Star Wars: The Last Jedi and Our Obsession With Public Movie Ratings
Times have changed, but as Shmi Skywalker told us, “You can’t stop the change.” Whether we like it or not, we live in an age of immediate access to information, and everybody has a platform to speak their mind and showcase their opinions about anything and everything. This also applies to movie ratings. Sites like Rotten Tomatoes allow consumers to create profiles and vote on films in what is then aggregated as the “Audience Score” of a movie. But why are we so obsessed with movie scores? Is it some deep-rooted sense of justifying our fandom? If our favorite movie gets slammed in audience polls, does that devalue me because I am a fan of it? It is an interesting phenomenon that has taken fans of movies by storm, and the latest headline maker for this is Star Wars: The Last Jedi. So let’s try to make sense of it all.
There is no doubt that The Last Jedi has had a wide range of mixed receptions since its release in theaters a week ago. Film critics overwhelming lauded the film, with over ninety percent of critics giving the movie a positive review. The real bombshell struck when arguably the most popular movie review website, Rotten Tomatoes, began seeing a huge dive in its “Audience Score”. This score is an average score of reviews comprised by ratings submitted by users over the internet, where the only requirement for submitting a review is creating a login account. Thanks to James Shapiro of birthmoviesdeath.com, we can get a better idea of the specifics on the votes submitted for The Last Jedi by the non-critic public.
As Shapiro points out, only six percent of the votes cast for The Last Jedi on Rotten Tomatoes were cast by people with an existing account, with 61 percent showing as new accounts, and the other 33 percent of accounts were deleted after their review was posted.
“(T)here were a lot of respondents who signed up to review The Last Jedi and with Rotten Tomatoes, and a third of the respondents deleted their account or had their account deleted after registering. This suggests an effort was made to create a negative self-selecting bias because these new users chose to register with the site just to have their review counted in the overall Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic score for the title.”
Logic would point us to someone creating an account just to rate this one movie.
Now Shapiro moves on to the company called comScore, which performs opt-in exit polls for movies. This means people leaving the theater are asked to participate in a poll and they agree to participate. conScore will survey 1,000 people in 20 different markets, to gauge the public’s pulse on how they feel about a film. Let’s see how their positive statistics for The Last Jedi matched up against The Force Awakens and Rogue One:
As you can see, all three movies are pretty close to one another, with Rogue One receiving the least favorite (but still incredibly positive) percentages of the three. I made a chart extracting the positive comparisons for all three movies, including the Rotten Tomatoes scores as well. It’s crazy how close The Last Jedi and The Force Awakens are across the board, but it is quite curious how way off-kilter they are in one specific score:
After reviewing this, just from a logical standpoint, would it be fair to assume that there is something strange going on in regards to the Rotten Tomatoes audience score for The Last Jedi? The site released a statement saying that nothing was tampered with in terms of bots or auto-voting, but that does not mean people didn’t galvanize and voluntarily bombard the site with new profiles and negative reviews. To put it in perspective, Tommy Wiseau’s The Room has a 46% rating on Rotten Tomatoes audience score, only seven points lower than The Last Jedi, and there is no scene with Kylo Ren and General Hux randomly throwing a football around behind a building in tuxedos.
We even posted our own SWNN poll on our Twitter account which we also shared on the website and Facebook:
Our 5,000 votes also fall in line with comScore’s results. Now some may look at this and say that those are all die-hard Star Wars fans who will overwhelmingly rate it highly. Okay, and that is fair. But we’ve also noticed that a major amount of comments we receive on our articles about the film are extremely negative, which leads us back to the subculture of public opinion.
For whatever reason, negativity finds its way to the forefront. Perhaps contentment doesn’t inspire people to project their opinions unto others. Maybe if you like something you are satisfied and less inclined to express it outwardly as you might if you were upset. When people enjoy a meal at a restaurant, they don’t always find the manager and thank him, but if their dining experience was horrible, they likely would, in addition to possibly writing a harsh review on Yelp or Google. It often seems if something bothers us or triggers a negative reaction in us, there is an inherent spark to let it be known. There are way more scientific-social studies about this phenomenon beyond our pay grade, but you get the picture.
I didn’t write this to convince people how to feel about The Last Jedi, but more to put the headline-grabbing and public obsession we have with movie scores and ratings on websites into perspective. Whether you liked Rian Johnson’s entry into the Star Wars saga or not, it seems abundantly clear that it took on a massive wave of dissent on a rating platform that may need to rethink it’s regulations and requirements.
But we the public, as individuals, also have power too! We can all take a step back and do what previous generations did and just not care what other people think, to think for ourselves, and decide whether we like or dislike a movie, which should be enough for all of us.
You can find me on Twitter @JohnnyHoey and on The Resistance Broadcast @RBatSWNN
“For my ally is the Force, and a powerful ally it is.”
John Hoey is the Lead Editor and Senior Writer for Star Wars News Net and the host of The Resistance Broadcast podcast
"For my ally is the Force, and a powerful ally it is."
Many fans are terrified of these movies to actually evolve.
To those “RianRuinedMyChildhood” bullsh*t: grow up.
I wish the ST would evolved from the Empire vs Rebellion storyline, one of Luke’s last lines basically stated that: “The war is just begining. the Rebellion has been reborn today”. We already had a trilogy like that.
That’s what I wish these movies would evolve from…
Well probably this is why it’s not bad news that the saga ends with IX. But I think The Last Jedi really brought the story to another level, and “the war has just begun” is a kind of “the biggest battle ever will happen in the last episode of the saga”
Saga ends with IX???
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
And please, big battles??? what is this some stupid marvel movie where the ‘fights’ have to be bigger and better? Yeah, that’s more of a devolution, and its not what star wars is about IMHO. ANH and ESB are the best SW movies and its not because they have the best battles and fights.
Skywalker Saga ends with IX.
What comes next is a new story. A new saga maybe, but the one we are in now ends in the next movie.
The next movies might not be the Saga, but that doesn’t mean it’s done. Haha, you show me any official word from LucasFilm that IX is the last one and then I still won’t believe you 😉
One quick search and I see KK saying “Future stories beyond Episode IX with these new characters: Rey, Poe, Finn, BB-8…”
Here’s my source, where’s yours???
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/star-wars-kathleen-kennedy-teases-more-rey-finn-al-post-2019-1054438
Man you are overacting. Just relax 🙂 I never said the star wars films were over. I just said the episodic saga we know now is over. In other words, there won’t be something called Episode X. That’s all I’m saying.
Later to your source it was announced that a new trilogy would be created by Rian Johnson that won’t have anything to do with the current characters and storilines. Blank canvas.
Almost parallel to that, Daisy Ridley said that she won’t do Star Wars anymore: http://www.businessinsider.com/daisy-ridley-wont-play-rey-after-star-wars-episode-ix-2017-11?IR=T
Both news together make me think that Ridley’s refusal caused LFL and Disney to think that giving continuity to the story without Rey was lame (I agree with them). Wrapping the saga as a trilogy of trilogies and have a new beginning seems the right choice for them.
Now, find me a source in which, later than November 30, Kathleen Kennedy states there will be more Finn and Rey and Poe, and we will keep discussing.
Evolve? Rey trains with Luke, hmmmm….where did that plot point come from. First order following the Rebellion the whole movie,……where did we see that? Finn/Rose go off to a new world and hook up with a shady character who turns on them and makes a deal with the First Order, hmmmm….where did we see that? Then you have a land battle on planet against AT-AT’s. Geez, these all happened in ESB!
Planet killing device. X-wings, TIE fighters, and Stormtroopers. Desert planet. Cantina full of shady aliens. Han in trouble for not delivering something for shady character(s). Secret plans hidden within a cute droid. Hmmmm…Where have we seen those plot points…A New Hope or The Force Awakens? The answer is BOTH. Geez, the Force Awakens is a copy of A New Hope in many ways.
I still liked both…
We’ll see what the drop off is, but yeah, some weird shit going on
Something is definitely a foot at the circle k
I don’t pay a whole lot of attention to movie reviews. There’s just too many times that reviewers are just trying to be Superior in their English grasp.
