Zetascore

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I love movies and I love data and the folks at Metacritic do a great job of combining the two. They take movie reviews, convert them into a 100-point scale, and then average them together (important publications are weighted more) to get a single number that gives you a sense of how well a movie has been critically received. The Metascore.

Metascore is great and I use it all the time. It’s not the boss of me, I saw and enjoyed That Awkward Moment even though it only had a Metascore of 36 (Miles Teller FTW). But I still like to know if the critics love, hate, or are so-so on a particular movie.

I’ve discovered a problem with Metascore, which is really a problem with movie critics. They literally get paid to watch movies, so they don’t care if the movies are long. Critics aren’t worried about meeting up for dinner after the movie, waking up for work the next day, getting home to relieve the babysitter, etc. But we are.  This is especially true now that we’re in Oscar season. Nothing says “important film” like a 3-hour runtime.

Since I think movies are too long and I think Metascore rewards long movies too much, I’ve invented my own movie metric. I’m all about branding, so let’s call it the Zetascore. I’ll explain more below, but first let’s see if there’s really a problem.

Let’s look at every wide-release movie of 2014 by runtime (in minutes):

More than a quarter of them are longer than two hours. WTF? And 4 of them are in the bladder-busting zone at more than two and half hours. Including, bizarrely, Transformers: Age of Extinction which is as long as 7.5 episodes of the original cartoon.

Here’s a histogram of Metascores for these same movies:

There are a lot more movies in the top half than in the bottom half. This is known as a top-heavy distribution. I think the critics are being too kind. Especially when it comes to long movies.

Unlike Metascore, the Zetascore rewards short movies and punishes long ones. Here’s how it works:

I take the Metascore and divide it by the movie’s runtime, then I multiply it by 100. Take Noah.  It has a Metascore of 68, but a painful runtime of 138min: 68/138 * 100 = 49. The Zetascore of 49 reflects that the movie got pretty good reviews, but it gets docked for being long. But the Zetascore cuts both ways. Neighbors has the exact same Metascore, but at 97 minutes, it’s 41 minutes shorter than Noah! (All comedies and action movies should 90min so good job guys.)  Its Zetascore is 68/97 * 100 = 70. In this case, the Zetascore gets a little boost because of the brisk length.

Here’s a histogram of the Zetascores of the same movies we’ve been looking at:

Holy crap, that’s a thing of beauty! Unlike the top-heavy Metascore, here we have a nice, symmetrical, “normal” distribution.  Because the scores are more spread out we can do a better job of separating the popcorn from the kernels (see what I did there?).

In 2014, the highest Zetascore was 88 (The Grand Budapest Hotel). Note that unlike Metascore, a Zetascore can go above 100. Last year’s big hit Gravity had a badass Zetascore of 105 because it packed a Metascore of 96 into its brief 91 minutes. That’s a lot of bang for your buck (or 12 bucks, not including concessions).

Here’s a table of all the wide-release movies of 2014. You can sort by clicking on any column head or find a specific movie with the search box:

