The grading rules of the three major film review websites in the United States are popular: IMDb, Metacritic and immature pine rotten tomato.

as early as 20 years ago, Americans began to rely on information technology to set up a unique film scoring system online. Film evaluation websites with their own emphasis came into being, and the published data and information are the absolute authorities in the industry.

original title: there is Douban in China, so how do the American people rate the movie?

just a few days ago, just after the Oscars, "Moonlight" won best picture, and the most popular "La La City" lived up to expectations, winning six awards. Among them, the freshness of rotten tomatoes in Moonlight Boys and the freshness of rotten tomatoes in "La La City" and "La La City" were 7.5 and 93%, respectively, and 100%:IMDb was 8.8. The beautiful film review results seem to have made a strong note on the film quality before the Oscars.

if you happen to be a movie fan and a slight stranger to phrases such as "rotten tomato freshness", congratulations, this popular science article is written for you. You know, as early as 20 years ago, Americans began to rely on information technology, set up a unique film scoring system online, each focus on the film evaluation website came into being, the published data and information are the absolute authority in the industry. Like the domestic Douban network, reliable film evaluation can screen out a number of golden and unsuccessful works for the audience in advance, so that the really good movies can be carried forward. Let's take a look at the three reliable film review websites in the United States.

strong > IMDb: the full name of Douban / strong >

IMDb in the United States is Internet MovieDatabase (International Film Database), and indeed it deserves this name. IMDb, founded in 1990, now has a cumulative stock of more than 6000 films and TV series, and you can find reviews on almost every film and television work you can remember. In addition, it also provides global filmmakers to upload their own personal data service, so you can also find your favorite director, actor, screenwriter and so on. It can be said that IMDb is the most informative movie database website in the world.

IMDb's evaluation of the film is not based on the objective performance of the film, such as the box office or awards, but based on the scoring mechanism of the general public. All registered IMDb users can rate a movie on a scale of 1-10 stars, and IMDb will use the arithmetic average (Arithmetic mean) method to calculate a weighted average number of stars as the final score. For example, last year's popular "Zootopia" combined with the final score of 266540IMDb users-8.1 stars

the age distribution of IMDb users who rated" Zootopia "

in addition to daily movie ratings, IMDb also released a real-time updated Top 250 movie list. Once launched, it has become the best place for the broad masses to look for high-quality movies. But how did this list come into being?

IMDb Top 250The No. 1 movie list is" Shawshank's Redemption "

in order to maintain the fairness of ratings, IMDb has refused to publish a formula for calculating daily movie ratings. However, the formula for calculating the Top 250list has been published on the official website:

v=IMDb active user votes

m = the minimum number of votes required to enter the IMDb Top 250th list

R = average score of the movie

C=IMDb database average score of all movies

this formula is actually an example of Bayesian algorithm. This is a relatively scientific calculation method recognized in the field of statistics. And, in order to shield out the risk of water army or fans brushing the list, IMDb only allows veteran fans as "active users" to vote for it, and the qualification of "active users" is also extremely complicated. This is the enduring foundation of the IMDb Top 250 film list.

take advantage of the victory. Since 2015, IMDb has launched the Top 250 TV series list. Unlike the movie list, there are more new works on the list in recent years. At the top of the list is Planet Earth 2, a big documentary released by BBC last year.

strong > Metacritic: professional rating platform / strong >

on IMDb, the higher the popularity of the movie, the higher the score, because it is a scoring website for the general public. Unlike Metacritic, it is mainly a platform for expressing the opinions of professional filmmakers, and only critics from mainstream media and professional film review organizations such as the Guardian, the New York Times, Rolling Stone and time magazine can play Metascore for films on Metacritic.

Metacritic was founded in 1999, started as a book review, and now covers music albums, movies, TV dramas, video games and other fields. Here, green represents recommendation, yellow represents neutrality, and red represents opposition. Although Metacritic requires professional film critics to give an accurate score, not everyone is so obedient. In fact, Metacritic does this: film critics use scores for scores; stars are converted into percentile scores; if only the text version of the film review is not graded, Metacritic will find someone to read the review and give it a score based on how it feels. However, it should be noted that the score mentioned here is not the score of the final movie, it is only the source of the final score.

