Just a year ago, David Corenswet likely wasn’t a name you’d heard. Now that the actor has been cast as Clark Kent in director James Gunn’s upcoming “Superman” movie, however, you’ve probably been hearing his name quite a bit. Following an inauspicious end to the DC Extended Universe and an equally inauspicious end to Henry Cavill’s run as the Man of Steel, Gunn announced that the newly-launched DC Studios’ first film would be his “Superman” movie, led by none other than Corenswet.
This will no doubt prove to be Corenswet’s breakthrough role. Prior to his casting in the inaugural DC Studios outing, the Juilliard alum had played a significant roles in several high-profile films and TV shows, from the projectionist in Ti West’s A24 horror “Pearl” to aspiring actor Jack Castello in Ryan Murphy’s “Hollywood” on Netflix. He even showed up in David Simon’s criminally under-seen HBO series “We Own This City,” in which he played narcotics investigator David McDougall. But none of these roles propelled Corenswet into mainstream superstardom in the way Gunn’s “Superman” will.
Earlier this year, we got our first official look at Corenswet in the Superman suit with the release of an image that also features what is surely one of the biggest stars in all of Hollywood history: a giant sky laser. But before Corenswet becomes a household name, why not take a look back at his career thus far and remind ourselves of the path he took to get here. Luckily, Rotten Tomatoes provides rankings of actor’s work, which also gives us an excuse to talk about Corenswet’s highest-rated film.
David Corenswet’s highest-rated film on Rotten Tomatoes
While we all wait for “Superman,” 2024 has given us our David Corenswet fix in the form of Ned Benson’s romantic dramedy “The Greatest Hits” and Apple’s “Lady in the Lake” miniseries — both of which feature the actor in supporting roles. We’ve also seen Corenswet in “Twisters,” a film which evidently had a little hint of his Superman performance in it. As director Lee Isaac Chung recalled, after auditioning for Clark Kent during filming of “Twisters,” Corenswet brought a bit of Superman back to the set with him.
But before he was chasing down tornadoes in legacy sequels and trying out to play the savior of DC’s beleaguered cinematic universe, Corenswet was playing a small role in A24 horror movie “Pearl,” in which he appeared opposite a delightfully bonkers Mia Goth. In her review for /Film, Lex Briscuso called the second installment in Ti West’s “X” trilogy “an ambitious and bold work of horror that calls into question what it means to deserve love and the bad things we sometimes do to receive it.” There’s no doubt the star in this 2022 sequel was Goth, but according to a Rotten Tomatoes ranking, “Pearl” is also the highest-rated project in Corenswet’s filmography.
The movie currently enjoys a 92% rating, which also makes it the second-highest rated of West’s trilogy, just behind “X” and its 94% rating. For Corenswet, though, this is the kindest the Tomatometer has yet been.
What does David Corenswet’s Rotten Tomatoes ranking mean?
Where to begin with Rotten Tomatoes? Having written many times about the site’s shortcomings, it’s hard to know what to say about this latest ranking of an actor’s work. This is the site that says there are only two perfect war movies in the history of cinema and that Sean Connery’s finest film is “Darby O’Gill and the Little People.” But perhaps you agree that no war film has yet topped “Grave of the Fireflies” or “A Man Escaped,” and maybe you like Connery’s Disney debut. Well, let’s take a closer look at “Pearl” and its RT score.
That 92% score is apparently indicative of an average rating of 7.9 out of 10. Why? Because 7.9 is the actual average rating critics gave this movie. 92% just means 92% of the reviews aggregated by Rotten Tomatoes were “positive.” But as anyone who has familiarized themselves with the inner workings of the great Tomato edifice will know, the word “positive” is an elusive one in this context. Often, RT aggregators are forced to make a decision about whether, as the website puts it, some reviews are “mixed-positive or mixed-negative.”
When looking at David Corenswet’s filmography on RT, “Pearl” is far and away the highest-rated film on the list. But as his career goes on, there will surely be many more well-reviewed projects to come, and knowing what we know, this RT ranking won’t mean much when several of them are jostling for the top spot. Who knows, maybe “Superman” will come along and blow “Pearl” out of the water — which at least would mean Corenswet’s highest-rated film on Rotten Tomatoes would be one in which he was the star.