The Audience Score for Star Wars’ latest live-action show The Acolyte has disappeared or been removed from Rotten Tomatoes main page for the series. However, the Audience Score is still available on the show’s first season page.
(L-R): The Stranger and Yord Fandar (Charlie Barnett) in Lucasfilm’s THE ACOLYTE, season one, exclusively on Disney+. ©.
When searching for The Acolyte on Rotten Tomatoes, people no longer see the Audience Score, but instead only see the Tomatometer score, which shows the critics score.
Star Wars: The Acolyte Rotten Tomatoes scores
The Audience Score is still available on the website if you click on the show’s first season page. It currently sits at an atrocious 14%.
It’s unclear why the show’s audience score is not available when accessing the main page for The Acolyte.
Star Wars: The Acolyte Rotten Tomatoes scores
It also does not seem to be isolated to The Acolyte. Other Star Wars shows are also missing their Audience Scores including Obi-Wan Kenobi, Andor, The Mandalorian, and Ahsoka. Interestingly, The Book of Boba Fett still has its Audience Score.
Rotten Tomatoes previously faced criticism back in 2019 when it deleted over 50,000 audience reviews for another Disney property, Captain Marvel. The company explained in a statement to The Hollywood Reporter, “We launched some changes to the movie pre-release functionality last week, which included not allowing users to leave a comment or review prior to a movie’s release in theatres. However, we still invite users to vote if they ‘want to see’ a movie prior to its release, and that vote total is displayed on the site.”
The company added, “We have identified a bug in the post-release functionality for the movies that have released into theaters since our product update last week. The quantity of user ratings (which is displayed directly below the audience score and is intended to only include the quantity of users who have left a rating or written review after a movie’s release) had included both pre-release and post-release fan voting.”
The Stranger (Manny Jacinto) in Lucasfilm’s THE ACOLYTE, season one, exclusively on Disney+. ©2024 Lucasfilm Ltd. & TM. All Rights Reserved.
This explanation made no sense at the time and contradicted Rotten Tomatoes’ notice on how they were updating their website. A blog post explained at the time, “Starting this week, Rotten Tomatoes will launch the first of several phases of updates that will refresh and modernize our Audience Rating System. We’re doing it to more accurately and authentically represent the voice of fans, while protecting our data and public forums from bad actors.”
It continued, “As of February 25, we will no longer show the ‘Want to See’ percentage score for a movie during its pre-release period. Why you might ask? We’ve found that the ‘Want to See’ percentage score is often times confused with the ‘Audience Score’ percentage number. (The ‘Audience Score’ percentage, for those who haven’t been following, is the percentage of all users who have rated the movie or TV show positively – that is, given it a star rating of 3.5 or higher – and is only shown once the movie or TV show is released.)”
Brie Larson as Captain Marvel/Carol Danvers in Marvel Studios’ THE MARVELS. Photo courtesy of Marvel Studios. © 2023 MARVEL.
Back in September 2023, a report from Vulture alleged that the website was being manipulated by a PR firm called Bunker 15. The report claimed that Bunker 15 was paying reviewers to obtain higher scores for various films.
Bunker 15’s founder Daniel Harlow stated, “We have thousands of writers in our distribution list. A small handful have set up a specific system where filmmakers can sponsor or pay to have them review a film.”
Mae Aniseya (Amandla Stenberg) in Lucasfilm’s THE ACOLYTE, season one, exclusively on Disney+. ©2024 Lucasfilm Ltd. & TM. All Rights Reserved.
READ: Leslye Headland Admits ‘The Acolyte’ Is About Breaking “Down The Jedi As A Concept”
Former The Mandalorian actress Gina Carano has also alleged that Lucasfilm and The Walt Disney Company colluded with YouTube to have critics of the company’s films and TV shows removed from their platform.
She wrote on X, “This is the part where KK demands any YouTubers get censored off of YouTube for sharing and laughing at this hilarious episode, she’ll have YouTube disable the thumbs down option because of the ratio she’ll receive, then she’ll have her publicist ghouls make sure Variety and Hollywood Reporter run hit pieces about the South Park creators and their families smearing their names through every useful idiot she has under her thumb who would sell their soul to work for Lucasfilm.”
What do you make of the Audience Score being removed from Rotten Tomatoes’ main page for The Acolyte?
NEXT: ‘Star Wars: The Acolyte’ Episode 6 Falls Off Top 10 Chart For Streaming Originals
