Fresh, stale, or politics? The Melania doc's Rotten Tomatoes score, explained

Melania, a documentary about the first lady, has a 10 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes from critics, but a 90 percent score from audience members, an unusual discrepancy that raises the question, how did Rotten Tomatoes get those scores anyway? Show notes: The 'Melania' movie audience: Older white women (NPR http://The ) Melania’s Movie Shows Signs of Bulk Buying to Boost Box Office: Guru (The Daily Beast https://www.thedailybeast.com/obsessed/box-office-guru-flags-suspicious-sales-to-boost-melania-movie/) You Can Thank 'Rush Hour' for Rotten Tomatoes (Vice https://www.vice.com/en/article/you-can-thank-rush-hour-for-rotten-tomatoes/) Rotten Tomatoes Owner Says ‘Melania’ 99% Audience Score Is Not ‘Bot Manipulation’: ‘Reviews Are Verified… Users Bought a Ticket to the Film’ (Variety https://www.vice.com/en/article/you-can-thank-rush-hour-for-rotten-tomatoes/) Credits: This episode was produced by Kalyani Saxena and Grace Tatter. It was co-hosted by Ben Brock Johnson and Kalyani Saxena, and edited by Meg Cramer. Mix and sound design by Paul Vaitkus.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

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  Support for this podcast comes from Is Business Broken?, a podcast from the Marotra Institute at BU Questrom School of Business. A recent episode explores how AI is reshaping our schools. Stick around until the end of this podcast to preview the episode.

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• 1:03Speaker 03

  WBUR Podcasts, Boston.

• 1:13Ben Brock Johnson?

  WBUR producer Kalyani Sookseena, how you do?

• 1:17Speaker 05

  I do so good, so good.

• 1:20Ben Brock Johnson?

  All right. I feel like this conversation, which is your sophomore appearance on Endless Thread, congrats. This is right in your wheelhouse. Because your first Endless Thread conversation about 10 years ago now, in like, modern internet time, was about Kamala Harris. Remember Kamala?

• 1:40Speaker 05

  I do.

• 1:41Ben Brock Johnson?

  And brat culture. Yeah.

• 1:42Speaker 05

  I have heard of her. And you're right, that this is in my little wheelhouse. I love when politics and internet culture have a small, little love affair.

• 1:54Ben Brock Johnson?

  So today we begin with Melania, another somewhat political topic, a person in politics, et cetera. So for whatever reason, the modern data brokered internet did not deliver me ads for the new documentary Melania, which covers the story of her private life, leading up to President Donald Trump's inauguration in 2025. Okay, you didn't get the ads either.

• 2:18Speaker 05

  No, I actually heard about it from my dad. He's like, did you hear about the Melania movie? And I was like, Melania movie? There's a movie about Melania? And then, you know, we went from there.

• 2:30Ben Brock Johnson?

  Fair. Okay, so I did not know this was a real movie also that was coming out in 2026. I did not find out from your dad. I found out when I saw the snark on Reddit.

• 2:47Ben Brock Johnson?

  Okay, so this discussion of Melania on the internet kind of snowballs as these things are wont to do. The Daily Beast says that this documentary, which cost $75 million to make, and apparently brought in $7 million in box office seats its opening weekend.

• 3:03Speaker 05

  Great ratio.

• 3:04Ben Brock Johnson?

  Well, not a great ratio, but a pretty good opening weekend for a documentary, actually. And this $7 million number, amongst some other things, were very surprising to people on Reddit, who maybe didn't know a single person who went to see the movie or saw reporting about mostly empty theaters and social media posts about empty theaters. There's a lot of skepticism that all of those ticket sales represented actual people going to see the movie. Like, were they part of some kind of push to make the movie seem more popular or successful than it was? There were a lot of rumors flying around about this, everything

• 3:44Ben Brock Johnson?

  from the military being pressured into going to see the movie to block ticket sale buying. And now there's been some reporting on those rumors. Tom Bruggeman covers box office news. He wrote in his newsletter about industry sources who said there were signs of block ticket sales, like when a person or a group buys a whole bunch of tickets that were then given away for free. And then there's this guy Matthew Baloney at the Puck, who then reported that AMC and Regal told him they did not see unusual ticket purchasing. And also that Amazon says it did not artificially boost ticket sales.

