Why is Infinity War’s Rotten Tomatoes Score Lower Compared to Other MCU Films?

Why is Infinity War’s Rotten Tomatoes Score Lower Compared to Other MCU Films? 

If you weren’t there for the release of Avengers: Infinity War, you might not understand just how much excitement and discussions were being made about this film. It was a cultural event that defined pop culture in 2018. Its current Rotten Tomatoes score is 85%. A good and respectable score but compared to the praise and hype it gets, it’s a bit surprising that the score isn’t higher. Why is that? Let’s get started!

NOTE: I’m not suggesting that 85% is a bad score. That’s a great score especially for big blockbuster films like Infinity War. An 85% doesn’t mean that the critics’ average score was 8.5/10. It’s saying that of the 487 critics that reviewed the film, 85% would recommend the film to audiences. In a group of almost 500 critics, 85% of them giving it a positive review is very good. But as we go into this and we see what films are rated higher, it’s a bit interesting that Infinity War only has an 85%. 

Compared to the Other MCU Movies: This is where things get interesting, Infinity War is the 17th highest rated MCU film on Rotten Tomatoes. That just goes to show how beloved the MCU is that an 85% is only 17th on the Rotten Tomatoes list. Some films that are above it like Iron Man, The Avengers, Guardians of the Galaxy, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Captain America: Civil War, Avengers Endgame, and Spider-Man: No Way Home. You might not think that those seven films are better than Infinity War, but you can probably get why they’re highly rated. The part where some of this gets interesting are the MCU films that not many people praise as one of the best MCU movies have scores higher then Infinity War. Doctor Strange, Ant-Man and the Wasp, Spider-Man: Far From Home, and it even has the same Rotten Tomatoes’ score as Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2. There are people that like those films, but I don’t see very many people praising any of them as top 10 Marvel. I’m more positive on Ant-Man and the Wasp then most people, but it’s not better than Infinity War, it's a middle tier MCU. The middle tier MCU is still very good. Even the two most recent MCU films, Thunderbolts* and The Fantastic Four: First Steps have better scores. With time passing, we’ll see how the reception of those films change. But it’s just interesting to see what MCU films are ranked higher than Infinity War that a lot of people have in their top 3 MCU films or maybe even their favorite. Before we start diving into the specifics, this is some of the data and point of reference for why I’m asking this question and giving my best guess as to what happened. I think there’s three reasons as to why Infinity War’s Rotten Tomatoes score is lower compared to other MCU films. 

• REASON #1: It’s An Incomplete Story: This is probably just the most obvious reason as to why. When this film and Endgame were originally announced, they were titled Infinity War: Part 1 and Part 2. They decided not to go with that because The Russo Brothers thought that Endgame was its own story. But Infinity War leaves off on a cliffhanger that resolves the story established in Infinity War but very obviously sets up Endgame and what that film is going to be about. Over the last several years there’s been several examples of films being split into two and part one ends on a cliffhanger. The most recent example being Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning to The Final Reckoning. But what I think Infinity War does is it concludes the story established in Infinity War. The whole mission and plot revolved around who was getting the Infinity Stones. By the end of the film that answer was given, Thanos got the stones and eliminated half of the universe. But because of the ending it left room open for another story to be told. But to some people it is an incomplete story and they might have left disappointed and unsatisfied because of it and they had to wait a year for Endgame to come out. Once a critic submits a review, they can’t go back and change it. Perhaps the critics that left Infinity War disappointed might go positive on the film after seeing Endgame. But when critics submitted their reviews in 2018 we only had the first part of the story that we had till 2019 to get the second part. 

• REASON #2: High Expectations: When it comes to Infinity War, for so many people this was one of their most anticipated movies of all time. The MCU was on such a hot streak and they’d perfectly been building towards Infinity War. With so many people’s expectations being sky high, there were bound to be people disappointed by it. It’s one of those movies that if Infinity War disappoints it’s likely one of the biggest disappointments of all time. But if you go into a movie like Ant-Man and the Wasp and you’re disappointed by it, it’s probably not on the same level as Infinity War. Because Ant-Man and the Wasp is just another MCU sequel and not the culmination of 10 years of build up. Audience expectations easily could’ve worked against the film because the anticipation therefore the likelihood of it disappointing is very high. The fact that the MCU, Kevin Feige, and The Russo Brothers were able to make two movies with Infinity War and Endgame that everybody had sky high expectations for work and beloved by fans is pretty remarkable. But even if it’s a beloved film, there’s still people going to be disappointed by it. 

• REASON #3: Character Imbalance: I don’t think this is as big of a reason but it’s certainly something to consider here. There’s 22 heroes in this film (at least that’s the amount that got a character poster). When you have a film that’s just about 2 ½ hours long with 22 heroes there’s bound to be some heroes that get put on the back burner. Likewise, there’s going to be characters who maybe you’re not a fan of who get a lot of screen time. For example, if you don’t like the Guardians of the Galaxy then all of the scenes in space you’re not going to like because they’re so prominently in them. Likewise, if you’re a massive Captain America fan you're going to be disappointed because he only has seven minutes of screen time and only appears in three locations in the entire film. Likewise, the film nerfs some major characters like Hulk and Vision and casts them off to the side. If you’re a big Hulk fan then you’re probably very disappointed by the ways that he’s used in the film. I don’t think the character imbalance was an issue at all, that has never bothered me. In my eyes, I think they gave every hero their moment to shine. But to some people the character imbalance is weird because some of their favorites don’t have a lot of screen time or some of these least favorites have too much screen time.