Rotten Tomatoes reveals divisive change to scores that gives fans more power
ABCAre you fed up with Rotten Tomatoes scores not reflecting your opinion about a movie? You’re in luck: its audience rating is about to get a big boost.
It’s a tale as old as… well, the early 2000s, when Rotten Tomatoes rose to prominence on the internet: people love a new movie, critics hate it, and suddenly “reviewers are out of touch.”
Here are a few examples: Tom Holland’s Uncharted movie has a 40% Tomatometer score, but a 90% audience rating. Venom earned a 30% score, but audiences gave it a glowing 80% rating, and Godzilla: King of the Monsters was similarly slammed with a 42% score, while everyday moviegoers gave it a respectable 83%.
Well, the hierarchy of power is about to shift on Rotten Tomatoes, because it’s about to introduce an “elevated designation” for movies with the highest verified audience scores.
“We’re excited to introduce a new elevated distinction to our Verified Audience Score: Verified Hot. This new designation will complement our Certified Fresh rating, helping fans not only find films that are widely praised by critics but also discover those beloved by audiences. It’s a win-win,” the website announced.
For a movie to be Verified Hot, it needs to have a 90% audience score (or higher) on the Popcornmeter with a minimum of 500+ verified ratings (if it’s a limited release, that requirement drops to 250 verified ratings).
Over 200 movies are set to be awarded the Verified Hot label when the feature launches, including Deadpool & Wolverine, It Ends with Us, and Godzilla Minus One.
Why Rotten Tomatoes’ Verified Hot score could be a problem
Rotten Tomatoes audience ratings (much like IMDb scores) are often abused as part of review-bombing campaigns, and bolstering the score could further incentivize that behavior.
Look at The Acolyte: it has a 78% score from critics, but an 18% score on the Popcornmeter. That isn’t to say people aren’t entitled to an opinion, but it’s not reflective of the general sentiment on the series; The Last Jedi, a far more contentious entry in the Star Wars canon, has a 41% audience rating.
It’s happened with other titles; Captain Marvel ended up with a 45% audience rating after Brie Larson’s comments about wanting more diverse film critics.
There’s a flip side: audiences can now rally even harder for movies seemingly dismissed by critics. This is particularly evident in Zack Snyder’s filmography: excluding Sucker Punch and Rebel Moon Parts 1 & 2 (but not his director’s cuts), every movie he’s directed has a positive audience rating, while eight out of those 14 movies have rotten critic scores.
“Maybe Rotten Tomatoes should fix their utterly broken user reviews to prevent harassment and review-bombing instead,” one user reacted on X/Twitter. “Hey Rotten Tomatoes can you do something to combat review bombs and the inverse pretty please? Thank you,” another wrote.
“Congrats to the Comcast exec who’s responsible for Rotten Tomatoes. Didn’t think there was a way to make the site worse… but you did it. Way to go,” a third tweeted. “The IMDb-ification of Rotten Tomatoes is almost complete. Also f**k off,” a fourth wrote.
However, others are delighted at the news, with many people trusting audience ratings over what critics have said (praised, warned, or otherwise). “LOVE this and they’ve been needing something like this,” one user wrote.
“Too many times there are fantastic films that the people love but get terrible Rotten Tomatoes score. This will definitely help balance out the uneven scores that often occur.”
“We all know that the audience scores are more accurate than the critics!!! Love this addition,” another posted.
In the meantime, check out TV shows streaming this month that should be on your watch list.