• 4:26Ben Brock Johnson?

  So, you know, this is a little complicated, but I think a lot of the speculation around fake ticket sales has to do with just like how much money Amazon has been willing to spend on this movie in general. So the company paid, Amazon paid Melania Trump's production company $40 million for the rights to the movie. That is a lot of money to pay to a member of the president's family. It's also way more than anyone else wanted to pay for it. So that was kind of interesting. Then Amazon spent $35 million to market the movie. That is a lot of money to pay for a documentary. That's not your average documentary spending budget when it comes to marketing.

• 5:09Ben Brock Johnson?

  And this is not a money-making venture for Jeff Bezos, right? And it's, it's not a secret that Bezos is trying to get close to President Trump. So there's arguably something flattering to the president about this movie being worth so much and about so many people wanting to see a documentary about the First Lady, which brings us to the thing that we're going to get into in this episode. It is something else that I've seen a bunch of people wondering about on Reddit. Are you ready? Do you know the phrase, Kalyani, astroturfed? Are you familiar?

• 5:48Speaker 05

  I am familiar with astroturf, even though I was not what you might call an athlete, but I imagine there's a different meaning.

• 5:57Ben Brock Johnson?

  Yeah, yeah. Artificial, artificial turf. The idea here being that you can use the internet to suggest or create interest in something, even though there's no interest in the thing, or very little interest in the thing. So kind of like using the tools of the internet to make something seem more popular than it is. Long story short.

• 6:21Speaker 05

  Like audience plant type.

• 6:23Ben Brock Johnson?

  That's right. And, you know, in that discussion about astroturfing in this movie and reviews, specifically reviews, there was a lot of conversation about the website Rotten Tomatoes, which, do you use Rotten Tomatoes?

• 6:38Speaker 05

  I don't actually. I mean, I use it in the sense that like when I Google a movie and then I see the like Rotten Tomatoes, it's on Google, it pops up as like a potential

• 6:48Ben Brock Johnson?

  Hundred percent fresh. Yeah.

• 6:50Speaker 05

  But I can't say that like I've, you know, gone and logged on to Rotten Tomatoes and looked.

• 6:56Ben Brock Johnson?

  Okay.

• 6:57Speaker 05

  I don't.

• 6:58Ben Brock Johnson?

  You're not checking the freshness of the tomatoes is what you're telling me.

• 7:03Speaker 05

  I'm not a big tomato fan in general, but that's neither here nor there.

• 7:07Ben Brock Johnson?

  Okay. All right. So the current rating of this movie is like 10% via critics. So 90% rotten and the audience score is 99% fresh. So this is like a huge difference in scores. So I, you know, I think it's time for me to sort of lean back in my movie chair. I'm going to take my popcorn out or in this case my Mike and Ikes. And I'm ready to learn because Kolyani, you started looking into this. And I think what we're trying to answer, right? Is these very specific questions. People are wondering why there's such a big difference between the critic's score and the audience score.

• 7:49Ben Brock Johnson?

  Could this be the result of Astro turfing? I've seen a lot of Reddit threads over the past couple of weeks, sort of referencing this, making jokes about it. Specifically using the word Astro turfing. They're not like, there's not like one big post, but there's a lot of people referencing Astro turfing and fake reviewing in all of the different Reddit threads that are discussing this topic of the movie. And you've done some deep diving, Kolyani, into how Rotten Tomatoes works. I have questions, you have answers. We are going to get into all of it right when we come back.

• 8:52Speaker 00

  Support for this podcast comes from Is Business Broken?, a podcast from the Marotra Institute at BU Questram School of Business. How should employers measure real skills in the age of AI?

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• 9:31Speaker 01

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• 10:21Ben Brock Johnson?

  We're back, Kalyani. We're back. And you're about to learn me some facts.

• 10:27Speaker 05

  And I have been doing some deep digging in the tomato garden, as they say. And I I'm going to start with a little, a little history lesson. Have you ever seen the small, the tiny indie film Rush Hour?

• 10:42Speaker 07

  Please tell me you speak English. Do you understand the words that are coming out of my mouth?

• 10:48Ben Brock Johnson?

