MovieChat Forums > Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (2021) Discussion > can' t trust imdb ratings, user reviews ...

can' t trust imdb ratings, user reviews are being deleted.

posted 3 years ago by tom8 (3119)
28 replies | jump to latest

a lot of post on imdb go like this:

"My review keeps getting deleted... this is the 10th attempt.
ab-408024 September 2021
As I stated in the title this is the 10th time I'm posting a review and it's probably going to be the 9th time it's reported by the large group of individuals trying to swing the ratings.

In any case this movie is what it is... it just so happens that what it is, is bad.

The writing is predictable. It's very far from traditional source material. Worst of all though is that it doesn't even feel connected to the MCU regardless of cameos."

Now i have not seen this movie, and only a fool would pay money to do that, when it's clear you cant trust even user reviews anymore.... sad Hollywood censorship shit indeed :-(

[–] [deleted] 3 years ago

the only user ratings i'm aware of that can be truly trusted are the rotten tomatoes audience score and the cinemascore. those are the only sites where all scores are from people who have been verified as having watched the movie.

https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/shang_chi_and_the_legend_of_the_ten_rings

98% audience score, with an average rating of 4.8/5.

https://www.cinemascore.com/

it has an a on cinemascore

[–] fc31 (5405) 3 years ago

They are all corporate owned. IMDB is owned by Amazon, rotten tomatoes is owned by Comcast and Warner Bros. CinemaScore is not owned by giant media firms, but if Amazon is taking money and fixing scores, what chances CinemaScore doesn't?

You can't get honest reviews anymore, too much money is at stake. Promotion cost of blockbusters are over $100 millions on regular basis. Tell me there is anyone at all can't be bought by that amount of money.

[–] [deleted] 3 years ago

cinemascore's entire brand rests on being the only audience rating where people are polled coming directly out of the theatre. could they be bribed? i guess anyone could. but it would certainly be the end of the brand they've spend decades building.

good interview with the president of cinemascore here, btw.

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/harold-mintz-on-the-past-present-and-future-of-cinemascore/id1526477480?i=1000509806373

lots and lots of things are corporate owned. that's not bad! economies of scale and all that.

it's true that there's money at stake, but i think you have to apply skepticism both ways.

is it in amazon's interest or warner brother's interest to game ratings? i guess so. but there's a risk in that too, in the degradation to their reputation that would come when people find that out.

and there's also the effort that goes into that.

and there's also the fact that the verified ratings on rt and cinemascore generally line up with other metrics. for eg, when audience scores on those sites are strong, the films tend to have higher ratings on letterboxd, and the films often have better holds due to strong repeat viewing and word of mouth.

so...i don't think it's completely crazy to be open to the possibility that a business might try to game results.

but if the results they report line up with other outputs, there's no explicit reason to doubt those scores.

[–] fc31 (5405) 3 years ago

IMDB already told us they think we were stupid, that we would believe they value their brands and would not do what they have already done.

I guess they could be right. There are clearly some (you for example) can be fooled.

[–] [deleted] 3 years ago

all i'd ask for is actual proof.
that's what you should be looking for too.
real proof. not some imdb user claiming his reviews keep getting deleted.
i don't know his reviews were deleted.
if they were deleted, maybe there was a good reason!
either way, i'm fine with completely disregarding imdb ratings.
and using only cinemascore & rt audience scores.
or using a site like letterboxd to verify general trends.

[–] fc31 (5405) 3 years ago

I witnessed with my own eyes of what happened to "Star Wars: Episode IX - The Rise of Skywalker" scores & reviews 2 years ago.

A lot of people did as well: https://moviechat.org/tt2527338/Star-Wars-Episode-IX-The-Rise-of-Skywalker/5df96e8a28146538e7cd9cef/All-negetive-reviews-on-IMDB-are-deleted-interesting

[–] [deleted] 3 years ago

i wouldn't call linking to a thread you started that makes the exact same claim you're making here proof.

i just went to the ros imdb page and opened up the reviews, and it's absolutely chock-full of 2/3/4 star reviews, people heaping all kinds of scorn & contempt.

i don't know if imdb are deleting reviews.
if they are, i don't know why they're doing it.
maybe they've identified sock accounts based on ip addresses, and are trying to manage negative review bombs.
that's at least as plausible as the idea that they're trying to finesse scores and reviews.

regardless, i'll still stand by my original point to you:
if you care about audience ratings, the best resources are probably:

cinemascore
rt audience rating
letterboxd

basically in that order.

i agree that imdb may not be that useful.
but i'd say that likely has more to do with armies of trolls who are bizarrely fixated on down-voting certain films & upvoting others. which is very likely the reason reviews get deleted.

[–] fc31 (5405) 3 years ago

Negative reviews I think were tolerated later on for that movie, the first few weeks are very critical for a new movie, especially the first week. And I don't think IMDB was bought for every movie, I think only big blockbusters pay for that kind of services.

You see @FilmBuff has called my comment fake news, and later on I noticed he vehemently defended Disney. So at that time I checked his past comments and found he only commented on Disney related shows and all reviews were overwhelmingly positive. So I realized he was a corporate drone.

Just like now I realized you might be one as well. I already kind of suspected that when you posted that interview with the president of cinemascore.

[–] [deleted] 3 years ago

hahaha, i wish i was a corporate drone.
i'd love to get some of that sweet mouse money!

i just kinda think you should apply a bit more skepticism to your own conclusions.
& not assume deceit or malice when you see something that you don't agree with.

as a wise man once said, "The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool."

don't be so certain you're right.

