i stopped thinking imdb or rating for entertainment as "how good it is" but rather "the odds of me liking it" i've seen plenty 5 or 6 imdb but i absolutely love it. and 9s as meh.
this post was submitted on 30 Apr 2026
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Exactly. Critics are only useful if your opinions are similar to the critics.
Remember, even in recent years movies have been review-bombed for being "woke", for instance, with hordes of people upset about things that are not important to the movie, attempting to destroy the reputation of the movie rather than evaluate it fairly on its own merits.
I was just watching facts behind "Robin Hood men in tights", and apparently Siskel gave it half a star, which is absolutely insane. It's no blazing saddles, but it's one of the better Mel Brooks movies
So yeah, review scores are basically a good way to decide whether you should go to the theaters and watch it or wait till it's on streaming. But outside of that, it's not a good indicator of whether or not you're going to enjoy the show.
unironically, I loved the mario bros movie from the 90s. It's rated REALLY low on imdb, but I loved that film.
I use them by genre. A drama or action movie needs a very high score for my tastes.
Comedies usually a 6 or 7 is going to be good for me and a very high score usually means it's a dramery.
Horror movies with very high scores are usually mainstream over produced like the conjuring. Good horror movies usually are 6-7 like the witch or hededitary
And also, if a movie has a very high meta critic but a very low user rating it usually means the movie will be weird af
I learned in my youth not to read reviews of things I like. It's unpleasant and pointless to read someone savaging your favorite albums or books.
(More critical analysis can be fine, but regular Internet reviews are not so worthwhile)
wait till you find about filmaffinity
What about it?
I'll be the contrarian and say IMDb ratings are pretty accurate for me. The two exceptions are super inflated Cinemaβ’ ratings and middling ratings for comedies. A 9.3/10 silent era movie gets too much credit for having functional lighting while a 6/10 comedy gets panned for its shallow character development.
I feel IMDB ratings for new movies are ridiculously gamed / paid-for. Like the amazon reviews scandal all over again.
A lot of criticism here for numerical scores, but consider the popularity of tier list ranking videos. Maybe we should be ranking movies relative to one another. Not sure how that works as a UI though.
We need two ratings, how objectively good the movie is and how much you enjoyed it. Currently most user reviews are a mix of both and critic reviews are often very biased or financially motivated.
Most people don't have the ability or understand how to separate those 2 concepts. Asking too much from normal people that are just watching some entertainment.
Yea, it will never happen. Personally, I watch stuff based on recommendations from people directly, rather than looking at reviews anyway.
Isn't that the idea behind the critic/audience scores on rottentomatoes?
The idea, but the execution doesn't work. People are inherently emotionally charged, which is fine, but we won't get honest scores from it.
Fuck ratings and reviews. I've watched terribly rated movies that are gold, and award winning films that are absolute dumpster fire.
Too many times other people insist on inserting their opinion when it is not requested. A lot will also just go with the tide as well. If others are giving good reviews, then they will do the same.
I prefer to read a summary of the plot and give it a watch to form my own opinion.
Really? I find the opposite problem. Ratings are inflated and even utter trash on IMDB is 6 or 7 out of 10.
I think part of the problem is that the scale is not used properly. On a scale of 1 to 10, I would consider 5 to be average. Most movies seen are average. Average is well worth watching. 5 is a decent rating as far as I am concerned. I'll even watch a 4 or a 3 if someone tells me that some aspect of the movie was worthwhile. But most people seem to treat the scale as if they only are willing to watch 8 and above, and that anything below a 7 is trash.
It would be much better if there was a site to input your ratings and for it to match you to users and critics similar to your taste. I used to use Last.FM like this for music but haven't found anything similar for movies or TV. Ratings alone are useless because critics and users alike will swing all over the scale for the same movie. Tastes need to match.
I have both problems or I am counter-cyclical to IMDb. Anyways. My algorithm now works like this:
IMDb > 5 = potentially good movie
IMDb <=5 = trash
Rotten Tomatoes > 70% = potentially good movie
Rotten Tomatoes <= 70% = potentially good movie.
