Age of the Geek

By: 
Travis Fischer

When is bad good?
      They did it. They finally did it.
     After the abomination that was "Man of Steel" and the unmitigated disaster that was "Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice," Warner Bros. has finally put out a movie in the DC Cinematic Universe that was kind of okay.
     "Suicide Squad" is not a great movie. It's really not even a good movie. There is a good movie in there somewhere, but some truly questionable editing keeps it from being all it could have been. The movie suffers from the same problem that "Warcraft" suffered earlier this year. In both films it's obvious that some vital parts were left on the cutting room floor, for one reason or another.
     Still, at least it was entertaining and I left the theater without feeling that I'd wasted my time and money, which is more than can be said for Warner Bros. previous entries.
     Of course, that's just my opinion. An opinion shared by (at this time) 72 percent of the users on RottenTomatoes.com, but only 26 percent of the critics.
     But wait, if I didn't like "Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice," and it got a 27 percent from the critics, how could I like "Suicide Squad," which received a similar response? Well, appropriate for the movie in question, sometimes bad can still be good enough.
     Ignoring the obvious answer that everybody has different opinions, determining the quality of movies isn't how Rotten Tomatoes works.
     Contrary to popular perception, the website does not actually rate movies. In fact, unlike other review aggregates like Metacritic, it doesn't even average out review scores. "Suicide Squad's" 26 percent rating does not mean that the average critic rated it 2.6 out of ten. It's a much more binary system. Either a critic liked the movie or they didn't. A movie that five critics hated, five critics were kind of disappointed with, and five critics kind of liked will receive a 33 percent score. A movie that ten critics were kind of disappointed with and five critics really liked will receive the same score.
     In the case of "Suicide Squad," there isn't a whole lot of difference between the good reviews and bad ones. Tony Hicks of the San Jose Mercury News called it a "sloppy and wild ride." Jake Coyle of the Associated Press called it a "gleefully nihilistic, abysmally messy romp." One of those reviews is counted among the positive. The other is counted in the negative.
     It's not a system that deals with nuance very well. Which is fine, so long as the user doesn't treat the score as more than what it is.
     Rotten Tomatoes has gotten a lot of flack recently for how they "have rated" the movies in the DC Cinematic Universe. Specifically, a Change.org petition that started as a joke and has since spun wildly out of control, tapping into the classic Marvel vs. DC rivalry along with the internet's inherent love of bandwagoning on silly things.
     It's hard to tell who is being serious when they criticize Rotten Tomatoes for bias against Warner Bros. Of the 22,000 people who signed the petition, most appear to have done so in order to say how dumb the petition is. Because that's largely how the internet works.
     Still, in the event that anybody actually thinks that bias exists, it's worth pointing out that Warner Bros. themselves owned Rotten Tomatoes' parent company from 2011 until this February, and still hold a minority stake in it.
     One might criticize the lack of standards by which Rotten Tomatoes determines which reviewers are worth counting. How legitimate can their "Top Reviewers" be when BuzzFeed News is listed among their ranks? But for the most part, blaming Rotten Tomatoes for bad reviews is a matter of shooting the messenger.
     As always, the best course of action is to dive deeper. Rotten Tomatoes is a good tool for managing expectations, but it's only one tool in the toolbox.
 
     Travis Fischer is a news writer for Mid-America Publishing and hopes "Suicide Squad" gets the same extended cut that "Batman v Superman" did.

Hampton Chronicle

9 Second Street NW
Hampton, IA 50441
Phone: 641-456-2585
Fax: 1-800-340-0805
Email: news@midamericapub.com

Mid-America Publishing

This newspaper is part of the Mid-America Publishing Family. Please visit www.midampublishing.com for more information.