‘F1’ Arrives With A Stunning Rotten Tomatoes Audience Score

This article was published on 6/26 and republished on 6/28.

It was easy to believe that director Joseph Kosinski had the potential to produce another beloved blockbuster after his enormous hit, Top Gun: Maverick. And it seems he’s done just that with F1.

While its critic score is a bit below Top Gun, its audience score? Almost identical and almost perfect. Top Gun: Maverick had a 96% critic score and a wild 99% audience score, one of the best for a blockbuster in a decade, at least. F1 has an 86% critic score and, at least for now, a near-perfect 98% audience score, just shy of Top Gun. We’ll see if it can maintain that as more reviews come in, but for now, it’s extremely impressive. Ironically, however, it does have current competition with the also 98%-scoring How to Train Your Dragon live-action adaptation.

Here’s the synopsis for F1 if you haven’t seen the trailers that have been blasting the airways for two months at least:

“Dubbed “the greatest that never was,” Sonny Hayes (Brad Pitt) was FORMULA 1’s most promising phenom of the 1990s until an accident on the track nearly ended his career. Thirty years later, he’s a nomadic racer-for-hire when he’s approached by his former teammate Ruben Cervantes (Javier Bardem), owner of a struggling FORMULA 1 team that is on the verge of collapse. Ruben convinces Sonny to come back to FORMULA 1 for one last shot at saving the team and being the best in the world. He’ll drive alongside Joshua Pearce (Damson Idris), the team’s hotshot rookie intent on setting his own pace. But as the engines roar, Sonny’s past catches up with him and he finds that in FORMULA 1, your teammate is your fiercest competition–and the road to redemption is not something you can travel alone.”

One thing people have noted about F1 is that it has cast the 61-year-old Brad Pitt as a 50-something F1 driver in a sport where the current oldest competitor is the 43-year-old Fernando Alonso. Though I suppose being way, way over the hill is sort of the concept of the F1 movie in the first place.

It’s a hugely high-profile role for Damson Idris, who first broke out in FX’s Snowfall. Now he’s co-starring in a blockbuster with Brad Pitt, and there are rumors he may end up being the new Black Panther in the MCU going forward, and he always slides around the question when asked.

So, F1 seems worth everyone’s time, and given the context of the film, seeing it in actual theaters feels like a must.

Update (6/28): Checking back in on how things are going, F1 dipped a single point, down to a 97%, but I mean, that means essentially nothing and it’s a phenomenal score for a theatrical release. Other metrics have come in and the movie has an A-rated Cinemascore, another metric that indicates huge audience satisfaction.

With this level of success, is F1 going to get a sequel? (F2? ha ha). Likely not, because director Joseph Kosinski is doing a different sequel for his other giant his. He says there’s a story for another Top Gun. Here’s what he told GQ:

“Yeah, there’s still more story to tell for [Maverick],” Kosinski said. “There’s one last ride. So we’re working on it now.”

“Working on it” is what I imagine is the script phase, as it’s certainly not filming or anything. It remains to be seen who would return for this, as the movie was a star-making turn for an actor like Glen Powell, who is now one of the busiest guys in Hollywood. But I’m guessing he’d drop everything and go back for that. And Cruise, obviously, there’s zero question about. Hopefully we’ll hear more about the Top Gun sequel soon, but for now, we have F1 to enjoy on its own.

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