When the lights of the cinema dim and the hum of anticipation fills the air, one thing magical occurs—tales come alive. And typically, the tales behind the storytellers are essentially the most fascinating of all. On right this moment’s episode, we welcome Patrick Lee, a person whose quiet curiosity and geeky love for movie statistics helped form the very lens by way of which thousands and thousands of individuals now view cinema. Patrick Lee is the co-founder of Rotten Tomatoes, a web site that has change into each a cultural barometer and a battleground for filmmakers and followers alike.
Before Rotten Tomatoes turned a family title, Patrick and his co-founders had been merely tinkering with design and leisure tech, creating web sites for giants like Disney Channel and MTV. But like many progressive concepts, Rotten Tomatoes was born from a easy query: “What if people could see all the movie reviews—good and bad—in one place?” It was their artistic director, Sen Duong, who initiated the challenge, working it as a facet hustle till it turned clear they had been onto one thing far larger than banner advertisements and on-line video games.
The journey wasn’t easy crusing. As Patrick defined, the movie business usually has a conflicted relationship with Rotten Tomatoes. Studios adore it when their films are Certified Fresh however curse its very existence when the Tomato Meter goes south. “We’ve had studios threaten to pull ad campaigns or never advertise with us again,” Patrick revealed. It’s a effective stability between journalistic integrity and enterprise pragmatism, and it’s one which Rotten Tomatoes walked with stunning grace—largely because of the staff’s perception in transparency and equity.
What’s exceptional is how this digital compass developed right into a type of cinematic ethical authority. “The Tomato Meter is basically the percent chance that you’ll like seeing a movie,” Patrick stated. And therein lies its appeal—it doesn’t declare objectivity. It’s not about whether or not a movie is “good” in a vacuum. It’s about consensus. It’s about likelihood. It’s about understanding whether or not you, expensive viewer, are prone to go away the theater with a full coronary heart or an empty pockets.
Patrick additionally took us down a rabbit gap of adjusting critic landscapes. When Rotten Tomatoes started, the concept of a “professional critic” was simple to outline: newspaper columnists, journal reviewers, or syndicated tv movie buffs. Today, in an age of TikTok evaluations and substack essays, that boundary has blurred. “Anybody can start a podcast or a YouTube channel,” he noticed, echoing the democratization of media that defines our period. But for Rotten Tomatoes, high quality nonetheless trumps amount, and validation nonetheless requires rigorous requirements.
Perhaps one of the vital sudden components of the dialog veered towards China, the place Patrick spent almost a decade after promoting Rotten Tomatoes. There, he witnessed first-hand the explosive rise of filmgoing tradition. “Even for some random movie, theaters were sold out for hours,” he famous. With state-of-the-art theaters rising from dusty streets and censorship shaping storylines, China has change into each a brand new frontier and a mirror reflecting international shifts in leisure priorities.
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