Analysis of Rotten Tomatoes Movie Reviews - Psych Papers

All right, Joseph, we got a good one today. Alright. What we got Chris? I... I conducted... an analysis of Rotten Tomatoes movie reviews. Oh shit, okay, okay. Welcome to Psych Papers, a podcast of Bad Content where we discuss psych, psychology studies and conduct our own follow-up research. I'm Chris Cole. I have a PhD in psychology and this is Joseph Tajaran. I'm just his friend. In today's episode, we're going to discuss the analysis of Rotten Tomatoes movies reviews. We're going to discuss th

e top rated movies of all times, which movies people talked about the most, which movies the audiences loved but critics hated, which movies the audience hated but critics loved, how do movie ratings differ by genre, content rating, and release year, and do movies get better or worse over time? I found a data set online of 1 million, 130,000 reviews from over 17,000 movies from 1914 to 2020. Okay. Why, why not the last three years? Why are we omitting that? data set I found. Cause that's the dat

a set I found. It was somebody put it together online and scraped the data and they didn't have the most recent data. I'm sorry. So it doesn't have the most recent movies. they couldn't bother doing the last three years? Come on, man. This is, this is, this is, the episode's really bunk. You only have almost a century's worth of it. Ha ha ha. I figure there's 106 years worth of movies. 17,000 movies over a million reviews. I figure that's the last couple of years. We're fine. All right. I'm sorr

y. Avatar two couldn't make it. Joseph. Shit, that's my favorite movie dude. All right. So to start off, we're going to talk about the highest rated movies ever. So I filter them so that the movies had to have at least 100 critics reviews into thousand audience reviews, just to make sure that we didn't get these movies with like, you know, like a tiny amount of reviews. So by the audience, the highest rated movies were Just Mercy, Cidade de Deus or city of God. City of God... Star Wars, episode

five, the empire strikes back, the art of racing in the rain. That was for audience. The critics highest rate moves were PADDINGTON 2. PADDINGTON 2, THE BEAR??? The bear. The sequel. This movie re- a sequel movie nonetheless! Critics too! NOT EVEN THE AUDIENCE??? THE CRITICS LOVED THIS MOVIE, OKAY-- Now I know what I'm doing after this. It's a social commentary on the morality of society. It's about a bear. I actually haven't seen it so I don't know much about it. It might be an amazing movie, I

don't know. For critics also Man on Wire, Toy Story 2, and Leave No Trace. Jesus. Yep. All of these scored out either a 100 or 99%. And this is a good sample size for each one, right? The number of reviews for each. critics reviews and at least a thousand audience reviews. Gotcha. Um, and I found out something about the rotten tomatoes percentage, like what that actually means. So something is like a 90% on rotten tomatoes. That means 90% of people gave it a positive rating, which is 3.5 stars

and up. Interesting, okay, because like different critics have different rating scales. yeah. So what that means, uh, you could have a movie where every single person that rated it gave it four stars and it would still get a 100% on Rotten Tomatoes, even though every single person gave it four stars, but it means a hundred percent of the people liked the movie. And to like a movie, it's gotta be three and a half stars. That's their criteria. Okay. So now we're going to go on to movies that audie

nces loved, but critics hated. They, the critics hate it. Alright, and again, I filtered, you know, they had to have at least 100 critic reviews and 1000 audience reviews just because there are a ton of small movies that nobody knows that we wanted to filter out. Okay, so audiences loved this movie, but critics hated this movie. Dolittle. 2020 version. Is that the one with a- with a- Damn, the dude from Iron Man. Um... Who was in Doolittle? Robert Downey Jr. Robert Downey Jr., wasn't he in that

one? The, the, the original was Eddie Murphy, I think in Dr. Dolittle that was the one like in the 90s or 2000s. Oh yeah. And then do a little, the 2020 version audiences loved it with a 76% critics hated it with a 15% and then second place was Gemini man, the one with Will Smith and I believe his son was in it, Jayden. And then Maleficent, Mistress of Evil, Venom, Warcraft, The Kitchen, Men in Black International, Dark Phoenix, Godzilla, King of Monsters, and King Arthur, Legend of the Sword. A

