i agree. i mean i have a roomate who thinks that he is a critic because he has seen shawshank redemption a few times. hell bash on transformers because a critic or two doesnt like it. in movie arguments hell be like "well you think its a good movie......but does roger ebert think its a good movie. no. so there for the movie sucks"

i say fuck off. movie critics are just people who post their opinion and then get a bunch of idiots who read the opinions and immediately agree. its like all of you are brainwashed or something youre a bunch of morons. if you dont like it well good for you. keep it to yourself so someone who does like it doesnt have to have their experience ruined. and the worst rated highest grossing film of all time..........according to my rating system. is titanic. that movie was gay boring and lame. yes i said gay. cocksuckers hate like the transformer critics.

focker. out.

TRANSFORMERS ROCKS!!! MICHAEL BAY ROCKS!!!
THIS MOVIE WILL MAKE BILLIONS BECAUSE AMERICA MADE IT. IF YOU DONT LIKE IT THEN GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY COUNTRY AND GO BACK TO THE DARK AGES SO WE CAN BOMB YOUR ASSES!!! IF YOU DONT LIKE THE BEST MOVIE EVER MADE YOUR JUST A FAG PUSSY BITCH WHO NEEDS TO SHUT THE FUCK UP!!!

Nice satire.

Peter Jackson definitely could've handled a big CGI laden movie like the Transformers films and actually make all the characters count. I just seen ROTF and I actually liked it. Yeah it was long and there were too many robots who didn't get enough screentime, but I liked how it was at least towards the end anyway dark. I can enjoy in you terms crap movies because I lower my expectations, that way if it sucks I'm not as disappointed. But there are some movies I regret seeing like the mummy 3.
But there will be movies that are both good and high grossing.

Glad to see that the mainstream public ignores critics. Shows that there are still some people with a mind of their own that don't sit around listening to a bunch of senile old folks giving there thumbs up or thumbs down on stuff...

If there's anything deserving to be on that list, it's this movie. OH GAWD was it awful. There was no point at all to what was happening. The characters were extremely annoying. etc. The only thing praise-worthy in this movie was whoever worked on the robots, but even that's blotted out by explosions.

And what is the percentage of the results of Michael Bay to other directors? And what does it all mean ... that people really do like things they dont really are good, or well done??

interesting article. i generally read reviews just for the synopsis, and ignore the critic's views. plainly subjective.

Thanks for doing this. Interesting to see the list.... not surprised at all that Transformers 2 was at the top. There's good mindless popcorn movies and then there's Bay crap.

There IS one more you could add to this list: Alvin and the Chipmunks.

Domestic Gross: $217.1 million (domestically more than The Day After Tomorrow, Angels and Demons, and Armageddon, and only $200,000 shy of The Da Vinci Code!)
Worldwide: $360.5 million
Tomatometer: 26%

$/%: 13.8

And imagine how the *ahem* SQUEAKUEL will rank!

Really interesting post, Peter, and I appreciate the hard work put into it… although I’m still trying to determine what “come-what” means (it sure sounds dirty, though).

However, and though I’ve made this point before, I think the determination would be somewhat (or even come-what) more useful if you used the formula with the Metacritic score. I truly find the Rotten Tomatoes score far less exact than Metacritic because RT simply averages “fresh” or “rotten” – sorry, but I need more nuance than that, and I think many other film geeks would agree.

Take “Hancock,” for example: it’s a film that received very few outright raves and very few outright pans (though the Wall Street Journal dude despised it), because (IMHO, at least) it’s a seriously flawed film that still has several strong elements.

Hancock gets a 39 at RT, but based on the Metacritic system, it jumps a full 10 points to 49. That’s a moderately significant difference. Same for Angels & Demons, which jumps 11 points on Metacritic.

Shrek the Third benefits even more, jumping from a 42 on the polarizing RT-based system but a 58 (!) on the Metacritic system. That’s a 16-point jump and puts it only ONE POINT apart from Spider-Man 3’s Metacritic score of 59. (The Lost World: Jurassic Park jumps 10 points to 59, making it IDENTICAL to the Spider-Man 3 score.)

Da Vinci Code, meanwhile, jumps a huge 22 points from RT’s 24 to 46 on Metacritic, while Transformers: ROTF gets a solid 16-point boost from 19 to 35.

