Critics’ choice? New study discovers white dudes dominate film criticism
A study published by USC from the Annenberg Inclusion Initiative discovered something many observers already suspected but that lacked hard numbers at the time: movie critics remain overwhelmingly white and male. The report examined 19,559 reviews on Rotten Tomatoes for the top 100 grossing films of 2017. White critics accounted for 82 percent of those reviews, while men wrote 77.8 percent overall. White men alone contributed 63.9 percent, compared with just 4.1 percent from women of color. White women wrote 18.1 percent, outpacing men of color at 13.8 percent. Male critics outnumbered female critics by a ratio of 3.5 to 1. The study, titled “Critics Choice?,” marked the first systematic look at reviewer demographics by gender, race, and ethnicity.
Platform Responses and Critic Pool Changes
Rotten Tomatoes adjusted its Tomatometer criteria after the study surfaced. By 2019 the platform had added roughly 600 new approved critics, with more than half women. Sixty percent of the additions were freelancers, and ten percent arrived through YouTube and podcast channels. The changes expanded the pool beyond traditional print outlets and aimed to bring in voices that had been filtered out by earlier credential standards.
Later Gender Snapshot: 2022 Data
Martha Lauzen’s 2022 Thumbs Down report tracked gender ratios in early-year reviews and found women at 31 percent of reviewers, down from 35 percent in 2020. Men outnumbered women by more than two to one. The dip suggested that platform-level adjustments had not fully translated into sustained gains for female critics across the wider critical landscape.
How Critic Demographics Influence Ratings
A 2025 Journal of Marketing Research study moved beyond head counts to examine how critic identity shapes scores. Ratings tended to drop as the proportion of Black cast members rose, yet the decline eased when the critic was Black. The finding indicated that reviewer demographics can affect both the tone and numerical outcome of coverage, adding another layer to the original representation question.
Broader Industry Context: Declining On-Screen and Behind-the-Camera Diversity
UCLA’s 2025-2026 Hollywood Diversity Reports documented declines in BIPOC and female representation across key film roles for 2024-2025 releases. The backslide extended to theatrical and streaming titles alike. While the reports did not track critics directly, they placed the criticism data inside a larger pattern of contraction in opportunities for underrepresented groups.
Study lead author Marc Choueiti noted that even among top critics the conversation was still shaped more by white and male voices. He suggested re-examining the definition of a top critic or casting a wider net to diversify the pool. Co-author Stacy L. Smith connected the imbalance to on-screen and behind-the-camera underrepresentation, arguing that publicity, marketing, and distribution teams could shift access quickly by elevating women of color as reviewers. The 2018 data showed no film among the 100 received equal numbers of male and female reviews. Female-driven titles drew more balanced coverage when restricted to top critics, yet the overall pattern held. The study’s authors framed the numbers as an invitation for outlets to widen their contributor lists rather than a fixed ceiling. Women of color remain a small slice of the published record, and the gap continues to signal open space for new voices.
