Cinemascore surveys audiences on opening night across the country, using the card you see above. Movies are rated on a 4point scale, much like a student is, and demographics are carved out based on gender and age. By late Friday night (usually 11pm-2am), Cinemascore will post a letter score on its site for the movies that released that week, and distribute its demographic data to studios and theatre chains. Under this model, general audiences are provided with limited data but studios and distributors are provided with sufficient data in order to estimate the movies preformance and appeal in the weeks to come.
There are certainly strengths to Cinemascores data collection model, some of which I would consider more relevant to general movie goers I see everyday. Too often I hear how the critics are wrong, they're "out of touch" or predisposed to dislike movie before they see it. I tell people that this just isn't true, critics come in all types and ages just like the movie going audience. The big difference is that it's a critics job to see every movie, even the ones they don't want to see. Because of this, critics have a much broader opinion on what makes a good movie good, not a more accurate opinion. If somebody who goes to see ten movies a year, pays to see Fifty Shades Darker with their friends, statistics would suggest he or she will like the movie considering they are predetermined to enjoy dark romance films. Statistics would also suggest he or she saw Fifty Shades of Grey (the first one) considering Fifty Shades Darker is a sequel. Continuing on the stats form last week, Fifty Shades Darker scored a 9% on RT but a B+ on Cinemascore. While critics, and myself, tore apart the film audiences who the movie was marketed to enjoyed the movie almost enough to award it an A. This examples proves that just because a movie is critically panned, doesn't mean it won't be enjoyed and even loved.
Cinemascore's strengths may make it more relevant to audiences and studios, but when considering the circumstances of its collection there are several flaws to it's accountability. For one, Cinemascore tends to skew relatively high in its scoring, with many if not a majority of movies being awarded an A or A- as its cumulative score. This is a result of audience bias; as discussed above somebody who is choosing one movie over a variety of others is predisposed to like said movie regardless of its critical reception. I love Marvel movies, and if you read my blog you will notice no marvel movie I have reviewed has been given anything less than a 3/5 (a positive score by my standards). Two even scored a 5/5 and I have only ever awarded ten 5/5s since 2014. Now I fully stick by my ratings and I argue to the death to defend them, but I'm not ignorant to my own biases. The second reason for this skew has to do bias in the critical skills of the individual. On this site I try to make my ratings as clear as possible (I even did a post a little while back), but different people judge on different scales. My brother for example like to rate movies on a scale of 1-10, where 7 is an average movie. This is completely valid, movies are subjective therefore so too must be the measurements we use to compare them, however as a result we tend to have very different scores even if we similar opinions on a movie we watched. I may say after the movie is a 3/5 but he may say its a 8/10 even though we like it the same, as an outsider looking in however you would determine without a doubt that my brother liked the movie more than I did. Cinemascore does not and cannot account for this bias even though I know it exist, again this isn't necessarily good or bad but is absolutely an explanation for the skew in Cinemascore ratings. The last account for this skew is the simplest to explain, Cinemascore survey's audiences on opening night. There is no audience more predisposed to enjoying a particular movie that the audience that pays for a ticket in advance for an opening night screening.
For these reasons I structured my own way to interpret a movies praise based on Cinemascore. Movies that score an A or the exceptionally rare A+ are donated with the emblem "Crowd Pleaser" in my reviews (although I sometimes award A-'s depending on the reception of my own screening). B+ is mainly positive with a mixed majority, and B and B- are even more mixed than that. When I see any sort of C it's immediately considered a fail, most of these are horror pictures or drawn out dramas that don't quite hit their mark. I have only seen a D once, I remember shivering a little. Fs hardly ever happen, in Cinemasores history only about ten movies have received an F.
Cinemascore accurately determines an audiences reception to the movie by surveying the audience responses on opening night. It's data can be highly relevant for the studio who puts out the movie, the theatre chains that show it, and the movie goers who go to it, but it does have its flaws. Cinemascore often varies for more critical sites like RT; movies that are critically panned may score well with audience and some movies that are critically praised can turn audiences off. I love Cinemascore because it shows a drastically different side of the movies lovers world, one that is equally significant and dually noted by all parties that make and distribute the films we see.
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