A fresh Rotten Tomatoes score has become a highly coveted aspect of movie marketing. It’s somewhat shocking to think that movie studios will go out of their way to slap a “Fresh” sticker on a TV spot or Blu-ray for their movie, but indeed it’s become commonplace as studios look for new ways to get their films seen. But does a “fresh” Rotten Tomatoes score mean a movie is good, and does a “rotten” score mean a movie is bad? Absolutely not, and filmmaker Brett Ratner had some incisive thoughts on the matter while speaking at the Sun Valley Film Festival.

Per EW, Ratner singled out Rotten Tomatoes as a giant thorn in the film business’ side rather than an ally:

“The worst thing that we have in today’s movie culture is Rotten Tomatoes. I think it’s the destruction of our business. I have such respect and admiration for film criticism. When I was growing up film criticism was a real art. And there was intellect that went into that. And you would read Pauline’s Kael’s reviews, or some others, and that doesn’t exist anymore. Now it’s about a number. A compounded number of how many positives vs. negatives. Now it’s about, ‘What’s your Rotten Tomatoes score?’ And that’s sad, because the Rotten Tomatoes score was so low on Batman v Superman I think it put a cloud over a movie that was incredibly successful.”

I didn’t necessarily think I’d find myself agreeing with the director behind Tower Heist and After the Sunset on film criticism, but he’s not wrong. Rotten Tomatoes is simply a guidepost, and it doesn’t allow for nuance. Just because Rogue One got an 85% and Split got a 76% doesn’t definitively mean Rogue One is the better movie—the percentage is a barometer of how well-liked a movie is, not how good it is. The percentage merely takes a “thumbs up/thumbs down” approach where every “positive” review counts as fresh and every “negative” review counts as rotten. Meaning mixed reviews can go either way, and a film with a 96% score doesn’t mean every review was glowing, just that most of the reviews were simply positive. Again, there’s no room for nuance—for reviews ranging from poor to fair to good to very good to great.

Ratner continued, rightly pointing out that a lot of moviegoers now are simply glancing at a Rotten Tomatoes score to decide whether a film is worth seeing:

“It’s mind-blowing. It’s just insane, it’s hurting the business, it’s getting people to not see a movie. In Middle America it’s, ‘Oh, it’s a low Rotten Tomatoes score so I’m not going to go see it because it must suck.’ But that number is an aggregate and one that nobody can figure out exactly what it means, and it’s not always correct. I’ve seen some great movies with really abysmal Rotten Tomatoes scores. What’s sad is film criticism has disappeared. It’s really sad.”

EW did its due diligence and reached out to Rotten Tomatoes for comment, and Jeff Voris offered a statement that kind of supports what Ratner was saying: