Current Events > 'Little Mermaid' negative reviews compel IMDb to change rating system

(+) Yeah! (+)

https://fortune.com/2023/05/30/imdb-revamps-rating-system-the-little-mermaid/

Disneys live-action remake of The Little Mermaid has been a hit with critics, but the casting of Halle Bailey as Ariel has brought racists and alt-right critics out in force. And efforts to scuttle the films success has led one of the internets largest film sites to adjust its rating system for the film. IMDb currently gives the movie a 7 out of 10 ranking, but of more than 33,000 user-submitted reviews, around 13,000 have it ranked as a one-star film in a clear review-bombing attempt. Our rating mechanism has detected unusual voting activity on this title. To preserve the reliability of our rating system, an alternate weighting calculation has been applied, IMDb wrote in a note flagging unusual activity on the page. When that occurs, the site says, an alternate weighting calculation may be applied in order to preserve the reliability of our system. To prevent that system from being circumnavigated, IMDb did not disclose its alternate method for generating ratings.

Review bombs are an increasingly large problem for review sites. Activists who object to some element of a film, or groups that want to see it succeed, flood review sites with positive or negative reviews, usually driven by bots, to skew the averages, in hopes of discouraging or encouraging others to view it. Baileys casting as the character Ariel was praised by many, including Jodi Benson, the original voice of the cartoon character (who cameos with Bailey in the new film). Self-appointed culture police, though, loudly complained about the casting, insisting the character remain a Caucasian with red hair. The attempts to review-bomb the film havent stopped audiences from going, however. The Little Mermaid topped the box office last week, with the fifth-biggest Memorial Day weekend opening on record, earning $95.5 million.

There's definitely a noticeable trend of movies featuring actors or stories about people of color having lower ratings on IMDB. The lower-profile ones don't get review-bombed like this though.

Red hair?
Everybody knows that Disney fucked up her hair color.
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/2/2/5/AAA_aCAAEh2Z.jpg

Has it really been a "hit with critics"?

Seems like an overstatement

the casting of Halle Bailey as Ariel has brought racists and alt-right critics out in force

Not sure how they separate the two but they're fucking up everything in the country.

GranolaPanic posted...

If people are this upset over The Little Mermaid, I worry what theyll do when they hear about The Blackening movie.

Even as a comedy, it's a movie about black people being killed.

The people that review-bombed Little Mermaid will love it based on that alone.

Not to take away from this kind of BS right here from bigots, but IMDB always had an issue with bombing the ratings. There were the wars between fans of The Shawkshank Redemption and The Godfather to get their favorite to the top of the Top 250 back in the day. Then there were the fans of The Dark Knight giving 1 ratings to everything else to make it number one. They should have done something like this a long time ago.

bigblu89 posted...

Even as a comedy, it's a movie about black people being killed.

The people that review-bombed Little Mermaid will love it based on that alone.

I doubt racists will watch a horror movie based on black culture just bc black people will die in 'em

Review bombing forces these companies to charge their rating system which hurts us all.
It doesn't work to hurt the IP they're trying to.

Youtube changed (multiple times), Netflix changed, IMDB. . . thank god these bigots don't read or Goodreads would probably have to change their system too.

It is always funny. I don't know about this movie. But in the pass the bigots have helped bad movies my letting people qhoblike the movie focuse on them and not the people who had real issues. Note this in general not for thisb movie for have not seen it. If these ppl think the movie will be bad they will make more head way by saying nothing.

If people are so petty that they want to mass down vote a mediocre movie let them. Just shows that rating systems can't be trusted and only personal opinion matters.

I'm sure the movie sucks because Disney live action remakes in general are pretty soulless compared to their animated counterparts, but we've also had people viciously attacking this film before so much as a trailer was released and nobody knew anything other than who the star of it was going to be.

There's a big difference between leaving a bad review because you've actually seen it and thought it was lacking vs. you haven't seen it at all, but you hate black mermaids (or black people playing any role at all) and you're getting your good ol' boy group to mass downvote it because y'all say it's "woke" or whatever. We saw them pull this same shit with Black Panther when that came out.