By Staff Writer Ben Pfeffer. The question has been asked recently whether or not the popular movie review website Rotten Tomatoes influences what viewers think about movies. Does seeing that a movie has gotten a poor rating on Rotten Tomatoes permanently scar what you will think of a movie? The Transformers movie series is a perfect example. The Transformers series had a few good movies before it turned bad because the actors and actresses that everyone grew accustomed to, quit. However, Rotten Tomatoes does not show this. They show the first movie doing well and then the second movie, which was good as well, did relatively very poorly on Rotten Tomatoes. This poor rating is what people see before going to see the movie, which influences their decision and dropped the rating even lower. This probably combined with the fact that the fans’ favorite actors and actresses were leaving the series to produce low ratings for the rest of the movies. People like to fit in. If this means not liking a movie just because you think it’s the general consensus that a movie is bad, then people will think a movie is bad. They will find the bad things and focus on those. It is how people have adapted and survived, so it makes sense that people would go along with the general consensus. This can also be good for movies too. If a movie is doing well on Rotten Tomatoes before it gets officially released, everyone will want to see it and, most of the time, think it’s a good movie. This is a phenomenon that separates slightly above average movies from slightly below average movies. When more people watch the movies, the more people rate the movie and they are more likely to agree with the majority and spread out the ratings of what were slightly above average from the slightly below average movies. A new movie called Bohemian Rhapsody comes out on Friday, Nov. 2 and it has gotten slightly above average reviews. Due to the Rotten Tomatoes issue I just discussed, this will likely go up higher in rating, making the movie seem better than it is. The answer to the question, “Does seeing that a movie has gotten a poor rating on Rotten Tomatoes permanently scar what you will think of a movie?” is obviously yes, but the better question would be; “Is Rotten Tomatoes at fault for spoiling your thoughts on a movie?” The answer to that is no. Rotten Tomatoes is simply a review website. If you find a movie trailer or idea interesting or think that you will like the movie, then go watch it and do not even look at what anybody else thinks of it. Make an opinion for yourself and then you can go to Rotten Tomatoes and compare what you think to what other people think. It is the viewer’s fault if they get a movie spoiled or ruin what they think of it. It was 100% the viewer’s choice to go to the website and search for their movie, so they can see what other people thought of it. Using the previous example of Bohemian Rhapsody, I looked up the reviews for the movie. I was the one that saw that it was given a slightly above average rating. Nobody made me create an opinion based on what other people thought of the movie. I did that myself. Seeing what other people think of a movie by going on Rotten Tomatoes does ruin your original thoughts on a movie. However, the choice to go onto Rotten Tomatoes to determine whether or not you’ll like a movie does ruin the movie experience. PHOTO COURTESY: QUORA