‘The Odyssey’ Suffers Unprecedented Review Bombing on IMDb From Trolls, Yet Still Scores Exceptionally High
Christopher Nolan has never had a film labeled Rotten across his entire filmography, and ‘The Odyssey’ was never going to be the exception. The film has landed with a stunning 95 percent fresh score on Rotten Tomatoes and an 88 on Metacritic, numbers that place it comfortably among the most acclaimed work of Nolan’s career and firmly in line with the response to something like ‘Oppenheimer’.
Critics have been almost uniformly glowing in their praise. Variety’s review called the film a genuinely grand and gutsy vision, and RogerEbert.com delivered a rave four-star notice, with the site’s critic making clear he was ready to follow Odysseus anywhere the story led. That kind of consensus rarely leaves much room for controversy, yet the film’s audience scores tell a noticeably different story.
On IMDb, ‘The Odyssey’ currently holds a weighted rating of 8.3 out of 10 from more than 56,000 votes, a strong number by almost any standard. Buried inside that overall score, however, is a pattern that has become instantly recognizable to anyone who has followed similar controversies before: a disproportionately large share of one-star ratings sitting right alongside an overwhelming wave of perfect tens.
According to the platform’s own user rating breakdown, 37 percent of voters gave the film a perfect 10, while a striking 13.9 percent gave it the lowest possible score of one star. That kind of bimodal split, with almost no middle ground and two extreme spikes at opposite ends of the scale, is widely recognized as one of the clearest signs of coordinated review bombing rather than organic audience reaction.
This is not the first time a major blockbuster has faced this exact pattern. Disney’s 2023 live action ‘The Little Mermaid’ saw more than 39 percent of its IMDb ratings come in at one star despite a favorable overall weighted score, a wave of negative voting widely tied to backlash over Halle Bailey’s casting as Ariel that ultimately pushed IMDb to apply an alternate weighting system to preserve the reliability of its ratings. Amazon’s ‘Rings of Power’ and the Star Wars series ‘The Acolyte’ faced similarly lopsided rating patterns during their own release windows.
‘The Odyssey’ has its own casting flashpoint fueling this kind of backlash. Lupita Nyong’o’s casting as Helen of Troy drew significant criticism online well before the film’s release, criticism that Variety’s own review directly addressed, noting that the character’s actual conception in the finished film undercuts the culture war narrative that had built up around her casting in the first place.
Despite the noise, the film’s box office performance and overall critical reception suggest the review bombing has done little to slow its momentum. With packed IMAX 70mm screenings selling out for weeks in advance and reviews continuing to roll in overwhelmingly positive, ‘The Odyssey’ appears positioned to be remembered as one of Nolan’s most celebrated films regardless of the skewed slice of its audience score.
Do you think IMDb review bombing affects how people see a movie?
For a filmmaker who has built his reputation on ambitious, large-scale storytelling, this latest controversy looks more like background noise than a genuine dent in the film’s legacy. Have you seen ‘The Odyssey’ yet, and do you think its IMDb score fairly reflects how audiences actually feel about the film. Share your thoughts in the comments.
