But can it last?
With nearly 50 reviews recorded on Rotten Tomatoes as of midday Friday, Thor: Ragnarok is (so far) the best-reviewed superhero film of all time, scoring a 98% fresh rating that's four percentage points better than the next runners up, 94% fresh Iron Man and The Dark Knight (with the 1978 Superman just a step behind at 93%).
To keep that title, however, Thor: Ragnarok has a ways to go.
Major superehero releases tend to have 250-350 reviews by the end of their reviews cycle, and the God of Thunder just got out of the gate. Hot Rotten Tomatoes starts almost always tend to trend slightly downwards; Blade Runner 2049, for instance, opened to 95% fresh in its first week after reviews came in, only to settle in at 88% after trailing critics finally posted.
What's interesting about Ragnarok, though, is that even its across-the-board criticisms -- that it's a little too jokey and doesn't carry a lot of emotional heft -- don't seem enough to push it in to "rotten" territory. This is a crowd-pleaser, easily the funniest of the Marvel movies, and would take a real grouch to say the experience was "rotten."
In other words, I think it's got a shot at keeping this title – but an outside one.
Which is funny, because you'd be hard-pressed to find anyone calling this the best superhero movie, or even the best Marvel movie. It's simply not. But with the binary nature of Rotten Tomatoes, there's a big difference between "best" and "best reviewed."
There were early indications that this would happen -- Thor: Ragnarok had a ridiculously long amount of time between when the first reviews were allowed to post (Disney/Marvel set the embargo for Wednesday at noon ET) and its earliest public screenings (Thursday Nov. 2 at 7 p.m. ET). As we've previously reported, a long span like that is a good predictor of a high RT score.
And those very early social-media reactions were also over the moon -- another good sign that the eventual score will be high.
So where will Thor: Ragnarok land in the end? Given the way studios are manipulating the roll-out of critical reactions these days, it'll definitely be somewhere below 98%. My guess is that it will fall to 93% fresh, leaving Iron Man and The Dark Knight alone in their rightful spots atop the pile, and sliding in just above Wonder Woman and Spider-Man: Homecoming (92%).
Ragnarok may not wind up being the best-reviewed superhero movie of all time, but it'll always be your friend from work.