But I still don’t know how I feel about TLJ. I liked it but like the Force awakens, it’s just taking me time to adjust to the story line. I think I just hoped for a little more Luke being a Jedi. I get it, it’s time for new characters, but I guess I’m just still stuck on my childhood dreams of what happened after ROTJ.
It is a known thing that people are more likely to speak about something they don’t like vs something they do like. When everything is going fine and you’re happy, you don’t have to speak or do anything, but when things don’t go you’re way, it’s “Time to Write My Letter to the Editor!!!”
I think all the negative reviews are legit. I really did not care for The Last Jedi, and I was very much inclined to create an account and give it a bad review for that very reason, but I’m just slightly too lazy, so I’ll just stick to these forums. That being said, the negative reviewers are not truly 53% of fandom, but probably closer to the SWNN twitter poll, which is about 15-20%
Think of the Midterm elections in politics, it’s usually the opposition party that comes out ahead, because the supporters of the party in control are generally happy and not as galvanized to go to the polls to defend their control, even though they really should show up to show their support.
As a total detractor of the ST myself, I haven’t put anything into any review sites, except the SWNN twitter poll, so note that there are many reviews, both positve and negative that will never be garnered by ComScore or RottenTomatoes or wherever.
I would suggest we all consider Benicio Del Toro’s quote:
DJ: It’s all a machine, partner. Live free, don’t join.
From some of the comments I have read from several articles, there seems to be a very vocal, but small, group that really hates Disney’s ownership of Star Wars. They may have a lot to do with the Rotten Tomatoes score. Also, just throwing this out for consideration. There was an article about a month or two ago reporting that some within the film industry, mainly studio execs, that were discussing their dislike for the site. Maybe some of that score is the result of those individuals or like minded folks fudging reviews as a form of protest of the site and/or hoping to slow the box office for Last Jedi.
I loved TFA and R1 yet hated TLJ. I was in shock it was so bad as Disney was 2 for 2 for me. Nothing to do with Disney, it’s just a bad movie, IMO. It’s the first SW movie I won’t atleast see a 2nd time in the theater.
I totally understand that not all people are going to like this movie. I was (and still am) that way with Phantom Menace and a lesser extent Return of the Jedi. It does seem weird that 33% login and then cancel their account. This is no way takes away from those that are truly upset and wish to express so. That shows true love for something they value. There are those that are only focused on the “Down with the House of Mouse” agenda.
I honestly don’t care what the specific numbers are because I agree we’ll never know because it’s the internet. I’m just going by my friends, family, co workers, and people from this site I’ve known since it started a few years ago. The fandom is split and the fans who hate TLJ are not pushing an agenda, they truly hate it. I’m still mad I hate this movie as I never thought THIS would happen, being a diehard fans since 1977.
Sorry, if you are taking what I said as in any way is against you and your friends views. I am just discussing where some of the numbers may be coming from since they seem to be all over the map and the subject of this particular article. I was, in fact, kinda agreeing with you. But there are, not accusing you or your friends, some that have an agenda. That there could be a mix of both going on.
I agree that there is an agenda on both sides but that’s like that in everything: politics, sports, pop culture.
I’m surprised at the utter hatred of this movie from so many fans as I mulled over it all last weekend thinking I was the only one. I really questioned was it me? Then I started reading comments online, talking to friends, watching YouTube reviews and they were saying the SAME complaints I had. This wasn’t nitpicks about hyperspace, these were major plot points like the way Luke was handled, Flying Leia, the death of Snoke, the failure to remotely develop or answer the mystery box questions from TFA. I read that Rian Johnson wanted to blow up SW and make everyone rethink the franchise. Well he’s done that, but I don’t think he wanted fans like me to not care about Episode 9!
I don’t have a very wide circle of die-hard star wars fans, but of the two that are my friends and my younger brother, we all were very disappointed with TLJ
Same exact thing for me!
For me, it’s weird. So far, I’ve loved everything Disney has created for Star Wars (I’ll admit being a Star Wars Rebels homer) EXCEPT the new trilogy AND only the new trilogy. My only guess is the more Disney has unfettered control over the story, the more I dislike their decisions. So that’s why I liked Rebels and Rouge One because Disney had to work within Lucas’ OT, yet I also like that they didn’t play it too safe in either one of those (which was my main problem with TFA).
For me, it’s weird. So far, I’ve loved everything Disney has created for Star Wars (I’ll admit being a Star Wars Rebels homer) EXCEPT the new trilogy AND only the new trilogy. My only guess is the more Disney has unfettered control over the story, the more I dislike their decisions. So that’s why I liked Rebels and Rouge One because Disney had to work within Lucas’ OT, yet I also like that they didn’t play it too safe in either one of those (which was my main problem with TFA).
Ok SWNN has to accept that there are fans who didnt like the movie, get over it… its not only rotten tomatoes… youtube is full of videos even cable tv
bitching about this movie, metacritic, imdb and the list goes on.
Ok SWNN has to accept that there are fans who didnt like the movie, get over it… its not only rotten tomatoes… youtube is full of videos even cable tv
bitching about this movie, metacritic, imdb and the list goes on.
I’m very surprised that this great site is sort of questioning the backlash as they should look at the members here. We’re pretty much split. And these aren’t spam accounts as I remember the same people who hate TLJ loved TFA. The movie split the fanbase down the middle as either you love or hate it.
So how would you explain the poll results from our own dear readers? More the 5000 real and different people?
So how would you explain the poll results from our own dear readers? More the 5000 real and different people?
Haha, I’ll explain it the same way that you explain the RT audience score: A bunch of users created fake twitter profiles to inflate the positive reviews!!!
Haha, I know that isn’t the case, but is your question a joke? It’s hardly a scientific poll, I mean what, has it been up for 12 hours? The people that follow SWNN are most likely people that agree with it’s clear editorial opinion that TLJ is good. The more disillusioned fans have already tuned out and honestly just stop caring about SW news anymore because their fandom has diminished, and they will never see this “flash-poll”. Are you as blind as the Jedi Council to not see your own hubris?
Not at all. Since TLJ was released we have more negative comments about the movie on our site than positive. That’s why I wanted to make that poll. I was a bit surprised that so many of our readers disliked the movie. But the poll proved that as always the people who don’t like something are more vocal about it. I respect fans not liking the movie, but no real Star Wars fan would rate TLJ with 0 as was the case with Rotten Tomatoes. No film deserves that.
Yeah, but still 🙂
And you’re right, it’s definitely not a 0. In my opinion it’s a 6 out of 10. Which according to the Tomatometer, I would be giving it a fresh rating, if I were a critic.
I think you’re right, that vocal minorities are definitely a thing, but at the end of the day, polls can’t possible show the whole story, I mean just look at the last election in U.S. Every poll said Trump was going to lose and look where that got us.
So at the end of the day, my point is: I believe that the majority of SWNN readers are naturally going to agree with your site’s editorial opinion, and the trolls and detractors will be always be in the minority on that one given site because why would any sane person stick around just to argue and read opinions of people they don’t agree with…those are the trolls. I 100% agree with your poll that 15% of SWNN audience does not like TLJ, but I don’t think SWNN audience represents the die-hard fandom that you think it represents. I’m sure that is where you will want to disagree… but search your feelings, you know this to be true 🙂
Does anyone deserve a ten?@v@ViralHide:disqus
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2527336/ratings?ref_=tt_ov_rt
If so can we rate from 2-9?
do you realise writing “haha” in every answer doesn’t make other’s opinion weaker?
do you realise writing “haha” in every answer doesn’t make other’s opinion weaker?
I would also like to add – the TWITTER poll is not really worth anything. I’m sure I’m not the only one that doesn’t have a twitter account – and refused to get one just to vote.
I would also like to add – the TWITTER poll is not really worth anything. I’m sure I’m not the only one that doesn’t have a twitter account – and refused to get one just to vote.
“I didn’t write this to convince people how to feel about The Last Jedi”
yeah, you wrote the article to try discredit the negative reviewers by saying that rotten tomatoes should somehow up their standards?
I don’t know why SW apologists constantly have to defend why they like something and discredit other fans that disagree with them.
Ok, moving on…
Hey Lucas, thanks for reading. That’s not what the article is about, and RT should up their standards. Why should someone be able to create 10 accounts to slam OR praise a movie? I don’t care whether someone likes this movie or not, the article is about the fact that all scores line up except one, but that people should not put much stock into what others think about the movie. I thought that was pretty clear.
Ok, so we shouldn’t put much stock in the ComScores or RT critics % because you say we should put much stock into what others think?
It felt like you wrote the article to single out the Rotten Tomatoes Audience Score as the black horse, and it’s the score that shouldn’t be trusted. Critic reviews are important, audience reviews are important, and they all have their own unique biases and flaws and to any degree they can be skewed, but there has to be some +/- that we can accept these numbers as representative of some part of the population. My gut tells me that 25% of Star Wars die-hard fans really didn’t care for this movie. At the end of the day, you’re right, who cares, think for yourself and vote with your wallet.
Because opening their site to unvetted public opinion is exactly their niche? They provide an aggregate of unfiltered opinions from the public – if they locked down their site to only professional critics and other approved people, there would be almost literally no reason for them to exist. And “all scores line up except one”? Put another way, “in an array of precisely two scores, the professional critical aggregate and the public aggregate, one score doesn’t jive with the other”. I mean, it’s a much less exciting way to put it, but I think a more accurate one.
Rian was just working with what JJ had already set up. He had to reconcile characters and locales that he himself may not have agreed to had he started from scratch.
And the concerns about not knowing that to expect from 9 now; how great is that. That SW isn’t some template of predictability.
Totally agree: garbage coming in the TLJ and garbage going out
A series of reviews for a SW movie are not going to sway any of us as we’ll all be there the first week. But I like to see the general consensus of the reviews just to get an idea what the opinion is out there.
I think the reason that fans like me are suspicious of the critics reviews isn’t a simple thumbs up or down as we all look at every SW movie a bit differently. A lot of reviewers were making bold statements that this was as great as ESB, some said THE best of the Saga, as those are some serious statements.
When I saw TLJ (regardless of whether I liked or not) it wasn’t anywhere near ESB or ANH. I say this cause I loved TFA and that movie doesn’t come close to ESB & ANH. Then when I seriously disliked TLJ to the point where I actually hated it and then started talking to friends who hated, I wondered if I was watching the same movie as the critics?
Again, it is one thing to say you like TLJ, and there is nothing wrong with saying you love TLJ. But when a lot of reviewers compared to ESB (A movie that is considered one of the all time best in its genre) it made me very suspicious.
And that’s the problem I have with the critics. I think Donnie Brasco is a great movie, but I’m not going to say it’s on par with The Godfather!
Which leads to the constant defense I hear from this film. It’s different = great and you didn’t get the story you wanted. Well if that’s true then why did I Love TFA as it had 2 minutes of Luke and a divorced Han/Leia? That wasn’t the story in my head for 30 years, but it was a good movie so I went with narrative. Which leads me to RJ doing something different and that justifies it as great. If he had Luke fly a kite for 2 hours with Rey, that’s different! Would it be great? You still had to execute a great movie and not rely on fooling the viewer who expected this and that from the TFA mystery box.
Because TFA (which I loved) was designed as a crowd pleaser. It was safe homage. They would never have thrown any curveballs in it like TLJ did because it was all about reestablishing classic Star Wars. It didn’t make any drastic changes to the Star Wars formula. Han and Leia’s relationship has always run hot and cold, and although they were separated, the movie shows them in a loving embrace. Star Wars cannot thrive on constantly retreading the same stuff over and over again, even if it is pleasing to the fan base. This thing HAS to evolve and change, or it becomes stale and predictable. Change, of course, is fuel for fanboy hatred, this is nothing new. See the movie a second time. I guarantee that your opinion of it will improve.
That is one of the best responses to a fan like me who is disillusioned with TLJ. That’s a legit point that a movie can grow on you and you could change your mind. I worry because I went through this with the PT and tried and tried to love them yet just never worked for me.
But I do appreciate a different answer then others in this fandom who flat out tell me I don’t understand the movie like it’s some art house Indy movie or that it didn’t fulfill my story.
You may a persuasive argument that has me considering seeing it again! We need more fans like you on the internet!
I agree. It’s a good response. His post is one of my favorite and gives me alittle more optimism. That being said, my main problem isn’t with change, but the drastic pendulum that Disney is on with this trilogy. TFA is a far swing toward super-safe while TLJ seems to be an equally fervent swing in the opposite direction. I think that’s due in large part to the “writing by committee” with no central person storyboarding all three movies. But if nothing else, I do appreciate the PT stories better. Now I think the story line was decent with enough familiarity and enough newness, and it was the execution by the Anakin actors and Jar Jar who made the films cringe-worth or boring at many important moments of the film. Just imagine what Adam Driver could have done as Anakin and Daisy Ridley as Padme.
How about you change things at the end of a trilogy rather than halfway through it without any follow up plan?
How about you change things at the end of a trilogy rather than halfway through it without any follow up plan?
So you want two safe, homage episodes before you introduce anything new or unexpected?
No but if you want to do something new than do it at the beginning or end of a trilogy. Don’t set the mood to A and then make an 180° turn to B. Use the anthology movies to experiment and so what works and what doesn’t. Don’t change OT characters beyond recognition, let the new additions to the franchise be the one’s to push the change forward. Don’t make up your story on the fly and commit to a plotline rather then resetting it to zero after every movie. A movie created on a blank canvas is fine for part 1 of a trilogy but not after part 2. The overarching plot of the ST is really disjointed atm, the visions of JJ and RJ clashing and moving in opposite directions. Snoke, set up by JJ as the big and mysterious evil from the unknown regions degraded to a plot device to push Kylo’s narrative further is a symptom of the lack of a uniform vision at Lucassfilm.
By that logic Darth Vader would’ve waited until the end of Jedi to make his big revelation to Luke.
Not doing anything new or giving the classic characters any evolution over the course of 30 years would make for a pretty boring, forgettable sequel trilogy.
If you look at the audience reviews for the movie ‘The shape of the water’ there is negative Star wars reviews in that as well. I understand people make mistakes, but seriously what the hell is going on
Nicely done. As I commented on an earlier but similar story here, social media DISTORTS FACTS. Sock puppets and trolls love to make themselves seem more important than they are. Largely of course, because their lives are unimportant.
Any poll that only requires an email address to participate in will be distorted, particularly if the alt.right has an agenda to prove.
It’s gutless, it’s cowardly and it’s inane to promote your own opinion by spamming it everywhere and then declaring yourself a “winner” for doing so.
And I hate to say it, but a lot of the disdain for this film comes from a narrative that white men are victims and that there’s a deep establishment in the media to punish them and demonize them.
It’s hateful such a distorted political opinion spills over into a children’s film like Star Wars, but this is not a movement based on reason or compassion, it’s a movement based on bullying others who don’t fall in line with alt.right philosophy. It’s a digital boot squad and they use anonymity and cowardice to congratulate themselves on their opinion.
Of course, many authentic Star Wars fans disliked the film too. But the problem here is the media is already spinning this idea that the community is fractured and dislikes the film, only elite critics like it. It’s a false narrative, created by sock puppets and simple bots and scripts.
This is good analysis, in that it exposes just how trollish and childish this kind of poll spamming has become. The internet lies, because the people on the internet care more about opinion and facts.
To them spamming polls like this is “winning”, when to anyone with an adult brain and an ounce of reason, it’s the biggest loser move of all.
They can’t handle truth, so instead of accepting it, they scream like children as much as they can to prove to themselves the truth isn’t real.
And again, I do agree there is legitimate negative reviews out there, welcomed ones, reasoned ones, that’s not the issue here. The issue is the trolling sock puppet army of Reddit using the cowardice of anonymity to bludgeon and stifle the opinions of others.
Such sad little boys.
Great article. Very well done!
Did you just assume the gender of the negative voters?
