What Rotten Tomatoes data tell us about the best, worst, and most bizarre Hollywood trajectories.
What Rotten Tomatoes data tell us about the best, worst, and most bizarre Hollywood trajectories.
When M. Night Shyamalan's came out in July 2010, critics competed to see who could muster the most scorn. Shyamalan's seventh film was "" (San Francisco Chronicle), and "" (Detroit News). In the Wall Street Journal, Joe Morgenstern called it "a form of Chinese water torture in which tin-ear line-readings take the place of drips." "The current national priorities should be as follows," wrote Cliff Doerksen in the Chicago Reader. "Reduce carbon emissions and stop funding the films of M. Night Shyamalan."
Perhaps the most devastating critique—of not just the movie but of Shyamalan himself—was a
plotting the Rotten Tomatoes scores of the director's movies over time, posted by Alex Tabarrok at the economics blog Marginal Revolution:
What makes the data from Rotten Tomatoes so brutal is that they depict not just one person's opinion of Shyamalan but the collective assessment of all our cultural critics. (The scores are based on aggregated reviews.) You may still run into the occasional Shyamalan defender, but as the graph shows, their numbers dwindle with every new film he makes. Rotten Tomatoes data reveal other trends, too. They show you how Brad Pitt went from being a regular star—the kind of Hollywood actor who appears in some good films and some bad ones—to a critical darling whose movies are almost always well-received. (It started with
in 2006.) Or how Matt Damon has made consistently better films than Ben Affleck since 1997, when the pair starred in .
website, created in 1999, aggregates reviews from hundreds of newspapers and websites across the country, converts each review into a thumbs-up ("fresh") or thumbs-down ("rotten") rating, and then combines those assessments into a single "Tomatometer" rating that gives the percentage of positive reviews. The site even aggregates archived reviews from films that were released in the 1990s and before. Whether you're looking at contemporary cinema or the classics, the Tomatometer can serve as shorthand for a film's critical reception, if not its box office success.
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A visitor to the Rotten Tomatoes site can check out the data for individual Hollywood careers—that's how Tabarrok came up with the Shyamalan graph—but there's no easy way for users to measure industrywide trends or to compare different actors and directors side-by-side. To that end, Rotten Tomatoes kindly let Slate analyze the scores in its enormous database and create an interactive tool so our readers might do the same.
The first thing we learned was that a film's Tomatometer rating is strongly influenced by its age. Films from the 1920s, for instance, have an average Tomatometer rating around 91 percent, while films from the 1990s average around 55 percent. Movies might have gotten worse since the Great Depression, but not that much worse. The golden-oldies effect may be explained by a bias toward reviewers reviewing, or Rotten Tomatoes scoring, only the best movies from bygone eras. Rotten Tomatoes includes a
for from 1942, for example, but leaves out clunkers from the same year like and .
In light of this overall trend, we decided to restrict the rest of our analyses to films that were released since 1985, after which the golden-oldies effect seems to disappear. We also stripped out any movies listed on the site as a documentary, just so we'd be comparing apples to apples.
What does the average Hollywood career look like? In the Rotten Tomatoes database, more than 19,000 actors and 2,000 directors had their first film released in 1985 or later. The average actor's critical reception gets slightly worse over the course of his first few movies, then plateaus. The average score for an actor's first film is about 55 percent. By his fourth movie, that score slides to about 50 percent, where it hovers for the rest of his career.
Directors' careers follow a different trajectory. Like actors, a director's first movie averages a Tomatometer rating around 55 percent. But the average ratings for the next few movies don't drop much at all, never falling below 54 percent. Then, between the average director's seventh and eighth movie, the Tomatometer ratings jump dramatically, from 55 percent to nearly 63 percent. That score stays steady for the average director's ninth through 11th films and then jumps again to the 80s and 90s for the rest of his career.
These trends seem to make sense. Most actors have to appear in good movies early in their career. Those who don't risk being flushed out of the business. Once they've established themselves with a good film or two, they can safely make some bad ones. But all in all, they don't have nearly as much control over film quality as directors do. Directors' scores spike over time, presumably because only the best ones stick around long enough to make so many films.
With that in mind, use Slate's Hollywood Career-o-Matic tool below to map the career of any major actor or director from the last 26 years. You can also type in more than one name to plot careers side by side. For example, Paul Thomas Anderson vs. Wes Anderson vs. Pamela Anderson. Mouse over the data points to see which movies they represent. (We've included only actors and directors who've released at least five films between 1985 and March of this year, according to the RT data, to filter out thousands of bit-actors you've probably never heard of.)
