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Rotten Tomatoes vs Metacritic: What Each Movie Score Actually Measures

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Top Gun: Maverick sits at 96% on Rotten Tomatoes and 78 on Metacritic, and neither number is wrong. The Rotten Tomatoes vs Metacritic gap comes from two different questions: one site asks how many critics liked a film, the other asks how much.

The short version: the Tomatometer is the share of approved critics whose review counts as positive, so a film that every critic found merely good can top the chart. The Metascore is a weighted average of how high critics actually rated it, on a scale from 0 to 100. Audience scores (the Popcornmeter, Metacritic’s user score and CinemaScore) measure different crowds again.

What each number counts

Score Who it counts What the number means
Tomatometer Approved critics Share of reviews that are positive
Popcornmeter Rotten Tomatoes users Share of users rating 3.5 stars or higher
Metascore Selected critics, weighted Weighted average of reviews converted to 0-100
Metacritic user score Metacritic users Average rating out of 10
CinemaScore Opening-night audiences polled in theaters Letter grade, A to F

Rotten Tomatoes is owned by Fandango, its FAQ says, a joint venture majority-owned by Versant with Warner Bros. as minority owner. That ownership matters for one detail below: only Fandango ticket buyers can leave Verified audience reviews.

How the Tomatometer works

Rotten Tomatoes defines the Tomatometer as “the percentage of professional critic reviews that are positive for a given film or television show.” Every review is reduced to a yes or no, Fresh or Rotten. A film is labelled Fresh at 60% and up and Rotten at 59% and below. Certified Fresh is a separate badge that needs 75% or higher plus at least five reviews from the site’s designated Top Critics, along with other conditions on review counts.

The yes-or-no step is where the judgment calls live. An analysis from Northwestern University’s Amaral Lab explains that a rating above 60% of the available scale counts as positive, so “2.5 stars out of 4 is fresh.” Reviews with no star rating are read and classified by people. For a review that sits in the middle, Rotten Tomatoes says its curators decide whether it is “mixed-positive or mixed-negative,” and when a critic submits their own review, the site defers to that critic’s call.

How the Metascore works

Metacritic keeps more of each review. According to the Northwestern analysis, it converts every critic’s grade to a 0-100 number (2.5 stars out of 4 becomes 63), assigns a number by reading the review when there is no grade, and then takes a weighted average. Some critics count for more than others, “based on (a subjective idea of) quality, stature, prestige and respect,” and the scores are normalized, similar to grading on a curve.

Each film page also shows how the reviews split. For Top Gun: Maverick, Metacritic lists 63 critic reviews: 87% positive, 13% mixed and none negative, for a Metascore of 78 labelled “Generally Favorable.” Metacritic’s other bands include “Universal Acclaim,” “Mixed or Average” and “Generally Unfavorable.”

Rotten Tomatoes vs Metacritic: five films where they diverge

The Northwestern piece sums up the difference neatly: the Tomatometer is roughly the probability that a typical critic liked the film, and the Metascore is the rating that typical critic would give it. A 99% film is not necessarily better than an 80% one; as the lab puts it, the number “absolutely does not imply that you will like the 99% movie more than the 80% movie.” Here is how that plays out on five well-known releases, using each site’s own pages as checked on October 11.

Film Tomatometer / Popcornmeter Metascore / user score
One Battle After Another 94% / 85% 95 / 6.7
Top Gun: Maverick 96% / 99% 78 / 8.4
Star Wars: The Last Jedi 91% / 41% 84 / 4.3
Venom (2018) 31% / 80% 35 / 6.3
Joker: Folie à Deux 31% / 31% 46 / 4.3

One Battle After Another is the rare case where both critic numbers agree at the top: 94% on Rotten Tomatoes from 448 reviews, and a Metascore of 95 from 63. When nearly every critic loves a film, the two methods converge.

