Disney's 'The Little Mermaid' Negative Reviews Force IMDb To Change Rating System

The Internet Movie Database (IMDb) has swooped in to save 2023’s ‘The Little Mermaid’ from being bombarded with a low score, utilizing an “alternate weighting calculation” that doesn’t use raw data of reviews but instead gives different reviews higher value in the system. 

The remake of the classic 90s Disney animated movie immediately was treading on thin ice with its casting of a black actor in the starring role of ‘Ariel,’ who was originally a Caucasian ginger in the drawn version of the movie. Things haven’t been much better for the $250 million film, drawing in notable criticisms for its lack of originality in the movie and The New York Times writer Wesley Morris claiming that the children's movie lacked “kink” in its execution.

With all of these factors going against the redone movie, it’s no wonder that it drew the ire of so many upset fans. The film has seen less than stellar reviews despite appeasing the woke activists standing behind it. In response to the avalanche of bad reviews, IMDb has had to step in to force the ratings upwards.

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The movies page is currently showing a 7.2 rating on the website but has managed to garner over 22,000 one-star reviews, a whopping 40 percent of the total. IMDb has now activated the alternate method, stating that “Our rating mechanism has detected unusual voting activity on this title. To preserve the reliability of our rating system, an alternate weighting calculation has been applied.”

On how the site decides the score and whose rating is worth more, a help page states, “IMDb publishes weighted vote averages rather than raw data averages. The simplest way to explain it is that although we accept and consider all votes received by users, not all votes have the same impact (or ‘weight’) on the final rating. When unusual voting activity is detected, an alternate weighting calculation may be applied to preserve the reliability of our system. To ensure that our rating mechanism remains effective, we do not disclose the exact method used to generate the rating."

The interesting part is that when it comes to conservative pieces of media such as Matt Walsh’s ‘What Is a Woman?’, they don’t provide the same sort of treatment. IMDb's treatment of 'The Little Mermaid' shows a concerning bias for a site that claims to “takes pride in the unbiased nature of our database.”