A Massive Gap Opens Up Between ‘Black Adam’ Critic And Audience Scores

Well, as I predicted, there is indeed some disparity between the perception of critics and audiences when it comes to Black Adam, where early viewership has opened up a massive rating gap between the two groups.

At the time of this writing, Black Adam has a 44% score on Rotten Tomatoes with reviews in from 138 critics. That’s dropped another 11% since I last wrote about how it was doing there like 48 hours ago, and it remains the fourth worst-rated DCEU film by that metric.

But audience score, with 500 “verified” reviews in (RT makes you now prove you’ve actually watched the movie somehow after Captain Marvel was bombed to high heaven), Black Adam has a 89% score there.

Now, some caveats.

Verification or not, audience score is still possible to sway with large, impassioned groups of fans. The highest audience score in the DCEU is Zack Snyder’s Justice League cut with a 94%, and The Rock has made himself allies of that crowd with his allegiance to both the Snyder Cut and Cavill’s Superman.

Then there’s just the logic that this early, the kinds of people who are rushing out to see Black Adam on opening day Thursday are probably…more likely to like a movie like Black Adam. But even if the score drops in time, I do expect it to be quite a bit higher. Maybe not a 45% gap like we’re seeing now, but I’d guess a significant one.

So, here is all of the DCEU ranked by audience score, where Black Adam is currently tied for second with the Peacemaker TV show:

1. Zack Snyder’s Justice League – 94%
2. Peacemaker (TV) – 89%
3. Black Adam – 89%
4. Wonder Woman – 83%
5. The Suicide Squad – 82%
6. Shazam – 82%
7. Birds of Prey – 78%
8. Man of Steel – 75%
9. Aquaman – 73%
10. Wonder Woman 1984 – 73%
11. Justice League (Whedon) – 68%
12. Batman V Superman – 63%
13. Suicide Squad (Ayer) – 58%

And then here is the DCEU ranked by critics. You can see that it’s at least somewhat similar, and there are a few surprises in here, like Wonder Woman 1984 being rated higher by audiences than critics and on par with Aquaman. But overall you can see the order is pretty close to the same with one major outlier, Black Adam, which jumps 7-8 places on the list. Again, this may not be permanent, but it’s an early indication that we could have a Venom situation on our hands here to a certain extent.

1. Peacemaker (TV) – 94%
2. Wonder Woman – 93%
3. The Suicide Squad – 90%
4. Shazam – 90%
5. Birds of Prey – 79%
6. Zack Snyder’s Justice League – 71%
7. Aquaman – 65%
8. Wonder Woman 1984 – 58%
9. Man of Steel – 56%
10. Black Adam – 44%
11. Joss Whedon’s Justice League – 40%
12. Batman V Superman – 29%
13. Suicide Squad (Ayer) – 26%

By the end of all this, we will have a few hundred critic reviews and thousands of audience reviews in to get a better picture, but for now, a wide chasm has opened, and we are no doubt going to see The Rock extolling the virtues of his “for the fans” movie and these audience scores soon enough here.

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