The debate over the differences in fan opinion and reviews has been everywhere you look these days, with a quartet of recent blockbuster movies in particular highlighting that some titles are being enjoyed a great deal more by the audiences they’ve been geared towards, rather than the critics who weigh in with their analysis.
Venom: Let There Be Carnage, Eternals, Red Notice and Ghostbusters: Afterlife all currently boast user ratings on Rotten Tomatoes that are significantly higher than the critical consensus, and none of the four appear to have been hindered in terms of either box office takings or viewership figures by the negative responses.
However, in a most unexpected turn of events, Netflix’s live-action Cowboy Bebop series has found both sides of the divide in complete and total agreement, with the current RT scores sitting on a bang-average 51%. The anime adaptation has been trending online for all of the wrong reasons, with Faye Valentine one of the top topics of discussion after her characterization left a lot to be desired.
It’ll be interesting to see whether or not Cowboy Bebop ends up getting a second season, because it doesn’t really matter what the critics and the diehards think, as long as it draws in enough eyeballs to justify further investment. It’s a shame to see it being greeted so tepidly, though, when it was one of the year’s most hotly-anticipated projects for a lot of people.