Film fans know how Rotten Tomatoes works, but it’s worth reiterating just to remind ourselves of what the site is, and what it isn’t. This may come as a shock for those of us who rely on the Tomatometer to whittle down the unending cavalcade of streaming “content” on offer, but Rotten Tomatoes is not the final word on whether a film is actually good or not. This is the site that contends there are only two perfect sci-fi movies ever made and that Sean Connery’s best film is “Darby O’Gill and the Little People.” But thinking about which films RT considers “best” is somewhat of a misapprehension of the site’s purpose.
The review aggregator does just that: aggregates other people’s opinions on films and TV shows, producing a percentage score based on whether those opinions are positive or negative. So, while the percentage scores we see emblazoned across the top of a film’s RT page may seem like some sort of purely objective representation of a film’s quality, behind them are opinions as subjective as anything ever was.
With that in mind, when RT shows “Dune: Part Two” as Austin Butler’s “best” film, all that means is that a percentage of the total critics who reviewed that movie liked it. It tells you nothing about the number of critics who actually reviewed the film, or whether the positive reviews were gushing or just good enough to avoid the dreaded green splat. In the case of the bleak blockbuster that is “Dune: Part Two,” 92% of 434 reviewers liked the movie — and so they should. “Dune: Part Two” was an epic sci-fi drama took some serious dedication to pull off. But is it fair to say that this is Butler’s best movie?