IT Blog

Ever since Rotten Tomatoes was dreamt up in 1998 by three Asian-American University of California at Berkeley undergrads who initially built the website to collect old reviews of Jackie Chan movies, it has been synonymous with its scores. The famed “Tomatometer” averages reviews from professional critics and slaps a movie or TV show with either a “fresh” rating—when 60% or more of the reviews are positive—or a “rotten” one. The results are visually conveyed, appropriately enough, with either a bright red tomato or a green splat.

There’s also an “audience score,” which is a tally of what Rotten Tomatoes users think of what they’ve watched. Mostly positive reviews (again, over 60%) result in an image of a full popcorn bucket. Mostly bad reviews: a tipped-over bucket. 

But Sandro Corsaro, SVP and chief creative officer at Rotten Tomatoes, wants people to think of those scores as “the beginning discussion point,” he said recently. “They’re the opening…