Top Gun: Maverick shows the classic gap. Almost everyone was positive, so the Tomatometer is 96%, but many of those positives were in the mixed-to-good range, which pulls the Metascore down to 78. Audiences agreed with the critics’ enthusiasm: the Popcornmeter is 99% from 50,000+ verified ratings. Our look at Top Gun: Maverick’s opening weekend and summer run shows how that word of mouth turned into box office.

Star Wars: The Last Jedi splits along a different line: critics against audiences. It holds 91% with critics and an 84 Metascore, but a 41% Popcornmeter from 100,000+ ratings and a Metacritic user score of 4.3. Neither of those audience figures is verified; Rotten Tomatoes says verified ratings exist only for US theatrical releases from May 2019 onward.

Venom (2018) runs the other way. Critics were cool on it (31% and a Metascore of 35), while 80% of Rotten Tomatoes users rated it 3.5 stars or higher. The series went on to two sequels; our explainer on the ending of Venom: The Last Dance covers where it finished.

Joker: Folie à Deux is the case where every measure lined up in the wrong direction: 31% from critics, 31% from verified audiences, a Metascore of 46 and a Metacritic user score of 4.3.

Audience scores: Popcornmeter, user scores and CinemaScore

The Popcornmeter is the percentage of users who give a title 3.5 stars or more; a movie needs 50 or more ratings before it appears. When Rotten Tomatoes can confirm a ticket purchase, the default score is built from Verified Ratings, which in practice means a Fandango purchase: the FAQ says reviews from people who bought elsewhere cannot be verified. Metacritic’s user score is shown on a 10-point scale, separate from the Metascore, and is built from ratings by anyone with an account.

CinemaScore takes a different route. Its pollsters stop audiences leaving theaters on opening night and have them grade the film from A to F on a small cardboard ballot; Harold Mintz of CinemaScore told TheWrap the firm usually gets about 400 responses per film. Because everyone polled was keen enough to go on the first night, TheWrap noted, the grades skew high: a B is fine and a C usually signals word-of-mouth trouble. Mintz framed the grade as a test of marketing as much as quality: “The grades say whether the film delivered what the marketing promised.” Consequence reported that Joker: Folie à Deux became “the first comic book movie to earn a D grade from CinemaScore,” while the 2019 Joker had received a B+ and even The Flash and Catwoman had managed a B.

Which score should you check?

Use the Tomatometer to judge whether a film is a safe bet and the Metascore to judge how good it is. A high Tomatometer with a middling Metascore, as with Top Gun: Maverick, usually means an enjoyable crowd-pleaser rather than a masterpiece. A gap between critics and audiences is worth reading into rather than averaging: The Last Jedi and Venom split in opposite directions, and the reviews on each side usually explain why in a sentence or two. And for anything less than a month old, check the review count first: Rotten Tomatoes needs 50 or more audience ratings before a Popcornmeter even appears.

Frequently Asked Questions

How is Rotten Tomatoes different from Metacritic?

Rotten Tomatoes reports the percentage of approved critics whose review is positive (the Tomatometer). Metacritic converts each review to a 0-100 score and reports a weighted average (the Metascore). One measures how many critics liked a film, the other how much.

What Tomatometer score counts as Fresh?

A movie is Fresh at 60% and up and Rotten at 59% and below. Certified Fresh requires 75% or higher plus at least five reviews from Top Critics and other review-count conditions, according to Rotten Tomatoes.

Why does Top Gun: Maverick have 96% on Rotten Tomatoes but 78 on Metacritic?

Nearly every critic was positive, so the Tomatometer is high, but many positive reviews were moderate. Metacritic counts 87% positive and 13% mixed reviews among 63 critics, which averages out to 78.

What is the Popcornmeter?

It is Rotten Tomatoes’ audience score: the percentage of users who rate a movie 3.5 stars or higher. For recent US theatrical releases the default version counts only Verified Ratings from people who bought a ticket through Fandango.

What is a CinemaScore?

A letter grade from A to F based on ballots filled out by audiences in theaters on opening night. Joker: Folie à Deux was the first comic book movie to get a D, Consequence reported.

Sources

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