How Eternals’ Rotten Tomatoes Reviews Changed After Positive First Wave

As the first Marvel Cinematic Universe movie to not earn a “Fresh” score in Rotten Tomatoes, Eternals reviews offer a lot of interesting insights about how Marvel movies are evaluated and how it’s reflected on the Tomatometer. Rotten Tomatoes scores take hundreds of individual reviews with fairly nuanced scoring and boil them all down into a fairly opaque Fresh vs Rotten percentage, but a little deeper digging into the Rotten Tomatoes review data for Eternals can actually reveal a lot about what the reviews actually say.

Before Eternals, the MCU had a perfect track record in Rotten Tomatoes, scoring fresh with every single of their first 25 installments with a cumulative average of about 85 percent, so it was a bit of a shock when Eternals didn’t only dip into a “Rotten” score, but dropped all the way to 47 percent, a full 19 points below the previous MCU low score, Thor: The Dark World. Of course, all reviews are subjective, so the MCU’s Rotten Tomatoes scores shouldn’t represent any kind of official ranking, and there’s surely many fans who prefer Eternals to Thor: The Dark World and a number of other MCU films, but the collapse of Marvel Studios’ previously flawless Rotten Tomatoes track record still makes for an interesting examination.

The most intriguing aspect of Eternals‘ Rotten Tomatoes performance is the way reviews changed over time. Not only did the movie start off with a much more positive score, but the reviews can be segmented chronologically into a few similar groups based on when the reviews were posted, revealing a few things about how reviewers approach Marvel movies and the potential impact Rotten Tomatoes has on reviews.

Eternals’ First Reviews Were Way Better

When Rotten Tomatoes revealed the first batch of Eternals reviews on October 24, the sentiment was initially far more positive. In fact, the first eight reviews were 100 percent positive, and the first three days saw a still-fresh 68 percent total at the end of October 26. The first three days of Eternals reviews were positive, with the daily scores coming in at 67 percent (for 39 reviews), 78 percent (for 9 reviews), and 65 percent (for 20 reviews) for October 24, 25, and 26, respectively.

After that, there was a very steep drop-off, with the rolling average for the next three days (another 46 reviews) coming out to 41 percent, and after that, the three-day rolling hovered above and below 50 percent for the next 78 reviews until November 2, when the rolling average saw another rapid decline. At that point, the three-day rolling average was 38 percent, and the seven-day rolling average was 41 percent. It’s not uncommon for Rotten Tomatoes scores to drop after an initial batch of Fresh reviews, but Eternals opened with a softer Fresh score and dropped significantly.

The next 171 review stretch from November 2 – November 10 (covering the movie’s November 5 domestic release date) was the roughest, with the three-day rolling average hovering around the 40 percent mark before an interesting uptick for the 30 most recent reviews, with the seven-day average climbing all the way back up to 53 percent on November 16, and the three-day average trending even higher at 70 percent. Granted, despite the positive uptick, the volume of review submissions is way lower than before, meaning if this trend continues it will likely only bump the overall score up by one or two percent, still far from Fresh Tomatometer territory.

Why Eternals Reviews Changed So Much Over Time

The reviews pretty cleanly fall into four groups, opening high, dropping down, dropping down again, and then ticking back up. This review behavior has a few interesting implications. Most reviewers try to form their opinions and write reviews in isolation of other reviews, but the way each wave of reviews follows a similar pattern depending on when the reviews were published suggests there may be other unconscious factors at play. Every review in Rotten Tomatoes is tied to a written review where the reviewer expresses their assessment in several hundred words, so you can reference those for a granular and more nuanced explanation for each score, but we can also speculate about what factors caused Eternals Rotten Tomates reviews to trend in the same direction at the same time depending on when they were published.

When it comes to the first batch of reviews, there’s a few factors influencing why they were generally more positive. This group is 68 reviews published from October 24-26 and averaged 67 percent (the only group with a Fresh average). The first potential factor is simple sampling. The very first reviewers to see big franchise movies like this are often inherently more enthusiastic about the franchise in question, which typically leads to big blockbuster franchises seeing their most positive reviews published first. The second factor is the fact that there was no established context from other critics when the first wave of Eternals reviews dropped, which could influence more mixed reviews to lean towards a safer neutral-Fresh score in Rotten Tomatoes.

The second batch of early reviews is where the first big step down happens. This group is 71 reviews published from October 27-November 1 and averaged 44 percent. These reviews likely had a little less of a predisposition towards superhero movies or Marvel, meaning it may have skewed less enthusiastic anyway, but they also arrived after the first wave of lukewarm fresh reviews, meaning there was less unconscious social pressure to skew positive, especially on mixed reviews. Most reviewers try to avoid intentionally allowing a larger critical sentiment from impacting their score, but sentiment has a strong unconscious effect, and while it may not swing a strong Rotten review into Fresh territory, a reviewer may be more inclined to mark a mixed review as Fresh in Rotten Tomatoes if there’s a groundswell of critical enthusiasm for the movie.

The third group of reviews is both the largest and the most negative. It’s comprised of 178 reviews published from November 2-10 and the average This is traditionally when blockbuster movies start to see a drop in their Rotten Tomatoes score, since this wave of reviews comes from more mainstream (and less geek-focused) outlets, so there’s not as much natural enthusiasm for blockbusters like Marvel movies. On top of that, by the time these reviews were published, the score had already dropped into Rotten territory on the Tomatometer, which means a negative review would be much less controversial, which, once again, could have a big impact on those middle-of-the-road reviews skewing Rotten. The average review score in Rotten Tomatoes stands at 5.6 out of 10, indicating Eternals had a lot of mixed reviews, so it wouldn’t take much to tip the scales in a negative direction.

That brings us to the fourth group of reviews, which were submitted after the movie had already been out at least a week. It’s comprised of 30 reviews published from November 11-17 and averaged 53 percent. This group clearly wasn’t in a rush to see the movie, but the late submission could point more towards curiosity about the movie, whereas many of the third group may have been obligatory reviews from people who would have skipped the movie altogether if they weren’t going to review it. Ironically, while the negative sentiment may have begotten more negative reviews in earlier groups, the sharp uptick in this last group could be due to the low Rotten Tomatoes score and generally negative sentiment setting a low bar, allowing the movie to be a somewhat pleasant surprise instead of a let-down.

Of course, this is all hypothetical, as every individual reviewer has their own reasons for scoring the movie the way they did, but these theories could help explain why there was consistency in the way reviews trended over time. Ultimately, every audience member should make up their own mind, but reviews and Rotten Tomatoes scores have a big impact on the way these movies are discussed collectively, so it’s helpful to have more insight into how and why the scores turn out the way they do.

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.

Yes, that’s his real name.

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