Chris Pratt’s New Sci-Fi Movie Continues a Dismal 10-Year Rotten Tomatoes Streak (but There’s Some Good News)

Since experiencing his big breakout in the 2010s, Chris Pratt has emerged as one of the highest-grossing lead actors in Hollywood. While his films have frequently achieved tremendous box office success, Pratt hasn’t always been so lucky when it comes to critical reception. Outside of his various appearances as Star-Lord in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Pratt’s live-action projects have been widely panned for an extended period of time. There was hope that his new sci-fi movie, Mercy, could reverse that trend, as it features a potentially intriguing premise and pits Pratt against the fan-favorite Rebecca Ferguson. Reviews for the thriller are in, and sadly, it’s another critical dud for Pratt.

As of this writing, Mercy has an 17% score on Rotten Tomatoes, with 53 reviews counted so far. This means that none of Pratt’s live-action non-Marvel movies have achieved a fresh rating since 2015’s The Magnificent Seven remake (64%). Outside of the MCU, Pratt’s only fresh movies during this stretch have been animated features like The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part and Onward.

Despite Poor Reviews, There’s Still Good News for Mercy

The creative team behind Mercy was certainly hoping for a stronger critical reception, but they can at least take some solace in the box office projections. According to Variety, Mercy is projected to with the weekend with approximately $10-13 million domestically. It’s poised to knock Avatar: Fire and Ash off the top spot, ending that film’s streak of five consecutive weekends at No. 1. Obviously, that doesn’t make up for the negative reviews, but it’s at least a small victory for Mercy.

Granted, $10-13 million isn’t the largest sum of money as far as box office champions are concerned. The low review scores and box office projections highlight why distributor Amazon MGM opted to move Mercy to a January release date (it was previously slated to open last summer). While holdovers from the holiday season can continue to make some noise throughout January (see: Fire and Ash), the month typically is not a major launchpad for new releases. If Mercy was coming out during a busier time for moviegoing, it would be overshadowed. But now, it has more of a chance to stand out.

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Mercy may win the weekend, though it isn’t going to be a massive hit. That may not matter too much, however. Though Amazon has released several of its films in theaters, the main objective here is to keep adding to the Prime Video library. Box office receipts are always important, but they’re not the end all be all in this case. Amazon is hoping Mercy will eventually find a larger audience on streaming. The odds of that happening are fairly high; Mercy is exactly the kind of film that could emerge as a hit on home media. People may not want to pay to see it in theaters, but it’s a lot easier to convince them to hit play and take a chance on it. Similar to War of the Worlds, some may be inclined to watch it out of morbid curiosity to see if it’s really as bad as the reviews say.

Even if Mercy finds modest box office success and becomes a streaming hit, Pratt will be hoping for a better showing for whatever his next film is. He does have The Super Mario Galaxy Movie on the horizon, but as far as live-action projects are concerned, nothing has been officially dated. Marvel has promised that Star-Lord will return, meaning Pratt could show up in Avengers: Doomsday or Avengers: Secret Wars. Hopefully, both of those will turn out well, but that doesn’t do anything for the actor’s non-Marvel prospects. Pratt has the charisma and action chops to be a great blockbuster leading man, so ideally his next non-MCU movie will start a hot streak.

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