ll the movie audiences loved, critics hated. The audience rating for Maleficent is 95 and critics rated it 39. That's such a big disparity too. Wow. Do you know what we're going on to next? Movies that critics love but audience hated. Exactly. All right. So audiences hated these movies, but critics loved star Wars, the last Jedi. 2017. iNTERESTING. Mm hmm. Interesting...I'm very surprised by that. Yep. Star Wars, the last Jedi got an audience rating of 43%. Critics gave it a 90%. Followed by tha

t was Ad Astra, It Comes at Night, Hail Caesar, Highlife, Uncut Gems, Love and Friendship, The Informant, Noah, and Blockers. Interesting. More high, like a more... More riskier artistic ventures, I might say. Uncut Gems...I'm very surprised that I got a low audience rating. We saw that movie together, I think, in theaters. I really liked that movie. I remember I was stressed out the entire movie. I'm just like, God damn, make, make one good decision. Oh my God. I was like, I thought it was a go

od movie, but I was just like, my heart rate, my stru, like cortisol, my stress was just up at like max the whole movie. Really? And I was like, I was like, I w I was like, I need to like catch a breath. Like, and they just, they just never let you like just have a moment of solace, you know? That's valid, that's valid, I got that. Yeah, I was like, oh finally he just got like this money. He'll be good now And he's like, all right time to gamble it again. I'm like, noooooooo! You have kids I thi

nk he has kids. Yeah. Yeah, he does I forget. Alright, what do you think is the difference between how a critic versus an audience member reviews or evaluates a movie? Yeah, I think critics probably have like a wider criteria than audience members. I feel like audience members pretty much like, did I enjoy it or not? Was this entertaining? And then critics are probably looking at like, not only was it entertaining, but does it have artistic merit? Like they're looking at the shot selection. They

're probably looking at the acting, a little bit more critical and more layered than the audience, I would presume. Not to say audience members don't have that. I just feel like most audience members are just going to be like, I like it or didn't like it, could be a little bit more binary. yeah, yeah. A lot of audience members might, they might not like explicitly notice some certain like filming techniques that a critic might pick up on. All right. I analyzed what the most common movie genres a

re. Do you have any guesses on what the most common movie genre is? most common. Let's say action, action adventure. Survey says... Nope, it was drama. Oh. Almost 11% of all movies were dramas. Interesting. And then second, we had 7% movies being comedy. And then in third place with about 5% movies being comedy dramas, and then drama, mystery and suspense. Uh, fifth, we had art house and international dramas, then documentaries, special interest, then documentaries, then a horror action and adve

nture slash drama. And in last place. with 2% of all movies is horror, mystery, and suspense. Now in retrospect, my answer was dogshit, because that would have implied that every movie comes out and every month is an action movie. And this is more, there's a fucking Bruce Willis Tom Cruise movie. Yeah, that's true, yeah. All like all really high budget action movies. Yeah. Those are hard to make. Yeah. Those don't come very often. So you can think of for dramas, you can think of like the Godfath

er. Comedy, like Monty Python and the Holy Grail. And then like a comedy drama or dramedy is like the Truman Show. Mmm. Mmm-mmm. And then I know these don't add up to a hundred. That's because the rest of the movies were just like different mixes of genres. Yeah, it looks like it gets further subdivided or gets more genre blended towards the end. If comedy is the second most common movie genre, then why is it the eighth place when it comes to movie ratings? So out of the top 10 genres, so how do

movie ratings differ by genre? And I took the median audience ratings. And in the top place, so for median audience ratings were documentaries. Then second place, you have documentaries of special interest, then art house and international drama, then drama, action and adventure dramas, comedy dramas, drama and mystery and suspense, and then comedy in eighth place, and then a horror and then horror mystery and suspense in last. So the, the median audience ratings for horror was 39%. And for hor

ror mystery and suspense also 39%. So horrors generally don't do well. Comedies also generally don't do well in terms of audience ratings. Yeah, yeah. Man, those Adam Sandler movies really dragged the percentage down, huh? Like all those shitty movies he's been releasing on Netflix. Out of 17,000 movies in the dataset, all those Adam Sandler movies dragged it down. Man... Those percentages, those outliers, man. Yeah... And I think, I think comedy is rated lower than other types of genres, just b

