People's Daily criticizes Douban and Cat's Eye: Bad reviews hurt the film industry

Since the release of the domestic film "The Great Wall", people inside and outside the industry have been arguing repeatedly. After the box office chaos, the topic of film reviews has also triggered a new round of thinking about China's film industry.

The three domestic films "The Great Wall","The Ferry Man" and "Railway Flying Tiger" that are being released nationwide are facing huge public opinion storms. First, after "The Great Wall" was released, the Weibo account "blasphemous movie" trampled on the bottom line of comments and posted "Zhang Yimou is dead" to carry out a malicious personal attack, which triggered verbal criticism; later, Douban maliciously swiped a star for "The Ferry Man", which caused another uproar. Although these films do still have flaws in artistic quality, what cannot be ignored is that some big V's and public accounts have made malicious and irresponsible remarks for the purposes of attracting attention, attracting fans, and monetizing traffic, which has seriously damaged the ecological environment of China films.

After entering the era of the Internet, especially the mobile Internet, a number of websites such as Douban and Cat's Eye have closely connected with audiences and provided audiences with new release information, movie viewing guidance and ticket purchasing services, playing a certain role in promoting the development of China's film market. However, after the arrival of the New Year market at the end of this year, Douban and Cat's Eye's scores on the three major new films were surprising. Judging from the scores at around 19:00 on December 27:

on Douban,"Great Wall" scored 5.5 points (101551 reviews);"Ferry Man" scored 4.4 points (43311 reviews); and "Railway Flying Tiger" scored 5.7 points (12623 reviews).

On the Cat's Eye platform, the audience score of "Great Wall" is 8.4 points (rated by 401,000 people) and the professional score is 4.9 points (rated by 45 people); the audience score of "Ferry Man" is 7.8 points (rated by 109,000 people) and the professional score is 4.9 points (rated by 22 people); The audience score of "Railway Flying Tiger" is 8.5 points (rated by 59,000 people) and the professional score is 5.2 points (rated by 21 people).

Guided by these low scores, many viewers were disappointed with domestic films during the New Year and even refused to watch domestic films. But in fact, are these scores objective? What kind of mystery is hidden behind the formation of scores?

Douban movie rating, how can I trust you again?

As of 19:00 on December 27, a total of 43,300 people commented on "The Ferry Man" on Douban. Among them, 40% of netizens gave 1 star, 22% gave 2 stars, 21.8% gave 3 stars, 9.6% gave 4 stars, and 6.6% gave 5 stars.

Regarding Douban's scoring machine, Douban founder Yang Bo (Weibo) once explained: "For example, a movie has 420,000 users rating it. Our program converts these 420,000 from one to five stars into 0 to 10 points, adds them up and divides them by 420,000 to get the Douban score. This rating will automatically appear everywhere in Douban, with no review in the middle, and no editors usually stare at it. Every few minutes, the program will automatically rerun it to include the opinions of the most recent person who scored."

Then,"The Ferry Man" will be released at 0:00 on the 23rd, and the film will last for 128 minutes. But before the first screening of the film ended, Douban received thousands of 1-star ratings. What is even more strange is that the 4-star and 5-star reviews of some high-authority real accounts have been "disappeared", but the 1-star rating has been completely retained. A total of 200-300 movie reviews have been cleared and banned.

Industry insiders who declined to be named said that "bumping into banks" and "broilers" are the usual methods used by some hackers when interfering with the normal order of the Internet.

The so-called "database collision" means that hackers collect leaked user and password information on the Internet, generate corresponding dictionary tables, and try to log in to other websites in batches to obtain a series of users who can log in. Many users use the same account and password on different websites, so hackers can try to log in to website B by obtaining the user's account on website A. This can be understood as a "database collision attack."

"Broiler chicken" is also called a puppet machine, which refers to a machine that can be controlled remotely by hackers. Hackers induce customers to click, or the computer is hacked, or the user's computer is vulnerable and planted with a Trojan horse. Hackers can manipulate it at will and use it to do anything.

It is understood that using online cheating techniques such as "database collision" and "broilers", a team or even a few people can easily "brush up" points. A large number of film reviews are automatically generated by collecting information on various big V, small V, large and small V, and the software can ensure that the captured information does not duplicate. Industry insiders revealed that this is how the very active "water army" on Douban and other websites came from.

