How Rotten Tomatoes Gets It Wrong

Happy Fourth of July! In honor of our nation's independence, and the sci-fi/action movies that always get released on the 4th (who's going to see Transformers today?), here is today's post:

I like the Rotten Tomatoes website. I think it's a very helpful way to get an initial impression of whether it's worth seeing a movie or not, and the concise excerpts of what the critics are saying is a helpful one-stop-shopping place for the buzz on almost any film.

I do, however, have a bone to pick with them. I think their Top 100 Sci-Fi Movies list is absolute crap. I'll get into why it's so bad in a bit. But first, I should point out that that this is a list of the top-reviewed movies. That is important to keep in mind when viewing the list. They're allegedly not taking into account a movie's influence on the rest of the genre, whether or not the movie is ground-breaking, or its place in sci-fi movie history. They're just looking at the quality of the reviews of individual movies.

Ok, fair enough. But then, if you look at the sidebar explaining "How It Works", you see that there's a complicated process involving mathematical formulas and voting. Voting? Suddenly, the list is no longer about just which movies were best reviewed, but which movies critics thought belonged on this top 100 list.

Since the transparency and objectivity in the list is gone because of the addition of voting, I'm free to critique it all I want. Heh heh.

The biggest bone to pick with the list is the inclusion of movies like Ghostbusters, Men in Black, GalaxyQuest, and Space Balls above movies that have really shaped the genre. These are comedies, wearing a sci-fi costume. Their jokes are all dependant on movies that have gone before them. They wouldn't exist if it weren't for the original movies of Star Trek, Star Wars, etc. Sure, they may be good comedies, but ground-breaking sci-fi films they are NOT. There is no way that GalaxyQuest deserves to be #13 on the list, above truly innovative films such as Bladerunner.

Which brings me to my next point--why is Bladerunner #36 on the list? In my opinion, this is one of the most highly innovative sci-fi films of all time, building the imagery for countless sci-fi films to come. And not only that, but why isn't the 1992 rerelease on the list? Both the original and the remake of Invasions of the Body Snatchers were on the list since both mattered so much; since the original and redone Bladerunner had a similar effect, why not them too? I guess what's really irritating about this example in particular is that Minority Report, another movie based on a Philip K. Dick novel, is ranked #5. The imagery in Minority Report wouldn't have been possible if Bladerunner hadn't already done the same thing twenty years earlier.
(Plus, I don't like Tom Cruise.)

I was also irritated by how harshly they judged The Return of the Jedi. Yes, it's the weakest of the original three Star Wars films, but is it really worse than The Matrix Reloaded? Hardly. And rating Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan below Star Trek: First Contact doesn't make any sense, especially since most ST fans agree that Wrath is the best movie in the franchise. Also, no offense to fans of the movie, but does Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind really deserve the #2 spot on the list? The explanation of the film even admits that the science fiction aspects of the film are more incidental than anything. If that is the case, then give the spot on the list to a movie where the sci-fi focus is what makes the movie great.

I was happy with how much attention was paid to classic sci-fi films, such as The Day the Earth Stood Still and Invasion of the Body Snatchers. I was also pleased to see that Metropolis made the top 3--an acknowledgement that knowing your roots is important. And Star Wars and Empire Strikes Back were both in the top 10, which is also good.

The top-rated film of the list is E.T. I'm not angry about this, although if it were up to me, Bladerunner would probably have the spot, just because of how influential it was in shaping future ideas of what science fiction was. E.T. just seems too soft, too warm-hearted, and not particularly influential on sci-fi films that followed. I think Close Encounters of the Third Kind would have been a much better choice.

Anyways, rant off. Let me know what you think I've gotten wrong :)