As for Crystal Skull, it FALLS a full 11 points to 65 on Metacritic, which is one area where I do have to take exception to the notion that it earned “high praise” from critics. I’d argue that more critics generally liked Crystal Skull than disliked it, but as you can see from the 65 score, the majority of critics gave it just fair-to-moderately-good reviews. (Only 4 of the 40 reviews listed indicated a score for the film above 80.)

Phantom Menace, BTW, plunges a full 11 points on Metacritic to 53, which makes it identical to Dead Man’s Chest (a 53 on both systems).

Again, it’s fair to argue which system one should use and which works best – as noted, both systems give Dead Man’s Chest a 53 – but I do believe the RT method is “flawed” enough that it’s a bit unfair to include some films on the list as being among the “worst-reviewed.”

Really, most of the films in the post were nowhere near as reviled as Transformers: ROTF has been so far.

Anyway, I decided to apply your formula (honestly, it is a great idea) to the same films you listed, using Metacritic instead of RT.

I did NOT include Crystal Skull, because even though I didn’t much care for the film, its 65 on Metacritic definitely is high enough not to be included among poorly-reviewed films. I also pulled out Spidey 3 and Shrek the Third, because I think if you’re above a 55 on Metacritic, it’s not like you get panned too badly.

Long story short: Using the Metacritic method, Transformers: ROTF comes in fourth behind Dead Man’s Chest, At World’s End and Phantom Menace:

1) Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest
Box Office: $1,066.2 Million
Metacritic: 53
$/%: 20.1

2) Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End
Box Office: $961 Million
Metacritic: 50
$/%: 19.2

3) Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace
Box Office: $924.3 Million
Metacritic: 52
$/%: 17.7

4) Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
Box Office: $607.7 Million (so far)
Metacritic: 35
$/%: 17.3

Of course, as ROTF makes more money, it will move on up this list, at least jumping over Phantom Menace. Here’s the rest of the list, (again, this includes only films scoring lower than 55 on Metacritic):

5) The Da Vinci Code
Box Office: $758.2 Million
Metacritic: 46
$/%: 16.4

6) Armageddon
Box Office: $553.7 Million
Metacritic: 42
$/%: 13.1

7) Hancock
Box Office: $624.4 Million
Metacritic: 49
$/%: 12.7

8) Meet the Fockers
Box Office: $516.6 Million
Metacritic: 41
$/%: 12.5

9) The Day After Tomorrow
Box Office: $544.3 Million
Metacritic: 48
$/%: 11.3

10) Bruce Almighty
Box Office: $484.6 Million
Metacritic: 46
$/%: 10.5

11) Angels & Demons
Box Office: $473.2 Million
Metacritic: 48
$/%: 9.8

Long story short: Michael Bay might seem like the king of making millions with iffy product, but Gore Verbinski might really deserve the title.

How long does it usually take to have my comment approved?

I say bring in Peter Jackson to make the next one. The story could be Unicron dropped some sort of bomb killing off all the humans leaving only the bots and the cons. They have to band together to fight Unicron. This takes care of the Human Problem.

Fun with numbers. Now adjust it to inflation!

You forgot Mama Mia which has grossed $602.5 mil with a 53% on RT (11.36), Ice Age 2 ($651.9/57%/11.43), Passion of the Christ ($611.9/50%/12.24), Armageddon ($554.6/40%/13.9), Night at the Museum ($574.5/44%/13.0), and Meet the Fockers ($516.6/38%/13.59), National Treasure 2 ($457.3/32%/14.29), Pearl Harbor ($449.2/25%/18.0) and the first Transformers ($708.3/57%/12.4) and probably a few more. (I used the-numbers.com for this because it has the gross and tomato rating included on the site). And yes that means Michael Bay has four super high grossing poorly reviewed films.

Saw Transformers finally today. I almost didn´t because of all the negative reviews. All I can say, I´m glad i saw it. It was a fun two hour and thirty or whatever brainless action movie.

And today I want to say this:

Critics dont matter. Fans don´t matter. What matters is what we, the uneductaded masses think.

The same thing happened to me with Terminator Salvation, evey critic I read hated that film, but I loved it. Only differens, Terminator was far superior imo than Transformers.

Transformers is a huge event movie. It looks gorgous (i´m talking only about the visuasl). Lots of good action. Don´t get why every critic and hater said it was so fast you couldn´t see a shit. Well, it was fast but go check your eyes people. Cause I saw everything. It was like the first. You have to concentrate a little harder.

The climax in the desert was really good, the forest fight that everone says was so great was over before it started. Sure it was good, but I was expecting so much more... It was probaly the emotional impact that made people think it was so great. And yeah it was really good, but not that good imo.