Maybe it’s the fans that delude themselves into thinking that “TLJ is ground-breaking SW film” are the ones that can’t handle the truth…
See, it doesn’t feel good when someone is sassy, huh? I don’t care what you think, just accept others have a different opinion than you. It’s fine. You like it, that’s great. Stop trying to belittle or discredit anyone else. If you really wanted to take the higher ground, you wouldn’t result to name-calling/bullying.
Can we acknowledge how the Rotten Tomatoes % system works???
If you don’t know then realize this, If any given review is perceived to be more positive than negative, then it’s get a fresh rating. This means that critic could give it a 6 out of 10, and it’s considered a fresh review. So a 92% rating means that at least 92% of critics gave it at least a 6 out of 10. Any well-produced and visually stunning film should have no problem getting a 6 out of 10.
TLJ is a 6 out of 10, or in generous C minus
Can we acknowledge how the Rotten Tomatoes % system works???
If you don’t know then realize this, If any given review is perceived to be more positive than negative, then it’s get a fresh rating. This means that critic could give it a 6 out of 10, and it’s considered a fresh review. So a 92% rating means that at least 92% of critics gave it at least a 6 out of 10. Any well-produced and visually stunning film should have no problem getting a 6 out of 10.
TLJ is a 6 out of 10, or in generous C minus
Metacritic has it at an 86 – universal acclaim.
4.8 user score
http://www.metacritic.com/movie/star-wars-episode-viii—the-last-jedi?ref=hp
Based on a whopping 4,600 ratings? Please.
SWNN survey polled 5000. Rot Tom critics is based on 330 reviews. What’s your point?
Because nothing about user reviews on a website is scientific.
Then why post “Metacritic has it at an 86 – universal acclaim”. And why “oh please” just because it’s 4600. And please explain a scientific review? Is it in a labratory with lots of people with clipboards and white jackets?
Because the 86 is based on published reviews. They are all verifiable. User scores have no ability to be verified. Do you not know the difference between a scientific poll and a non scientific poll? Here’s an explanation:
http://classroom.synonym.com/describe-scientific-polling-6460927.html
Oh I know what a scientific poll is my friend . But what is a scientific review. Read your own link. What were the questions in this poll? Also your “verified” 86 is from a pool of 56 reviewers, and as your link so eloquently states “If the group selected is truly random, a small sample of 1,000 adults can reflect the attitudes of millions”…
That bugs me too because it skews an above average or just good movie toward the same high score as an all-time classic. TFA has a 93% score which is the same as NH, and ESB is only one percent higher. However, if you asked critics to name the top 100 greatest films of all time, the latter two would be way, WAY ahead of TFA. In fact, many critics put one of those OT films in their top 10 films of all-time while TFA only made their top 10 for a particular year.
It has an average rating of 8.1, .1 points behind TFA.
Soooo….Why does it have to be some sweaty conspiracy that a ton of people didn’t like the movie?
A lot of people HATE the direction they went with this movie for a lot of rational, sensible, fair reasons. A lot of people like it too…
The story here is that TLJ is controversial; not that fans that didn’t like the movie are hateful, conspiratorial trolls.
Agreed, and it’s not just TLJ, it’s the ST as whole.
There are conspiracy theories that suggest the positive reviews are all the result of a scam by Disney bribing critics. So it comes from both sides.
We won’t really know where the fanbase as a whole stands until the returns come in for Solo or maybe IX. Then we’ll know whether TLJ is the Batman v. Superman or The Godfather of the Star Wars franchise. I understand why industry mouth pieces are rallying around the movie. If the Star Wars franchise goes the way of the DCEU, that would be a black swan event for the industry and the entire thing could go belly up in a hurry. Spielberg and Lucas both recently predicted such an event. My feeling is that TLJ is not going to age well with fans and you’re going to see those fan review score sink even lower over the course of the next 12-18 months. By the time IX comes out, the issue is going to be so charged and divisive that only a truly exceptional movie will be able to turn it around. In many ways, Stars Wars set the stage for the modern movie business. It would be ironic if it also brought down the curtain on it.
I highly doubt that fans are going to get much more negative about TLJ. If anything, people will come to accept many of the risks taken in the movie and be more kind to it. I think TLJ is getting its “backlash” phase out of the way early.
I think you’re probably right. I think critics will come to a “reluctant acceptance” especially if IX is a hit. So this film will be the “Temple of Doom” for them rather than the “Crystal Skull.”
Yep yep yep.
Yep yep yep.
Of course, if Speilberg went on to produce another Temple of Doom instead of a Last Crusade, then I think you can kiss the “reluctant acceptance” goodbye. So there is alot more riding on IX than ever.
https://youtu.be/7cql4KuraEo
Gets my vote for most laughable video title on YouTube.
ooooooooo. So if someone doesn’t like TLJ, they’re a racist, woman hating bigot…makes sense…
If people cared about the alledged “SJW proaganda” they would have downvoted R1 even more than TLJ. R1 had one of the most diverse casts I have ever seen in a blockbuster movie and noone gave a f’ck. Because R1 was a really good movie and except for militant leftists and Alt-Right idiots nobody cares about gender or ethnicity. We simply care about character and stories. I don’t need a vagina to find Jyn Erso a compelling character and most mentally stable people can seperate Star Wars movies from politics.
Alledged?
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/ef5e64f526a828800041059215c181e11abeb9e0882c03d73780cce2085e9bab.jpg
Oh wow a department that is all female. I wonder if there is a department that’s all male at Lucasfilm… That’s cherrypicking to a degree where it becomes ridiculous. I mean look at SW making ofs and you will see 95% males. Do you really feel threatened because one department is female?
So what you’re saying is it is ok to hire based on gender, race, and sexual orientation. Got it.
So what you’re saying is it is ok to hire based on gender, race, and sexual orientation. Got it.
Yes, that’s exactly what I said. I wrote that somewhere above, word for word.
Damn how butthurt can you be. First of all how many members did the department have Kriri Hart hired for? If it’s her and 3 other people than it’s pretty f*cking easy to hire only women by pure chance. Also I have yet to see the job description at LF that reads: No males, no whites. I hate the binary political system in the US. Militant liberal douchebags and alt-right boneheads all the way. A department of 5 women is “female empowerment” to the one idiot faction and “SJWs taking over” to the other idiot faction. No it’s just a department which happens to have only women while there’s a shitload of departments with only men.
You can scream and cry all you want and try to justify it anyway you want. It’s a black or white answer.
Can a company hire based on gender yes or no.
So as a white male and business owner I can say, I want to make my entire team males?
If you answer is yes, you support hiring based on gender.
If you answer is no, your whole point is mute.
No they can’t and I have yet to see a job hiring at Lucas film where it says: No white people, no males. Show me where Kiri Hart says: Men, don’t even apply at my department because if you have a dick you are forbidden to work here.
Also if this was the case just claim you identify as a female and you’re good to go. But again, show me where Kiri Hart said only women are allowed to apply for the job.
For your information I was against the female only showings for Wonder Woman because it discriminates against men. I am also against bakeries not offering wedding cakes to gay people because it is discrimination.
Who said apply, what the fuck does that have to do with anything? She said I want to make the entire group of paid Disney employees female. What do you think this is a volunteer group?
If you have a restaurant like hooters you are allowed to only pick hot females. No males, no fat chicks. The employer can decide to pick whoever they want to hire as long as anyone can apply for the job.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/2009/04/21/texas-man-settles-discrimination-lawsuit-against-hooters-for-not-hiring-male.html
“Settles Lawsuit” not “wins lawsuit”. That’s a huge difference (no judgement was passed on by the state). Btw the Hooters manager was pretty stupid to let it get this far. Just let him work at the restaurant for a week, let some of the guests complain about it and fire him based on a occupational qualification defense. You know there are a lot of nightclubs that are outright racist. But they can’t simply ban person X because of their skincolour so they just make claims like “he seemed drunk, agressive…” Point is as long as you don’t have proof that Kiri Hart denied males to apply for the job your accusation is baseless. Even if she was the worst feminazi ever she’s innoccent until proven guilty. Some American’s don’t get this concept which the whole #metoo witchhunt showd us. Republican assholes will happily ban gays from marrying but are infuriated when some feminist doesn’t hire men. It’s a ridiculous.