Yeah I think this is an issue in general with any kind of 1-10 scale! People tend to think 7+ is good. I don't think people recognize 5 as average or they see "average" as less than what it actually means - I'm with you that most media is average and that doesn't mean it's not worth checking out.
Anyone who creates a scale needs to be super clear about what each interval means lol because I think they get misconstrued all the time.
I do miss the old IMDb review/chat boards though. Before everything just moved to reddit, it was fun to go on there and just talk to people about certain movies. Was so good for when a movie had a confusing/open ending to share theories and stuff. Didn't get trolls when forums were all separate!
Might I add, a 10 scale is too granular for most people. It should be on 5. Most people have their scale start at 5 and go above. The only time they will go below is to give a 1 to a movie they hated.
A LONG time ago back when Netflix first started its rating system was its major speak. I recall articles saying that even if you did not pay for the service, you should make an account just simply to use its rating system to decide your next watch (and then go get them at Blockbuster or something:-P). My, how things have changed in the meantime..
Back when Netflix had anything you wanted to watch instead of the same 100 movies listed in 5 different categories each.
That seems counter-productive, since Netflix was far cheaper than paying per movie at Blockbuster. I used to use Blockbuster the opposite way, going there to browse for movies to order from Netflix. I do miss being able to browse at a physical store.
Same as Google ratings. Like it? 5 stars. Hate it, 1 star. No nuance. If it's below 3.5 stars, absolute garbage. In Japan they somehow treat the rating system as intended. 3 stars is a solid, ok experience. 5 is exceptionally hard to achieve
This varies a lot by place. In some countries a 4.0 is an excellent score.
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I agree with you, but the problem is, IMDb collates ratings from thousands of people, each of whom have their own scale. I might have the same opinion about a movie, but I rate it as a 5 because it was completely average, and the next person who feels the same gives it a 7.
I would love to use a service that asks you a series of questions about a movie and generates a rating based on that. That way, if you're honest about your answers, the ratings should match. Questions like "was the acting good?" with answers like "the acting was exceptional," "the acting was bad," and "the acting didn't make me think about it at all." But if you ask if the movie was good? If it's a movie about a working man being pushed to the breaking point and he dies, the rich man is going to like that a lot more than a working man.
Then you have review bombing. I think the best example of this is Fullmetal Alchemist. FMA fans believe that no anime should be rated higher than FMA, so if something starts to get popular, they will organise a review bombing of it. Don't get me wrong, Fullmetal Alchmist was a good anime, but it was also kinda trash. The first series in 2003 did 20-odd episodes, caught up with the manga, then they decided to write their own ending/second half. In 2009 after the books were done, they did a remake, but the first episode was original (not in the books), the next nine summed up the first half of the books (because the 2003 series already covered that), and then the next 50-odd episodes cover the second half of the books, so you have one where the pacing is good but the story goes off the rails (IMO, in a good way, I like where they took it), and another one where it's more true to the books (except that random ass first episode) but the pacing sucks. To top it all off, the lead actor was accused of sexual misconduct a few years ago and has basically been cancelled online. It's still an awesome series, but is it so good that nearly 20 years later, nothing can be rated more highly?
I just checked and it's just the English dub's VO that's been cancelled, so who cares?
I hadn't heard about the voice actor. I wonder if someone has done a fan dub... But yeah, review bombers are scum.
I just joined a site called criticker that aims to fix this via data normalization. It can adjust ratings to the way you rate and base them on people who rate like you as well. Although its database is a bit lacking and all ratings are public.
Also FYI on 1 to 10 5.5 is average, 5 is below average.
On a scale from 1-10, the average is 7. That's how humans work. You should probably get used to it.
600% this!
This is why approval voting is better than score voting, or rather, score voting quickly becomes approval voting anyways so might as well not overcomplicate matters π
yes but with approval rating the "best" movies are the ones which appeal at least enough to the most people.
True, I was thinking about this some other time too. I think more granularity in votes doesn't really solve that though, you need some way of weighting approvals. Like determining whose approval matters most.
