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It really feels like critics have gotten way less punishing on big-budget movies recently. I can't think of a major blockbuster that got panned by critics since Batman v Superman. Even dogshit like The Rise of Skywalker got 52% on Rotten Tomatoes. I have seen multiple very mediocre films in the last 6 or so years which got RT scores in the 80s and 90s. It's quite baffling. I suppose it's indicative of some kind of corruption, but what? Politics is certainly a component, but this seems more pervasive than that.
One of the strangest internet phenomena I've encountered is that of nerds who are so protective of their IP of choice that they will actively harass film critics they deem insufficiently positive towards the IP in question. (Some nerds will do this without having even seen the movie in question.) If you're a film critic for a publication of middling circulation and you didn't love the latest Star Wars, is it really worth the trouble to write a negative review and get immediately inundated with death threats and doxing? It's hard to blame some for taking the easy way out and saying "cinematography was certainly professional, 3/5".
This definitely isn't the whole story but it could well be a contributing factor, but only for those properties known for having a fanbase of rabidly protective nerds.
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Everything is owned by everybody. Your film/TV/games critic gives the latest big release a bad review, you can kiss goodbye to that sweet ad revenue the big companies are buying from you, plus your critic no longer gets access to previews, early releases, etc.
Amazon owns IMDb. Rotten Tomatoes turns off/filters out negative reviews, so you have two sets of reviews: the 'accredited critics' who are generally favourable to Latest Release, or the 'all reviews' which often are much less positive.
It's down to money and control. The studios pump so much money into the productions, they need to be big hits. To do that, the studios need to control the reviews. Negative reviews are written off as review bombing (it's all the racists and sexists!) and pressure put on so that only positive reviews, be it from sites they own, or access media who get a lot of ad revenue from the studios, are publicised (go see this movie which got 89% on Rotten Tomatoes! Of course that 89% was from the eight critics who gave it good reviews because their papers need our ad money, and the general audience gave it 38% but you don't need to know that).
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The problem with Rotten Tomatoes has always been the use of a positive review to create the RT % score. A review that awards a movie 2.5 stars out of 4 is typically considered a good review and adds to the overall tomato meter score. This leads to problems where extremely good movies (think individual critic scores of 3.5 to 4 stars out of 4) earns a similar RT rating as a mediocre superhero movie (which earns 2.5 stars out of 4). I think a lot of blockbuster, big budget movies are not panned appropriately, leading to an inflated RT score. This, coupled with studios attempts to wine and dine movie critics, coupled with an extremely liberal use of the word “verified critic” leads to high RT scores.
Just look at Mission Impossible 7. That movie had a 94% RT score last time I looked. This movie was nowhere near as good as MI4, 5 or 6. Entertaining as hell? Yes. Worth the watch? Absolutely. But they weren’t making No Country For Old Men or Goodfellas here. Rotten tomatoes is an inherently broken tool, one that should only be used as a jumping off point, not the be-all, end-all.
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Justice League? Flash? Black Adam? Those Fantastic Beasts movies? The entire "Monsterverse" (technically started before BvS but I think they all were criticized)? Morbius? Hell, Gods of Egypt was released in the same year.
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