ecause I feel like people don't think of comedies as like artistic or deep or complex, um, But, but then again, this is audience ratings and we were just talking about how audiences are just like, was I entertained or not, you know, but maybe comedy is more subjective documentaries are like, was this informative and you know, um, like interesting. All right, now we're going to go with the top audience rated movies by genre. So within each genre, what was the top rated movie? And again, I took, h

ad to have at least a hundred critic reviews and a thousand And again, I took, had to have at least a hundred critic reviews and a thousand audience reviews. So for dramas, it was just mercy with a 99%. For comedy, it was the big Lebowski with a 93%. For comedy, drama, it was fight club with a 96%. Comedy/drama, it was fight club with a 96%. Fight Club. Yeah. Drama, mystery and suspense was L.A. confidential. Art house and international drama was the Lives of Others. Documentary special interest

was the Fog of War. Eleven lessons. For documentaries, it was the Cove. Horror, it was The Conjuring 2 with 81 percent. Action and adventure drama was the peanut butter falcon. And for horror, mystery, and suspense, it was The Silence of the Lambs, with 95%. Fucking Fight Club, man, I think- Isn't Fight Club that movie you discover when you're 16 and you're like dude this is what you know fuck society dude this is this movie's gonna define- I need to be like Tyler Durden, I'm gonna wake up. Is

that his name? I think that's his name. I'm gonna be fucking-I'm fucking be a rip Brad Pitt, dawg, I'm gonna be 150 pounds and fucking packing heat I wanna beat up my friends. How many- God, I can't imagine how many- how many guy friend groups started a fight club as a result of watching it, just for a short period of time. Just- just- Until they realized like this is not really that fun guys. This is not fighting each other...Man, that's not it. That's not the vibe Man, let's just go play Halo.

Let's go play Halo and continue getting rejected by women. Yeah. All right, Joseph, the next thing we're looking at is how do the ratings differ by All right, Joseph, the next thing we're looking at is how do the ratings differ by genre between audiences and critics? Ooh, okay. Okay. median ratings and I'll give you, I'll play a little game out of the top 10 genres that we're looking at right now. We're gonna play a little game, Joseph. Uh-huh. Yes, two genres, only two genres. Uh, two genres h

ad it where the audience rating was higher than the critics rating. So audiences liked it more. Every single other genre critics liked the genre more. Two genres audiences loved critics did not like. Can you guess which genres? Alright, my vote goes to horror and horror mystery and suspense. Let's see. The answers were... Comedy and action and adventure dramas. So this shows, uh, so red is the critics rating and the blue is the audience ratings and you can see that for all the genres, the median

critics rating was higher than the audience ratings. Critics liked these genres more except for action and adventure dramas and comedies where the audience liked it more. And that kind of goes back to what we were saying where the audiences are kind of like, was I entertained or not? Critics are viewing it as like, I'm going to evaluate it as like a piece of art. Okay. So action movies and comedy movies probably have broader appeal and they prioritize like entertainment and humor rather than li

ke a deep message or societal commentary. Yeah. So the next analysis is how do ratings differ by content rating? So G, PG 13, and rated R. So which content rating at a G, PG-13, and Rated R, do you think gets the highest ratings? That's hard. Should I just go with G because I assume most movies are rated G? Or most movies are probably rated PG, huh? I'll go with PG because that's the higher sample, the least amount of discrepancy. Okay that's not really a real answer. You're trying to play stats

games to figure it out and not just go with your heart. All right. Okay. Dude, I wa- If you're gonna fight stats, you gotta fight stats with stats dude That's what I- That's what I learned from- From- From talking to you man No- Yeah yeah All right. Well, well, you're wrong. Uh, G movies, G movies were rated the highest and then there's, and then there's a downward slope from as you get into more mature ratings, there's a steady downward slope for audience ratings, at least so for the median ra

tings for G was 72% PG it's 65 PG 13 is 61 and then rated RS 57%. Yep. Interesting. But as it raises up, what do we get to R? Interesting. Yeah. For critics, for critics. So the red line is critics, which it also steadily goes down. And then there's a slight bump for rated R movies. And I think a possible explanation for this is that G and PG rated films, they, they have content restrictions that limit the inclusion of material, such as violence, language, and adult themes. And those restriction

