How The Suicide Squad's RT Score Drop Changes Its DCEU Ranking
James Gunn's The Suicide Squad debuted as the highest-rated movie in the DCEU on Rotten Tomatoes, but thanks to a post-release drop, it's lost that title, although it still has an impressive score as one of the highest-scoring comic book movies on the Tomatometer. The DCEU's complicated relationship with Rotten Tomatoes hasn't entirely gone away since the original Suicide Squad scored just 26% in 2016, with Wonder Woman 1984 shockingly dropping drastically, not only losing its "Certified Fresh" status, but falling into a full-on "Rotten" score at 59%.
The Suicide Squad's Rotten Tomatoes drop isn't nearly so dramatic, but it is enough to lose it the top spot in the DCEU's list and revealing some more nuanced perspective of what most critics actually think, since the initial score was only based on a few dozen reviews and it's now gathered 259 submissions on Rotten Tomatoes. Score changes after release aren't abnormal as the pool of critics reviewing after release aren't always as friendly to geek-friendly movies (or vice versa), but sometimes it's more pronounced, as with Wonder Woman 1984, whereas The Suicide Squad really only dropped a few percentage points.
After initially opening at 100% (and quickly dropping down to 97% after more reviews came in), The Suicide Squad has now dropped down to 92%, which is the second-highest rated movie in the DCEU, just after the first Wonder Woman at 93%. The average review score of 7.6 out of 10 (down from 8) is also the second-highest after Wonder Woman's 7.7 out of 10. When it comes to Top Critics, it dropped a little more, going from 95% to 89%, which isn't only below Wonder Woman (90%), but also Shazam! (also 90%); however, its average Top Critic rating of 7.2 out of 10 is still good for second place over Shazam!'s 7 and Wonder Woman's 7.5. The Tomatometer score for all critics was also higher than any movie in the MCU before release, but now its 92% is tied with Spider-Man: Homecoming and Gunn's own Guardians of the Galaxy below Black Panther (96%), Avengers: Endgame (94%), Iron Man (94%), and Thor: Ragnarok (93%).
The other interesting stat before release was the difference between its Tomatometer score and average reviews. Before release, it had a bigger difference than any movie in the MCU, but with additional reviews coming in, that difference narrowed from 17 points (97% Tomatometer minus 8/10 average review score) to 16 points (92% Tomatometer minus 7.6/10 average review score), which drops it behind Thor: Ragnarok, Ant-Man and the Wasp, and Iron Man, and ties with Spider-Man: Far From Home and Doctor Strange. Of course, the DCEU still has it beat with a wide margin, as Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice and Suicide Squad have average review scores of 22 points and 23 points higher than the Tomatometer respectively. It's now also below Shazam, which has a 17 point difference (with a Tomatometer score higher than average review scores).
Of course, as always, reviews are all subjective, and especially after they're run through Rotten Tomatoes' formula, so this is hardly any kind of measurement of actual quality or enjoyment, and merely an estimate of critical consensus. It's clear overall that critics are very positive on the movie, and with an audience score coming in at 84% (for now, audience scores almost always drop even more in the weeks and months after release), it's the second-highest rated by audiences, below Zack Snyder's Justice League at 94%. The Suicide Squad's 259 reviews interestingly make it the DCEU movie with the least reviews submitted to Rotten Tomatoes, which could be partially indicative of the lower turnout (and therefore low box office score), although that number is sure to climb a bit more, it likely won't result in any significant swing in the actual scores at this point. A drop below 90% would place it below Shazam!, but barring a swing that severe, The Suicide Squad is likely secure as the DCEU's second-highest rated movie in Rotten Tomatoes.