Call me naive, but I still think it’s all about money. Kathleen wants to encourage female interest in Star Wars because, traditionally, Star Wars diehards (those who spend lots of money on every new DVD release of the movies for example) tend to be male. However, that also means there is a huge percent of untapped consumers (females). So Kathleen starts to go after this untapped group by adding more female leads and a female think-tank to help storyboard Star Wars projects. It makes good business sense, and other industries have or will try the same thing (I remember the NFL pushing hard a few years ago to increase the female fandom). I find no fault with her as long as the female characters are interesting and compelling. So I enjoyed the Jyn Erso character regardless of her plumbing. She wasn’t a Mary Sue but she also wasn’t the damsel in distress. My only fear is the negative side effects that can creep into these effort to increase female interest, i.e. overcompensation with the female leads that have no or little weakness, and are just awesome in everything. Whether I’m right or wrong, you can probably guess what character I’m thinking about here.
I 100% agree. I feel that Rey is way too good at everything. Her character got less interesting to me the longer TLJ carried on simply because she takes one step back and then continues to march 10 steps forward. Her control of the force is ridiculous, even for a master Jedi it would be. Characters like Jyn or Ahsoka however are a welcoem addition to SW.
Yes! How could I forget Ahsoka?!? She was an awesome character arc and the model for all new Jedi character growth. I even like how they handled her ultimate rejection of the Jedi path and her post-Jedi life. It was much better than what they’ve done with Luke.
On a total tangent, God, that bakery case is so interesting. Keep in mind, that’s not exactly what they said. They were willing to sell the cake, but they didn’t want to do the custom writing on it, as they felt it conflicted with their religious beliefs (leaving aside for the moment that the bible doesn’t REALLY say any such thing). I’m sure there are plenty of fairly arbitrary rules other bakeries use about what they will and won’t write for clients (just for a semi-related example, I can’t imagine a Muslim baker being forced to write something they found personally offensive, but legally protected like “Allah is a lie” on anything), and they reserve the right to refuse service. This wasn’t a simple case of discrimination, but a situation where two competing sets of rights (which the court acknowledged) butted up against each other.
.
Personally, I think where two rights come into conflict, the outcome which does not compel action by either party should usually be the one the court sides with, and that ultimately the market would have punished the bakery for not being willing to compromise.
.
Anyhoo, tangent over.
I can see your point and I think that the different religions are treated quite differently in our society. Just looking at how often Christianity is mocked in cartoons vs the complete silence when it comes to Islam. This shows quite a bit of hypocrisy. As a non religious person human rights are always superior to religious feelings in my personal oppinion. If you are against gay marriage so be it but you are still expected to provide the same service to your customer no matter if you feel offended by their worldviews or not (same goes for Muslims, Buddhists, etc…) And you should be held accountable if you violate a human right based on your religious or political beliefs. I don’t make any difference if discrimination happens to men who are not allowed to join a “female only” wonderwoman screening, a gay couple who are denied a service at the bakery or a black woman not allowed to sit in the front of the bus. However smr9 never showed any proof that discrimination against (white) males actually took place. All I can see is a department that happens to be women only in a company with tons of departments that are men only.
Oh….oh…don’t say ‘black and white’. You really don’t want to open THAT can of worms up.
In case you need some help:
Under federal law, an employer cannot illegally discriminate in its hiring processs based on a job applicant’s race, national origin, gender, pregnancy, age, disability, or religion.
Your viewpoint is extremely narrow minded. Hollywood is a boy’s club. If Lucasfilm manage to get more woman into the industry then this positive action should be applauded.
Women are clearly frozen out, just look at the lack of female directors alone.
Hey it’s cool if you agree with hiring based on gender.
Hey it’s cool if you agree with hiring based on gender.
But that’s how about 95% of Hollywood currently works, has been since day 1. Jobs for the boys.
Or as I call her “VaJyna”. Spot on, and more broadly accurate too. I didn’t have a problem with Star Wars being an adventure aimed at young boys, and think the notion of ‘correcting’ the franchise from that aim is completely stupid. That said, my issue with Rey isn’t that her pronouns are “She” and “Her”, it’s that she’s colossally under-cooked as a character, and gets abilities for no other reason than ‘the plot needs to go here now’. Jyn was a much better written character, one who’s motives I could understand, one who’s actions made sense over the film, and one who’s abilities never seemed to be deus ex machinas, whipped out because the script was the absolute LAST thing developed on that movie.
No. Alt Right losers stuck in 1852 are pissed that white men don’t control everything anymore, including the casting of space fantasy movies. So they throw childish temper tantrums about it.
While I don’t give too much credit to the IMDb scores, I think it’s worth a look, especially if you compare the score of TLJ with other episodes. Look at the ones with the worst score: TPM and AotC. 25 % of the people thought TPM was rather bad giving it a score 5 or less. 22 % give 5 or less to AotC. TLJ has 17.9% of its ratings at 5 or less. But if you look at how many of them give 1/10. TPM: 3.2 %, AotC: 2.8 %, TLJ: 6.1 %!.
So is it’s suspicious, and that why you should never trust these audience scores like this. I mean, i get that some people didn’t like the movie but it’s nowhere near as bad as a real 1/10 film (non of star wars is).
At it isn’t a 10 either. Robust statistics would remove both, 1 and 10 and then TLJ would end up as a pretty mediocre movie. It is already on 7,7 on IMDB which is pretty poor for a SW movie. Is it a failure? nope. Is it a flawless movie? Nope.
I agree and that’s why I won’t give it much credit. The fanboys overscore their favorites almost every time, like in case of all the recent superhero films. I just wanted to point out that that 6.1 % is ridiculously high compared to the “most hated” sw episodes.
Sure but TLJ has it’s highest rating in the 10/10 area. remove both the 1/10 and the 10/10 and see the average drop drastically.
Not really, I counted this yesterday. Tha average would be 7.375 (IMDb uses weighted average) and the average without the 1’s and 10’s is 7.175. Not a big difference really
Well the idea is that apparently it’s only trolls downvoting TLJ when it’s quite the opposite. I agree, the difference isn’t that big but we can now savely say that it’s not the trolls causing only mediocre rating (for a starwars movie that is)
i’m not convinced. I agree that there are no proofs that trolls did it. It could be just senseless people. Giving it a 1/10 means TLJ is worse than sharknado and other bullshit movies. Who thinks that seriously? It’s not 10/10 either but I can’t see that more people gave it 10/10 than other blockbusters, while far more people gave it 1. I wouldn’t say anything if 75% would have given it 3 or 4. But it’s not the case. People just jumped on the hate train. Trolls or not, it doesn’t matter.
That more people gave it a 10/10 than a 1/10 means two things. a) there’s a ton of fanboys out there who really think this movie is flaweless. That’s not surprising because it’s SW and some people will hype any SW movie no matter how good it actually is. The fact that more people gave it a ridiculously high rating compared to a ridiculously low rating show that the trolls are not the problem. There are more than 3 times more 10/10 fanboys on IMDb than there are 1/10 trolls. So to say that the trolls are the one skewing TLJ’s rating when they are outvoted 1:3 by the fanboys is ridiculous!
Oh please, as if exit polls were any more reliable than RT ratings. There are multiple factors that make exit polls heavily biased.
a) they are done after premiere showings which means that only the most enthusiastic people are polled but not someone who was dragged there by some friends 3 weeks after the movie launched. This means that the audience is already heavily biased to begin with.
b) the polls are taken immediately after seeing the movie when people had no time to let it sink in. I would have probably given the movie a 9/10 immediately after seeing the movie. It took some time until I realized that there were some serious flaws especially in context with TFA and the boring setup for IX
c) social pressure. I dare you to say “well this Star Wars movie sucked” on premiere day in the middle of a crowd of enthusiastic SW fans
d) these interviews are often not anonymous. People are more polite and less honest with negative feedback when they are interviewed by a real person.”Did you like your steak sir? Oh yes, very much *rates the restaurant 2 stars on yelp”
To say that an exit poll represent the overall oppinion of the audience is like saying: “95% of all Americans love Bingo” based on a Bingo night exit poll. Same goes for the SWNN poll. People taking part in the SWNN poll are more enthusiastic about SW than the average viewer per default, otherwise they wouldn’t be on this website!