s might actually lead to more creative storytelling, uh, to be, to be within those limits. Yeah. the constraints you have to work with. Yeah. Yeah. So people, people might appreciate that extra creativity and in the same vein, PG-13 and rated R movies, they have fewer restrictions, obviously, which can sometimes lead to an over-reliance on like mature content at the expense of story and character development. You know, like, I mean, I think we've all heard about like, Oh, this movie had too much

like senseless violence or, you know, a lot of action, but there, it didn't mean anything. You hear that you hear that Hollywood you want to make money? Gotta make G rated movies Psych Papers is calling you out, alright? Stick to... Stick to the... Stick to kids movies. We need Paddington 3. We need Paddington... We need Paddington goes to... Paddington goes to America. Paddington goes to Antarctica. Paddington... Detective Pikachu. You do crossovers. Man, there's so many possibilities out ther

e for the Paddington franchise. The Conjuring 3 with Paddington Bear. And another possible explanation for this is that it could be like viewer, a difference in like viewer opinions and expectations of different movies. So like audiences for G rated films are generally probably less critical and more forgiving, possibly because these view, these films are kind of viewed for like lighthearted entertainment or as family activities. And as the content rating becomes more mature, viewers might have

higher expectations for like sophisticated content and storytelling. Yeah. You're saying people may be more forgiving for kids movies possibly. Yeah. Yeah. How, how do ratings differ by release year? So how I have audience ratings changed from movies across the 100 years that we have movie data for. You think movies have gotten better or worse? Back in my day, we met we had all these great movies and now they have bang bang. I'm a superhero, let's fuck on the screen. I want to say movies are get

ting much worse. No, I'm I think movies have been getting better. I think I think there's so much content. There's so much good stuff out there. I think I think there's a positive slope You should have stayed in character. You're right. Uh, they've gotten worse. God damn it! Why'd you put me in the closet, Joseph? There he is, there he is. Texas Joe. Um, man! Look at that. So what we're looking at is a graph of audience ratings and critics ratings, kind of over time. So for different movies, the

year of original release date, they kind of peaked at around like maybe like 90% for critics, 80% for audience, maybe around like 1940. And then there's a steady decline with the lowest right around 2000. And then there's a little bump toward the end in the last five, 10 years. It is, it is steadily going up. Uh, but generally what that means is that, uh, people view older movies as better, at least that's how the ratings show it. Is it possible, because Rotten Tomatoes wasn't a thing until, I

don't know, late 90s, early 2000s I think? I can't remember. But is it possible that people like G-rated movies are maybe looking at older movies with more reverence potentially? Or have less skewed expectations than newer movies possibly? Yeah. So there are a couple of things that this, this could mean. Um, so yeah, like you said, like there could be like a nostalgia effect of like watching old movies and being like, "Oh, I grew up with this." Or maybe you have different expectations for older

movies just because they were more limited with technology and like, they're just like filming capabilities. Um, or it could mean movies just have gotten worse generally. Whoa. Uh, It could mean that audiences have gotten more discerning. Maybe people are becoming more film literate and critical over the years. Um, so another interesting thing, it could be that, um, so streaming services became popular in like the mid two 2000s, which would greatly increase the amount of alternatives that people

could watch potentially making people like more alternatives that people could watch potentially making people like more selective and critical of movies. It could be a mix of, yep. It could be a mix of all of these explanations. There could be that nostalgia effect or maybe the way we interpret the ratings systems have changed over time, just kind of overall, you know, Like what's considered a three star or five star. Maybe that criteria changes over time. So to quickly summarize the findings.

So we saw the ratings for movies over the time since around like, you know, 1920 to 2020 ratings have generally declined. So I think there's a nostalgia effect. People are giving older movies higher ratings. Uh, rate, G rated movies are ranked higher. Comedy movies and action movies audiences love because it's entertaining and humorous. Uh, critics are like poo on that. And they like documentaries. No, documentaries are fine. Christopher Cole, PHD says documentaries are boring. I'd rather read

a psychological research paper than watch this fucking movie. No, I'd rather watch Superbad for the fifth time. And yeah, those are probably my biggest, biggest takeaways. If you're still listening, thank you so much. We really appreciate you guys. Love you. Bye.