How Deep Water’s Rotten Tomatoes Compares to Other Ben Affleck Movies

Ben Affleck’s new movie Deep Water has a low 36 percent Rotten Tomatoes score, but how does its score compare to the scores of his other movies? As Affleck’s 51st movie, his filmography has films running the full spectrum of Rotten Tomatoes scores, so Deep Water‘s low score isn’t anything he hasn’t seen before, but where does it stand against all the other films he’s acted in over the years?

The erotic thriller featuring both Affleck and Ana des Armas is now streaming on Hulu after multiple COVID-related delays and additional uncertainty following Disney’s acquisition of 20th Century Fox. While Disney subsidiaries have released plenty of non-family-friendly movies over the years, an R-rated erotic thriller like Deep Water still isn’t typical for Disney’s brand, which only recently added the Netflix Marvel shows to Disney+ as its first content with a rating harsher than PG-13 after famously including a hilariously censored version of Splash (despite the PG-13 X-Men: Days of Future Past still including nudity and an F-bomb).

From award-winning films like Good Will Hunting to legendary bombs like Gigli or Phantoms, Affleck has seen every conceivable Rotten Tomatoes score, and has the memes to prove it. While Deep Water‘s reviews hardly break any new ground for the 49-year-old actor, it still makes for an interesting addition to his current trend in Rotten Tomatoes.

Deep Water is Ranked 39th Out of All 51 Ben Affleck Movies in Rotten Tomatoes

Ben Affleck has been acting in Hollywood movies since 1992’s School Ties, appearing in 51 roles in the three decades since. Ranking all his movies in Rotten Tomatoes, Deep Water sits firmly in 39th with a Rotten Tomatometer score of 36 percent. Overall, movies featuring Affleck as an actor average 55 percent in Rotten Tomatoes, meaning Deep Water is 19 points below average.

Deep Water only fared slightly better with Rotten Tomatoes’ Top Critics, landing 6 points higher with a score of 42 percent, but compared to other the Top Critics ratings of his other movies, it’s enough to bump Deep Water up to 30th place. Unfortunately, as can be typically expected, while the Top Critic score went up from the critic Tomatometer, the Audience Score went all the way down to 23 percent, 10 points higher than Gigli‘s infamous 13 percent and 28 points higher than his brief Netflix appearance, The Last Thing He Wanted, which scored 8 percent.

Deep Water’s Poor Reviews Didn’t Impact Affleck’s Average Rotten Tomatoes Score

Despite Deep Water having such a low Rotten Tomatoes score, Affleck has acted in so many movies and received such a large variety of Rotten Tomatoes scores that it doesn’t impact his 55 percent average. Affleck’s 51 movies have earned scores in every 10 percent segment from 0 to 100, earning 39 unique scores overall, never earning the same score more than three times. While Deep Water is his only Affleck movie to score exactly 36 percent in Rotten Tomatoes, his last three movies, The Tender Bar (52 percent), The Last Duel (86 percent), and Zack Snyder’s Justice League (71 percent) all doubled-up on scores he already had from previous movies (The Accountant, Daddy and Them, and Triple Frontier, respectively).

In order to have a negative impact on his overall average, Deep Water‘s reviews would have needed to be bad enough to drop the score by 13 points to 23 percent or lower, which would have dropped his average to 54 percent, but it would have been impossible to drop his average below 54 percent, as even a zero percent Rotten Tomatoes score would have still brought his overall average to 54 percent. At this point, it’s not likely any of his movies will alter his average very drastically, as his Rotten Tomatoes review trends have kept his average in the low-to-mid 50s for over 20 years at this point.

Deep Water is Affleck’s First Back-To-Back Rotten Score Since 2017

Affleck’s acting career is defined by a number of hot and cold streaks. He was in some huge hits in the mid-90s before entering a 19 movie rough patch from 1998-2004, during which time he only had four Fresh reviews, after which he decided to make a career pivot to directing with 2007’s Gone Baby Gone, which was critically praised and earned a 94 percent on Rotten Tomatoes (although it’s not included in this article’s Rotten Tomatoes averages since he didn’t act in it). After that, he went on another hot streak with a run of five Fresh-rated movies in a row, averaging 80 percent, and culminating in the Best Picture-winning Argo (which he both directed and starred in), but then he entered his last rough patch, only seeing one Fresh score in his next seven movies, culminating in Justice League, which he’s pointed to many times as the culprit for his decision to walk away from the Batman role due to a number of behind the scenes issues.

After Justice League, Affleck entered a new era of his career, with his next six movies seeing highly praised performances and five Fresh Rotten Tomatoes, but Deep Water and The Tender Bar start to break that streak as the first back-to-back Rotten scores he’s received since Justice League (even though his personal performances in both movies received compliments). Affleck says he’s going to do a lot less work over the next few years so he can spend time with his kids, meaning he’ll likely be a lot pickier about roles he takes, so it’ll be interesting to see what roles he takes next, even if they aren’t likely to drastically alter his firmly rooted Rotten Tomatoes average.

About The Author

Stephen M. Colbert
(627 Articles Published)

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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.

Yes, that’s his real name.

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