Hollywood Career-o-Matic
Some careers are more notable than others. We analyzed the Rotten Tomatoes data to find the superlative ones. (For these awards, we included only the roughly 2,700 directors and actors who have made more than 10 films in the last quarter-century, in order to eliminate outliers.)Best Actor: Daniel Auteuil. With an average film score of 86 percent,
has appeared in the most consistently high-quality films of the last few decades. The French star, best known for his role in
(1986), may benefit from the critical soft spot for foreign films. If you prefer to count only red-blooded Americans, the top honor goes to John Ratzenberger (76.1 percent average), who has voiced a character in every Pixar movie to date.
Best Actress: Arsinée Khanjian. In the mind of the American film critic,
can do no wrong—or almost no wrong. Films like (100 percent), (100 percent), and (100 percent) have helped boost Khanjian's average score up to 84.7 percent.
Even her "bad" movie, 2002's , rated a 56 percent and was called by one critic "the most thought provoking movie of the year." Topping the list of American actresses with an average of 72.8 percent is Amy Madigan of (94 percent) and (88 percent).
Worst Actor: Chuck Norris. Appearing in one bad film is a mistake. Appearing in dozens of bad films is a deliberate choice. Thanks to movies like (20 percent), (23 percent), and (0 percent), Norris tops—or, as it were, bottoms—the list of worst-reviewed actors, with an average score of 18.4 since 1985. If you count only actors who have made at least 20 movies since 1985, the Worst Actor award goes to Eddie Griffin, with an average rating of 24.1 percent.
Worst Actress: Jennifer Love Hewitt. Hewitt has the rare distinction of never having made a single "fresh" (above 60 percent on Rotten Tomatoes) film. Her average score of 18.9 owes to such duds as (7 percent), (35 percent), (7 percent), and both movies (15 percent and 11 percent, respectively). If you count only actresses who have made at least 20 movies since 1985, the Worst Actress award goes to Mena Suvari, with an average rating of 32.7 percent.
Best Director: Mike Leigh. The British director of (94 percent) and (92 percent) rates a lifetime average of 92.1 percent. The best directors have higher average scores than the best actors, presumably because they have more control over the quality of their films. A critically acclaimed actor might see his average dragged down by a few second-billed roles in lousy genre flicks. (See, for example, multiple-Oscar nominee John Malkovich, whose numbers take a major hit from recent flops like and .)
The highest-rated American director? Ethan Coen, with an 84.3 percent average.
Worst Director:Dennis Dugan. This honor goes to one of the more successful auteurs
in American cinema, the man responsible for (7 percent), (59 percent), (14 percent), (14 percent), (36 percent), and (10 percent), all of which earn Dugan an average rating of 23.6 percent. (There are surely worse directors out there—again, this list only includes directors who made at least 10 movies since 1985.)
Most Improved: Josh Brolin, Dakota Fanning, and Ken Loach. If the average Hollywood career is a slow decline into mediocrity, an actor or director whose films actually improve deserves special recognition. Among actors with at least 20 films in the Rotten Tomatoes database since 1985, Brolin has seen the greatest increase in average rating from the first half of his career to the second half—an improvement of 28.4 percentage points. Despite Brolin's early appearance in (63 percent), the first half of his career was marred by abominations like (4 percent), and (27 percent). His later transition into gems like (95 percent), (94 percent), and (96 percent) is a tale of redemption that not even Wall Street:
(54 percent) could derail. The most improved actress is Fanning, with a 20.1-point increase from such duds as (34 percent) to critical darlings like (89 percent).
Among directors, the award goes to , the British filmmaker whose reviews went from great in the first half of his career (80 percent) to stunning in the second half (88.1 percent).
Best Actor in Worst Movie: David Strathairn in Twisted. Strathairn, best known for playing Edward R. Murrow in , has had a blessed career, with an average rating of 70 percent. That is, if you don't count (2 percent), the 2004
starring Ashley Judd as a cop who might actually be the killer she herself is hunting, in which Strathairn plays Judd's shrink. Honorable mention goes to Laurie Metcalf (average: 70 percent) for her role as Rebecca Frazen in 1996's (12 percent).
Corrections, June 6, 2011: This article originally stated that Ararat came out in 1992. ( to the corrected sentence.)
This article also misidentified Ken Loach as an Irishman. ( to the corrected sentence.)
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出门在外也不愁From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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A director providing instruction
A theatre director or stage director is a director/instructor in the
field who oversees and orchestrates the mounting of a theatre production (a play, an , a , or a devised piece of work) by unifying various endeavours and aspects of production. The director's function is to ensure the quality and completeness of theatre production and to lead the members of the creative team into realising their artistic vision for it. The director therefore collaborates with a team of creative individuals and other staff, coordinating research, , , , , acting, , , and
for the production. If the production he or she is mounting is a new piece of writing or a (new) translation of a play, the director may also work with the playwright or translator. In contemporary theatre, after the , the director is generally the primary visionary, making decisions on the artistic concept and interpretation of the play and its staging. Different directors occupy different places of authority and responsibility, depending on the structure and philosophy of individual theatre companies. Directors utilize a wide variety of techniques, philosophies, and levels of collaboration.
