>The original point of contention was that the "percent that approve" of the film that RT uses is surprising and not as useful as a regular rating system.
No, the original point I was responding to was the tired, hypothetical claim that a movie could get "100% fresh" with every critic giving it a middling 3/5 stars. My point was that in practice, this never happens. You have provided zero evidence to the contrary and have now shifted the goalposts to a vague, subjective debate about "usefulness.". The original comment is right there. You can read.
>I don't need to have "heard of them" to know that the NYT film critic, the reviewer at Siskel and Ebert and the film critic at Vanity Fair are probably more worth listening to than the "MacGuffin or Meaning Substack".
This is just gatekeeping masquerading as an argument. They have more to say on the mechanics of film, not on what movies you'll think are the best. It's especially ridiculous when you realize that RT gets reviews from these 'top critics' and you can filter for them.
>The RT score tries to answers the question..."What are the odds the average person will like it"...
The RT percentage has a critics and top critics score so no it's not, not anymore than the metacritic score is 'the score the average person will give it'. That's not how statistics work.
>That's fine and as I said something I and everyone else does, just like I eat junk food (and maybe sometimes actually prefer to some 3-star Michelin restaurant). The problem is pretending that those two films are roughly the same quality, or that because someone sometimes prefers a lower critic ranked movie that ratings don't matter: you can make the same argument about preferring a "rotten" RT movie.
There's nothing to pretend. If i think it's better then it's better for me. What critics say doesn't matter. It's really sad that you apparently characterize movies you like with lower critic scores as 'junk food'. Have a mind of your own.