'How to Train Your Dragon' is NOT better than Pixar!

I'm undergoing a little bit of a crisis right now, because my fellow Oscar prediction sites seem to be under the false assumption that How to Train Your Dragon is likely to beat Toy Story 3. This is a very serious problem, not because Dragon is bad movie, which it definitely isn't. In fact it's a lot better than most Dreamworks films. But people are getting it in their heads that it's better than most Pixar films, just because it has a 98% Rotten Tomatoes score. Let me break down where the error occurs.

Rotten Tomatoes dictates that most film of a 2.5 out of 4, or a B- and up are good reviews, and most things below that are bad. Now only a few people don't like the movie, in fact right now it's three. That does mean that it's a likable film, but where the conclusion of just how good it is lands is something else entirely. If you want to know the average grade for a film, compiled from the ratings of all other reviews, you look at (who'd have guessed it?) the spot that says average rating. Dragon's rating stands at 7.8 out of 10, while last year's Up which got the same percentage of positive reviews, got an 8.6.

The Incredibles, which stands at 97%, has an 8.3 rating. Both Ratatouille and WALL-E, which have 96%, acheived a 8.4 rating. So despite the hype and lasting box office results, I doubt How to Train Your Dragon will beat out Pixar this year. They haven't failed before, and likely won't this year. You'll see the Dragon hype die out as soon as Toy Story 3 enters the market.