Rotten Tomatoes Score Appears to Be Excellent Predictor of Which Marvel Studios Directors Return

If you're planning on doing multiple projects under the Marvel Studios umbrella, you had better hope your film scores over an 80-percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes. As one astute fan of the Marvel Cinematic Universe has pointed out, anytime a film scored 80-percent or below on the review aggregating website, they failed to film any subsequent movies for the House of Ideas. Naturally, there are some caveats that make the situation appear purely coincidental but overall, it's a stunningly accurate trend.

Shared to r/MarvelStudios by u/JoeBiden2020FTW over the weekend, Marvel Studios apparently prides itself on near-perfect review scores. Joe Johnston's Captain America: The First Avenger starts the trend at the 80th percentile, which ended up being Johnston's lone MCU flick.

Using Rotten Tomatoes to predict whether Marvel brings a director back from r/marvelstudios

Recency bias doesn't appear to be super involved in the listing either. As the Reddit chart points out, most of the films under 80-percent were at the onset of the shared cinematic universe. Captain Marvel, however, is also included with its 79-percent Fresh rating. Despite hitting theaters just last year, filmmakers Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck have already been replaced by Nia DaCosta for Captain Marvel 2.

It should be noted that every Marvel Studios film on the list finished with a rating the review site considers positive. While all of the movies are "Fresh" by Rotten Tomatoes standards, The Incredible Hulk and Thor: The Dark World are the only two on the list without the site's coveted "Certified Fresh" designation.

Then you have the case of filmmakers like Jon Favreau. Though Iron Man 2 fell below the 80-percent threshold (72-percent Fresh) and never returned to the MCU in a directorial role, he earned producer credits on every movie in the Avengers franchise. He happens to be one of Disney's go-to filmmakers, directing a few of the studio's live-action remakes of animated classics; and that's not to forget he's one of the new architects of the future of Lucasfilm's Star Wars universel.

The next Marvel Studios programming due out is WandaVision, which premieres on Disney+ starting January 15th.

What filmmaker would you love to see take a stab at a Marvel Studios property? Let us know your thoughts either in the comments section or by hitting our writer @AdamBarnhardt up on Twitter to chat all things MCU!