2025 Movies Where Critics and Audiences Disagreed the Most

In August of 2024 Rotten Tomatoes introduced a new rating to the site. Their “Popcornmeter” was intended as a companion to the site’s famous “Tomatometer,” which turns movie reviews from professional critics into a percentage that represents whether it’s good or bad. Under 60 percent positive, and a movie is “Rotten.” Over, and it’s “Fresh.” The Popcornmeter works basically the same way, but it’s based on the reviews on the site by “verified” users who pay their hard-earned money and go to see a title in the theater or at home on streaming. Movies can now be “Verified Hot,” just as they used to get (and still get) “Certified Fresh.”

Now that the system’s been in place for a few months, we have the opportunity to compare critics and audiences tastes — or at least, we can compare the critics and audiences whose reviews wind up on Rotten Tomatoes, which is arguably not a fully representative sample. Nonetheless, it is very interesting to put these numbers side by side and see when they sync up, and when they don’t.

Many of the biggest films of 2025 have extremely similar Tomatometer and Popcornmeter scores; The Fantastic Four: First Steps, for example, has a Tomatometer rating from critics of 86 percent and a Popcornmeter rating from audiences of 92 percent. But a lot of the year’s notable titles have drastically different scores depending on who you ask. That includes both movies that flopped and movies that were big box-office hits. Some films were preferred by critics and others by audiences. And honestly, some of those numbers are pretty surprising! So here are 15 studio movies of 2025 so far with the widest disparity between Tomatometer and Popcornmeter scores.

READ MORE: 10 “Rotten” Movies on Rotten Tomatoes That Are Actually Good