Black Adam’s Huge Critic To Audience Score Gap Is Now Tied With ‘Venom’

There is a narrative that if you watch a big blockbuster superhero movie, you should listen to the critics and not the fans, but that is not the case. Critics give fresh aggregate ratings to every single movie except one, and when we do see splits, they are 10 to 20% different than fans in either direction. They are often the same.

There are exceptions. The gap between critic scores for Venom and its audience scores is the biggest outlier. The gap is 50% with a 30% score by the critic and 80% by the fans. Venom spawned a sequel and an entire Spider-villain universe from Sony, so who really won there?

Black Adam is the second superhero movie to open up a big gap. It is the same spread right now. Thousands of fans have rated Black Adam a 90% instead of the 40% that critics have given it. The critics think it is tied with Justice League. The fans are scoring higher than everyone else. The DCEU isn't normal.

Again, this really doesn't happen as often as fans think, so when you see a gap like that, it's significant. Black Adam is set to do well at the box office, already setting records for The Rock, so it may track along with Venom that way as well. If the film does well, The Rock may be able to build out Black Adam, the JSA and a future rivalry with Superman.

What did happen here? I agree that most of the critics are missing the mark, but I don't know why. It was dumb fun that critics were trying to judge Venom more like a traditional movie. Some of the reviews for Black Adam are pretty eye-rolling.

There was a lot of symbols and sounds. It adds up to two hours of action and comedy concepts that are divorced from rhythm or comprehensibility. The Rock used to be fun, but it's not anymore.

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A superhero film that ignores the moral ambiguity of the original character. Not offensive but not fun. It might not feel so anemic if this had come out a decade ago.

Black Adam wants to be the film that "rights" the DCEU, but it's just another messy, shallow entry into a sloppy canon that won't commit to real ideas

Lighten up a little. I've hated a lot of DC superhero films in the past, but I'm not connecting these criticisms with what I actually saw in Black Adam. Critics were off-based with this one.

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The Herokiller series and The Earthborn trilogy are available for purchase.