Gerard Butler’s New Movie Has An Unbelievable Rotten Tomatoes Score
Gerard Butler's new film Plane has a 95% Audience Score on Rotten Tomatoes, his highest ever.
If you ask critics about Plane, the recent film featuring 300 star Gerard Butler and Luke Cage star Mike Coulter, they’d say the movie’s pretty good. With a 73 percent Tomatometer score, the action thriller is firmly in “fresh” territory. But if you ask audiences, who have flocked to the site and given Plane an unheard-of 95 percent Tomatometer score, the movie is amazing.
Plane stars Gerard Butler as a pilot who performs an emergency landing on a war-torn island after his plane is struck by lightning. After landing, his passengers are taken hostage by armed rebels. He has to rely on the help of an accused murderer (played by Mike Coulter) to rescue his passengers and get them to safety.
The popularity of Gerard Butler’s latest film with audiences has also been reflected at the box office. Plane, which was produced by Lionsgate, is projected to make $11.6 million on its opening weekend. While this isn’t nearly enough to outpace the dominant Avatar 2 or even the Tom Hanks comedy-drama A Man Called Otto, it’s above expectations for a movie that only cost about $25 million to make.
The audience score is even higher than the film’s respectable B+ score from CinemaScore, a company that surveys film audiences about their viewing experiences — implying that there’s a dedicated group of Gerard Butler fans who enjoy gushing about their love for the movie online. Online audiences have praised the nonstop action and suspense, along with the performances of both Gerard Butler and Mike Coulter.
The positive response can’t entirely be an outpouring of Gerard Butler fans, however, since Butler has never achieved an audience ranking this high over the course of his entire career. His most famous films, which include 300, How to Train Your Dragon, and How to Train Your Dragon 2, sit with audience ratings of 89 percent, 90 percent, and 89 percent, respectively. Other films of his that received high ratings from critics, including the war drama Coriolanus and the historical drama Her Majesty, Mrs. Brown, only received audience scores of 58 percent and 79 percent.
Interestingly, the Gerard Butler film with the second-highest audience ranking was widely lambasted by critics. The movie, Angel Has Fallen, received a 39 percent Tomatometer score but a 93 percent audience score. The 2019 film is the sequel to the 2013 movie Olympus Has Fallen, which was about terrorists taking over the White House, and London Has Fallen, which follows a terrorist attack that leaves London in ruins.
Gerard Butler’s Has Fallen series has gained enough popularity to merit a possible fourth movie, but there’s very little information about the progress of the as-yet-unnamed sequel.
Whether Gerard Butler will be able to maintain his current popularity remains to be seen, but he has plenty of projects coming down the pipeline to prove his worth. These include a sequel to 2018’s crime film Den of Thieves, the action thriller Kandahar, and the Robert Downey Jr.-led comedy film All-Star Weekend. He’s also set to provide a voice for the animated film Naya Legend of the Golden Dolphin, though that one might not be the best test of whether Butler’s star power is staying strong.