All excellent points and really why a part of me stopped reading this article. Polling like this needs to be especially paid attention to as each of the examples you brought forth a big lurking variables. And really shouldn’t be blindly discarded.
Questions, “why are we so obsessed with movie scores?” Proceeds to have an entire article, charts and graphs all obsessed with movie scores.
The bigger question is – “why are people so obsessed with making people like this movie?”
My gosh – enough already. We get it. Move on…
Nicely researched and well written.
Yea didn’t waist time doing research smarta$$, I fully admit I’m making assumptions but one thing is for sure not everyone is polled but please tell me what ur counter argument is or can all you do is come up with childish remarks?
Nicely researched and well written.
Please, kindly inform everyone here what is so “childish” with my comment above. I’ll wait…
Of course, it’s entirely possible that you are trying to respond to another comment altogether because nothing you said has anything to do with what I typed. Anyways, have a nice day. Xoxo
I honestly can not tell if your comment about being well written n good research was a response to me. If it you weren’t responding to me than please clarify that and I will retract my comment about being childish n apologize.
I think you misread his comment as I think he was paying you a genuine compliment. Just because you didn’t poll people or do any first-hand numbers crunching doesn’t mean you didn’t write a well-researched article. Too many people just cite headlines, but it looks like you read several sources (including the SWNN poll and main article), and gave us a valid summary.
This is another interesting effect of internet debates, if this were a face to face conversation, Pete would surely not have said this…. Seems to be making two assumptions: 1) Pinché is replying to him (which he isn’t) and 2) Pinché is being sarcastic, which also I don’t think he is. This might be a microcosm of what’s happening with TLJ flame wars right now, chain reactions based on assumptions based on misunderstood tone with a little trolling mixed in. Wheeeeeeee!
Well Said.
I promise you anything I say here I would not be afraid to say in person. I’m econfident enough to speak my mind in any setting. You don’t me so I don’t know why you would infer something about a complete stranger. If Pinche isn’t replying to me than I will admit I made error in my reading.
it really was. no consolation for a shitty movie, but well written.
First off not every theater is polled with exit polls. I went to large theater on Dec 14 and 15 to see TLJ and did not see anyone being polled about the movie. Second, think about what portion of the audience in every screening is made up of die hard Star Wars fans. If there’s 40 people in screening let’s say, then I’m going to bet about 8-10 people in that audience are die hard fans, and it’s a lot easier to please a causal fan than the die hards and the casual fans will show up based on the name Star Wars alone. My siblings are causal fans here’s what makes up a good film in there opinion: good action, good dialogue, interesting plot. By those requirements it’s not to hard to satisfy that type of person. TLJ is well made film but imo a terrible Star Wars film. To get the majority of the movie going audience to like a Star Wars film is not necessarily a terribly difficult feat to accomplish. It’s the die hard fans who care the most who will always be the hardest to please and yes half of the die hards like/love the film but that means the die hard fan base is probably spilt 50/50 on the film and that isn’t so impressive.
In other words…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXJKdh1KZ0w
Ok, so we might not be able to stop the change, but we can certainly stop giving Disney our money…
Movie ratings mean nothing to me, If i want to see a movie i will no matter how bad it is rated by movie goers.
Every franchise has its ups and downs. Its great that the TLJ has challenged the norm, but when its at the risk of splitting the fans it turns into a Prequel style disagreement.
On another site a guy was saying that the PT almost destroyed Star Wars and not matter the future its better off under Disney, and though those films have faults I total disagree. Lucas could of made 7, 8 & 9 and people would of turned out. We would all be complaining or defending the aspects, but the franchise wouldn’t be destroyed.
The same goes for TLJ, its polarised the fans, but at the mid-point of the trilogy its a bold claim to say its ruined the sequels. Let it play out and give me Episode 9, then I’ll decide if the Saga should of ended at RotJ or if the sequels were a worthy continuation.
Obviously SW will never die but I worry about the enthusiasm going into the future. I can say that in work we all talked about TFA even if we disagreed. There is no buzz right now regarding TLJ in my work as it just feels different then any of the PT anger. It’s not anger of Lucas doing this and that and the movies would have been better. Some fans feel just defeated and all the fandom sucked out after TLJ.
Now many will read this and say we all take SW too seriously and I wouldn’t disagree. But when the fans turn out obsessively Opening night and we applaud ourselves, there is the flip side when SW angers us too.
A lot of trilogies feel this way to me. When I came out of the second Matrix film, I felt like it wasn’t as good as the first, but it really took some steps in other directions which if they paid off would have really redeemed the trilogy as a whole. Fans my age grew up with the prequels so we knew where everything was going, but I can imagine seeing empire in theaters and not knowing how to feel until a lot of plots were resolved. Snoke gets as much screentime as the emperor in the OT, Yoda advises from a distance and never actively helps defeat the empire before fading away in peaceful death. Its a movie with a lot of elements designed to take people out of their comfort zone and I can really see why this polarized people. Heck I didn’t like the film that much on initial viewing. It took 2 more veiwings and a bit of digestion to really appreciate TLJ for me. I realized that the things I disliked were not so much IN the film as around it. The idea that Luke hid away and left everything behind after his mistake was set up way back before even TFA, so its not really this movies fault that this was the decided direction. My other big problem was how much ideas from new “canon” books seem to have different ideas that don’t really line up with the films. It felt more like this movie highlighted some flaws in Star Wars as a BRAND under Disney than the film itself, which is overall quite brilliant despite some pacing issues and a few odd design choices. They just needed a more singular vision to make things line up across all media, I love TLJ and TFA both, but they feel like two different storytellers with conflicting ideas trying to tell the same story
HAHA, the Matrix Reloaded was the WORST and is that your way of defending TLJ, by comparing it to that???
You have lots of good points. I think Disney is somehow trying to tell the SAME story over and over again because that’s what they think Star Wars is. As much TLJ is trying to break new ground, it feels like it just sets up everything in the SW universe to repeat itself, i.e. the spark of a rebellion fighting against an empire with unlimited resources, blah blah blah
That’s a good point. If you only look at the movies, then Snoke got as much screen time and background story as the Emperor. We’re told up front that they rule, they are holograms in their first films, and they are killed by their subordinate in the second. We didn’t know their life stories through the films. Same with Phasma and Boba Fett (except Boba captured rather than be captured in his first film). So much of the backlash from Snoke and Phasma is thanks to Disney who produced alot of books that hinted at big revelations involving Snoke and the decision to use a celebrity actor (who appeared in alot of PR events and articles) for Phasma. It drew alot of our attention to relatively minor characters in the film and left alot of people angry that they were duped into thinking these characters were going to be major players in the trilogy stories.
This is getting ridiculous. Yes, the fanbase is split on this movie. F*ck ratings, let‘s all move on and not release articles on the perceived quality of TLJ. It‘s not productive or healthy to shout at each other on the internet or try to stick it to the other team.
Thinking about this stuff is making me sick, Star Wars is supposed to bring joy to people, not divide them.
Usually I‘m less vocal about that shit, but I‘ve read some really nasty stuff… Much of it from people defending the movie, but the other camp is overreacting heavily when they say that their childhood got destroyed. It wasn‘t. I‘m upset myself, but I think it is best to move on.
To some extent I agree, but I do think we need to flesh out these issues because we still have one more movie to go, and Disney needs to figure out what kind of film they want IX to be. Of course, we should debate this in a respectful manner (and there has been alot of nastiness from both sides unfortunately). In some ways, I look at TLJ as the Temple of Doom of this trilogy. Some people liked Temple, and some didn’t, and the latter were vocal enough that we saw Indy going back to what he does best: fighting Nazis in the third film.
