Frustrations with star rating systems
Star rating systems are an integral part of most forms of reviews of movies, books, games etc. I have been using Letterboxd for a few years now and in theory I would like not to care about the star ratings, but I kinda still do, because they can be useful and I like structuring things into well defined labels. However I am also very frustrated with how they work, especially with the number of stars and half stars you can give. Letterboxd has 5 stars plus half stars, making it numerically the same as IMDBs 10 star system, though somehow a 6 out of 10 seems worse than 3 out of 5 making it a bit different in how they are perceived
My main problem with having 10 levels is that I don’t really see the need for so much fine tuning for bad movies. Does anyone really consider a movie with an IMDb-rating below 5, or 6 for that matter, worth watching? 5 and below basically means crap movie. Is there any meaningful difference between a 2 star movie and a 4 star movie? I can see the need for more fine tuning to differentiate the decent from the great movies. I think a flat 6 star system would be ideal:
| ⭑ | Terrible movie that was a totally waste of time |
| ⭑⭑ | Didn’t like it, but I can see it has objective qualities that other people may like |
| ⭑⭑⭑ | The meh-rating for a decent movie that is neither great nor terrible. A movie with plenty of problems but also some potential |
| ⭑⭑⭑⭑ | A good movie worth watching and recommending |
| ⭑⭑⭑⭑⭑ | Really great movie that would be worthy on of the big awards |
| ⭑⭑⭑⭑⭑⭑ | Something that rises above just the best of the year or have personal special meaning for me |
I could even make a case for simplifying it even further to just have 4 stars.
For the last couple of years I have stuck to just 5 plain stars in my Letterboxd ratings, but I was never fully satisfied. The 3 and 4 stars got too crammed as this is where most movies I watch tend to end up. I know others try to achieve a perfect bell curve rating distribution, but I am only interested in watching movies that I think might be good, so I have little need for being precise with the ratings of a bunch of crap movies.
I couldn't fit my own internal 6 star system into a meaningful representation, so I succumbed and have now re-distributed my thousand ratings across the entire spectrum, so my ratings went from this:
to this
Of course, having written several paragraphs now on this rather mundane and silly thing, I know I should just relax and enjoy my movies without overthinking it.