Alien Covenant loses Certified Fresh Batch on Rotten Tomatoes. Fair or Unfair?

joylitt
MemberNeomorphOctober 17, 2017"Alien Covenant" mixed reviews did not prevent the movie from originally getting a "certified fresh" stamp on the Rotten Tomatoes website. This certification is synonym of more less unanimous critical praise; however, it can be misleading, specially considering the average grade given by reviewers (e.g.: AC's avg grade is 6.4/10, while Prometheus' is 7/10). A movie gets a certified fresh status when it manages to achieve 75% of positive reviews. It doesn't matter if the movie score eventually drops a little, unless it is by more than by 5%; then, it loses its "certified fresh status". That just happened to "Alien Covenant", as its score slid below 70% for the first time since its release. The audience score remains at 57 % (rotten) But, what is the relevance of this, you might be wondering. On one hand, it shows the movie is not getting any new found love from critics to become one of those "misunderstood" gems some claimed the film was. On the other hand, the new stripped status is more telling of the divisive nature of this particular installment in the Alien franchise and its focus. To put things on perspective, "Prometheus" maintains (and never lost) its certified fresh status at 72% while 68% of the audience liked it.