  Oh, my God, we were talking about this and yes, I have seen the I've seen both. I've seen one and two. I don't know if there were more.

• 10:58Speaker 05

  There were. There was one more. They probably should have stopped at one. And the reason I know this is because I just rewatched both movies for the first time in 20 years. I watched them as a child and I watched them both back to back on a plane, which in my opinion is like, I think that's the only format in which Rush Hour should ever be viewed is on a plane. I think some movies are just built for the plane and and this one is. But for people who have not seen the movie, it's a buddy cop film that stars Chris Tucker and Jackie Chan. And they've sort of been thrown together to solve. This is the first movie. They've been thrown together to solve the kidnapping of a diplomat's daughter. And it's watching it back 20 years later.

• 11:40Speaker 05

  Like, I don't think you can argue with the fact that Rush Hour is funny, but it's also aged in a way that's like, not so hot. I don't know that you would see that movie made in the same way today.

• 11:53Ben Brock Johnson?

  I have not watched it since I since like, when did it come out? Do you know when it came out?

• 11:58Speaker 05

  1998, and this is relevant. 1998 is relevant.

• 12:01Ben Brock Johnson?

  OK.

• 12:02Speaker 05

  So in 1998, a guy named Sen Young, he actually ends up creating Rotten Tomatoes. But at the time, he was just a really big fan of Jackie Chan movies.

• 12:12Ben Brock Johnson?

  OK.

• 12:12Speaker 05

  And he was looking for information about this movie in particular, Rush Hour. And I admittedly was not super sentient in 1998, like I was around, but I wasn't watching movies. So I'll have to ask you, I mean, do you remember how people used to find movie reviews?

• 12:30Ben Brock Johnson?

  No idea, no idea.

• 12:33Speaker 05

  It was primarily looking at newspapers, magazines, like you would have to go somewhere,

• 12:37Ben Brock Johnson?

  Sure.

• 12:38Speaker 05

  Look at a physical article and sort of, there was no central place in which all those reviews were compiled.

• 12:44Ben Brock Johnson?

  So that's a good, that's a good point. It was like, it was like a wire service. Either you, either there was a local critic in the newspaper that you read.

• 12:52Speaker 05

  Right.

• 12:53Ben Brock Johnson?

  Or they were like, it was like a wire service and the reviews would come out every, when the movies came out that week and it was like, you don't, sometimes you didn't even know who the person writing the reviews was. It was just like the review that the wire service that ran in the newspaper. You're like, oh, I got three and a half stars and here's like a paragraph or two on the movie. Interesting. Yeah. I didn't even think about that.

• 13:12Speaker 05

  Yeah. So he, he was looking at all these different sources of information about this Jackie Chan movie. And he was like, wait a minute. What if there was a site that put together reviews from all these different sources in one place? And here's how he described it on a podcast called, So This Is My Why, last year. Every weekend I noticed there were all these awful movies. And every movie, no matter how good or bad, will have critics saying how great it is. I've seen some pretty bad movies and I'm just like, there's no way this movie is that good. So that gave me the idea, hey, I should just create a website, pattern it after these, these movie ads, but not just the good ones, but also the bad ones.

• 14:02Speaker 05

  So he puts together the site that becomes Rotten Tomatoes in like a crazy short period of time. And so it would be ready in time for the release of Rush Hour in August of 1998. But then the movie gets pushed to September of 1998. So he ends up using it to compile reviews for other movies too. Not just like as a site about Jackie Chan movies.

• 14:22Ben Brock Johnson?

  That's super interesting to me. I mean, it, it just reminds me of this like wisdom of the crowd idea of a, a certain time on the internet when it was like, you know what? Like, the information that we have that's like highly moderated is not as good as the like total feedback of the audience that's like going to this thing. And that makes sense to me. From a 1998 perspective, that makes sense to me.

• 14:49Speaker 05

  Yes. Well, I mean, the site has really evolved over time. It sort of does both, right? It's got the opinions from the critics and it's got the audience opinions. And on Rotten Tomatoes, for people who don't know, there's two scores that you actually have to pay attention to. There's the Tomato Meter, which is the one that most people are familiar with. It's based on the reviews of critics.

• 15:12Ben Brock Johnson?

