In news that is sure to get a rise out of the 'Marvel Pay The Critics' conspiracy theorist crowd, Captain America: Civil War has launched on Rotten Tomatoes with a whopping 100% approval rating from 15 reviews with an average score of 8.8 out of 10. Although other Marvel entries such as Captain America: Winter Soldier and Avengers: Age Of Ultron have had similarly high scores within the first 24 hours but eventually settle at least a few points lower, early buzz around the film points to an eventual score north of 90%.
Time will tell if it can be their previous highest rated entry from Marvel studios
Iron Man or Christopher Nolan's
The Dark Knight which both rate at 94% and share the record for highest rated comic book movie on the site. Nolan's second Batman outing is often hailed as a masterpiece of comic book cinema, and Jon Favreau's
Iron Man was the film that spawned a $9 billion shared universe franchise, so the Russo's will have had to have produced something pretty spectacular to beat those two seminal films. Holding on to a score of over 90% will at least give the film the honour of being in the top 4 best recieved MCU films alongside the first
Avengers (92%)
film and
Guardians of the Galaxy (91%).
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/franchise/marvel-cinematic-universe/
For those unacquainted with the RT scoring system, reviews from registered critics are aggregated based on whether they are positive (fresh) or negative (rotten), usually determined as 2 out of 5 (or 5 out of 10) or less as rotten, and 4 out of 5 (or 6 out of 10) and above being fresh. Much of the controversy around their scoring system in the past has come from their interpretation of ratings of 3 out of 5, which need to be listed as either positive or negative. In these cases, the RT staff judge the tone of the review and whether or not the reviewer recommends that people see the film. This can cause controversy particularly when a film is receiving middling reviews, although advocates of the site have frequently noted that the number of 3/5 reviews deemed rotten is pretty consistent from film to film.
These good reviews - plus the combined star power of more than a dozen superheroes including debuts from Spider-man and Black Panther - should see this film cross the $1 billion line which would be a great start to the year for Disney owned Marvel Studios after last year’s Avengers follow up, which they were widely reported as being disappointed with from a box office perspective. For Marvel and comic book fans in general, it looks as though the upcoming
Avengers: Infinity War two parter is in good hands with the Russo Brothers.
Meanwhile over at IMDB the film has a score of 8.5/10 based on 3,235 reviews. I think we can dismiss most of those reviews since the film has yet to be released to the public, and this breakdown of the scores showing votes only in the extremes suggests more a case of fanboy inflation than any actual reviews from people who have seen the film.
You can see the full RT reviews here
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/captain_america_civil_war/ and IMDB here
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3498820/ratings?ref_=tt_ov_rt
Do you have faith in RT scores or do you prefer to make up your own mind? Share your thoughts below!