Ever since conceptualizing 5 Minute Movie Guy, I’ve been pretty adamant about keeping my review scores on a strict 5 star scale. I contemplated the idea of using half stars, but ultimately I felt that if I was going to do that, I might as well make the scores out of 10. So I stuck to 5 and only 5, and I assumed the simplicity of it would help make my scores easier to understand. Well… I’m not so sure it did.
Lately I’ve found myself struggling with setting scores for my reviews that accurately represent how I really feel. I went back and forth with trying to decide on my scores for Dunkirk, Baby Driver, and War for the Planet of the Apes for too long. For each of them I had to pick a side that left me feeling unsatisfied. It might not seem like that big of a deal, but I think there’s a pretty substantial difference between giving a movie a 4 (80%) or a 5 (100%). With no in-between ground, I’m forced to make a hard decision. Originally, I had liked the challenge and the harsh decisiveness of it, but as I review more and more films, I’m finding it to be a recurring problem. My ratings aren’t representing my true feelings, and that needs to be fixed.
Unsure of whether or not I should introduce half-stars to my review scores, I took my troubles to Twitter with a poll and asked my followers to vote. Here are the results:
Guys, I’m so conflicted! Should I start using half-stars in my review scores? Help me make up my mind!
— 5 Minute Movie Guy (@5minutemovieguy) August 8, 2017
The people of Twitter voted, with 66% in favor of the change. As much as I’ve been reluctant to use half-stars over the years, I gotta admit I feel liberated by this. If I had half-stars before, I could have scored all of those aforementioned movies with ease.
But alas, here comes the tricky part… Now that I’ve introduced this change, do I go back and change my old review scores, or do I just leave them the way they are and use the new system moving forward? I’m still undecided as I write this blog, but I think I might as well go ahead and do it now before my compilation of reviews gets any bigger. I would normally be very much against ever changing review scores, but I think I’m just going to do it this one time and be done with it. No previously reviewed movie’s score will be changed by more than a half star. To keep things easy, I think I’m just going to change the scores of the movies mentioned above, as well as Mad Max: Fury Road, whose 4 star review never sat well with me. I always felt that score was kind of…
5 Minute Movie Guy
8.19.17
Half-stars are almost essential for me. It helps cover more ground in terms of scoring a film (or anything, really). No film is JUST good or bad. All films have good and bad in them and the more options you have for summing up your thoughts, the better and more honest your writing becomes. I’m happy for you. 😀
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Thanks so much! Comments like this are very reassuring in that I made the right decision. I feel like it gives me a lot more freedom and keeps things from being so cut and dried!
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