Posted in: Movies | Tagged: batman v superman, brett ratner, rotten tomatoes, x-men the last stand, zack snyder

X-Men: The Last Stand Director Brett Ratner Indicts Rotten Tomatoes, Middle America In Defense Of Batman v. Superman

Counted amongst the many crimes of X-Men: The Last Stand director Brett Ratner is contributing to the financing of Zack Snyder's Batman v. Superman, so it's no surprise that he would feel a sort of kinship with Snyder over the critical bashing of the latter film (plus, we hear both of their mothers are named "Martha"). Addressing what he thinks is wrong with the movie industry today, Ratner lashed out at film critics and insulted Middle America in an attempt to place the blame for the poor critical reception of both films while speaking at the Sun Valley Film Festival, according to a report from Entertainment Weekly.

"The worst thing that we have in today's movie culture is Rotten Tomatoes," said Ratner, putting Rotten Tomatoes in the same conversation as other "worst things in movie culture" such as Brett Ratner and Zack Snyder. "I think it's the destruction of our business. I have such respect and admiration for film criticism. When I was growing up film criticism was a real art. And there was intellect that went into that. And you would read Pauline's Kael's reviews, or some others, and that doesn't exist anymore. Now it's about a number. A compounded number of how many positives vs. negatives. Now it's about, 'What's your Rotten Tomatoes score?'"

"And that's sad because the Rotten Tomatoes score was so low on Batman v Superman I think it put a cloud over a movie that was incredibly successful," Ratner continued, referring to a metaphorical cloud and not the literal cloud that apparently hung over the production for the entirety of its shooting, causing all color to be washed out from the film.

"People don't realize what goes into making a movie like that," Ratner continued before pointing out that Middle Americans are too stupid to make decisions about which films they like on their own and base their opinions solely on the Rotten Tomatoes score. "It's mind-blowing. It's just insane, it's hurting the business, it's getting people to not see a movie. In Middle America it's, 'Oh, it's a low Rotten Tomatoes score so I'm not going to go see it because it must suck.' But that number is an aggregate and one that nobody can figure out exactly what it means, and it's not always correct. I've seen some great movies with really abysmal Rotten Tomatoes scores."

Has anyone ever seen Ratner and Snyder in the same place at the same time? Just sayin'.

In conclusion, Ratner took a Donald Trump-like approach to describing the current state of film criticism. "What's sad is film criticism has disappeared. It's really sad."

Of course, in some cases, an objectively terrible movie can somehow end up with a decent Rotten Tomatoes score, at least compared to Batman v. Superman's 27%. Take, for instance, X-Men: The Last Stand, which has a 58% rating on the review aggregation site. You know what? Maybe there's something to what Ratner is saying after all.

Enjoyed this? Please share on social media!

Stay up-to-date and support the site by following Bleeding Cool on Google News today!