Avengers: Endgame's Metacritic Score Is Lower Than You'd Think

Part of the success of the Marvel Cinematic Universe is that it consistently churns out blockbusters that are enjoyed by both audiences and critics alike and this weekend’s Avengers: Endgame looks to be no different. While we won’t know what audiences think until it opens tonight, the film currently enjoys a great certified fresh score on Rotten Tomatoes, indicating that the large majority of critics gave it a positive review. On Metacritic however, Avengers: Endgame’s score is lower than you’d think.

Avengers: Endgame currently has a score of 78 out of 100 on Metacritic based on 47 reviews of the film. That indicates that those 47 reviews of Avengers: Endgame incorporated into the Metascore were generally favorable. However, “Generally favorable” and a C+ level score are a bit lower than you might expect for this movie. It didn’t even attain Metacritic’s “Must-See” award designation.

At a glance this certainly seems too low, especially given some of the positively gushing reviews out there. So what gives?

First, it is important to understand how Metacritic comes up with its score. Many people misunderstand what Rotten Tomatoes’ Tomatometer percentage actually represents, but Metacritic’s Metascore can be even more difficult to interpret. Metacritic curates reviews from only select critics, and not all reviewer’s opinions about a film are weighted equally. And reviews that don’t come with a numerical or letter grade score to translate are assigned one from Metacritic based on the reviewer’s qualitative opinion of the film.

For Avengers: Endgame, of those 47 reviews, only one is negative, two are mixed and the rest are positive. But not all of those positive reviews were 100 scores so Endgame ended up at a “generally favorable” 78. To put that into perspective, some movies in the past year or so that scored higher than Endgame and earned the “Must-See” designation are Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, Mission: Impossible Fallout and A Quiet Place.

It might not be what you’d expect for Avengers: Endgame or what you think it deserves, but the film’s Metascore is actually pretty high in relation to the rest of its MCU stable mates. In fact, the only MCU movies with higher scores on Metacritic are Iron Man with a 79 and last year’s Black Panther with an 88. For the most part the MCU films are between 60-75 with Thor: The Dark World taking last place with a 54.

So while Avengers: Endgame’s Metacritic score is lower than you’d think it would be, it is still pretty good. Ultimately, professional reviews and sites like Metacritic and Rotten Tomatoes are tools you can use to make informed decisions about what movies are worth your money as a consumer. But something tells me just about everyone decided they would be seeing Avengers: Endgame long ago.

Avengers: Endgame arrives in theaters this weekend. Stay tuned to CinemaBlend for all our coverage of the film and check out our 2019 Release Schedule to see what’s headed your way as we enter the summer movie season.