See, what I mean? It never really is like what those who have seen it first claim it to be. What was great in their eyes never is in someones elses eyes. So in the end, even if you really enjoyed more than half of the film, which I think most people did, you have enjoyed the whole film. When you leave the theatre and think: "Hey that was a fun action summer flick" and I think most people had that though, then Michael Bay has accomplished his mission.

Could be I´m not english or american, and that a lot of the language escapes me, but I heard about racism, about fart jokes and leg humping. And i registered all of that, but it never bothered me. Yeah there was that short egyptian dwarfe who was in the military who let the americans pass only because they were from new york, that was kinda racist against middle eastern people, but it wasn´t really outragous. It was michael bay. Come on people. There was a lot of racial stereotypes in the last movie too.

My point is: It was EXACTLY like the first movie. EXACTLY. The action, the humour. The editing. A typical Bay movie. No story? Never remembered there was a story in the last one either.

I love how people complain about how much movie tickets are. $10 isn't that much.

I thought this movie was awesome. Bring on number 3.

...Your rating system is flawed... Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2 made roughly 9 million and had a 0%... thus it has an infinite rating and is by far the worst reviewed highest grossing movie ever.

In the case of superbabies, there isn't a large enough sample of reviews to consider that tomato-meter rating valid. And if you did, you would need to round up to 1% for it to work in the formula. :)

The listing looks like what will be playing in Hell's Multi-plex.

Kudos on the article. A lot of work went into this interesting read. Thanks.

Why would you say $1,066.2 million and not $1 billion?

I was just trying to keep all the numbers on the same playing field to give better perspective (plus it's how Box Office Mojo lists box office totals: http://www.boxofficemojo.com/alltime/world/ )

What happens if you take inflation into consideration here?

Actually, inflation is in fact recognizable when looking at it from an economic point of view. Since the studio-system learned with time to more effectively market a product, their prediction of success got, in some aspects, more accurate. THis enables them to "mass produce" incredible levels of positive attention that they can turn into cash by means of tickets sales. But, this also means that the importance of a certain blockbuster is getting smaller in a historic dimension. Its not a coincidence that the box-office records are broken on an almost regular level. Long term attention in term of pop-culture prominence gets reduced though.

THe whole idea of "ranking" movies in terms of absolutes is a bit ridiculous to me personally, because setting the criteria is often too arbitrary. But still, critics DO play an important role for any art form in general (if you will also in sports and politics). Traditionally critics are familiar with aesthetic concepts of the medium they review and upon this theoretical background they (should) form their opinion. That their power is limited is obvious as the list above shows. Mainstream cinema is not that dependent on critics, since they can market certain content so it will most often be a box-office success. So called "independent" films, on the other hand, are hugely affected by critics. Bad reviews can prevent a film from even being shown outside a festival. They can even mean the end to a moviemakers career. The smaller the amount of accessable attention (and by that, possibly positive attention), the more important is the critic for the reception, since he is one of the main sources of getting any attention for a film at all (sometimes even a bad review can make a piece of art even appear on most peoples map). When being able to channel attention by other means than reviews (ads, connection to celebritys...) the critic ceases to be a gatekeeper. And notice, those facts have nothing to do with "quality" (that is a whole other topic, but with the economy of attention our culture has developed.I didn't pull this out of my ass, there are very interesting scientific theories that explain quite well how this all works (game theory, social theories and the so called "media theory").

Haha, great post Peter, always good to see the mouth-breathers who lapped up BayFormers get bitchslapped for being morons.

I genuinely believe that piece-of-shit movies like this doing so well at the box office marks a further devolution of the human race. Soon we will be divided, the enlightened "elite" versus the dumbass BayFormers fans, eventually becoming the Eloi and the Morlocks...

I reiterate - if you enjoyed this movie you require a brain scan.

That is all.

In general, I don't read reviews for movies, I go by friends' word of mouth and director's cred, etc. The only reviews I do read are on /Film, Ebert, and A.O. Scott. I think most critics are hacks and couldn't care less about what people think (especially Phil Villarreal of the Arizona Daily Star. Thankfully he's been reassigned to the Metro desk.

Frankly, I think more movie critics should be reassigned to different departments (not laid off, I would never wish that someone lost their job). Why in the hell does every local paper need a movie critic? Peter, Hunter and Co. are good enough to me. When it comes to an older movie, I check Ebert's archives. His opinion matters to me-the man has been reviewing movies his entire professional career, A.O. Scott I find highly intelligent and perceptive. But why should I care what some 25 year old recent college grad writing for the local paper thinks about the movie? I shouldn't.

