Director divisive Megalopolis, which earned mixed reviews and was a major box office disappointment earlier this year.
During a recent interview with CinePOP, Coppola sets his sights on review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, explaining why he believes the site has had a negative impact on cinema. The director doesn't just mention Rotten Tomatoes, however, and also criticizes CineScore and, in general, the culture of film scoring that exists today, which he says is "a way to control cinema."
According to the legendary filmmaker, this scoring mindset is shaping movies into products that try to please everyone rather than pieces of art that take risks. And according to Coppola, "real art has risks." Check out his full explanation or watch the video below: (relevant section begins at 1:44):
“Well, Rotten Tomatoes and CineScore and all of the very score system is a way to try to control cinema, which is art and shouldn't be controlled, by treating it like sports. In other words, we all know that in sports the teams play and some win, some lose, and that's a way to control whether the fans go. And since the modern movie industry wants to control how people go to movies because they don't want to lose money, they don't want risk, but real art has risk.
"I've often said that making art without risk is like making babies without sex. It's not possible. You have to leap into the unknown because that's where you prove you are free, which is another thing the film explains. And this is anathema to the modern system that is at work today. So the movie business doesn't want risk. They want movies to be like Coca-Cola or something."
What Rotten Tomatoes Means For The Modern Film Landscape
Other Filmmakers Have Also Criticized The Platform
Coppola's criticism of Rotten Tomatoes and the film scoring culture isn't new or unique to him. In addition to the Apocalypse Now director, filmmakers Martin Scorsese and Paul Schrader have previously shared similar thoughts about Rotten Tomatoes. Per Vulture, Scorsese criticized the platform for reducing the director “to a content manufacturer and the viewer to an unadventurous consumer.” Schrader calls the entire system "broken."
Rotten Tomatoes' Tomatometer score for a given film is the percentage of critics' reviews that are classed as positive. A film could have a 99% score even if most of the reviews are 3.5/ 5, further speaking to why some filmmakers take issue with the system.
The website can now quite literally make or break a movie's chances at the box office, and a high score can be used as a marketing tool in trailers. The issue, however, is not just that the system can be gamed using strategies like review-bombing, but also that it reduces a film and all its ideas down to a single percentage. If a challenging film earns a low Rotten Tomatoes score, viewers may choose not to watch it. A 46% critics score and 35% audience score are likely part of why Megalopolis' box office performance was so poor.
Our Take On Rotten Tomatoes & Coppola's Criticisms
Coppola's Complaints Are Understandable But The Tomatometer Isn't Going Anywhere
There's no question that Rotten Tomatoes scores have had a major impact on what movies are made, how they perform, and how people talk about them. It's not hard to see why legendary filmmakers like Coppola have taken issue with the website, and having an entire movie represented by a single score is indeed reductive. That doesn't mean, however, that Rotten Tomatoes' scores can't still be useful.
Every Francis Ford Coppola Movie, Ranked Worst To Best
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Rotten Tomatoes scores provide a snapshot of a movie's general reception among audiences and critics, and that snapshot can be used to help further explain box office results or to contextualize or chart the broad strokes of an actor or filmmaker's career. "Broad strokes," however, is the key phrase here, and Rotten Tomatoes scores are best used in conjunction with other metrics. A Tomatometer score is still no substitute for reading actual reviews or seeing a movie for yourself. For better or worse, though, Rotten Tomatoes is sure to remain a key part of movie culture for the foreseeable future.
Source: CinePOP
