The Woman King has received mostly glowing reviews, giving it one of the year’s best Rotten Tomatoes scores. 2022 has seen a number of well reviewed movies, but the strength and consistency of The Woman King‘s reviews set it apart from many other theatrical releases this year.
Set in the mid-1820s, The Woman King tells the story of an army of female warriors trained by General Nanisca (Viola Davis) to defend the West African nation of Dahomey. As an epic war film loosely based on historical events and starring women of color, The Woman King has a lot going for it on paper, but for a September release in an already complicated post-COVID theatrical environment, the positive reviews and high Rotten Tomatoes score are an especially great sign.
Obviously strong review scores in Rotten Tomatoes are always a good thing, but The Woman King‘s Rotten Tomatoes rating doesn’t only make it one of the better reviewed films this year, but in a year mostly dominated by franchise sequels, with just a few exceptions, so it’s encouraging to see a movie like The Woman King get such a positive reaction. Here’s how its Rotten Tomatoes score sets it apart.
The Woman King‘s Rotten Tomatoes score currently stands at 94 percent Fresh, coming from 118 positive reviews out of a total of 125 counted by the review aggregator (meaning only 7 reviews are counted as negative or “Rotten”). The 94 percent Rotten Tomatoes score is clearly a big sign of success, but the total number of reviews for The Woman Kingis also a positive sign in and of itself. While big franchises tend to get more total reviews than The Woman King has, with the average MCU movie seeing almost 380 reviews on each movie, for a non-franchise movie, The Woman King‘s 125 opening weekend reviews from critics is also a good sign for the movie’s popularity.
The positive reviews also extend to Rotten Tomatoes’ specially selected “Top Critics” category, seeing the exact same 94 percent from 36 Top Critics (meaning only two Top Critics gave it a Rotten review). The Rotten Tomatoes scores for both all critics and Top Critics simply represents the present age of reviews that are generally positive, but the actual average rating of all the reviews is also impressive, earning an average score of 7.8 out of 10, which is higher than the MCU’s 7.18 out of 10 average review rating. Obviously the movie is drastically different than most MCU movies, but as a franchise with consistently high scores it serves as a good point of comparison to use as a benchmark.
