Like it or not, review aggregate site Rotten Tomatoes has become one of the major arbiters of film quality for millions of people around the world. There’s a lot of power there and a lot of it is all summed up in just one number – the Tomato-meter score.
“Running Scared” and “The Cooler” director Wayne Kramer is not a fan of this idea, but has come up with an interesting suggestion. Recently on Facebook he laid out his proposal – he suggests that after a film has been in release for a decade, then filmmakers should have the ability to lodge an appeal and have their films be reconsidered with a new rating. Said new rating would accompany (but not replace) the original score.
The proposal relates to “Running Scared,” the Paul Walker-led thriller mostly dismissed at the time but which found respect and a following in the years since. As Kramer says:
“It takes a decade (or longer!) to know the real impact of a film and I’m sure quite a few critics might reverse themselves after ten years. I’ve heard from several critics who feel they got it wrong on ‘Running Scared’ and might consider it differently today.”
The other complication is time. As Kramer points out, films released before the site opened achieve their scores at least in part via retrospective reviews which paint a different picture to the reviews those same films scored at the time of release.
How such a procedure might work isn’t clear, nor is it clear if the writers themselves are likely to reassess a film but it’s an interesting read nonetheless. The full post is up on Facebook and was found courtesy of JoBlo.
