The Daily Observer London Desk: Reporter- Sarah Marshal
I was today years old when my unwavering affection for Rotten Tomatoes was ripped right out from under me.
For years, I’ve entrusted the popular review aggregation site to inform me what movies are worth my time and energy. One quick glance at a film’s critical rating would tell me all I needed to know.
On Rotten Tomatoes, films are assigned a score out of 100 based on the percentage of positive reviews they receive versus the negative. If half the reviews a film receives are good and half are bad, its score is 50 per cent – you get the picture.
You would have been right to label me a Rotten Tomatoes snob. If I didn’t see that little red tomato denoting a critics score of at least 60 per cent positive reviews, I wasn’t interested!
Alas, no longer. Because as of 9 February, the website egregiously named Top Gun: Maverick the Best Film of 2022, a film I believe to be criminally overrated.
Now, I understand that Rotten Tomatoes has no review board or academy of experts voting on its “Best of 2022” list. Instead, as the site says, the “order reflects Tomatometer scores (as of December 31, 2022) after adjustment from our ranking formula” – whatever that ranking formula may be.
In simpler terms, the Tomatometer score is a reflection of professional critics’ reviews, not those of the Rotten Tomatoes curators.
Perhaps, then, my grievance should lie more with those who have revered Cruise’s stunt-filled money grab, created exclusively for the nostalgic fanbase of the original 1986 Top Gun.
Admittedly, I already had some reservations ahead of the revival. One: I’m not a fan of war-based action movies, therefore, I’m not a part of its intended audience, and two: I’ve still never seen the original.
Set more than 30 years after the events of the beloved classic, Maverick sees Cruise return as the Navy’s top aviator Pete “Maverick” Mitchell, iconic aviator shades included. This time, his mission is to train a hand-selected group of Navy graduates for an especially dangerous assignment.
Yes, Cruise’s stunts – which he’s famously known to do himself – were jaw-droppingly impressive. Still, they weren’t enough to make up for the total lack of storyline and otherwise bland performances.
Perhaps this assessment makes me sound arrogantly high-brow, but when a movie has over 90 per cent on Rotten Tomatoes, I expect to be immersed in more nuanced storytelling, like I was with Todd Field’s Cate Blanchett-starring Tár.
How can I trust this site when a beautifully complex examination of cancel culture like Tár is rated five per cent lower than Tom Cruise doing some barrel rolls in a fighter jet?
So here it is, my formal farewell to Rotten Tomatoes. Hello Showbiz Grid, hello IMDb, hello Metacritic.
