Why King Arthur: Legend Of The Sword Flopped So Hard

3. The Scathing Critical Consensus

King Arthur landed a disappointing 26% on Rotten Tomatoes, which resulted in a flood of articles about how critics were "trashing" the movie despite the average score sitting at a not-awful 4.6/10. Round it up to a 5/10 and you have a supposedly pretty average film.

But the percentage score is all most people care about, and upon seeing that, many audiences were no doubt dissuaded from parting with their hard-earned cash.

There are certainly critic-proof movies out there, but due to the fairly opaque marketing campaign, a lot of people were waiting on word from reviews before heading to the cinema, and the critical ambivalence spoke volumes.