Black Adam Has The Biggest Rotten Tomatoes Score Disparity Since Venom
"Black Adam" has been a long time in the making, so when the reviews indicated that Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson's superhero movie isn't exactly super, fans of DC Extended Universe could be forgiven for dreading the dark cloud of critical damnation over the movie. Of course, things didn't turn out too badly in the end. "Black Adam's" $67-million opening weekend smashed Johnson's previous box office records, giving the star his strongest ever opening as a solo leading man (per Deadline).
Johnson himself has been predictably ecstatic over the movie's success, and took to Facebook to thank the viewers for appreciating his efforts. "This phenomenal 90% AUDIENCE SCORE for BLACK ADAM is so gratifying for so many reasons," he wrote. "15 years.THANK YOU all so much around the world for the amazing love and support. In the end, the only thing that matters to me is sending the people home happy. And that's what I'll always fight for."
Thanks to the considerable divide between reviewers and the moviegoing public, "Black Adam" has now earned yet another, surprising distinction ... because the movie has the biggest Rotten Tomatoes score disparity since "Venom."
The difference between the critics consensus and audience scores is massive
Sony's Tom Hardy-starring 2018 symbiote antihero movie "Venom" was hardly a critical darling when it came out, with a Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer score that currently stands at 30 percent. However, audiences disagreed with the critics, and the movie ended up with a worldwide gross of over $850 million against a $100 million budget, making it a wild hit. The movie's very respectable Rotten Tomatoes audience score of 80 percent reflects this.
As Forbes notes, "Black Adam" seems to be following "Venom's" strange trail of 50 percent disparity between the critical and audience scores on Rotten Tomatoes. In fact, Johnson's DCEU debut is nursing an even bigger difference ... yet, doing nearly 10 percent better on both fronts. At the time of writing, "Black Adam" boasts a humble Tomatometer score of 39 percent, but a stellar 90 percent audience score, which adds up to a 51 percent difference between the reviewers' and the viewers' opinions.
Seeing as how well "Venom" did despite its bad reviews, and how strongly "Black Adam" has started, it seems clear that bad reviews are far from a death sentence for a superhero movie ... at least as long as the star of said movie is a brooding, ominous anti-hero.