Rotten Tomatoes, the review aggregator website that tends to divide film fans as much as it divides and categorizes the actual films, stirred up quite the fuss earlier this week when it announced plans to withhold Justice League‘s official Tomatometer score until Thursday at 12:01 am ET – a full day after the review embargo lifted.
But because Justice League has been placed under such an intense spotlight in the build-up to launch, it was only a matter of time before the prying eyes of the Internet caught wind of the film’s preliminary RT score, and it certainly makes for interesting reading.
Despite mapping out plans to unveil that all-important number – and, by effect, declare Justice League ‘rotten’ or ‘fresh’ – on the website’s new Facebook show, See It/Skip It, fellow Fandango property Flixster clearly didn’t receive the memo, and openly confirmed the movie’s Tomatometer score to be ‘rotten’ at 48 percent – that figure has since climbed to 51 percent now that the site’s algorithm is beginning to process additional reviews, but it’s still a far cry from Wonder Woman‘s score of 92 percent. For the record, both Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice and Suicide Squad are even further down the totem pole, given each DCEU flick topped out at 27 percent and 26 percent, respectively.
Only 39 reviews have been published at the time of writing – see our handy round-up here, in which the critical consensus deems Justice League a “big, beautiful mess” – so there’s ample time for that number to climb higher still. By the same token, the film’s final RT score could dip below 50 percent, which is still considered fairly disappointing in the grand scheme of things.
But for all of the commotion surrounding Rotten Tomatoes and its review algorithm, it seems Justice League will do just fine at this weekend’s box office, with analysts predicting a strong debut in the region of $355 million worldwide.
Like it or lump it, Justice League will be available to all from Friday, November 17th.