Rotten Tomatoes has long been the most trusted source when it comes to getting a feel for movies and television shows. The site aggregates reviews from dozens, if not hundreds of trusted critics and determines if the reviewer gave a positive or negative score to the film. If negative, the movie gets a green 'rotten' tomato. If positive, it gets a 'fresh' red tomato. After weighing the ratio of rotten tomatoes to fresh, the movies gets a score based on the percentage of rotten to fresh.
In recent years, its become very apparent that critics are either irrelevant to what audiences think or let their values dictate wether or not something is good or not. A few examples:
Unnecessary sequels:
Audiences and critics both hated this unneeded sequel to Zoolander. Critics and audiences are even.
Fans and audiences similarly hated the Ghostbusters reboot, but it strangely has a 74% positive score from critics.
Netflix shows:
One of the most highly rated and fan-loved shows on Netflix. Critics and audiences agree.
So how in the hell does this abomination of the classic 80's cartoon have a perfect score? A questionable selection of critics are found here, from sites that typically don't do TV/movie reviews. The user rating is suspect too, as a ton of 5-star reviews flooded in recently with no avatar and no review.
TV Reboots:
While she's a controversial personality, it seems the critics and audiences mostly agreed on this show.
Though once they removed Roseanne from Roseanne, the critic score skyrocketed while the audience score plummeted.
Marvel movies:
Captain America: Winter Soldier is universally regarded as the best film in the MCU. Critics and audiences agree.
While one of the better films in the MCU, its score is highly suspect. 97% is higher than nearly every Best Picture winner since the year 2000. Were critics afraid to give this movie a negative review? After all, the first critic who showed up who didn't give it a fresh rating was called out as a racist.
Star Wars:
Everyone was disappointed with Episode 1. Ratings reflect that.
Most fans were happy with the first film in the new trilogy. Critics and audience scores are very close.
Fans HATED this entry in the franchise, but strangely the critics rated it about on par with the previous one. Why did critics and audiences agree on Episode 7, but critics loved Episode 8 while audiences hated it?
The common thread
The thing I see that's consistent through these shows and movies, where the critics scores deviate so far from similar properties or the audience scores, is that rather being objectively critical, tv and movie critics are now more likely to let their personal biases and beliefs dictate how they rate something.
This leads me to believe that who we're trusting as critics aren't capable of being impartial to judge a film or show's on its merit alone. Social or political messages in these properties seem to either increase or decrease their scores based on the critic's personal beliefs.
This disparity is no more visible than when examining highly partisan documentary filmmakers. Looking at Michael Moore vs. Dinesh D'Souza, they each make extremely partisan documentaries that exist to ramp up their bases. Moore is far left and D'Souza is far right and the films of both should be objectively and fairly critiqued as blatant political propaganda, yet Moore's films average around 75% positive while D'Souza's last three documentaries were rated 8%, 4% and 0%.
So if critics are unable to be impartial, what's the point of listening to them?
Personally, I quit listening to "professional" critics a long time ago and have started trusting film critics on YouTube instead. Chris Stuckmann, Jeremy Jahns and other YouTube film critics are far more fair, reasonable and share more in common with the audiences than 'real' critics. Writing for a newspaper or magazine used to mean the opinions of the critic had merit -- today it feels like it renders their opinions invalid.