One of summer’s biggest blockbuster hopes is flying into cinemas on Friday in the form of Superman, but as a film critic it’s Rotten Tomatoes score doesn’t make sense to me.
The eagerly awaited reboot of the franchise, overseen by DC Studios co-CEO James Gunn and starring David Corenswet as the Man of Steel, has bagged an impressive 86% on the review aggregator site based on 154 critics’ reactions so far.
The embargo on formal press reviews lifted yesterday (Tuesday), only hours after the embargo lifted on social media reactions following its Los Angeles premiere on Monday night.
But what makes me sceptical is how many of Superman’s reviews are damning it with faint praise, hovering around the 3/5 range, which is something that a score of 85% does not seemingly reflect to fans accurately.
In the minds of casual film fans who aren’t aware of how Rotten Tomatoes’ system works, it’s easy to see that rating and classify it as close to 90% and therefore assume most critics are lauding the film with near-full mark reviews.
And while some have deemed it ‘peak popcorn entertainment’ and the reboot that ‘will make you believe in superhero movies again’, they are not the vast majority.
Of the 112 reviews on the aggregator site which filled in a rating, 10 gave it a score of 3/5, all of which were classified as ‘fresh’. While it’s true that that mark leans closer to positive than negative of course, I’d argue that a 6/10 – or 60% positive – reaction is hardly overwhelming praise.
Instead, it suggests the reviewer is rather mixed on their reaction towards the movie, but by design on Rotten Tomatoes, the uploader must classify their piece into the binary categories of ‘rotten’ or ‘fresh’ – there is no in-between (‘on its best before date’?) or room for nuance.
And as many traditional outlets don’t permit half stars, it’s the closest you can get to middle marks, so neither positive nor negative, but – again – there’s no room to reflect that.
Elliot Collins of Movie Files literally writes in his 3/5 review (positive) of Superman that he was torn, sharing: ‘While it certainly captures moments of the empowering, hopeful spirit of Superman, the execution left me wondering if a little less ‘everything’ might have been a lot more ‘something truly great’. I walked out entertained, yet also mixed on the film.’
‘The story too can feel scanty and overstuffed,’ the chosen pull quote for Danny Leigh’s 3/5 Financial Times review of Superman begins, before adding: ‘Looking on the bright side, as he would surely like us to, it is also true that very little drags, that Corenswet, Brosnahan and Hoult do well; and that moments here and there are authentically funny.’
And while Nicholas Barber’s 3/5 review for the BBC observes that ‘[Gunn’s] nerdy ambition will make comic fans chuckle, as will his twisted sense of humour’, it also likens the film to an ‘eccentric sci-fi B-movie’ – not a wholly positive comparison.
And in other parts of his review not cited directly on Rotten Tomatoes, Barber says: ‘Superman is a curio that he appears to have made for his own amusement. Whether it will amuse cinemagoers at large remains to be seen.’
He also describes it as ‘glib and flimsy’ and later ‘exhaustingly self-indulgent’, alongside complimenting its ‘fun approach’. This is not the full picture you would get just from observing that Barber’s review has been slotted into the ‘fresh’ category and therefore helped tot up to its 86%.
Other 3/5 reviews mention the movie’s ‘narrative mishmash’ and ‘narrative shortcomings’… you get the point.
And if we nudge up to 3.5/5 and its equivalents (12 more views), for publications and critics that are able to split the whole marks in half (or rate out of 10), there are still some pretty major qualifiers in phrases used, with Casey Darling of the Houston Chronicle commenting that ‘it’s not a great movie, by any stretch, but it is a highly entertaining one with a solid cast, impressive effects and an underlying message of love and respect’.
For the remaining 40-odd reviews that didn’t fill in a rating but were still marked as fresh, pull-quotes included lines like ‘well-paced and entertaining, but not without some significant flaws’ (Chris Bumbray, JoBlo’s Movie Network).
Hoai-Tran Bui’s Inverse review, another scoreless (but marked fresh), described Superman as ‘visually bombastic and narratively indulgent to the point of near-overstimulation’ and suggested that ‘Gunn’s love for Superman is so abundant that it threatens to overflow’.
As of publication, there are also two fresh reviews that appear duplicated on the Tomatometer – those of Discussing Film’s Andrew J Salazar and Deadline’s Pete Hammond’s – so are currently pulling more than their fair weight on the rating.
I say this not to call out deliberate review manipulation – as doubling up can easily happen when individually Tomatometer-approved critics are usually asked to upload their own reviews, while the site’s curation team also scan the internet for reviews from approved sites and platforms to upload.
However, it’s also curious to note that Empire magazine’s 2/5 review of Superman (naturally a would-be rotten rating) has still not been added to the site the day after the embargo has lifted, despite its standing as the world’s biggest movie magazine.
None of this is said to fling around accusations or slam Rotten Tomatoes – it has its use for many of us as a quick place to check the mood or discourse around new films. But it also has its limitations, and Superman’s possible mediocrity is a clear example of them.
A film critic’s verdict on Superman
As a film critic, I’m happy to admit that this piece was driven by my own reaction to the film.
Having watched it yesterday, I’d characterise my response as mixed and say that, were I rating it, I’d probably haven given it a 3/5 – and my mouse would have hesitated over the choice between ‘fresh’ and ‘rotten’ for a long while uploading it.
While I enjoyed the return to characterising Superman as a more overwhelmingly positive force for good and the film’s central performances from new Superman Corenswet (sweet), Rachel Brosnahan as Lois Lane (sassy) and Nicolas Hoult as Lex Luthor (deliciously psycho), the story is extremely cluttered.
There are jokes and fun cameos and an existential crisis for Superman, but the film also revolves around a vague but on-the-nose conflict between two fictional nations that isn’t satisfyingly addressed outside of an interesting, heated discussion Clark and Lois have over Superman’s involvement in world politics.
And while Superman has some extra flavour injected thanks to the introduction of the Justice Gang (Nathan Fillion’s preening Green Lantern, Edi Gathegi’s super-cool Mr Terrific, and Isabela Merced’s intimidating Hawkgirl), it means the movie soon feels like too many becloaked chefs in the superhero kitchen.
Superman needed a bit more room to breathe – alongside other story elements – in his own comeback movie, which doesn’t feel as clean and clear a new chapter for DC Studios as many may expect.
Superman is in UK cinemas on Friday, July 11.
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