The Problem
Reviewing things is hard. This is especially true for art, which is subjective by nature. Questions like “what makes good art” and “why do you like this art” are hard to answer in a satisfying way, especially when the answer is something like “it made me feel good”.
I started using Letterboxd recently to keep track of the movies I’ve watched, but I’ve been having trouble putting into perspective what it means exactly for a movie to be a “6” or a “1”. I wanted to avoid the “IGN problem,” where everything’s a 7 unless it’s really good or really bad, because I think that prevents the scores from having any real meaning or nuance. It’s similar to the American A-F grading scale, where anything below 70 is failing, so scores get crushed towards the top—the difference between a 100 and a 90 feels much bigger than 0 and 10—and we lose a lot of granularity.
The Solution
This was when I saw Josh George’s video, “IGN’s review scale makes no sense.” In it, he argues that IGN’s process of rating everything a 7 (well-intentioned or not), decreases the insight that reviews and ratings give into an individual reviewer’s preferences and character. I highly suggest you watch his video, as it was well thought out and he includes some personal examples that illustrate his point.
The System
Based on Josh’s video and this YouTube comment, I’ve come up with my own scale, which I’ve described briefly below.
| Score | Meaning |
|---|---|
| ☆☆☆☆☆ | I would pay money for this to not exist. |
| ⯪☆☆☆☆ | You should be paid money to watch this. |
| ★☆☆☆☆ | I will complain about this in detail. |
| ★⯪☆☆☆ | I will tell you not to watch this. |
| ★★☆☆☆ | You don’t have a reason to see this. |
| ★★⯪☆☆ | I would not be upset if you watched this. |
| ★★★☆☆ | It’s worth the time, but I’m not recommending it. |
| ★★★⯪☆ | If you’re asking, I’ll recommend it. |
| ★★★★☆ | I will go out of my way to recommend this. |
| ★★★★⯪ | I think everyone should watch this. |
| ★★★★★ | This will change your life. |
Unfortunately, I can’t rate a movie a 0, so if I ever need to rate something a 0, I’ll leave a 0.5 star review with a note that I would give it a 0.
If you’d like to see the scale in action, check out my Letterboxd page (@bustinbung).
Wrapping Up
I’ve been using this system to great personal success. It’s given me a good benchmark for how I rank movies, but has now extended beyond movies to other things like food and music. ■
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