‘The Odyssey’ Faces Review Bombing on IMDb Yet Achieves High Ratings

Christopher Nolan has never had a film labeled Rotten throughout his entire career, and ‘The Odyssey’ is no exception. The film has debuted with an impressive 95 percent fresh score on Rotten Tomatoes and an 88 on Metacritic, placing it among the most acclaimed works of Nolan’s career and aligning it with the response to films like ‘Oppenheimer’.

Critics have overwhelmingly praised the film. Variety’s review described it as a genuinely grand and gutsy vision, while RogerEbert.com awarded it a glowing four-star rating, with the critic expressing his eagerness to follow Odysseus wherever the story leads. This kind of consensus typically leaves little room for controversy, yet the audience scores present a starkly different narrative.

On IMDb, ‘The Odyssey’ currently boasts a weighted rating of 8.3 out of 10 from over 56,000 votes, a commendable figure by any measure. However, buried within that overall score is a familiar pattern for those who have observed similar controversies: a disproportionately large number of one-star ratings alongside a significant wave of perfect tens.

According to the platform’s user rating breakdown, 37 percent of voters awarded the film a perfect 10, while a notable 13.9 percent assigned it the lowest possible score of one star. This bimodal distribution, characterized by extreme spikes at both ends of the scale and a lack of middle ground, is widely seen as a clear indication of coordinated review bombing rather than an organic audience reaction.

This isn’t the first major blockbuster to experience such a pattern. Disney’s 2023 live-action ‘The Little Mermaid’ saw over 39 percent of its IMDb ratings come in at one star despite a favorable overall score, a wave of negative voting linked to backlash over Halle Bailey’s casting as Ariel, which prompted IMDb to implement an alternate weighting system to maintain the reliability of its ratings. Similarly, Amazon’s ‘Rings of Power’ and the Star Wars series ‘The Acolyte’ faced comparable rating patterns during their release periods.

‘The Odyssey’ also has its own casting flashpoint that has fueled this backlash. Lupita Nyong’o’s role as Helen of Troy faced significant criticism online prior to the film’s release, a point that Variety’s review addressed, noting that the character’s portrayal in the final film undermines the culture war narrative that had developed around her casting.

Despite the controversy, the film’s box office performance and critical acclaim suggest that the review bombing has had little impact on its momentum. With IMAX 70mm screenings selling out weeks in advance and overwhelmingly positive reviews continuing to pour in, ‘The Odyssey’ seems poised to be remembered as one of Nolan’s most celebrated films, regardless of the skewed audience score.

For a filmmaker known for his ambitious, large-scale storytelling, this latest controversy appears more like background noise than a significant blemish on the film’s legacy. Have you seen ‘The Odyssey’ yet, and do you believe its IMDb score accurately reflects audience sentiment? Share your thoughts in the comments.