affected box office gross, Hollywood director Martin Scorsese – best known for his gangster movies – has spoken out against Rotten Tomatoes in a new interview.
The filmmaker, who has all but one of his films categorised as fresh on the website, doesn’t like how Rotten Tomatoes and certain critics review modern cinema.
Speaking with The Hollywood Reporter, Scorsese said: “They rate a picture the way you’d rate a horse at the racetrack, a restaurant in a Zagat’s guide, or a household appliance in Consumer Reports.
“They have everything to do with the movie business and absolutely nothing to do with either the creation or the intelligent viewing of film.
“The filmmaker is reduced to a content manufacturer and the viewer to an unadventurous consumer.
“These firms and aggregators have set a tone that is hostile to serious filmmakers — even the actual name Rotten Tomatoes is insulting.”
MARTIN SCORSESE SLAMS MODERN MOVIES – ‘THE CINEMA I GREW UP WITH IS GONE’
The director added: “And as film criticism written by passionately engaged people with actual knowledge of film history has gradually faded from the scene, it seems like there are more and more voices out there engaged in pure judgementalism, people who seem to take pleasure in seeing films and filmmakers rejected, dismissed and in some cases ripped to shreds.
“Not unlike the increasingly desperate and bloodthirsty crowd near the end of Darren Aronofsky’s mother!”