Venom is officially in theaters everywhere, and fan reviews on sites like Rotten Tomatoes and MetaCritic are pouring in, and they prove that the critics are completely out of touch with movie-going audiences.
The critic score for Venom sits at 28% on Rotten Tomatoes, but the Audience score currently sits at 89%!
The film isn’t doing as hot with audiences on Metacritic, but it’s still well ahead of what the critics view the film.
The difference between audience and critic scores is an ongoing trend. Most notably was Star Wars: The Last Jedi, where critics praised the film while audiences roundly panned it. In fact, on Rotten Tomatoes the critics gave the film a 91% positive rating while the audience score is at 45%. Metacritic saw a similar rating where the critic score was 85 while the audience score was 4.5.
Another film out this week, A Star is Born received high praise from critics with a 93% critic score. However, the audience score just sits at 83%. That’s a huge 10% gap. Even a film like The Predator that got negative scores from both critics and audiences sees a 10 point gap. The critic score was 34% while the audience score was 44%. The horror film the Nun sees a similar trend with critics giving it a 26% and audiences giving it a 42%. That’s a big difference.
You can even look at Marvel Studios’ Black Panther. The film did gangbusters at the box office and critics praised it with a 97% score. However, the audience score is at 79%.
The list could go on and on. Critic scores almost never align with the audience score or are even close to the audience score. Is there even a point of basing your anticipation of a film off critic scores even worth it, knowing it will hardly match up to what general audiences think? It’s possible if you find a specific critic that you like that matches up to your own styles and tastes. However, looking at aggregate critic scores seems to be a complete waste of time for general audiences as their opinions don’t reflect general audiences.
Do you look at critic scores to determine whether or not you will see a movie?