Not My Plate of Tomatoes! | Teen Ink

Not My Plate of Tomatoes!

October 4, 2017
By dylan_ BRONZE, Glendale, California
dylan_ BRONZE, Glendale, California
2 articles 0 photos 0 comments

When a new movie comes out of Hollywood, everyone that worked on said film wait in suspense to hear about how good their production did in the box office. In the past,  box office earnings and ratings were more safe, because people had to really put effort into knowing if a movie was good or bad. Thus, people bought tickets anyways. Nowadays, that has changed. The extremely popular review site Rotten Tomatoes is infamous for giving most high production movies a bad rating, such as a splat, which is just a term for a rating below 59%. Many movie studios, producers, and directors alike fear this splat as it usually tanks profits for their movie.This is because people really do care about a film’s Tomatometer score. This situation only becomes worse when you consider the fact that ticket purchasing sites like Fandango feature a film’s Tomatometer score right on it’s ticket purchasing page, thus possibly making it the factor that determines if a moviegoer will buy that ticket or not. According to The Hollywood Reporter, AMC will not even run a movie in their theaters if it’s Tomatometer score is a splat thus decreasing profits for big productions even further.


Many movies over the summer such as Baywatch, Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets, The Mummy, Transformers 5, and The Emoji Movie became victim to the splat and lost quite a bit of profit. Some movies, such as the recently released Kingsman: The Golden Circle received poor ratings from Rotten Tomatoes, even though many moviegoers enjoyed it. However, Kingsman: The Golden Circle did have a good opening weekend. These facts are reason to believe that Rotten Tomatoes are the cause of a lot of stress and anger in Hollywood’s big film companies. Many independent movie critics and directors are saying that Rotten Tomatoes have ruined film critics and the art of critiquing. According to The Hollywood Reporter, some studios have even delayed the release of their movie’s score in hopes of gaining more profit before the storm. I tried to find information on how they do this but I was unsuccessful in doing so. This method seems to be working however, as The Emoji Movie made nearly $25 million on its opening weekend despite being given an abysmal 8% Tomatometer score. It achieved these opening weekend profits by delaying the release of its score. It has since made over $170 million worldwide. Ultimately, the Rotten Tomatoes pandemonium will likely continue for quite some time until either Hollywood learns from its mistakes, or Rotten Tomatoes themselves go out of business.


The author's comments:

I chose to write this piece because I am very interested in pursuing a career in the Film industry.


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