Metacritic

after the film critic finishes scoring, Metacritic will process the source data according to the critic's reputation, status and specific comments, and then get a final comprehensive score by weighted average, which is the Metascore mentioned above.

the calculation principle of Metascore does not seem to reflect the feelings of film critics accurately and truly, but the authority of Metacritic in the industry is rarely questioned. In addition to professional reviews, Metacritic also offers a dedicated Userscore for ordinary users, but it uses a ten-point system.

users can score directly on the movie's home page, but this Userscore is calculated separately and will not have any impact on Metascore. Due to the small user base, Userscore is not as credible as the rating of IMDb users, so the function of Metacritic is more chicken-ridden.

there is also a real-time updated movie list on Metacritic called "Best Movies of All Time", but that's a far cry from the IMDb Top 250 movie list. Shawshank's Redemption, which topped the IMDb list, did not rank high on the Metacritic list. The first of the millennium is another well-known blockbuster, the Godfather. This is probably the difference between the eyes of ordinary audiences and professionals.

strong > rotten tomato: / strong >

rotten tomato must be more well-known in China than the two film review websites mentioned above. It was founded in 1998 as a platform for Jackie Chan's founders to collect reviews of Jackie Chan films in the United States, and the name "rotten tomato" comes from the vaudeville period when audiences threw tomatoes and other fruits and vegetables on the stage when the performance was poor. Nowadays, rotten tomato is an old pine in the field of film criticism, and even movies on iTunes Store and Google Play will give rotten tomato evaluation information for public reference.

the evaluation system for rotten tomatoes is called "Tomatometer", which is what we often call "freshness". Similar to Metacritic, rotten Tomato is judged mainly by professional film critics. Only here, film critics do not rate or star rating, can only give "Fresh" (fresh tomato) and "Rotten" (rotten tomato) two kinds of marks, respectively for "recommended" and "do not recommend". Therefore, the higher the freshness of a film, the higher the degree of recommendation, the more worthwhile it is to watch.

the freshness of rotten tomatoes is in percentage, which means the percentage of film critics recommend it. In addition, you will often see three evaluation logos next to the percentage of the movie.

if the film is recommended by more than 60% of critics, rotten tomatoes will be identified with red tomatoes, that is, the freshness is Fresh, which belongs to the medium level. If the film is recommended by more than 80 critics and more than 75% of the critics, like Zootopia above, you will get a gold medal logo, and the freshness will rise to Certified Fresh level. But if the number of critics who recommend the film is less than 60%, then you can only get that pile of green rotten tomatoes, which are works with poor word-of-mouth.

at the same time, in order to ensure that users' opinions can be reflected here, rotten Tomato has set up an Audience Score audience score, which is expressed by the logo of popcorn. All registered users can comment on stars and comments, but in the end, what is reflected on the introduction page of the movie is the proportion of all users who have scored more than 3.5 stars (out of 5 stars).

rotten tomatoes have also been ranked in many categories, but the most popular one is the "Golden Tomato Award" launched at the beginning of each year. The selection of the award is not only based on the daily score, but also takes into account the impact of the number of film reviews (the number of film reviews) on the score, and then uses the Bayesian algorithm to get the final score. Not long ago, the 18th Golden Tomato Awards was announced, in which Zootopia won the best film of the year with a freshness of 106.749%.

other lists

after more than 100 years of wind and rain, the American film industry has become particularly mature, and the cultural background of freedom of speech has given the film industry real fairness. With a strong star lineup, gorgeous technical special effects and luxurious public relations publicity, any packaging is a bubble in front of moviegoers. But at this time, I can't help thinking of last year's "A hundred Birds to the Phoenix". A masterpiece of conscience is so bleak that I don't know who to blame.

Edit: nancy