The Most Surprising Rotten Tomatoes Scores Of 2018

Duncan Jones is an interesting director with a Tomatometer record that was only recently derailed by his odd stint as the director of the critically ill-fated Warcraft movie. Before that, he was riding high with the low-key sci-fi masterpiece Moon, which scored a 90% on Rotten Tomatoes. His 2011 follow-up, the Jake Gyllenhaal thriller Source Code, topped that with 92%. Warcraft was still a financial success, especially outside the United States, but fans were eager for Jones to return to his own stories, characters and worlds. His next piece of work, 2018's Netflix-distributed Mute, was described as a Blade Runner-esque excursion, suggesting a strong rebound.

While Mute looked like a return to form, it ended up being a generic, lifeless mess with not much to say and not much to show for it except a 20% on Rotten Tomatoes. Netflix seems like a good platform for the smaller sci-fi stories that Jones is interested in telling, but as Uproxx's Amy Nicholson put it, "Mute isn't a good movie. It manages to be both bizarre and boring." As tough as Nicholson was on the film, she admitted that "Mute is more interesting as a bullet-point list of absurdities than as a two-hour film. Yet Jones continues to have my attention." There may still be hope for fans of Jones' work in the future.