Everything after the first sentence in this Variety article could and will probably be vehemently argued somewhere, so let’s just look at the sentence in question: “Rotten Tomatoes is dramatically changing its Audience Score methodology for movies: The site’s standard user rating will now reflect only moviegoers who can prove they’ve bought a ticket to see it in a theater.” For right now it’s specifically people who bought a ticket via Fandango (which mostly owns Rotten Tomatoes), but they’re already talking about bringing in theater-specific ticket services like Regal’s*. Which they will absolutely have to do if they want this to work.
Like Sonny Bunch, I approve of this move on general principles. I retain a naive, and no doubt actively Pollyanna, desire to have people review things on the basis of having actually watched/read/listened/otherwise consumed them; and I am weary of trying to plow through the current signal-to-noise ratio. If you want to hate something before you even see it, awesome. I do that myself all the time; and it’s both a legitimate life choice, and great fun. But if you want to affect my decision toward the thing in question by ‘reviewing’ it, at least buy a ticket first so I know that you have some skin in the game.
Or not! You’re either all adults, or else you’re reading over an adult’s shoulder. But non-viewer reviews do make it harder for me to pick which movies to watch. Sorry about that.
Moe Lane
*I picked Regal because I use their rewards program, and I use their rewards program because the Regal Theater near me is awesome and I don’t like to go anywhere else now.