  Yep.

• 15:12Speaker 05

  The staff of Rotten Tomatoes, they go through hundreds of opinions from film and TV critics. And then they mark them, whether they're positive or negative. And then the score that you see, like 55% represents the percentage of reviews that were positive. So 60% or more positive reviews, fresh. 60% or less, rotten. That's when you see the green splat.

• 15:34Ben Brock Johnson?

  Got it.

• 15:35Speaker 05

  But there's another score that I think is really key to this discussion about Melania. It's the popcorn meter, which assigns a rating based on what fans think, not critics. Have you ever looked at that one?

• 15:46Ben Brock Johnson?

  Yeah, I've seen the popcorn bucket. Yeah.

• 15:49Speaker 05

  And so here's how Rotten Tomatoes describes the popcorn meter working.

• 15:52Speaker 06

  If 60% or more of the reviews give a movie or show a star rating of 3.5 or higher, it's hot. If less than 60% of the reviews have a star rating of 3.5 or higher, it's stale. If a movie or show doesn't have enough reviews or hasn't been released yet, it will have a no popcorn meter score label. When we can verify users who bought a ticket to a film, the default score shown is composed of verified ratings and check marks appear next to their reviews.

• 16:19Ben Brock Johnson?

  Clearly one of those like, okay, the marketing team helps us explain this big change to the website to all the users, right?

• 16:27Speaker 05

  It's like. Right. And there's another like little nitpicky thing that's really important to pay attention to here, which is that the default popcorn meter score that you see on the website is made of verified ratings, which means those are reviews from people that Rotten Tomatoes can verify bought a ticket to the movie. So that's specifically people who bought the ticket on Fandango. As far as I can tell, they're only able to verify reviews from ticket purchases off Fandango.

• 16:55Ben Brock Johnson?

  Do you buy your movie tickets on Fandango?

• 16:57Speaker 05

  No, I buy my movie tickets.

• 17:01Speaker 05

  I don't know why I said that with so much disdain. I have no beef towards Fandango. I just buy them from my like, local indie theater on their website. And I, I don't think I've ever left a review on Fandango or Rotten Tomatoes.

• 17:14Ben Brock Johnson?

  Well, that's, that's an interesting thing too, right? As you're basically like, I, I get why they're doing it. They're trying to, they're trying to ensure that they don't get astroturfed, right? Like they, they're basically saying, no, you have to have actually purchased a ticket for this movie. Whether or not you went, I suppose you could purchase a ticket and not go, right? Which is also what we're kind of talking about here. But that is their effort to have some control over it. Of course, we should say like, part of the complexity here is like, again, this idea of like, well, we know the review is legit because somebody bought a ticket. And we don't know a lot about how Fandango protects against blocked ticket buying

• 17:59Ben Brock Johnson?

  or, or buying and not going and seeing the movie, but leaving a review anyway. So our process of ensuring that the reviews are legit is still, it's not bulletproof, shall we say? But can you talk a little bit more, Kalyani, about how, how do you know how Rotten Tomatoes verifies its users?

• 18:21Speaker 05

  So the email address that you use when you log on to Fandango to buy your ticket, that should match the email address that you're using to leave your Rotten Tomatoes review.

• 18:31Ben Brock Johnson?

  Okay.

• 18:32Speaker 05

  So if those two match, then your review is verified.

• 18:34Ben Brock Johnson?

  Interesting. Okay.

• 18:36Speaker 05

  And this all comes back to Melania because Rotten Tomatoes' parent company says that there's been no bot manipulation when it comes to the audience reviews for the documentary. The reviews that are displayed on the popcorn meter are all verified reviews, which means that the people who reviewed Melania on Rotten Tomatoes bought a ticket for Melania. And we should note that these are just people who bought a ticket. Presumably, they went to see the movie. There's no way to verify that they actually did.

• 19:02Ben Brock Johnson?

  This is very interesting to me because again, it sort of gets into this like weird zone of how the, how like platforms on the internet work, right? And, and they are, I would say, like in these weird ways.

• 19:21Ben Brock Johnson?

  They are kind of like buggy and like, once you start to drill down, you start to see stuff where you're like, huh.