[–] alienzen (1931) 3 years ago

There are a few problems with this.

1. Most people cannot be bothered to jump through hoops just to rate a movie. Studio shills can though.
2. The was of "proving" you have seen the movie is crap. It means only people in the US who bought tickets through certain ticket vendors can rate the movie. Only people in the US, who saw the movie in theaters, through the correct ticket vendor.
3. Shang Chi only has about 10k user ratings. For big blockbuster movie you have a lot of people related to people who work for the studio, as well as youtubers and journalist who get free tickets, who number in the thousands when you add them all up all over the country. With such low vote numbers, it is quite easy to fix the vote.

IMDB has millions of user votes on the other hand. They have a weighted average, and fraudulent accounts get purged over time. Which makes it very difficult to fix the vote because of sheer volume. IMDB is much MUCH more reliable than the RT critic or user rating.

[–] furiousstyles (4391) 3 years ago

[deleted]

[–] jewoogle (2269) 3 years ago

all the review sites rating are fake as shit. they just rate the propaganda value of the film not the actual entertainment value. a sjw tear jerker snorefest about a transvestite black paraplegic welfare recipients struggle to find its place in the world will be rated 10 times better than a badass movie with car chases, explosions, and topless models. google user review score seems to be the only somewhat accurate measure but u cant trust google anymore more than a rabbid dog either and i am sure the propaganda police play around with those rating aswell. imdb and rotten t have been comprised since as long as i can remember

[–] 123Guy (7282) 3 years ago

looking at the audience reviews on RT, I have to agree with you. so many look so very planted.
and 98%? it was an okay movie, but not 98% amazing.

[–] AP (5288) 3 years ago

It's not that people thought it was 98% perfect but that 98% of the audience liked the movie to one degree or another. for instance, if they thought it was just okay, it would factor into the 98%.

[–] NorrinRad (5468) 3 years ago

In this type of discussion, it would help if the "Audience Score" was understood. As the previous poster who replied to you stated 98% of viewers (the verified Audience) liked the movie. It is well-received and even your, "It was an Okay Movie" would have been counted into the 98%.😎

It over all Tomato-Meter score is down to 93%.

[–] tom8 (3119) 3 years ago

👍

[–] tom8 (3119) 3 years ago

👍

[–] HarryShoulder (279) 3 years ago

Honestly the first movie you describe sounds infinitely more interesting than the vroom, vroom, boom titty fest you describe. Substitute homoeroticism for the titties and you just get another Fast and Furious movie.

[–] Wuchak (8737) 3 years ago

People who throw around words like 'homoeroticism' are usually realityphobes who confuse the stinky rectum for a vagina.

[–] plusplus (467) 3 years ago

They took the time to clean up other MCU review sections too. Until yesterday, my review of Black Widow ("she's the sidekick in her own movie" - 5 stars) had been among the most helpful ones for months. Now it's gone.
It wasn't overwhelmingly positive, just a bit disappointed that we only learned about Natasha's past when it happened to tell Elena's story.

[–] tom8 (3119) 3 years ago

👍

[–] ElizabethJoestar (946) 3 years ago

I had a negative review of that disappointing What if series that got deleted as well once it started raking in a lot of helpful votes. It really is disgusting.

[–] tom8 (3119) 3 years ago

all opinions of IMDB looks to be saying the same thing.... wow, that is actually a major story and quite frankly not something they should be getting away with....

its actually fraud and deceiving behavior.

reviews on trustpilot !
https://www.trustpilot.com/review/www.imdb.com

[–] [deleted] 3 years ago

After what the odious Jeff Bezos-owned IMDB did to all of us when they got rid of the message boards in 2017, I am baffled anyone is still frequenting that site. Why are you surprised they delete user ratings and reviews that make certain expensive projects look bad? That was the reason they got rid of the message boards--because bad word of mouth on some movies was causing bad movies to tank on opening weekend. It wasn't because of the "trolls" who were merely the justification for this cold and corporate decision. Damn them all to hell!

[–] jewoogle (2269) 3 years ago

i was so sad when this happened in 2016. was living as a study abroad student at the time in Korea like a sardine with 3 other roommates in a room the size of a walk in closet. i spend a lot of time on the internet on my phone to cope with living conditions at the time and it was exactly at this time right after trump won when the big tech liberal overlords starting censoring the shit out of all the most awesome parts of internet. reddits best forums like fatpeoplehate and later watchpeopledie were banned. that site which i used to like has turned into a libturd circle jerk hive mindset on all the forums that they still allowed to exist. when i was a young teen my life was very bad and movies were one of the escapes i used to try to get away. imdb forums were always the first place i would check to see if a movie was good ignoring the critics rating and going straight into the chaotic moshpit to hear an average joes point of view. it was one of the most influential sites to me as a kid transitioning to adult. i used that site and its forums to find not just movies for myself but movies that my dying mother would enjoy. to see what that piece of shit literal dickhead looking ass billionaire did to that site makes me sick to my stomach...

[–] tom8 (3119) 3 years ago

100% agree.. you speak the truth.

The Donald T win really started the whole thing, these weak people could not handle their darling Hillary lost, so out of anger they just wanted to shut everybody up.

They controlled all media (and still do) yet they could not get their candidate elected, so after that they thought: we will do better next time, and we will start right now, playing the censorship and control game!

[–] tom8 (3119) 3 years ago

for sure .... "too many trolls, we are closing the message boards"

LOL, lamest excuse ever, it was just because these Hollywood phony's get handle criticism or the truth for that matter!

[–] HarryShoulder (279) 3 years ago

Your review should be deleted if you didn’t see the movie.