I completely agree! Your Temple of Doom comparison could be spot on. 🙂
I completely agree! Your Temple of Doom comparison could be spot on. 🙂
This too
well this is reaching unthinkable levels… i have to say that the media is playing an important role on fueling the fans
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8jzgPifyY7g
well this is reaching unthinkable levels… i have to say that the media is playing an important role on fueling the fans
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8jzgPifyY7g
If it didn’t work for the PT it won’t work for the ST. That’s all I gotta say about that.
yeah but its a sign of how splitted the fanbase is right now
It’s been split since the PT. I don’t know if this is news to you, but there are people who like the PT.
i’ve never seen so much hate between SW fans … i mean check out RJ twitter or his instagram is like WW3
And they’re the same people that claimed George “raped their childhoods” and “hate him for what he’s done to Star Wars” in regards to the PT. It’s really nothing new.
If that’s the same petition that was going the rounds last week, the petitioner has revoked it and apologised for how stupid it was.
Additionally they requested that all the people that signed it look at the more worthy petitions they could sign instead.
The saddest and most pathetic thing about all of this, is the gloating from those ‘fans’ who genuinely want to see this movie bomb at the box office, purely to validate their own opinion. I can understand someone not enjoying the film, but to see the future of the franchise damaged because of it. I can’t get my head around that.
While I would never want a Star Wars movie to fail I wouln’t say some fans purely want this to validate their oppinion. Some genuinely disliked TLJ and if TLJ bombs then IX will probably be more like TFA and Rian probably won’t get to do his trilogy but someone else. So I can see where they are coming from.
Sure they do. There’s a couple of regular comment contributors on this website alone.
But that’s the gist of the problem. If Lucasfilm go back to making safe movies, then that’s going to have a big impact on the longevity of the franchise. Franchises have to reinvent themselves or they fall. The Fast and the Furious is a good example, it went from starting of as a rehash of Point Break to becoming its very own bonafide superhero movie, and as a result has become extremely successful at the box office.
There’s got to be a middleground between nostalgiafest TFA and TLJ. I still feel like TLJ was IX and DIsney forgot to release VIII. It would explain the different tone, the lack of background information about Snoke, the first order and Luke’s map and the end saw the death of Luke and left us with a blank canvas once more. Changes in the franchise are always welcome but they need their time or they will feel rushed.
We’ve now had 8 SW movies made before TLJ. The Force Awakens and Rogue One were both pretty safe movies. I personally was impressed with how fresh The Last Jedi felt, and as someone who up until now has been positive for the Solo movie, I can’t help but feel it’s now going to feel quite flat after seeing Rian Johnson’s entry.
I’m tired of hearing how those of us who thought TLJ was a poor film are just longing for “safe” pablum.
That is the equivalent of accusing fans of the movie of loving anything with the words “Star Wars” in the title.
I liked Rogue One well enough. How was that “safe”? Everyone died. They didn’t use Goldsmith music. There were no full-blown Jedi characters. It deviated from the norm in many ways.
A lot of us just happened to think it was not a good movie. I could list the reasons, but they are all over the internet. And as far as I can tell a lot of valid criticisms are dismissed with arguments like, “Well, it would make sense if you’d read the Stackpole EU books.” Or, “A lot of time has passed, people change.”
Just one for example: force projection. Fine, let’s say that is consistent with our understanding of the Force from the previous movies. It is plain bad storytelling to show us this ability for the first time when Luke does it as his final act. We laugh at foreshadowing, but it serves a purpose. Show us someone at least attempt force projection earlier in the movie (or even in TFA). And also explain that there is a risk of DYING from the exertion.
You can’t just drop all of this on us in Luke’s final scene. That isn’t risky or dangerous storytelling, it just sucks.
Nevermind there are probably 10 other problems like this in the movie, some worse.
“I liked Rogue One well enough. How was that “safe”? Everyone died. They didn’t use Goldsmith music. There were no full-blown Jedi characters. It deviated from the norm in many ways.”
Any SW fan knew they would all die at the end. We were all expecting it, as we’ve never heard of any of these characters before. It was about as predictable as the titanic sinking at the end of James Cameron’s oscar juggernaut. Throw in a director who is incapable of making character driven movies, and their deaths end up devoid of all dramatic tension. Rogue One was safe, it felt more like a prequel than a spin-off, it was peppered with Easter Eggs, and it’s greatest scene involved one of the original trilogies most memorable characters, because let’s face it, the main characters were so forgettable.
This
I just want us all to be friends ),:
I don’t see how new accounts indicates that the vote comes from a bot.
I just made an account to vote on TLJ because i don’t really care about most movies but i care about Star Wars enough spent like 2 minutes making an account and voting.
Considering how big Star Wars is, it’s likely that many other did the same which doesn’t make their vote any less legitimate.
I don’t see how new accounts indicates that the vote comes from a bot.
I just made an account to vote on TLJ because i don’t really care about most movies but i care about Star Wars enough spent like 2 minutes making an account and voting.
Considering how big Star Wars is, it’s likely that many other did the same which doesn’t make their vote any less legitimate.
They didn’t say that it indicates a bot. But a bunch of people who only care about Star Wars is not representative of the filmgoing audience as a whole. Even the regular voters on Rotten Tomatoes are going to be skewed demographically. That’s why the audience scores are NEVER very meaningful.
Dumbest article I ever read. LOGIC says some people were so upset with the film (and Disney wiping their ass with Luke) that they created an account specifically to vote on this one movie they cared about. Just like how I created an account right now to comment on this ridiculous post.
The conclusions you’re coming to are not LOGIC. What you’re doing is creating a conspiracy theory and trying to get people not to trust the information they’re being given Mr. Sean Hannity.
FYI there was a 2 plus minute applause after The Disaster Artist. Great feel good film. After the last Jedi people just sat in their shit and looked around scared and confused with a few muffled claps. And I actually kind of liked the movie..
But you also have to use logic and keep in mind that people are much more likely to go to the trouble of making an account specifically to vote on something they dislike versus something they liked.
Very fair point. If nothing else, I wonder if the negative backlash will inspire the positive viewers to step forth in greater numbers. So over the coming weeks, I wonder if the numbers will change.
Don’t lie, you didn’t like the movie. You did naaaaaaaaaaahht….oh, hai, notabitch.
The movie sucked. Quit trying to justifying…just let it in…..let the past die.
Instead of writing articles theorizing why this movie is so polarizing, maybe SWNN should dedicate a few articles on how to be tolerant of differing opinions.
I thought this movie was probably one of the most underwhelming episodes in the Saga, and I don’t particularly care if anyone thinks I’m a disillusioned fanboy for saying so.
As in, don’t waste time saying it, because I don’t care.
HOWEVER, the same goes for fans who did enjoy this movie. My opinion doesn’t fall in line with yours, but guess what? I won’t be revoking your Star Wars fan club membership anytime soon. Why? Because I don’t own Star Wars and seeing as how it means something different in some way to everyone who enjoys it, variations in opinion are not only normal, but expected.
If someone wants to talk about why they enjoyed the movie in comparison to someone who didn’t, that’s fine. I’ve actually really enjoyed reading comments explaining why fans liked TLJ just as much as I’ve enjoyed reading the comments of people who didn’t. Let’s all stop trying to measure dicks and see who the “real” Star Wars fans are though. Chances are, if they’re on this website commenting, they’re fans just like you, even if they’re opinion isn’t just like yours.
I’ve loved plenty of things the masses or the critics haven’t. I don’t let it bother me too much other than it typically means no sequel. It can hurt and be confusing but people are so different.
I’ll use an example… I loved… LOVED Terminator Salvation. I thought it nailed every aspect. I couldn’t wait to see the reviews flood in and was so happy they finally got it on the right foot. Let’s finish this trilogy!
Ouch. What really got me was how many targeted Sam’s acting. I thought… again… he was perfect. What can you do?
True. We all have those films. For me, it’s Dick Tracy (1990). I think only I and Roger Ebert gave it 4 stars, but I still say it’s a fine film. It’s not a classic, but I’ll always watch it if I see it on TNT or some other cable channel.
So it is confirmed, a Clone and Bots army attacked the movie.
Just like Kylo Ren threatened Hux in TFA.
I never lie.
Actually you do… we need to confirm all lies you told Rey in TLJ in the next movie.
And you lied Hux when you told him it was the girl who killed Snoke.
:))
Rey forced my hand. Watch the movie closely. I tell the truth.
Actually if Ben Solo in that moment didn´t do that move, I was hoping for some Rey raw force explosion self defense.