• 19:30Speaker 05

  Well, I've been thinking about this discrepancy between the critic score and the audience score on Rotten Tomatoes for Melania specifically. And I have one theory, which is that I think this movie, it's coming out, obviously, in a very specific political environment. And if you're going to see Melania, it's likely, not a one to one, but it's likely that you have some positive feelings towards this presidential administration. You have positive feelings towards the first lady herself. And I feel like the folks who are going to see this movie are likely people who are going to enjoy the movie and maybe feel inclined to leave a review because they, they want to counter any narratives about,

• 20:14Speaker 05

  oh, this, this movie wasn't very good. Meanwhile, critics who are watching the movie, they're watching it for work. They have to watch it regardless of whether they feel strongly or not towards the first lady in the current administration. So I think that there's sort of a feeling that like, at least from my theorizing brain, that, you know, so almost like a confirmation bias thing. If, if you're likely to see Melania, you're probably the kind of person who's going to enjoy it, too.

• 20:41Ben Brock Johnson?

  All right.

• 20:42Speaker 05

  Okay. But there's also another connection. I just want to bring it full circle back to Rush Hour. There's another really, really interesting connection here between Melania and Rotten Tomatoes and Rush Hour, which is that Brett Ratner, who directs Melania, also directed Rush Hour in 1998 and the whole Rush Hour franchise. And his last movie before Melania was in 2014. And that's likely because in 2017, he was accused of sexual misconduct by a number of women in Hollywood. He vehemently denied allegations of sexual harassment and assault. But this is sort of his first big thing in the wake of those allegations.

• 21:27Ben Brock Johnson?

  Wow. And he's also mentioned in the Epstein files. He's.

• 21:31Speaker 05

  He is pictured. He is pictured next to Jeffrey Epstein. That, that is correct.

• 21:37Ben Brock Johnson?

  Ah, man. Okay, so.

• 21:40Ben Brock Johnson?

  It's so, we just, it's, we live in the weirdest timeline.

• 21:46Ben Brock Johnson?

  And it is so strange to me, this like random synchronicity.

• 21:58Ben Brock Johnson?

  And I don't know what to do with that, but I guess my takeaways are.

• 22:05Speaker 05

  All roads lead to rush hour?

• 22:10Speaker 05

  Sorry, I had to lighten it up.

• 22:11Ben Brock Johnson?

  I guess so. I know, it's good to lighten it up. It's good to lighten it up, I guess. I mean, I guess what we're supposed to take away is that Rotten Tomatoes does have some way of verifying a thing that would normally mostly correlate with going to a movie, which is buying a ticket.

• 22:37Speaker 05

  I have a takeaway.

• 22:38Ben Brock Johnson?

  Okay.

• 22:38Speaker 05

  Not to be profound, but I do.

• 22:39Ben Brock Johnson?

  Please, please go on, my friend. Thank you, Koyani.

• 22:43Speaker 05

  I think so often, like when we are talking about arts and culture, so much of the experience of like watching a movie is really intangible. It's about how it made you feel. And sometimes, and what's great about sites like Rotten Tomato is it's, it's sort of an ability to give data to like a general cultural feeling about something, right? And I think it makes people uncomfortable or upset when you see something like you see a low percent from critics and then you see a 99% from the audience. You're like, what am I supposed to do with this data? How is it supposed to tell me to feel about this movie and the fact that it's coming out? I don't like that these things don't match. And I don't like that maybe they don't match how I personally feel. And I kind of have to be like,

• 23:27Speaker 05

  guys, let's put the numbers down. You know, let's put the numbers down because I think, I mean, and I say this as someone who, who does not consult Rotten Tomatoes religiously. I really do think that like when we're trying to quantify personal enjoyment and also like a cultural vibe based on these numbers in a system as we've already talked about. I think it's just a futile task. And I think when we're thinking about. A film like Melania and the time at which it's coming out, I don't think we're gonna find any clarity from Rotten Tomatoes numbers. So maybe my takeaway is put the numbers down and there's, there's no real clarity we found there.

• 24:07Ben Brock Johnson?

