Batman vs. Spider-Man
Last week I finished reading Engineering Management for the Rest of Us, a solid read overall. But one paragraph was so bizarre to me that I couldn’t let it go:
I have a theory that the Spiderman movies keep getting better ratings while the Batman movies are getting worse because of modeling vulnerability. Marvel doesn’t cover up Spiderman’s weaknesses. They lean into them as part of telling the story. Spiderman is deeply relatable because his character isn’t perfect. Batman, on the other hand, seems less and less like a human we could understand or be.
I think I audibly said “what the fuck” to myself after reading this. How is “bitten by radioactive spider for superhuman powers” more relatable than “intense training and dedication plus high-end gear and tech”? Not that the billionaire experience is terribly relatable, of course – but it’s at least grounded in reality. That aside, the entire Nolan trilogy was about Batman’s humanity and (struggle with) imperfection. On the other hand, recent Spider-Man1 movies put him into the larger MCU-context, with all the reality-bending multiverse bullshit to go with it. How much less relatable can it get?
The above is a subjective and debatable perspective, but in what kinda bizarro world do Spider-Man movies get consistently better ratings than Batman? The book was first published on November 1st 2022, well after Matt Reeves’ movie was released. I’ve collected some data for the relevant films from Wikipedia:
| Movie | RT % | RT avg | MC | CS | BO |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Batman Begins (2005) | 85% | 7.7 | 70/100 | A | $375.4 m |
| The Dark Knight (2008) | 94% | 8.6 | 84/100 | A | $1.009 b |
| The Dark Knight Rises (2012) | 87% | 8.0 | 78/100 | A | $1.115 b |
| The Batman (2022) | 85% | 7.7 | 72/100 | A− | $772.3 m |
Lowest average review score on Rotten Tomatoes2 at 7.7, and the lowest CinemaScore audience rating an A−. Compare that to Spider-Man, where only the member berries meme movie reached a higher average review rating in recent history and there’s some truly impressive duds in every rating category.
| Movie | RT % | RT avg | MC | CS | BO |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Spider-Man (2002) | 90% | - | 73/100 | A− | $725.8 m |
| Spider-Man 2 (2004) | 93% | 8.3 | 83/100 | A− | $675.9 m |
| Spider-Man 3 (2007) | 63% | 6.2 | 59/100 | B+ | $895.9 m |
| The Amazing Spider-Man (2012) | 71% | 6.6 | 66/100 | A− | $758.7 m |
| The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (2014) | 50% | 5.8 | 53/100 | A− | $716.9 m |
| Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017) | 92% | 7.6 | 73/100 | A | $880.9 m |
| Spider-Man: Far From Home (2019) | 91% | 7.4 | 69/100 | A | $1.133 b |
| Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021) | 93% | 7.9 | 71/100 | A+ | $1.921 b |
While I’m personally of the opinion that Batman is superior in every possible way, I’ll gladly admit that overall these numbers mostly indicate a fairly level playing field. But with respect to the original statement that “Spiderman movies keep getting better ratings while the Batman movies are getting worse” I can only repeat: What the fuck?
