I have all my fields strongly typed but ran into problem with the api returning null in the vote_average. Is it generally preferred to treat fields as objects and check in code or is this a passing issue?

{

"page": 1,
"results": [
    {
        "adult": false,
        "backdrop_path": "/v8CJJ2MsYA3C876yII75SPMLUfA.jpg",
        "id": 9884,
        "original_title": "Collateral Damage",
        "release_date": "2002-02-03",
        "poster_path": "/o5TScwlDu3uPzbqZ5IYwlUtMP4O.jpg",
        "popularity": 2.06211273132946,
        "title": "Collateral Damage",
        "vote_average": null,
        "vote_count": 40
    }
],
"total_pages": 1,
"total_results": 1

}