Comic Strips

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

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?

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..

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.

I've always found imdb way less inflated than Rotten Tomatoes.

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.

The scaling on IMDB is bad, 10point scales do not work 5 and below isn't really used, unless they hate it passionately

On a scale from 1-10, the average is 7. That's how humans work. You should probably get used to it.

Ghidorah is a 4/10 at best.

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.

I think one of the reasons the critics came at it so harshly was that it was sort of this meme-movie. Lots of quotable lines. Lots of memorable scenes. But the overarching story kinda sucked. The villains were silly and lame. The heroes were uninspired. The movie parked itself on Irish Dude-Bro demographics and just kinda catapulted itself into cult classic material by casting Willem Dafoe a bit before he went mainstream.

I think it's better than a 26%. But not all that much better.

For me, it was the movie AVP2, that was way worse than it's IMDB rating.

Oh, hi Mark

They recently started demanding an account to read user reviews.

Well it is owned by Amazon