rottentomatoes.com
What Rotten Tomatoes Is
Rotten Tomatoes is a major website dedicated to movies and TV shows, mainly known for collecting reviews and turning them into a simple rating score. It’s an American site that aggregates reviews from critics and audiences to help people decide what to watch. The platform is owned and operated under Fandango Media, with a long history dating back to the late 1990s.
When you go to rottentomatoes.com, you get more than just scores. The site also features movie and TV news, trailers, showtimes, and the option to track titles in your own watchlist. It has become one of the most widely consulted entertainment review sources on the web.
How the Scoring System Works
The core part of Rotten Tomatoes is the Tomatometer. Here’s how it works:
- Critics from approved publications and sources submit reviews for movies or shows.
- Each review is classified as either positive (“fresh”) or negative (“rotten”).
- The Tomatometer score is the percentage of positive reviews out of the total reviews counted.
- If a title gets 60% or more positive reviews, it’s marked “Fresh” with a red tomato icon. If it falls below that threshold, it’s “Rotten” with a green splat icon.
There’s also a special “Certified Fresh” status, reserved for widely acclaimed titles that meet extra criteria like a high score and a larger number of top critics.
In addition to critic reviews, Rotten Tomatoes has audience ratings, sometimes called the Popcornmeter. This score reflects user reviews and can give a different angle from the critics. Rotten Tomatoes even incorporates verified audience ratings tied to real ticket purchases, to help reduce fake or uninformed submissions.
The Website’s Purpose
The whole idea behind Rotten Tomatoes is straightforward: give people a clear snapshot of critical and audience reactions. When a film or show gets released, there are hundreds — sometimes thousands — of reviews from different sources. Rotten Tomatoes aggregates all that into a single score so you don’t have to visit dozens of different review sites.
The site also aims to balance professional critics’ opinions with general audience feedback, which helps viewers get a fuller picture of how a title has been received. You’ll find:
- A Tomatometer score
- A Critics Consensus summary
- Audience scores
- Trailers and related news
All in one place.
A Little History
Rotten Tomatoes didn’t start as a polished brand or a corporate project. It began in August 1998 when a student named Senh Duong launched the site as a passion project to collect reviews from across the web. He wanted a central place where people could see a variety of critic voices rather than having to track them down individually.
Duong soon teamed up with fellow students Patrick Y. Lee and Stephen Wang to grow the site more seriously. It attracted attention quickly and became part of larger media companies over time. Today Rotten Tomatoes draws millions of visitors each month and plays a role in how audiences and industry professionals talk about entertainment.
What You’ll Find on the Website
When you visit Rotten Tomatoes, you can expect:
- Tomatometer scores for films and TV shows
- Audience ratings
- Critics’ reviews, often with short quoted reactions
- Movie trailers and clips
- News and blog posts about upcoming and current titles
- Showtimes and ticket links for theaters
This combination positions the site as both a reviews hub and a movie discovery tool.
Why It Matters
Rotten Tomatoes became influential because it transformed a fragmented set of critic opinions into a single, easy-to-understand number. It’s especially useful in today’s media environment where streaming releases, theatrical releases, and limited-run shows all compete for attention.
For many viewers, checking a Tomatometer score is one of the first steps in deciding whether to invest time in a movie or show. That influence has also made Rotten Tomatoes the subject of discussion in the industry: some people praise it for helping audiences, while others criticize it for oversimplifying nuanced reviews.
Key Takeaways
- Rotten Tomatoes is a review aggregation website for films and television, offering scores based on professional critic reviews and audience ratings.
- The Tomatometer score reflects the percentage of positive critical reviews.
- A title rated 60% or higher is Fresh, while anything below that is Rotten.
- There’s a special Certified Fresh status for highly acclaimed titles.
- Rotten Tomatoes also includes audience scores and optional verified ratings to show broader viewer sentiment.
- The site was launched in 1998 and has grown into one of the most consulted movie and TV review platforms.
FAQ
Is Rotten Tomatoes a review site or a rating aggregator?
Rotten Tomatoes is primarily a rating aggregator. It collects reviews from critics and audiences, then combines them into simple scores rather than producing its own reviews.
What does “Certified Fresh” mean?
It’s a label given to titles that meet specific criteria — generally a high percentage of positive reviews with sufficient volume, especially from top critics.
Can anyone submit a review on Rotten Tomatoes?
Professional critics are selected and approved to contribute to the Tomatometer. Regular users can submit audience ratings, and some of those can be verified if they bought a ticket.
Why do Rotten Tomatoes scores change?
Scores can fluctuate as more reviews are added over time. As new critics publish thoughts, the overall percentage can shift.
Does a high score guarantee a movie is good?
A high Tomatometer score means many critics responded positively, but individual tastes vary. It’s best used as one tool among others when choosing what to watch.
Post a Comment