New Star Wars Movie Being Blasted By Die Hard Fans Of The Franchise
The Rebellion Awakens: Fan Backlash Mounts Against 'Star Wars: The Last Jedi'
Star Wars: The Last Jedi is well on its way to scoring the second biggest opening weekend in cinema history, but that doesn’t mean that all is well in the galaxy. The $215+ million domestic debut may be a short-term win for Disney/Lucasfilm, but the reaction of moviegoers, especially the reaction of hardcore fans who most eagerly awaited the new film, could develop into a longer-term problem for the 40-year-old franchise.
At best, audience reaction to The Last Jedi on Rotten Tomatoes and across social media can be described as lukewarm, but from many quarters it has been colder than the freezing facility on Bespin that Darth Vader used to trap Han Solo in a block of carbonite. The Rian Johnson-directed picture’s Audience Score of 57 on Rotten Tomatoes is truly dismal, tied with the widely reviled George Lucas prequel Star Wars II: The Attack of the Clones as worst among all of the franchise’s nine live-action features.
The gap between the opinions of the 294 critics and the nearly 100,000 individual commenters is so vast that it's hard to reconcile them. The critic-audience gap for past Star Wars movies has typically fallen in the range of two to five percentage points; in two cases, the gap was as high as 14 points (audiences members likedReturn of the Jedi far better than critics did, and the reverse was true with Revenge of the Sith). But the 36 point disagreement between critics and audience over The Last Jedi leaves one to wonder whether a huge Jedi mind trick was played on one group or the other.
The Rotten Tomatoes “Audience Review” home page displays only 4-1/2 and 5-star reviews, but delve a level deeper and you’ll find scads of ½-star and 1-star reviews like these:
Robert S: “It isn't just a bad Star Wars movie, it's a bad movie. Maybe 15 minutes of actual (bad) plot padded to over 2 hours by nonsensical pointless writing.”
Tyler L: “This movie couldn't go 5 minutes without making me cringe or roll my eyes.”
Andrew F: “This movie sucked...like Luke Skywalker sucking on the bloated sixth nipple of some weird green milk producing space cow. That's how much it sucked. ‘The Force Awakens’ had its issues but ‘The Last Jedi’ is a very sloppy story, poorly directed and mostly pointless. This did nothing to further the Star Wars universe and just destroyed some of the magic - with ultimately nothing to show at the end.”
Of course not all the comments are so negative: by my informal count about 30 percent of commenters gave the picture 4 or 5 stars. But nearly 60 percent gave it 2 stars or less, meaning that a solid majority of Rotten Tomatoes commenters evinced great antipathy for The Last Jedi.
Now Rotten Tomatoes is admittedly a free-for-all as far as audience comments go, and there could be lots of franchise haters in the mix. So what if we go to the proven, die-hard fans, those with websites and Youtube channels dedicated to Star Wars? How have those who have been eagerly discussing The Last Jedi for two years responded?
Pretty much the same, is the answer. Here are a few quotes culled from a Sunday Express reviewof comments from hard core Star Warsdevotees:
“Ugh, Rian Johnson’s script really sucked. This movie was a colossal let down!!!"
“Laziest film ever made. I don't even get a Snoke back story at all! Rey is just some chick nobody wanted. Plot holes are as big as the Supremacy!”
“Disney WTF have you done?”
"Still trying to figure it out having just watched it 30 minutes ago. Some great moments in the film but overruled by the absolute cr** in it. Two years for what? Gutted. Disney has well and truly ruined Lucasfilm.”
Many commenters pleaded for JJ Abrams to return and salvage the franchise, not realizing, apparently, that Abrams is the executive producer of The Last Jedi and that it was made under his watch, with his full involvement and approval. The Force Awakens may have been a 'better' film than The Last Jedi in terms of its story logic, but I expect that if many were to revisit the previous picture they'd find it wasn't nearly the triumph they remember.
It should be noted that in-theater exit polling is capturing stronger positive sentiment for the film than online reviews would suggest. PostTrak has 79 percent of its interviewees giving The Last Jedi a "definite recommend," for instance. Still, there's no denying that there is a lot of disappointment and even anger evident out there, across fan sites, Reddit, Twitter, Facebook and other platforms where moviegoers share their views.
With only two and a half days' box office results reported so far it's impossible to tell how much impact all this negativity will have on The Last Jedi's grosses, if any, but it's certainly not what Disney or the filmmakers were aiming for. Still, if past history is a useful guide, Disney shouldn't have much to worry about. Attack of the Clones' terrible audience rating didn't appear to have any appreciable impact on its performance: its second weekend box office drop of 40 percent and its ultimate 3.77x multiplier of lifetime gross to opening weekend were identical metrics to those of The Force Awakens, which had vastly better scores.
The Star Wars movies of the past have proven to be not only critic-proof, but also uniquely and rather oddly audience-proof. Disney will be hoping that this tendency holds true with The Last Jedi.
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I couldn't get through Rogue One last year. I think Star Wars has passed me by.
They will always be gold mines though. Some people have too much of their credibility as judges of good entertainment invested in anticipating the next film in a successful franchise.
The Last Jedi Opens To 220 Million $ , No Matter What Disappointed Fanboys Say
I like The Last Jedi.
You can pick apart any movie. I remember when Empire came out, there were all sorts of complaints from some fans and they sounded a lot like the ones I'm hearing for Last Jedi. 20 years later, it was universally accepted as the best Star Wars movie ever made.
The first video sets up the second video, which is about Star Wars... Trust me, you'll be out a whole 5 mins and get a good chuckle in the process..
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