Angry Puppy

So I’m sitting here, watching Terminator 3, and thinking about how excruciatingly bad it is. Ouch. Wow. It wouldn’t be so bad if the first two movies weren’t among the best in big budget sci fi movies, but there you are.

And a funny thing happened. In my boredom and exasperation, I popped over to Wikipedia to read the T3 entry, hoping it would be better written than the disaster unfolding before my eyes in glorious widescreen HD TV. I get to the ‘reception’ section, curious to know just how bad the critics ripped it apart. After all, film critics love nothing more than ripping on that lowest-brow of genres, the sci fi film.

Wikipedia tells me T3 earned a 71% positive rating on Rotten Tomatoes. How is this possible when the best sci fi films I’ve seen have been rabidly dissected by the nation’s leading critics like so many 18th century surgeons sloppily ripping apart a new breed of monkey?

I pop over to Rotten Tomatoes.  Except it’s not Rotten Tomatoes anymore, it’s Rotten Tomatoes beta. And apparently it’s far less picky about who qualifies as a critic. All you need now is a blog to be one of the 199 “critics” who reviewed T3. I see I can also get a rating on reviews from only the 35 “Top Critics”, and when I click through I find a more believable 58% (which still seems awfully high).

How could Rotten Tomatoes have led me astray by blending professional critics with hack bloggers like me? And how is it possible that even mainstream critics found this film relatively favorable?

“Oh god. Oh my god, of course. It all makes sense now… don’t you see?… He’s the key. He always was.” (actual T3 dialogue) Skynet already has control of the internet, and he’s giving himself favorable reviews! Despite horrible clichéd writing and terrible jokes and an inconsistent story that makes no sen–

Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines Is an Excellent Film, and with All Pleasure I Advise This Film for Everyhuman.