‘Thunderbolts’ Has The Third-Best MCU Audience Score Ever

Thunderbolts The trailers looked good, and hopefully the final product would match. And as it turns out, yes, Thunderbolts really is that good, a much-needed MCU win not just among critics, but especially among audiences. Thunderbolts has landed a stunning 95% “Certified Hot” audience score on Rotten Tomatoes, something we have rarely seen even in the crowd-pleasing MCU. That 95% puts it as one of the highest of all time, actually in third place as we speak. These scores fluctuate over time a bit, but we have the top 12 list right here: Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings – 98% Spider-Man: No Way Home – 97% Thunderbolts – 95% Guardians of the Galaxy – 94% Deadpool and Wolverine – 94% Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 – 92% Avengers: Infinity War – 92% Captain America: The Winter Soldier – 92% Iron Man – 91% The Avengers – 91% Avengers: Endgame – 90% Captain America: Civil War – 89% So, that 95% may fall over time because well, these were also people who rushed out to see Thunderbolts last night or this morning when it first premiered, but the point is, in addition to be the best critic-reviewed MCU film in several years, now it’s one of the all-time best audience-scored ones, which is impressive in an age of relative superhero fatigue and an era of Marvel that has not exactly lived up to past ones in terms of quality. We don’t know the box office totals yet, as these are not the big A-list characters of the universe, but if word of mouth spreads, that may really help. And word of mouth seems likely to spread with these scores. Thunderbolts Marvel has confirmed that all members of the Thunderbolts (minus Taskmaster, including villain Sentry) will appear in Avengers: Doomsday, so they were already planning for this scenario. This situation seems like the opposite of what just happened with Captain America: Brave New World, introducing the new Captain America, Sam Wilson, with a rotten-scored film and an underwhelming audience and box office reaction. Thunderbolts at least has two of those three as positives right now. The idea here is that this is more of a “grounded” Marvel film, not filmed 100% in front of a greenscreen like we’ve seen with recent offerings like Quantumania or The Marvels. It has real stunts and real action and while obviously some amount of VFX, they’ve really tried to make it a different kind of Marvel movie. The marketing suggested it would work, and sure enough, it has. Follow me on Twitter , YouTube , Bluesky and Instagram . Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy . Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/paultassi/2025/05/02/thunderbolts-has-the-third-best-mcu-audience-score-ever/