http://www.cnn.com/2008/SHOWBIZ/Movies/04/28/film.summerpreview.ap/index.html?iref=newssearch

With the summer movie season on the horizon, people are waiting in anticipation for the stream of movies to be released. Sequels and new movies will inundate the industry this summer with movies such as Iron man, The Dark Knight, and Indiana Jones. The season begins with Iron man, and already critics everywhere are reviewing the film. It’s apparent, however, that these reviews will play a major role in the success of the movies. Although many people claim to denounce the use of reviews in determining the quality of a movie, it is undeniable that sites such as rottentomatoes.com and ign.com have a high degree of influence on what moviegoers go see each weekend.

In relation to the beginning of this year’s summer movie season, critic reviews of Iron Man are coming in fast to rottentomatoes.com, which currently reports Iron Man as having an 86% approval rating. For rottentomatoes, this type of rating is quite decent, and only time will tell how the rating will increase or decrease as more people review the movie. Currently, only 14 people have reviewed Iron Man, and 12 out of the 14 reviewed it as “fresh”- meaning that the movie met expectations and then some. The people reviewing the movies on rottentomatoes are professional and seasoned critics, so these people are quite qualified to issue ratings such as these.

My point however, in regards to behavior cascades, is that these numerical ratings on movies directly influence the population in deciding which movie to see. I know that I myself am guilty of using sites such as rottentomatoes in determining whether or not I should see a certain movie. Back in March, I was excited to see 10000BC (yeah-sad I know), but when I saw that rottentomatoes had declared it “rotten” with a rating of about 10%, I quickly took back my decision and haven’t seen it since. Mind you, I was going to see it more for a rumored trailer for The Dark Knight, but I still wasn’t willing to give up 9.50$ for a movie that I wouldn’t like. That’s where most of the influence comes in these reviews- if its unanimous among many critics that a movie has done poorly in its portrayal, then moviegoers will not spend unnecessary money in seeing a bad movie; people would rather spend such money in saving for gas or other important expenses at this point. I used to be a person where reviews didn’t phase me, but now as I look back I realize that I could have saved a lot of money had I looked at reviews more closely. This is the behavioral cascade that will predominately take place this summer with the slew of movies coming out, and not all of them will be benefical to the movies to say the least.