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2022’s Rotten Movies You Loved: Fan Favorites of the Year

Take a gander at the top 10 movies of 2022’s box office. The theater-throttling Top Gun: Maverick. Dark noir The Batman. The soulful Black Panther: Wakanda Forever and silly slapstick of Minions: The Rise of Gru. A connective thread between them: They matched their dollar earnings with praise from critics and Fresh scores on the Tomatometer, with Top Gun (the highest domestic grosser of the year with $718 million) flying high with an incredible Certified Fresh 96% from critics and a 99% Audience Score from over 60,000 Verified Ratings. A true meeting of the minds and mass audiences.

But there are outliers in the top 10. Jurassic World Dominion is the most Rotten entry of the franchise, but it’s held on to a Verified 77% Audience Score and made $376 million, so theatergoers generally approved of the dino-cum-locusts mayhem and casting nostalgia bait. And also the critically dragged Black Adam cracked the top 10 box office, rocking a Verified 89% Audience Score.

In that spirit, we’ve put together Rotten 2022 Movies You Loved! Every movie that made over $1 million in theaters with a Rotten Tomatometer score (59% or lower) and a positive Audience Score (60% or higher). These include lit adaptation Where the Crawdads Sing, two from Mark Wahlberg (Father Stu, Uncharted), two from Liam Neeson (Blacklight, Memory) and the Julia Roberts and George Clooney rom-com savior Ticket to Paradise.

There was the disaster (B.O. and genre) Moonfall, tabloid fodder Don’t Worry Darling, and Brad Pitt‘s stylish action/comedy Bullet Train. Once we got the rogues gallery together, we ranked with the highest Audience Score leading. So while critics weren’t fully into these movies, they still put butts in seats (some a few million more than others) — crucial in an economically rocky year — before what looks like a roaring 2023 release lineup. —Alex Vo