Useless IMDB ratings
There was a time when the IMDB movie ratings were, well, maybe not reliable, but at least useful. You could glance quickly at the rating for a film and decide whether it was worth watching or not. Generally, my floor has been around 6.5. That might sound a bit low, but I watch a lot of movies and there are a few gems at around 6.5. Unrelated: I took a gamble the other day with The X Files: I Want to Believe, which was rated 6.3. Turns out it was more like a 5.0.
During the last few years, something has gone awfully wrong with the ratings. I don’t know if they have updated their algorithm or if IMDB is the victim of “rating spam” or whatever, but some of the ratings are completely off the wall. Just have a look at the IMDB Top 250.
The latest Batman movie is the third greatest movie ever? Give me a break. It was a good flick, but anything above 8.0 is ridiculous.
All three Lord of the Rings movies are in the top 30? Jesus Christ! I fell asleep in at least two of them.
Iron Man is rated 8.1?! More like 6.1.
What’s Sin City doing in the top 250?
And last but definitely not least, what the hell is Blade Runner doing at #103? It should be at least in the top 20. People actually think Braveheart is better than Blade Runner?
20 comments
Because people are morons and not critics – but I must say that Lord of the Rings and especially Sin City is a great cinematic experience. They deserve their place. Sin City should maybe even be even higher up.
The superhero-craze has gone to far though. I agree with you on that.
While I agree that the Lord of the Rings movies and Sin City were great cinematic experiences, that’s just one aspect of a good movie. Just being pretty isn’t enough.
Besides the general “bad taste of the crowd”, the “average” ratings seem to me incorrect because a very few fans of one movie may pull it up by their several high votes.
It seems to me more correct a -10 to +10 system and the resulting rating should be a simple sum of all the votes. So the high score will really be an achievement. Referring to IMDB the movie rating should be SUM(vote – 5.5).
Blade Runner will rise again then :-)
Lets hope so :)
I have a sneaking suspicion that interested parties drive up the ratings at IMBD. If you look at ratings’ breakdowns there’s just too many 10s to be realistic. As I know companies employ people to effect other opinions on the net it seems reasonable that people in the employ of production companies are bending the numbers. While I use IMDB to scan the specs of a film I trust Rotten Tomatoes or Yahoo Movies more for the ratings.
only the people who rate on a normal basis count for the top 250. If anything your wrong because certain movies are rated by tens to hundreds of thousands…thats like not agreeing with everybody. you lost
i believe there might be two reasons for such unnatural ratings..
1. the increase in the social marketing( people actually pay for increasing the brand image and public talk in social networking forums(myspace, facebook etc).. so why not imdb)
2. casual movie reviewers rate their favourite movie 10 or close to that.( it is very unlikely that they think twise about relative rating as in.. 10 being the best movie ever and so on )
comes down to personal taste, personally I loved Sin City. I think ratings may have a boost during the screening stage because people that enjoyed it will rate it right away but this is usually scaled down in the later stages IMO.
i dont like IMDb , they rated Skyline by 4.7. I think it should be somewhere around 8.5. It’s the best sci-fi movie of the 2010.
ha! I’ve been annoyed by IMDB’s rating for a while and decided to google it… I totally agree with you! I use to go there before I got the movie. Now I go after just to check how far off they are.
But looking at the vote statistics it seems I could be off the general curve. Thank you.
i can use imdb rating for movie…but not drama series…some drama that i expected in range 8.5~9 were turning out to be somewhere between 6.6 to 7,5..
instead some drama that i hate so much seem to achieve high rating point…so it really depends to individual opinion afterall..
most important is u stick to what you stand for and believing for what u think!
In my life I have seen thousands of movies, starting with vintage film projectors and cinemas, after that famous VHS, and then digital media. Up to 2008 I became partially dependable on IMDB ratings – using them as reference to separate useless garbage and mediocrity from good movies.
People have different tastes and I respect that. Me myself – I like to see good movies from all genres, sometimes I like Amarcord, sometimes I just relax myself watching Rambo, lately I’ve seen couple of manga movies,…
I was and I am so annoyed by IMDB that I had to write here, I have even searched Google for “don’t believe imdb ratings”. All I can see for past two years are mostly fake-commercial reviews and unfairly good ratings for moronic movies. I have abandoned IMDB and will never ever use their service again for anything else but to see trailer or actor names or episode list and release dates.
hey you son of a …ch,you don’t have the maturity yet to watch LOTR movies and The Dark Knight….i have seen that movies more than 50 times than any other godfather and redemption craps…
I agree with you that is why I visit Rotten Tomatoes also. BTW, why do we have these Indians abusing in every forum. You can put your point in a nice decent way if you disagree but please learn some manners.
Hollywood industry has taken over, and now runs, the IMDB ratings. Unreliable? Understatement. Watch what you want. When you want and don;t forget that the film industry is not about what other people tell you to watch but what you want to watch.
If someone wants to Search for movies based on IMDB ratings Better to look for Between point 6 & 7 above 7.5 films are really shits.
i also dnt take imdb as a totally reliable source but your point about dark knight was not at all worth..it was a flawless movie not becuase of superhero stuff and all that but because the of incredible direction of christopher nolan and performance of actors like heath ledger,morgan freeman and christian bell but i agree with the point imdb is not on which u can completely rely thats why i searched this thread when i got frustated by low ratings of movies like never back down and paycheck they are great but even though are rated too low equally to some of the worst movie u have ever seen like priest..awfull movie man
@ james
you will have person posting spams in every thread from any country so if a person here is abusing and if he is indian then dont say discriminating stuff like indian abusing and all that because that makes u no less than abuser too…u dont know anything about indians so dont dare to say it..coz something that u dnt know,u will never understand..
and @bharat
yes james is correct..there is no need to use such offensive language to express your disagreement..
Every movie you think above deserves to be where they are. And for BATMAN – Nolan redifened how superheroes are seen. And regrding LOTR , everyone seems to have a different taste. The fact that among 100 people if 90 like a film and 10 do not , you find yourself in those 10.