The Flash received rave reviews from early critic screenings and numerous pre-release fan screenings, but after it arrived in theaters its audience score on Rotten Tomatoes plummeted. It's not uncommon for movies to see big changes to their Rotten Tomatoes scores after release, but it's usually the critic score that sees a sharp decline, so what's different about The Flash and its Rotten Tomatoes audience score for the post-release drop to look so different to other movies?
For months, The Flash has been heralded as one of the best comic book movies of all time, and not just from critics and fans, but even a plethora of celebrities like Tom Cruise, Stephen King, Jaden Smith, and more; however, now that it's finally in theaters, it's being lambasted for the way it looks, criticized for accusations made against Ezra Miller, attacked over some of its cameos, and more. The mood has completely shifted, and the Rotten Tomatoes score has also taken a big dive. There's a few reasons for this, and one of the biggest is Warner Bros. Discovery's marketing and release strategy.
The Flash's Rotten Tomatoes Score Was Front-Loaded With Positive Reviews
WB held dozens of pre-release fan screenings for The Flash, effectively drumming up super positive word of mouth and flooding social media with positive reviews in the weeks before The Flash's release. While all these reviews from fans were authentic, they're also curated from a section of the audience predisposed to like the movie more than the general audience. As a result, when The Flash's Rotten Tomatoes score finally debuted, the first wave of audience reviews were all from fans who had already seen and loved it, causing it to open around 95 percent before dropping to 86 percent by the end of the weekend.
Why The Flash's Rotten Tomatoes Score Dropped So Much
The general audience clearly isn't as positive about The Flash as the fans who saw it first, so by the time the score balanced out, it had dropped significantly from its opening number. Interesting, this isn't the first time a DCEU movie has seen its Rotten Tomatoes score plummet so much, although the last time it happened to a significant degree was with the Rotten Tomatoes critic score for Wonder Woman 1984, which actually dropped so significantly it lost its Fresh status. Fortunately, The Flash's score didn't swing so significantly, but it's still a sharp decline from its Rotten Tomatoes debut.
While WB's pre-release marketing strategy of hyping up the movie's quality was largely effective in establishing a narrative that The Flash was a really good movie, some are now questioning if the strategy might have actually been too effective, resulting in backlash when reviews saying it's anything less than "one of the best comic book movies of all time" arrived. The whiplash in the narrative surrounding The Flash's quality may have been significantly less if expectations weren't set so high. Although with how complicated the discourse has been around almost every DC movie for the last decade, it's not clear if The Flash ever stood a chance in the first place.
