Audience ratings on RT are only 76% compared to Jumanji, which was panned by the critics, has audience ratings of 90%. I tend to put more weight in the audience ratings myself.
Yes and no.
Audience reviews are from people who were already predisposed to go see the film. So for example audience reviews from "Saw IV" reflect the opinions of people who are already inclined to go see movies in the kidnap-torture-dungeon genre. A positive audience review might mean "Saw IV really takes the kidnap-torture-dungeon genre to a whole new level and is one of the best kidnap-torture-dungeon movies I've ever seen!" but is of little value to somebody who isn't predisposed to see that sort of thing.
Conversely,
**** loyalists can also be the harshest critics. "Hilted lightsabre IMPRACTICAL! Childhood RUINED!!" type rants seem to accompany every new Star Wars release, yet people continue to go see them in vast numbers.
In regard to superhero movies... a positive audience score reflects the views of people who were already inclined to go see superhero movies. But right now superhero movies are pretty mainstream action-adventure entertainment, so that doesn't necessarily mean that the audience score comes just from comic-book nerds. I am expecting that it comes mainly from people who wanted to go see an action-adventure movie, rather than
**** comic book nerds.
The 24% not-positve audience reviews might come from people who thought the movie wasn't good, but I have a hunch that some of it might be "less talking, more punching" type sentiment.
For me, when it comes to "genre" movies, I tend to pay attention to mainstream critics. Every once in a while a movie comes along, like "Guardians of the Galaxy" or "Wonder Woman" or "Deadpool" that generates a "wow!" reaction from mainstream critics. "wow! this is completely fresh and original!" or "wow! this is way better than I was expecting!" and those are the movies I enjoy watching as well. "Black Panther" seems to be one of those "wow!" movies.
-k