FiveThirtyEight Declares ‘Internet Movie Ratings Broken’ over ‘Ghostbusters’ Backlash

Following the low ratings received by the Ghostbusters reboot, some outlets have decided that the reason for this must be that “internet movie ratings are inherently a problem.”

Five Thirty Eight, political analyst Nate Silver’s data and poll centric website, recently studied the ratings received by the Ghostbusters reboot across multiple film review websites such as Rotten Tomatoes, Metacritic, and IMDb. The study seems to show that prior to the film’s release, men were rating the Ghostbusters reboot quite poorly, with an average of 3.1/10 on IMDb, while women were rating it exceptionally well with an average of 7.7/10.

This lead to their conclusion that all movie rating systems must be broken and do not represent people’s actual opinions, as if they did Ghostbusters would be rated much higher. It couldn’t just be that the film, currently sitting at an average rating of 6.5/10, is just painfully average.

The report further expands on their findings: “Based on the IMDb reviews, a lot of men on the internet (who may or may not have actually seen the film) really hate the new ‘Ghostbusters.’ A lot of women on the internet (who may or may not have actually seen the film) seem pretty into it.” This is unsurprising given that the film has been championed as a feminist summer blockbuster and even pokes fun at online critics in the film itself during a scene where the Ghostbusters read the comments beneath a YouTube video of their adventures, with one saying, “Ain’t no bitches gonna hunt no ghosts.”

The report concludes, “Based on the Metacritic score and the average Rotten Tomatoes scores, ‘Ghostbusters,’ like most summer movies, is merely a mediocre-to-good film, critically speaking. And based on the Rotten Tomatoes scores for top critics, professional critics are split on whether it’s worth seeing. But based on the larger pool of critics, three out of four of them think it’s worth a ticket.”

Lucas Nolan is a Journalism and Media student at Dublin Business School and a regular contributor to Breitbart Tech. He can be contacted via Twitter here: @LucasNolan_