An incident that is widely known in the film industry is even more worth pondering. A few years ago, a media person with the online name "Snow-Blind" created a movie called "Kafka the Beetle, Still Can't Enter the Castle". The IMDB number is his birthday, the cast and staff are all the English names of their relatives and colleagues, and the posters are stolen from individual movies, and the plot is fictional. After it was put on Douban, more than 2000 people liked it, more than 200 people wrote film reviews, and received rave reviews, basically receiving four or five stars. Some people even claimed to have purchased a "genuine DVD." After the incident was exposed, many ID's were ashamed and banned themselves.

Douban's scoring mechanism and credibility were again questioned in this year's New Year's film. The entertainment unicorn on the Weixin Official Accounts said: "The Douban score of" The Ferry Man "changed a lot in one day, and after zero point, a large number of one-star Douban scores were released in a concentrated manner, which was suspected to have been maliciously attacked by the water army.

The netizen said "same or different":"At first, I didn't think that the movie" The Ferry Man "was hacked, but I just felt that my personal hobbies and appreciation were different. Anyway, I personally thought it was not bad, but I felt that the Douban score was too low. Although it couldn't be said to be a good movie, it wasn't so bad, so I went to Douban to support it and gave it five stars. Then my account was locked, and then there was no more. It hurts! I once believed in Douban scores so much.

A film critic who asked not to be named said that the scores of "The Ferry Man" were obviously abnormal."I clicked it and saw it. Many of them were newbies who had just registered, and the scores came down as soon as they started. Douban scoring, no matter how many stars it is, if the registration date is very close, it may not be recognized by the system. But this time, no matter who scored, they were all recognized. This means that it's not normal." He analyzed that the Douban scoring system had manual intervention. "I even suspect that if Douban editors don't like a certain movie, do they have a lot of power?" A senior marketer pointed out that Douban's score is in need of "maintenance."

Why do professional cat's eye film critics have "one sentence is worth ten thousand sentences"?

On the Cat's Eye platform, the audience rating of "Great Wall" at around 19:00 on December 27 was 8.4 points (rated by 401,000 people) and 4.9 points (rated by 45 people); the audience rating of "Ferry Man" was 7.8 points (rated by 109,000 people) and 4.9 points (rated by 22 people); the audience rating of "Flying Tiger Railway" was 8.5 points (rated by 59,000 people) and 5.2 points (rated by 21 people).

It is understood that compared with Douban, which can be scored without watching the movie, Cat's Eye's scoring mechanism is that only after the ticket is issued can be scored. Another difference is that Cat's Eye divides the scoring subjects into audiences and professionals, while its professional scoring database has only 69 professionals.

Taking the film "The Great Wall" as an example, 401,000 viewers participated in the scoring, while only 45 professionals participated in the scoring. And what kind of people are these 45 people? Most of them come from online film critics who are also involved in Douban. Most of these people are super movie fans or film researchers. They have read a lot of films and have certain professional qualities. They like to express their opinions online. Some viewers may refer to their comments when choosing to watch a movie. But it is also undeniable that these people have common interests in author films, niche films, experimental films, and film festival films, which objectively causes a big difference between their scores and audience scores.

The key to the problem is that as two groups with huge differences in movie-watching interests, a very small number of professionals and a large number of ordinary viewers have the same weight in scoring. Also taking "The Great Wall" as an example, 45 professionals rated "The Great Wall", which was tied with the scores of 401,000 ordinary viewers. In other words, Cat's Eye professional film critics have the authority to "one sentence is worth 10,000 sentences."

What is strange is that among the professionals rated by Cat's Eye, one film critic gave "The Great Wall" an effective score of only 2 points. But on the afternoon of the 27th, his score of 2 had become 5, and the scoring time shown on the date was still on the 20th.

"The movie welcomes all scientific, realistic and fair criticism, but criticism is not a carnival of 'conspiracy' or a victory of 'premeditated'." Yin Hong, director of the Film and Television Communication Research Center of Tsinghua University, said that malicious film reviews are a double-edged sword. To gain attention, they can win temporary benefits, but in fact they drink poison to quench their thirst, and the big waves will eventually be eliminated. Criticism should be based on facts, not on sides. Putting facts and reasoning is the minimum starting point for film criticism.

Editor: Nancy