I've always found imdb way less inflated than Rotten Tomatoes.
90% on RT means that 9/10 reviewers didn't hate it but they could all have rated it a 6/10.
The wannabe professional reviewers on RT are the absolute garbage. Anything big and you'll find multiple Nobody McNobodyface from Nowhereton Gazette giving anything top score because they gave a boner for the lead actress.
The scaling on IMDB is bad, 10point scales do not work 5 and below isn't really used, unless they hate it passionately
10-7 and 1 are the only options
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IMDb is charitable and fairly reasonable and accurate compared to Rotten Tomatoes.
Most people don't understand how Rotten Tomato's grades movies.
If the score is 91%, that doesn't mean the average viewer gave the movie a score of 91%, it means that 91% of the people who rated the movie, rated it >50%
Here's another way of thinking about it:
If a movie is rated by three people, 62%, 52%, 57%, then the movie will receive a RT score of 100%.
That means that Rotten Tomatoes rating system even shittier than I had thought it was.
Rotten Tomatoes is a review aggregator. They don't decide what score the movie will have. The critics submit their reviews and the score is the percentage of critics who's own score is at or above 60%. It also shows the average rating. I think having hese two metrics is a great way to actually see if a movie is worth watching.
I also check out IMDb scores but it shows that it's mostly generated by regular users. And the average user doesn't know jack about cinema. Just looking at the top 250 : how is Shawshank the best movie of all time ? It's a great movie, but come on... just in general there are so many average movies that rank way too high while actual masterpieces are under the 100th position. It's not a ranking of the best movies OAT, it's a ranking of the most agreeable movies OAT.
Edit : The score is calculated on if a review is positive or negative. It does not specify what score is considered a positive review, I guess it is up to the critic submitting it. They also removed last year the average calculator which is sad...
Shawshank was an innocent bystander in the battle between batman and godfather fans (doesn't explain why it was that high up in the first place though)
I grew up listening to ICP so I have a lot of practice discounting other peopleβs opinions on things that I enjoy. Also if youβre seeking out interesting, challenging, non mainstream fare, opinions are inherently going to be mixed and reviews are going to have a lot of idiots who donβt get the piece of art, saying the art is bad.
Over time I learned to distinguish marketing hype from "it's actually a good movie/show" hype. The ratings are mostly meaningless. Highest grossing movies are usually shit and get good ratings because most people like watching something they are already familiar with or because they fall for the hype and just like something because everyone likes it. Same with "bad" movies. People will give low ratings to movies they don't understand or are too original for them. I learned to pick up movies and shows that are mentioned organically from time to time and ignore the ones everyone starts talking about suddenly. One thing indicates there's actually something interesting there, the other just good marketing.
I can't think of many examples so my comment is worthless, but for years I had this experience with Rotten Tomatoes and hated the site/community for it. Some of the most artistic and impactful films I had seen would get a 30% or something, and I'd be like how?!
I guess one more recent example that I do have was The Northman while it was still playing in theatres. It scored well enough on Rotten Tomatoes over time, but initial reviews were trash and I was hard-pressed to find a single person online who enjoyed it. Just endless shitting all over it. Comments sections full of folks calling it the worst/dumbest thing they've ever wasted their money on.
My wife and I went into it blind and were honestly blown away. It was like John Wick with Norse mythology. From the very beginning where Willem Dafoe is howling and going into a crazy shamanistic fire trance to the big otherworldly climax at the end, we were floored by how fucking cool that movie was. A genuine piece of art. Got us both playing Valheim again soon after.
Not sure what changed, but despite the 90% Tomatometer, the 64% Popcornmeter still shows that audiences were fairly divided. But that spread was way worse a few years ago. The part that perplexed me most is that most people's criticisms of the movie could just as easily be applied to Mad Max: Fury Road (which I ironically thought was hot garbage).
We don't have to agree always. There where movies I liked, and people where saying otherwise.
I usually use metacritic. Not as harsh as IMDB and not as easy going as RT.
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