I dont know why everyone hates on SUMMER MOVIES .. its not Oscar Season and your a Total F*&@King idiot if you are gonna compare movies like the wrestler to movies like hancock transformers and pirates. People want to be entertained and blown away by special affects and escape to a world unlike there own, thats why they do so well. The avarage movie goer could careless about too many close ups or why every shot seems to be taken at sunset. They just wanna shit taken to another level.

Why does summer blockbusters have to be mindless, badly made??? Some of my favorite films would qualify as summer films: Jaws, Star Wars, Empire Strikes Back, Jurassic Park, T2, Abyss, Batman Begins, Dark Knight. Why do we as a viewer just have to settle for "shit taken to another level"??? If you are going to make a film, regardless of whether it is a summer film or Oscar bait, make it with as much care and consideration as possible. Don't pander to the audience and don't substitute special effects and cliches for story. At the very least make me, as an audience, care about what is happening rather than passively watching a special effects show. Too much to ask???

No, it's not.

I don't really know if I should post this, but I will knowing it will probably get flamed down. Personally I hate critics, they really serve no purpose. Apart from the hand few, and that's probably exaggerating, most critics have no actual training in movies in any respect and are given the job of reviewing on the net or in newspapers as a "well we need a reviewer and this guy types good" sort of job. Again this isn't true in all cases, but in most it is. Most of the time, they don't review the movies themselves they just sit in their cubicles and eviscerate the directors or actors and their personalities instead of giving the positives and negatives of the movies.

Critics should be objective but their reviews smack of personal attacks. The idea of critics are good, but the Critic system we have is just horrible, and it's not only for movies, same goes for games.

This is where the flaming will begin lol... Watch the movie Heckler, it's a documentary done by Jamie Kennedy. It's a good watch for the most part and gives you a good idea of the crappiness of Hecklers and Critics. There's some points where you'll think "god Jamie stop whining" but there's times where you'll realize that critics are really useless and even sites like meta critic and rotten tomatoes are pretty useless

How are critics supposed to be objective? The art of criticism is subjective. Films aren't formulas or equations and critics aren't mathematicians.

Objective in terms of going into a movie with no pre-conceived ideas. So Critic X goes into the movie knowing it's a Michael Bay movie, therefore he has his opinion already made cause Bad Boys offended him somehow, therefore all his movies suck.

Also to say they aren't mathematicians, while correct, there are a lot of rating systems using numbers. Almost giving the impression of a mathematical equation when in essence there isn't, it's just a completely arbitrary number they come up with. Hell websites like metacritic and rotten tomatoes, compile all the "ratings" and average them out and give you a movie score... That's not the critics directly but it's an extension of what the critics do.

If Critics are supposed to be just giving their "professional opinions" on whether the movie is good or bad, why is it that they use personal attacks and use a numbered rating system. Yay or Nay, Thumbs up or Thumbs down, and then explain why you think the movie sucks or is incredible, or mediocre.

The way we read critics in the modern sense, with websites and social media that average out a large pool of critical opinions should force critical review to change. I always saw the job of the critic as someone who should contextualize someone else's work, not declare it good or bad.

Something like Transformers doesn't have a coherent plot, but it does have robot fights rendered in 4K and some amazing imagery. Neither of these facts (well, the imagery thing was an opinion) means that the movie is "good" or "bad," it means if you are a movie-goer who likes plot, you can probably skip it, but if you like robot fights, you've already seen it.

"Fresh" and "Rotten" via RT is kind of an over-simplification of what criticism should be.

As this has been inspired by Transformers, how about the summer of '82, when the genre movies were a) good b) comparatively cheap and c) mostly profitable?

"E.T. "
Budget: $10.5m
U.S. gross: $359m
IMDB user rating: 7.9/10
MRQE score: 91/100

"Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan"
Budget: $11.2M
U.S. gross: $78.9M
IMDB user rating: 7.8/10
MRQE score: 84/100

"Poltergeist"
Budget $10.7M
US gross: $74.7M
IMDB user rating 7.4/10
MRQE score: 76/100

"Blade Runner"
Budget: $28M
U.S. gross: $27.5M
IMDB user rating: 8.3/10
MRQE score: 86/100

"The Thing"
Budget $15m
US gross: $13.8m
IMDB user rating 8.1/10
MRQE Metric 85/100

"Tron"
Budget: $17M
U.S. gross: $33M
IMDB user Rating: 6.5/10
MRQE acore: 75/100

"Mad Max 2/The Road Warrior"
Budget: $2M
U.S. gross: $9M
IMDB user Rating: 7.6/10
MRQE score: 81/100


http://www.thewrap.com/ind-column/ah-why-cant-t...