Movie Metascore Runtime Zetascore
Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones 42 84 50
Her 90 126 71
Lone Survivor 60 121 50
The Legend of Hercules 22 99 22
Devil’s Due 34 89 38
Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit 57 105 54
Ride Along 41 99 41
The Nut Job 37 85 44
I, Frankenstein 30 92 33
Labor Day 52 111 47
That Awkward Moment 36 94 38
The LEGO Movie 82 100 82
The Monuments Men 52 118 44
Vampire Academy 30 104 29
RoboCop 52 117 44
Endless Love 30 104 29
Winter’s Tale 31 118 26
3 Days to Kill 40 117 34
Pompeii 39 105 37
Anchorman 2 61 119 51
Non-Stop 56 106 53
Son of God 37 138 27
300: Rise of an Empire 48 102 47
Mr. Peabody & Sherman 59 92 64
Need for Speed 39 132 30
Veronica Mars 62 107 58
Divergent 48 139 35
Muppets Most Wanted 61 107 57
A Haunted House 2 17 86 20
Cesar Chavez 51 102 50
Noah 68 138 49
Sabotage 41 109 38
Captain America: The Winter Soldier 70 136 51
Draft Day 54 110 49
Rio 2 49 101 49
Bears 68 78 87
Transcendence 42 119 35
Brick Mansions 40 90 44
The Other Woman 39 109 36
The Quiet Ones 41 98 42
The Amazing Spider-Man 2 53 142 37
Walk of Shame 25 95 26
Legends of Oz: Dorothy’s Return 25 88 28
Chef 68 114 60
Moms’ Night Out 25 98 26
Neighbors 68 97 70
Godzilla 62 123 50
Million Dollar Arm 56 124 45
Blended 31 117 26
X-Men: Days of Future Past 74 131 56
A Million Ways to Die in the West 44 116 38
Maleficent 56 97 58
Edge of Tomorrow 71 113 63
The Fault in Our Stars 69 126 55
22 Jump Street 71 112 63
How to Train Your Dragon 2 76 102 75
Jersey Boys 54 134 40
Think Like a Man Too 38 106 36
Transformers: Age of Extinction 32 165 19
Deliver Us from Evil 40 118 34
Earth to Echo 53 91 58
Tammy 39 97 40
Dawn of the Planet of the Apes 79 130 61
Planes: Fire & Rescue 48 83 58
Sex Tape 36 94 38
The Purge: Anarchy 50 103 49
And So It Goes 38 94 40
Hercules 47 98 48
Lucy 61 89 69
Get on Up 71 139 51
Guardians of the Galaxy 76 121 63
Into the Storm 44 89 49
Step Up: All In 45 112 40
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 31 101 31
The Hundred-Foot Journey 55 122 45
Let’s Be Cops 30 104 29
The Expendables 3 35 126 28
The Giver 47 97 48
If I Stay 46 107 43
Sin City: A Dame to Kill For 46 102 45
When the Game Stands Tall 41 115 36
The November Man 38 108 35
As Above/So Below 38 93 41
The Identical 25 107 23
Dolphin Tale 2 58 107 54
No Good Deed 26 84 31
A Walk Among the Tombstones 57 114 50
Kevin Smith’s Tusk 55 102 54
The Maze Runner 56 113 50
This Is Where I Leave You 44 103 43
The Boxtrolls 63 96 66
The Equalizer 57 132 43
Annabelle 37 99 37
Gone Girl 79 149 53
The Good Lie 65 110 59
Addicted 32 106 30
Alexander & the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day 54 81 67
The Judge 48 141 34
Whiplash 87 107 81
Birdman 89 119 75
Book of Life 67 95 71
Dracula Untold 40 92 43
Fury 64 134 48
The Best of Me 29 118 25
Ouija 38 89 43
Nightcrawler 76 117 65
Imitation Game 71 114 62
Wild 74 115 64
John Wick 67 101 66
St. Vincent 64 102 63
Before I Go to Sleep 41 92 45
Horns 46 120 38
Big Hero 6 75 102 74
Interstellar 74 169 44
Jessabelle 37 90 41
Dumb and Dumber To 36 109 33
Foxcatcher 83 134 62
The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1 64 123 52
Horrible Bosses 2 40 108 37
The Penguins of Madagascar 53 92 58
Exodus: Gods & Kings 54 150 36
Inherent Vice 84 148 57
The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies 62 144 43
Big Eyes 61 106 58
American Sniper 62 134 46
Unbroken 59 137 43
Boyhood 100 165 61
Selma 95 122 78
The Grand Budapest Hotel 88 100 88
The Pyramid 23 89 26

 

I haven’t seen Selma yet, but the others in the top 5 really are fantastic, especially Whiplash (Miles Teller FTW again). Bears gets a big boost from its svelte runtime, but it deserves it for packing so much amazing cinemtography into 78 minutes. And do you really want to watch bears frolic for longer than that? No, and that’s what the Zetascore is all about.

Boring note: The graphs and charts are based on all the wide-release movies of 2014, except Annie, Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb, Into the Woods, and The Interview because they don’t have Metascores yet. I’m sure the studios have good reasons for not showing these movies to the critics early and they aren’t crappy at all.

Less boring note: were there really two separate horror movies this year called Annabelle and Jessabelle??