Rotten Tomatoes first entered the public consciousness on August 12, 1998. Named after the age-old practice of throwing tomatoes at stage performers in disapproval, the review aggregator website was an instant success. Shout-outs from the likes of Yahoo and USA Today helped it rise in the ranks quickly, and before long, it became the go-to place on the internet to find out whether or not a movie sucked. Funny enough, all of that came to be because a Jackie Chan fan was really looking forward to his favorite actor’s upcoming movie.
Senh Duong, the founder of Rotten Tomatoes, conceived the idea for the site while running a web design firm with two of his friends from UC Berkeley. When he wasn’t making websites about movies and TV shows, Duong was scouring the internet for reviews of the latest film releases. After searching for information about Chan’s newest project, he realized it would be much easier if there were a website that compiled reviews from different sources. He was especially interested in reading reviews for Chan’s earlier films, which he’d been a fan of since he was in high school.
He got started on the idea right away, coding the site in his spare time and working as late as 4 a.m. some nights. The release of Rush Hour was fast approaching in August 1998—or so Duong thought — and he wanted to have things ready for the day it came out. Then, after Duong spent weeks working out all the kinks in anticipation, Rush Hour’s release date was pushed back to September 18. Thankfully, by that time, he’d had the foresight not to focus his energy exclusively on Jackie Chan movies and was able to launch the site as planned, with its first featured reviews being of another 1998 comedy, Neil LaBute’s Your Friends & Neighbors.
Two other early sources of inspiration were critics Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert; Duong originally planned to call the website “Thumbs Up,” but the name was already copyrighted. At the end of the day, though, if it wasn’t for Rush Hour, Duong might never have had the thought that led to him building the empire that he did. With the help of his Berkeley pals, he increased Rotten Tomatoes’ viewership from thousands to upwards of 30 million. From there, it was bought out by IGN and eventually even Warner Bros., and it was all because of this guy right here:
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