Oh man... That list was like a kick in the nuts after the summer we just had (A few gems notwithstanding.)

That is a list of some of my favorite films. I was born in 1977 and was four years old during the summer of '82. I would give so much to be the age I am now that summer and experience while it happened.

They sure used to make good films. I'm afraid if we keep lowering our standards like we are, we'll never see a summer like '82 again.

Stats involving money grossed are bunk. Try it with tickets sold.

The fact is, anyone who "hated" this film still paid the 10+ bucks to go see it in theatres in order to come up with such an opinion. So with more bad reviews slammed at TF2 than taxpayers' money lost in the recession, you still PAID to see it. Everyone can bitch all they want about how shitty critics are and how much this movie sucked, but when it comes down to it, it's all about cash flow. 600M bucks in 2 weeks is an unfathomable amount of profit. For a movie that cost 200M to make, they already have a 200% ROI. When it comes down to it, that's what dictates the entertainment market, and rarely much else. So hate all you want, cause the producers of this movie really dont' give a fuck because they already got your investment and will continue to make more movies.

Personally, I can't wait until the 3rd one comes out.

I will never understand how Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Cystal Skull was liked by critics. As hollow as Revenge of the Fallen is, and it is bad the last two Pirate films were even worse. Just awful. CGI vomit and nothing more.
Actually I don't get some of the hate for Armageddon. That film is alot of fun.
Same for Spiderman 3. Not as good as 1 & 2 but still a good movie.
chuck

Imdb and comments on the internet DO NOT account for the mainstream public opinion either, though. The internet movie boards are just a TINY fraction of the regular moviegoer. For example, Crystal Skull might make fanboys angry.. but regular families seemed to love it.

you know this just goes to prove that critics are full of shit anyways so no one should even bother listening to what they have to say when it comes to a big budget action movie. Enjoy the movie for what it is, action action action, remember those days? when people watched movies not because the script was pure gold, or the cinematography or any of that shit, they watched movies because it was an escape and it was entertainment, i think people have lost sight of that and are over analyze simple movies like this one.

It made 600$ million and it has a 19% rating, what does that tell you other than critics are snobby bastards who cant enjoy a movie that has explosion and super cool robots beating the shit out of each other. Dont even get me started on this michael bay thing, hes an action director, its time to get over it.

crystal skull is the only possible movie on this list that should outrank revenge of the fallen. how the hell did it get 76% positive when it was 100% garbage

I couldn't agree with you more.

who the fuck cares? transformers fans don't give a shit what reviews it gets. we just love it. bring on number 3!

amen!

Don't claim to speak for all Transformers fans. I'm a Transformers fan, and I hated it. A LOT.

Peter,
You don't forget shrek 3, right? 42%, 797 millions.

fixed!

Unfortunately Peter, you're really only half right. Agreed, making tons of money doesn't make you good, according to you and me. However, in the eyes of Paramount and Bay and everyone involved in that film, and the other films in the list, the box office success does make it good. In fact, so good that they're going to make more Transformers films, and Emerich is going to keep making movies. The sad thing is, because they see how low expectations have become for summer films, they don't really feel the need to change the formulas. Clearly they works.

That's really what this is all about; Lowered expectations. If they keep shoveling out crap to kids, the kids will ultimately have nothing to compare it to, cause they will never know what a good movie actually looks like. It engrains this mentality, that if it doesn't have incredible cgi and big explosions, it's not really exciting. Thus, not exciting, equals a bad movie. As such, movies like Tron, Blade Runner, and Terminator get the shaft because the effects are not the same as what we see today. And special effects clearly determines how good a movie is.

If they keep putting shit on our plates, and we keep eating it, we have no right to complain. Until we say, "hey, this shit tastes like crap" then nothing will ever change with this mentality.

Are Black Eyed Peas and Linkin Park good cause they sell tons of records? No. But according to them and their respective labels, yes. Will they continue to win Grammys? Of course. Because it's not based on quality, it's all based on how much money your product makes. Sad but true in the business world.