The Marvel Cinematic Universe is back on the big screen with Black Widow, whose “Fresh” rating in Rotten Tomatoes marks the MCU’s 24th consecutive Fresh film in the franchise’s flawless review history. It’s clear the MCU knows how to hit big with critics, with even the “worst” rated MCU movies landing a Fresh score, so how does Black Widow stack up to the other 23 films in the MCU?

Black Widow was supposed to come out in May 2020 before it was delayed to July 2021 due to the coronavirus pandemic, but now that theaters are beginning to return to normal, it’s the first MCU movie to hit theaters since Spider-Man: Far From Home in June 2019, which is the longest gap between releases in the history of the MCU. The box office isn’t quite back to pre-pandemic levels just yet, so it’s hard to compare to other MCU releases, but its Rotten Tomatoes score is certainly a return to form for what people have come to expect from the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

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Rotten Tomatoes’ “Tomatometer” is the distillation of every critical review submitted to the platform (322 so far for Black Widow), effectively turning every positive review (no matter how positive) into a 100 (“Fresh”) and every negative review (no matter how negative) into a 0 (“Rotten”), but the true average of every review submitted is also provided, as well as a breakdown between scores from all critics and “Top Critics,” with a separate audience section. Obviously, reviews are all subjective, so the mathematical score doesn’t serve as a true or absolute measurement of quality, but it does reveal a lot about critic and audience sentiment, especially when you look at the data beyond the Tomatometer. So, with the MCU back in theaters, how does Black Widow compare critically to what came before?

How Black Widow’s Rotten Tomatoes Score Compares to the Rest of the MCU

Black Widow‘s Rotten Tomatoes score currently stands at 80%, making it the MCU’s 22nd “Certified Fresh” film (and 16th in a row to be “Certified Fresh,” with Thor: The Dark World‘s normal Fresh rating at 66%), which is a great review score but falls just shy of the MCU’s impressive 84% average. In fact, thanks to the MCU’s consistently high Rotten Tomatoes scores, Black Widow‘s 80% is only good enough for it to rank 16th out of 24 films. Technically Black Widow’s Rotten Tomatoes score is identical to Captain America: The First Avenger‘s, but when you calculate the percentage of positive reviews to the second decimal place, it jumps ahead with 80.12% vs 79.85%. It also opened at 83%, so it’s already fallen slightly, but it’s doubtful to shift much more in the near future with so many reviews counted.

Due to the way the Tomatometer operates (representing the number of positive vs negative reviews, irrespective of the strength of the score), the average review score (the average of the actual scores submitted by reviewers) don’t always tell the same story, such as with The Avengers, which has the seventh-highest Tomatometer score in the franchise at 91% despite having the third-best average review score in the MCU at 8 (out of 10); however, interestingly enough, Black Widow‘s average review score of 7, which comes in just under the MCU average of 7.26, drops it down a rank to 17th, leapfrogging Ant-Man‘s higher 6.9 average (despite its higher 83% Tomatometer score).

How Black Widow’s Top Critics Rotten Tomatoes Score Compares to the Rest of the MCU

Black Widow‘s score with Rotten Tomatoes’ Top Critics is 74%, which is also just below the MCU average of 79%, also landing it at 16th in the MCU. Captain America: The First Avenger, Avengers: Age of Ultron, and Black Widow all share a 74% on the Top Critics Tomatometer, but calculating the full percentage shows Black Widow‘s 73.68% falls below Avengers: Age of Ultron‘s 73.81% and Captain America: Ther First Avengers‘ 73.91%.

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Interestingly, Black Widow jumps to 12th in the franchise if you rank by Top Critic average score instead of the Tomatometer, with its 7 average (identical to its average with all critics) jumping it past both the other 74% movies, Age of Ultron and Captain America, which didn’t see a drastically better Top Critic average than their Top Critic Tomatometer score. This means, while the Top Critics entered their thumbs up/thumbs down reviews in a nearly identical ratio with those three films, their positive reviews for Black Widow were more positive and/or their negative reviews for it were less negative. Also notable, While Black Widow scored below the MCU average in all other categories so far, its Top Critic average is above the 6.92 average for the rest of the MCU.

How Black Widow’s Audience Review Score on Rotten Tomatoes Compares to the Rest of the MCU

So far, audiences are way more positive for Black Widow than critics. It stands at 92%, which is good for fourth in the MCU (below Spider-Man: Far From Home at 95%, Captain America: Civil War at 92%, and Guardians of the Galaxy at 92%). It’s also substantially above the MCU’s 82% average audience score. Having said that, the Rotten Tomatoes audience score is it’s by far the most volatile score as it’s both vulnerable to brigading and can swing substantially over time as sentiment moderates from more impassioned audience reactions opening week. As an example, Ant-Man and Avengers: Endgame both had the same 92% audience rating as Black Widow at this point after their release, but today those scores have cooled to 86% and 90%, respectively.

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Black Widow‘s average audience review score is even more extreme, putting it at  4.5 (out of 5), the second-highest score in the MCU (and well over the 4.04 average), tied with Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame, with Spider-Man: Far From Home coming out on top at 4.6. Historical data isn’t available for this score, but it can be assumed it’s even more volatile than the audience Tomatometer since audiences tend to over-use more extreme scores (which is slightly moderated by the Tomatometer’s thumbs up vs thumbs down method in this case).

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About The Author


Stephen M. Colbert
(627 Articles Published)

Stephen has been writing for the site since 2016 and enjoys all manner of movies and TV, especially when it gives reason to obsess over minor irrelevant continuity minutiae.

Stephen has been infatuated with movie magic on screen and off since wearing out his VHS copy of The Making of Star Wars when he was 7. This passion continues in his work as a film journalist, whether it’s hunting down breadcrumbs about the Snyder Cut, breaking down box office trends, or obsessing over Rotten Tomatoes data, Stephen lives in the minutiae, as listeners of his podcast, Batman v Superman: By the Minute (with fellow-Screen Rant editor Andrew Dyce) know all too well.

When he’s not writing on the site, Stephen can be found obsessing over vintage camera lenses, chasing his tiny children around, or getting himself into trouble on Twitter @smcolbert.

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Yes, that’s his real name.

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