Rotten Tomatoes Removes Critics' “Average Rating"

Here’s another reason to prefer Metacritic over Rotten Tomatoes.

It looks like Rotten Tomatoes has removed all average ratings, including those from critics. This doesn’t appear to be a bug, and the aggregate site has more or less confirmed it via their FAQ section.

If this change is permanent — which would be incredibly disappointing — it would be the first time average scores have been missing since their introduction, in 2003. There was a similar situation with TV scores disappearing in early 2024, but that was part of a site redesign, and they returned when the update rolled out. This time, though, everything seems to be gone without explanation.

The average rating from critics on Rotten Tomatoes is important because it provides a more nuanced view of critical consensus than the Tomatometer alone. While the Tomatometer shows the percentage of positive reviews, the average rating reflects how strongly critics actually felt about a film, revealing whether praise was mild or enthusiastic. This helps users better gauge a movie's overall quality and compare films more accurately, offering a clearer picture of critical sentiment beyond a simple pass/fail metric.

Tomatometer is not an average of scores, it’s an average of 👍 and 👎

Was it studio pressure that resulted in this crackdown? I’ve noticed many more people have been referring to the critical average ratings more and more on their social media.

Historically, Rotten Tomatoes has made similar changes in response to … external pressures. For instance, in 2019, the company removed the "Want to See" score during a film's pre-release period to combat review bombing. Then, in 2024, Rotten Tomatoes rebranded its audience score as the "Popcornmeter" and introduced a "Verified Hot" badge, which is only given to films with a verified audience score of 90% or higher among users who have purchased a ticket through Fandango. ​