In , the birthplace of European drama, the writer bore principal responsibility for the staging of his plays. Actors were generally semi-professionals, and the director oversaw the mounting of plays from the writing process all the way through to their performance, often acting in them too, as
for example did. The author-director would also train the , sometimes compose the music, and supervise every aspect of production. The fact that the director was called didaskalos, the Greek word for "teacher," indicates that the work of these early directors combined instructing their performers with staging their work.
: The Martyrdom of St. Appollonia (1460), depicting the staging of a mystery play, led by a theatre director
times, the complexity of vernacular religious drama, with its large scale
that often included crowd scenes, processions and elaborate effects, gave the role of director (or stage manager or pageant master) considerable importance. A miniature by
from 1460 (pictured) bares one of the earliest depictions of a director at work. Holding a prompt book, the central figure directs, with the aid of a long stick, the proceedings of the staging of a dramatization of the Martyrdom of . According to Fouquet, the director's tasks included overseeing the erecting of a stage and scenery (there were no permanent, purpose-built theatre structures at this time, and performances of vernacular drama mostly took place in the open air), casting and directing the actors (which included fining them for those that infringed rules), and addressing the audience at the beginning of each performance and after each intermission.
times up until the 19th century, the role of director was often carried by the . This would usually be a senior actor in a troupe who took the responsibility for choosing the repertoire of work, staging it and managing the company. This was the case for instance with
companies and English actor-managers like
A portrait of
The modern theatre director can be said to have originated in the staging of elaborate spectacles of the Meininger Company under George II, Duke of . The management of large numbers of extras and complex stagecraft matters necessitated an individual to take on the role of overall coordinator. This gave rise to the role of the director in modern theatre, and
would provide a platform for a generation of emerging visionary theatre directors, such as
and . Simultaneously, , principally an actor-manager, would set up the
and similarly emancipate the role of the director as artistic visionary.
The French regisseur is also sometimes used to mean a stage director, most commonly in . A more common term for theatre director in French is metteur en scène.
Post , the
slowly started to disappear, and directing become a fully fledged artistic activity within the theatre profession. The director originating artistic vision and concept, and realizing the staging of a production, became the norm rather than the exception. Great forces in the emancipation of theatre directing as a profession were notable 20th century theatre directors like , , ,
(Russia), ,
(Britain),
(Germany) and
A cautionary note was introduced by the famed director Sir
who said "the only way to learn how to direct a play, is ... to get a group of actors simple enough to allow you to let you direct them, and direct".[]
A number of seminal works on directing and directors include Toby Cole and Helen Krich's 1972 Directors on Directing: A Sourcebook of the Modern Theatre, Edward Braun's 1982 book The Director and the Stage: From Naturalism to Growtowski and Will's The Director in a Changing Theatre (1976).
Because of the relatively late emergence of theatre directing as a performing arts profession when compared with for instance acting or musicianship, a rise of professional vocational training programmes in directing can be seen mostly in the second half of the 20th century. Most European countries nowadays know some form of professional directing training, usually at
or , or at universities. In Britain, the tradition that theatre directors emerge from degree courses (usually in English literature) at the
universities has meant that for a long time, professional vocational training did not take place at drama schools or performing arts colleges, although an increase in training programmes for theatre directors can be witnessed since the 1970s and 1980s. In American universities, the seminal directing program at the
produced a number of pioneering directors with D.F.A. (Doctor of Fine Arts) and M.F.A. degrees in Drama (rather than English) who contributed to the expansion of professional resident theaters in the 1960s and 1970s. In the early days such programmes typically led to the staging of one major thesis production in the third (final) year. At the ,
(a Yale D.F.A.) led for many years a graduate programme based on the premise that directors are autodidacts who need as many opportunities to direct as possible. Under Fowler, graduate student directors would stage between five and ten productions during their three year residencies, with each production receiving detailed critiques.
As with many other professions in the performing arts, theatre directors would often learn their skills "on the job"; to this purpose, theatres often employ trainee assistant directors or have in-house education schemes to train young theatre directors. Examples are the
in , which frequently organizes short directing courses, or the
on London's , which both employ resident assistant directors on a one-year basis for training purposes.
Directing is an artform that has grown with the development of theatre theory and theatre practice. With the emergence of new trends in theatre, so too have directors adopted new methodologies and engaged in new practices.
Once a show has opened (premiered before a regular audience), theatre directors are generally considered to have fulfilled their function. From that point forward the
is left in charge of all essential concerns.
Brocket, Oscar G.: History of the Theatre. 8th ed. Needham Heights, MA: Allyn & Bacon, 1999, p. 24
Brocket, op.cit., p. 96
Russel Brown, John (ed): The Oxford Illustrated History of Theatre. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995, p. 334
Eckersley, M. 1998. Soundings in the Dramaturgy of the Australian Theatre Director. University of Melbourne. Melbourne. p17.
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