While the online backlash against Captain Marvel spreads far and wide across the internet, it feels like the conversation just keeps coming back to the movie’s Rotten Tomatoes page, where over 54,000 user ratings were recently deleted.
Though Carol Danvers’ solo debut only just had its domestic release today, the film has already been the subject of over 58,000 user ratings. To put this into perspective, Avengers: Infinity War – the highest-grossing film of the last three years, and one that hit theaters almost 11 months ago – has a figure that’s at just over 53,000. Needless to say, it’s kind of hard to believe that all 58,000 of Captain Marvel’s ratings came about organically, and apparently Rotten Tomatoes feels the same, since that number was heavily trimmed down earlier today to slightly over 4,000.
Evidently, the site wasn’t just trimming all the negative takes, since the film’s “like it” score currently sits at a mere 36%. But while we can expect the online backlash to persist into this weekend and beyond, things are actually looking pretty promising for Captain Marvel’s first three days. From Thursday night previews alone, the film has taken in a whopping $20.7 million – a higher figure than the equivalent for any other solo debut of superhero cinema save for Black Panther. Meanwhile, THR is tracking the flick’s opening weekend domestic haul at somewhere between $125 million and $145 million, with some analysts going as high as $150 million.
In short, it doesn’t sound like the filmgoing public pays nearly as much attention to a movie’s Rotten Tomatoes user score as Captain Marvel’s most passionate detractors seem to wish, but we’ll surely find out if the analysts have it right within the next few days.