Rotten Tomatoes is a system measuring movies and TV ratings with either a “fresh” red tomato representing positive critic ratings of 60% or above, or the iconic “rotten” green splash icon representing the opposite end of the spectrum.

On the other hand, a full bucket of popcorn indicates a positive audience rating of 60% or above, while a tipped over bucket of popcorn shows that a particular film does not meet the goal. 

IB Film teacher Grant Steckbeck said he acknowledges the disparities between the two scores. 

“The critics’ jobs are to, in theory, have a more educated opinion about film and be able to articulate that opinion,” Steckbeck said. 

Still, senior Olivia Jones said she tends to concur with the audience ratings.

“I’ve seen movies where only 30% of critics enjoyed the movie, while 80% of the audience loved it,” Jones said. “It’s generally a good movie if it’s doing well with the audience.” 

Steckbeck said the Rotten Tomatoes system, or the “Tomatometer”, as the website calls it, doesn’t affect his perspective on movies. 

“There are plenty of movies on Rotten Tomatoes that have terrible, terrible scores that I find to be fun,” Steckbeck said. “I can look at it objectively and say it’s not a great movie, but I like it.”

Although the scores can be misleading, students still use them to form their own opinions on media.  

Junior Leanna Romero, who said he looks at the Rotten Tomatoes score when the public has varying opinions on a certain film, said she agrees with Steckbeck’s viewpoint.  

“I’ll look at the audience score, and I’ll think about the film,” Romero said. “Sometimes

it makes sense why [a film] was rated so low, or sometimes a film shouldn’t have been rated low at all.”

In general, using any quantitative scoring system to measure the subjective accurately may be a difficult task. 

“This goes for pretty much everything, but not everyone’s subjective opinion is going to be the same,” Steckbeck said. 

Steckbeck gave the “Transformers” movies as examples of inconsistencies within Rotten Tomatoes’ ratings, with a 57% critic rating and an 85% audience rating. 

“Generally people like giant robots,” Steckbeck said. “But critics will look at the movie and say that there are just inherent flaws within the movies.”

However, the opposite end of the spectrum exists as well, which is seen in “Killers of the Flower Moon,” with a whopping 93% critic score and a somewhat lower audience score at 84%. 

“In this case it’s because the critics see subtle things in film that are usually lost when it comes to the audience score,” Steckbeck said. “It comes down to if someone is just watching the film versus if someone is analyzing the film.”

Jones and Romero, after taking the IB Film course, both said their newly gained knowledge has had an impact on their perspectives of movies. 

“Now I see all these camera shots and specific technical things–I feel like a movie critic,” Romero said. “It’s kind of hard to not look at all of the themes and everything that is inherent within the film.”

While the Tomatometer is an invaluable statistic for media rating, Jones said he believes it’s important to acknowledge the echo chambers that public opinions create and use to influence individual perspectives. 

“I think it’s just important to realize that sometimes the audience themselves won’t be completely truthful in their ratings,” Jones said. “Forming your own individual opinion should come before hopping on the bandwagon of the Rotten Tomato scores.”