Score Wars: When Audiences and Critics Disagree at the Box Office

The latest biopic of Michael Jackson’s life, Michael, hit US movie theaters on April 24, 2026, and it may be on track to break an unexpected record.  

Fans are receiving the picture fantastically well, giving it a 96 percent audience score on Rotten Tomatoes. The critics, though? They’re far less impressed, giving it a score of only 37 percent. One reviewer’s headline summed up their view: “Michael Jackson biopic is bad, you know it.”  

That gap between audience and critic scores is what interests us at Domo on Data. How often does it happen? How wide does it get? And, what other films have sparked this kind of divide?

As always, we went to the data to see what we could learn. After that, we’re sharing notes on how we built the app to explore the data with App Catalyst below.  

Inside the biggest critic-audience gaps on Rotten Tomatoes

In the first visual, we use scatter plots to map the top 50 highest-grossing films of all time. You’ll find the critics’ scores along the x-axis and audience scores on the y-axis. Hover over any point to see the numbers behind each film. The size of each dot represents the film’s revenue. You can see two big circles, for example, in the upper right section. Those are the blockbusters Titanic and Gone with the Wind.  

The gray dotted line shows where critics and audiences agree. The further a film is from that line, the bigger the gap in their opinions:

• Above the line? Audiences loved the film more. See Captain Marvel, for example, at 60 percent from critics, while a colossal 95 percent from audiences.  
• But below the line, critics were the ones who were more favorable. Note Star Wars: The Last Jedi at 91 from critics, and only 42 from audiences.  

In the second visual, we highlight 20 films with the largest gaps. One standout pattern you’ll notice is with sequels, which critics and audiences disagree about the most. A full 12 of these 20 films fall into this category.

Lastly, the third visual explores genres. Across the top 50 films by revenue, we asked which genres tend to score higher with critics, and which resonate more with audiences?  

You won’t find Michael on these visuals, at least not yet. The box office numbers are still coming in. But in the meantime, explore the data and see what stands out.

To build this app, we combined film review and revenue data from several data sources. Review scores came from Rotten Tomatoes. Revenue data came from Guinness World Records and Wikipedia. We adjusted the revenue data for inflation, brought the whole dataset into Domo, and used App Catalyst to bring the app to life.  

If you’re building your own app, try this: Start in App Catalyst to wire up your app. Then take the code into Claude to refine your visuals.  

This method provides a way to build powerful, custom data applications. We hope what we’ve shared inspires your own data explorations.