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Air Returns Ben Affleck to His Career Peak Rotten Tomatoes Score
Ben Affleck is back in the director's chair again with Air, and it's already the highest-scoring Affleck-directed movie on Rotten Tomatoes and one of his highest-scoring movies as an actor as well. Affleck has been acting for over 30 years with over 52 movies in his filmography, but he's only been directing movies since 2007, and Air is just his fifth credit as a director. Most of the movies he's directed are very well reviewed, but his last movie, Live By Night earned his only Rotten score in 2016, after which he took some time off from directing, so Air also represents Affleck's return to the director's chair after a short absence.
Affleck is seeing an overall career resurgence after all the drama surrounding his time as Batman in the DCEU and well-publicized issues in his personal life, but thanks to his highly praised performance in The Way Back and his return to directing with Air, a movie about Nike signing Michael Jordan and the origin of the famous Air Jordan shoes, his career returned to a new high point. He's been in movies spanning the entire spectrum of Rotten Tomatoes scores (at least one movie in every 10th of the scale from 0-10 up to 90-100), but Air represents a welcome return to prestige for the actor/director.
Air Has the Best Rotten Tomatoes Score For Affleck-Directed Movies
Ben Affleck has seen critical praise for all but one of the movies he's directed, but Air's glowingly positive reviews and 98 percent Rotten Tomatoes score sets a new record. The first movie he directed, Gone Baby Gone earned a 95 percent Rotten Tomatoes score, The Town earned a 92 percent, Argo earned a 96 percent (and the Academy Award for Best Picture), and Live By Night earned a 34 percent Rotten Tomatoes score. Unfortunately, Live By Night was created during a low point for Affleck, and it impacted the critical reviews, but Air is a good sign that Affleck still has the skill he demonstrated with the first three movies he directed.
Prior to Air, Affleck's average Rotten Tomatoes score as a director was 79 percent, which is pretty impressive considering Live by Night's Rotten 34 percent score. Air elevates his new average to 83 percent. For perspective, Steven Spielberg has an 80 percent average Rotten Tomatoes score from 36 feature films and James Cameron has an 87 percent average from eight feature films. If it weren't for Live By Night's low Rotten Tomatoes, Affleck's director average would be 96 percent. Affleck has yet to make a blockbuster on the scale of Spielberg or Cameron (and doesn't seem interested after his experience with DC), but he's clearly well-suited as a director for movies like Air.
How Air Compares to Ben Affleck's Rotten Tomatoes Average as an Actor
Affleck also plays the role of Nike co-founder Phil Knight in Air, meaning it's also one of Affleck's best Rotten Tomatoes scores as an actor. Prior to Air, Affleck performed in five movies with Rotten Tomatoes scores over 90 percent: Dazed and Confused (92 percent), Good Will Hunting (98 percent), Shakespeare in Love (92 percent), The Town (92 percent), and Argo (96 percent). Including Air, half of Affleck's 90+ percent movies are movies he also directed. He's also credited as a writer on every movie he directed plus Good Will Hunting and The Last Duel (86 percent), so he's at his best when he's both in front of and behind the camera.
Affleck's Rotten Tomatoes track record is all over the place, with almost as many sub-10 percent movies as 90+ percent movies. Altogether, Affleck's filmography as an actor has an average Rotten Tomatoes score of 56 percent, which is one point higher than his 55 percent average prior to the release of Air. A single point may not seem like a big deal, but considering he's been in 52 movies, his Rotten Tomatoes average isn't going to change much with any single movie release - if at all. It'll take a big swing to bring his overall average into the "Fresh" 60+ percent range, but he's trending in the right direction.
Air Gives Ben Affleck a New Career Peak Rotten Tomatoes Score
Despite a number of big hits in the decades since the turn of the century, the 90s has always been Ben Affleck's best decade as far as his Rotten Tomatoes scores go. Affleck was in 12 movies from 1992-1999 with an average Rotten Tomatoes score of 62 percent, although the run included Dazed and Confused (92 percent) Chasing Amy (87 percent), Good Will Hunting (98 percent), and Shakespeare in Love (92 percent). After that, Affleck hit a low point in the 2000s, where he appeared in 21 movies between 2000 and 2009, earning an average Rotten Tomatoes score of 49 percent, but he improved decade-over-decade after that point.
Affleck appeared in 12 movies between 2010 and 2019, improving his Rotten Tomatoes average for the decade to 57 percent. The 2020s started poorly with The Last Thing He Wanted, which earned a five percent on Rotten Tomatoes, his lowest score yet, but thanks to The Way Back (84 percent), Zack Snyder's Justice League (71 percent), The Last Duel (86 percent), and now Air, Affleck's 62 percent Rotten Tomatoes average for his seven movies in the 2020s ties his 62 percent 1990s average. In a recent interview Affleck praised Zack Snyder's Justice League's IMDB rating, and here we see it making a big difference on his Rotten Tomatoes average.
Affleck appears as Batman one more time in The Flash, and has a few other movies in development, but he says he wants to focus on making smaller movies he can shoot in LA so he can stay near his family. If Air's 98 percent Rotten Tomatoes score is an example of the kind of movies he's going to be involved in for the foreseeable future, then hopefully his return to directing and the next roles he chooses will continue his current upward trajectory - if he gets 68 percent on his next movie, then the 2020s will officially be the best decade of Affleck's 30-year career according to Rotten Tomatoes.