  I think that's, that feels right. And I, you know, it also feels like relevant to a lot of the ways that I travel on the internet now, which is like, I don't, I still believe in the wisdom of the crowd and also the madness of the crowd. And so like, I think both things are true and can be true depending on the situation. And I also will admit that like, I don't, I don't pay attention to Yelp reviews anymore. I don't, I, it's been a long time since I've gone to Rotten Tomatoes to see anything as far as a, a rating. Like, you know what I do now to, to, to tell where to eat, which is a very, which is a thing that I care much about?

• 24:51Ben Brock Johnson?

  Is I look at the Google Photos. I go on to Google Maps, I find the place that I'm interested in, and I just do a deep dive on those photos and that's how I tell whether the place is good to eat at. And I don't know what the movie version of that is, but it might just be like, you watch the, you watch a lot of trailers. And like, if the trailer looks good, then if they did a good job on the trailer, then maybe they'll do a good job on the movie. I don't know. But is that, is that where we're, where we're at?

• 25:22Speaker 05

  I just look at, I just look at TikTok and see how many like lusty TikTok edits there are. And I'm like, if there's enough to grab me, like it's same with books. If there's a line that I find interesting that someone posts about a book or like an edit, I'm like, you know what? That speaks to me. That speaks to me louder than any number can. I'm seated.

• 25:39Ben Brock Johnson?

  That's a good takeaway, I think. Like, culture is not, culture's, culture's not like about what you, it's like you were saying before, culture is not really about like the numbers and the data. It's about, at least as a consumer, it's about like how you feel, right? So like, I think that's a good place for us to land on. And if you feel like going to see Melania, you know, you don't have to respond to the Craigslist ad and get your $50. You can just go. And, and if you don't-

• 26:08Speaker 05

  You can just go.

• 26:09Ben Brock Johnson?

  Yeah, you could. And if you don't, don't, don't go.

• 26:16Ben Brock Johnson?

  Endless Thread is a production of WBUR in Boston. This episode was produced by Kalyani Saxena and Grace Tatter and hosted by me, Ben Brock Johnson.

• 26:25Speaker 05

  And me, Kalyani Saxena. It was edited by Meg Kramer, mix and sound design by Paul Vitkus.

• 26:32Ben Brock Johnson?

  The rest of our team is Amory Seaberton, Dean Russell, Chiosna Bernadette, Emily Jankowski, and our managing producer, Sumit Joshi.

• 26:39Speaker 05

  Endless Thread is a show about the blurred lines between online communities and your fandango account.

• 26:45Ben Brock Johnson?

  If you have an untold history and unsolved mystery or another story from the internet that you want us to tell, hit us up. [email protected].

• 27:10Speaker 00

  Support for this podcast comes from Is Business Broken?, a podcast from the Marotra Institute at BU Questrom School of Business. Follow Is Business Broken? wherever you get your podcasts. And listen on for a preview of a recent episode featuring Janet Kang, Executive Director of the Just Horizons Alliance, on who stands to benefit from AI in education.

• 27:33Speaker 06

  I am absolutely in favor of AI in learning in the right context. And just to explain why you're excited about it. Oh, my gosh, individualized support, right? Personalization and to be able to scale quality education in places where it was historically impossible. So for certain kinds of learners with different kinds of learning styles and disabilities, for example, speakers of different languages, there are amazing ways AI can boost learning. It just has to be with the right context. And age appropriateness is something we do a lot of work in because it is very different depending on where in that maturity cycle you are in terms of how your brain develops.

• 28:11Speaker 00

  Find the full episode by searching for Is Business Broken? wherever you get your podcasts. And learn more about the Marotra Institute for Business, Markets, and Society at ibms.bu.edu.

• 28:29Speaker 01

  When you shop Kroger Delivery, you can expect the savings you love and fresh groceries delivered right to your door. From delicious produce to everyday essentials, enjoy the convenience of delivery and the trusted selection you've come to know from Kroger. Because bringing you fresh, quality groceries is what we do best. Right now, enjoy free delivery on orders of $50 or more with your digital coupon. Restrictions apply. See site for details. Kroger. Fresh for everyone.

• 28:58Speaker 02

  Ally here with cash when you need it. Like when your stylist just did the most. Fresh cut and zero cash. Don't be in... Ally has 75,000 fee-free ATMs nationwide, so you're never without cash. Ally Bank Member FDIC.