Rotten Tomatoes Lambasted For Joker’s Negative Label Despite Having Same Score As Marvel Movies

It looks like there's something fishy going on with Joker's Rotten Tomatoes score.

Reviews for Todd Phillip's highly anticipated comic book movie continue to pour in, and while the film's been receiving overwhelmingly positive responses from quite a number of critics, mediocre reviews for the film have been labeled as "Rotten" on Rotten Tomatoes.

Taking note of the reviews on the review aggregate website, DC fans have noticed that a mediocre review for Joker had been considered as "Rotten" by the site while Marvel films like Spider-Man: Far From Home and Avengers: Endgame with the same mediocre score had been considered "Fresh."

This example comes from the film critic Nicholas Barber, who reviewed the movie for BBC. This mistake by Rotten Tomatoes becomes even more interesting because Barber tells fans who've noticed the biased rating for Joker that he has no idea for deciding the definition of "Fresh" or "Rotten" on Rotten Tomatoes.

Because of this, some fans have been taking this new discovery as confirmation of Rotten Tomatoes having a bias against DC movies.

However, what fans don't know is that when critics add their reviews on Rotten Tomatoes, they're given the opportunity to decide whether a film is "Fresh" or "Rotten." Not only do critics have to add a numerical rating for their published review, but they also have to select the label for the movie – a critic has to choose between "Fresh" or "Rotten" before fully submitting the review. So, no, Rotten Tomatoes doesn't really have a bias against Joker.

Joker premieres October 4, 2019.

Read: Joker Director Todd Phillips Says It's Impossible To 'Beat Marvel'