Two years ago, Rotten Tomatoes introduced a second official rating system as a counterweight to the classic “Tomatometer” rating that aggregates the scores of many professional film critics.
This “Popcornmeter” provides a comparable number from “verified” audience members who used the site. Just as movies could be “Certified Fresh” by hitting a threshold of positive critics’ reviews, they could now be “Verified Hot” with a Popcornmeter number of 90 percent or higher (pending certain eligibility requirements including “a minimum of 500 verified ratings for a wide release (or 250 for a limited release).”
I can’t say that I have ever decided to watch (or to not watch) any movie based on its Popcornmeter score. Honestly, I don’t look at Rotten Tomatoes for scores at all. When I use the site, it’s because I’m interested in actually reading movie reviews, and it’s still a good place to find links to the work of critics I admire and respect. But when I am on Rotten Tomatoes, naturally I glance at these scores — and I am often intrigued by the divide between the Tomatometer and the Popcornmeter numbers. Are critics and audiences basically in agreement? And if not, why?
Those questions led me down a rabbit hole to see what 2026 films currently the hold widest gap between their two scores. Below are the 15 biggest numbers I could find. In most cases, the audience scores the much higher of the two numbers — but there are still a fair number of titles where the opposite is true. See for yourself.
2026 Movies With the Biggest Gap Between Tomatometer and Popcornmeter
Rotten Tomatoes aggregates critic and audience scores — here are the 2026 titles with the biggest differences between the two.
READ MORE: Movies With Genuinely Shocking Rotten Tomatoes Scores
Takeaways
My main reaction to all of this: The realization of just how much tribal fandom mentality has invaded cinematic discourse. In so many cases, when there is a wide disparity between a film’s audience and critic scores that gap can be explained by fans, who care less about an individual title and more about what that title represents to their broader fandom — whether they are fans of a beloved intellectual property or a controversial musician or a divisive political figure. Conversely, many fans automatically dismiss any critical opinion, no matter how nuanced or informed or widespread among dozens or hundreds of writers, as something formed in pernicious bad faith because it does not come from a “true” fan.
Of course, critics are not fans, at least not always. They don’t necessarily write about Camp Rock 3 or Scary Movie because they love those movies; they do it because an editor assigns them a review, or they consider it their professional obligation to keep tabs on the state of current cinema.
Audience members, especially the ones who will go to the trouble to write something on Rotten Tomatoes, don’t just see a movie because they’re excited about it. They’re invested in its broader success, and in numerical markers of that success like Rotten Tomatoes scores, whether that’s for self-validation or to create some sort of quasi-objective “proof” of a film’s achievements in the face of negative reviews. If a “Verified Hot” score verifies anything, it’s that.
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Gallery Credit: Emma Stefansky