I will say I kept myself away from the internet for five days before it came out. So I went into this pretty blank. I came away mixed and as time went on disliked it more and more. That’s when I found out I wasn’t alone.
So… I dunno. It is what it is. Once it’s out on Blu-ray I may change my tune. Who knows? If you love something I certainly wouldn’t let someone else bum you out. Kind of the point I was making about Terminator Salvation below. I loved it. Most didn’t. I’m ok with that because I still have my movie!
I think the more accurate analysis of the user reviews is to look at the quality/quantity of the review writing rather than the profile history. After all, I could see something fishy if alot of the user reviews were simply one star ratings with no accompanying reviews (or one sentence reviews). On the other hand, I’m guessing it’s very hard for just a few people to generate hundreds of coherent, full paragraph negative reviews (or create a bot that could do so). That being said, I’m skimming through the Rotten Tomatoes reviews now and I’m seeing a substantial percentage of the reviews that have low scores AND relatively lengthy reviews (i.e. more than just “it sucked.”). On the other hand, I do see alot of positive reviews that are one sentence at most. So long short, I think there is a substantial percentage of living, breathing humans who didn’t like this film, and we can’t dismiss them as merely some tiny, vocal minority.
And to attempt to put the bot rumour to rest, RT site owners have stated that they have experienced no unusual traffic that would indicate a bot at work either way.
Yeah, they definitely would admit their system being flawed and unreliable… That would do great for their site traffic.
So it’s more likely that some random attention seeking nobody whipped up some sort of botnet just because he didn’t like a film? Did he also get his AI to write some well-thought out negative reviews?
Presumably then, this random nobody has provided some sort of proof of his deeds?
If RT had any doubt about the veracity of its data it would be in it’s best interests to not only remove erroneous data but brag publicly about how it did to ensure that the public respect it’s scoring system.
The box office will be the true indicator… right now The Last Jedi has the worst percentage drop off of all 9 Star Wars movies. People haven’t been especially motivated to see it again…
Honestly, I think you probably nailed it from Disney’s perspective. If the films makes lots of money (relatively speaking) on the front AND back end, then Disney won’t care about comments. However, if the film loses steam quickly, then I expect Johnson will be the newest member of a growing club of fired directors from standalone Star Wars films.
Frankly, I think Rian could still do a good job on a new trilogy with one big IF… my main concern would be the addition of awful humor/jokes… that I think was the one big miscalculation on Rian’s part… It can’t be underestimated how many people were taken out of the movie right at the get go with the Spaceballs level joke/shtick at the beginning. It’s a little infuriating knowing that nobody apparently checked him on this.
I don’t disagree about Rian’s potential, but, looking at it from Disney’s perspective, you have to ask what percent of people won’t go see his new trilogy because of their anger or disappointment with TLJ (putting aside the issue about whether those people are right or wrong).
So Disney has to ask, “Do we go with Rian and make $300 million a film, or go with a Ron Howard, Spielberg, or someone else less divisive and make $350 million a film. Assuming that’s Disney’s ultimate question, I’m fairly confident they’ll dump Rian in a heart beat regardless of the quality of film he would make.
It’s the only Star Wars film released in a year when Christmas is on a Monday, which hasn’t happened in 11 years. So there’s that.
Actually, that has nothing to do with the numbers so far… I’d google to find Forbes article. That’s where I heard about it.
I also read the Forbes article, and that has quite a bit to do with it. Also, way more kids are still in school this time of year in 2017 vs 2015 and 2016. When TFA opened, about 3/4 of schools were out for the holidays, while for TLJ, it was a much smaller percentage. That’s why these day to day numbers really can’t be compared equally until the new year, when a similar percentage of kids will be out of school for both films.
To some degree I agree, and as you pointed out, there is a larger number of people this year who have other commitments and can’t/won’t see the film until it’s newness dies down. Therefore, early word of mouth is so important in getting that casual Star Wars fan or just average movie goer in the theater after the “newness” hype dies down. That’s why I wonder if the Rotten Tomatoes will end up costing Disney a good chunk of change if it drives the drop off which would cause negative publicity and weaken average cinema goers desire to see the film. Perhaps these people will still see the film eventually, but they will just opt for the DVD or internet release.
I doubt that. People pay more attention to the Tomatometer and word of mouth than to fan ratings, and the former two are very positive.
Ordinarily, I agree. However, based on the number of articles coming out about the RT fan reviews, I suspect there’s much more focus on this film’s “word of mouth” score than years past. So those negative fan reviews have a much louder voice with this film. Don’t get me wrong…I’m not claiming this film will flop. I suspect it will make alot of money. What I’m talking about is whether this film will make 800 or 700 or 600 million as the average movie goer has to chose between this film and Shape of Water or Disaster Artist. I can imagine the average person choosing one of the latter films because they heard that “even alot of diehard Star Wars fans don’t like TLJ.”
Maybe, we’ll see. I think TLJ is still gonna make Avengers money, and that’s more than enough.
I agree. It will still make crazy amounts of money.
I think if you’re talking ‘average movie goer’, then it’s not the same dollars and butts-in-seats for Shape of Water, Disaster Artist, and Star Wars.
(For the record though, I chose Disaster Artist last Friday, and do not regret my decision 🙂 )
That is true. If you made a Venn diagram of “average movie goer”, “Star Wars movie goer,” “Shape of Water movie goer”, etc., I’m not sure how much the circles would overlap. I probably drew too many assumptions there.
It was never going to make TFA numbers, even if the fandom were less divided, the hype for the last one was exceptional.
The downside of this is that if Disney do think it underperfomed they will revert back to the safe formula that made TFA such a resounding success.
The Empire Strikes Back made $100 million less than A New Hope. Please tell us how much that movie sucks using the same logic.
Your response is incoherent. I’m referring to first week drop off and I did not give my opinion of the film. To be clear, I was not referring to total box office..
You are trying to make a argument that a movie making less money comparatively to other Star Wars films is an indicator of people liking it less? Are you not?
No. I’m not making an argument. I appealing to facts. The box office will be a true indicator.
“People haven’t been especially motivated to see it again.”
Sorry, that’s not a fact. That’s your opinion.
The numbers speak for themselves… I sense much fear in you….
Yeah, I’m really afraid of analyses of box office returns. Give me a break.
If you’re Disney, then you do. In the dark recesses of the Magic Kingdom, I bet there is a committee of Harvard MBA grads, and if they say you could’ve made a $800 million box office, $100 million TV rights, and $500 million in merchandise over 20 years with a Howard, Spielberg, or Abrams TLJ vs. $700 million box office, $50 million TV rights, and $300 million in merchandise with a Johnson TLJ, then you can bet Disney will anguish over that $350 million difference than jump up and down with joy over millions they made. And they will also know that fact would affect future Star Wars film revenues as well.
And you can bet they will consider that difference when deciding when (if ever) they greenlight Johnson’s future trilogy. OF course, I’m making alot of assumptions there, but if that dropoff continues, I think that is what Disney will do.
It will be interesting to see how things play out…
You’re right. Disney is a business. If I was a Disney suit, I would be in WTF mode. They can’t take fan
ratings seriously because the 10 star fanboy and 1 star hater reviews
are obviously meaningless. So what’s the real score? The professional
ones? They clearly thought they had a hit on their hands.
It may be more likely that Disney, in frustration over the reaction to their “bold” and critically acclaimed film, makes another expanded universe – like decision and decide to do what they do best, find out who their “real” target audience is, you know, the ones who will actually fill $1b + seats, and forget trying to satisfy everyone.
If you think about it, Disney has done all the homage and fan service they need to do to bridge the original fans. They’re making boatloads of cash. You either like what they are doing or you don’t. Now that the most popular OT characters are dead on screen or in RL, they can just move on an focus on their (Disney universe) fans. They can still make smaller, stand alone movies to appeal to the OT and PT crowd but spend the serious money on what they want to do.
For me, I’m happy with what Disney is doing, to a point. Hopefully the PT level humor will be purged from the next one. On the whole though, they are treating the property right. I want them to be successful, not because I’m a shareholder, but because more movies, shows, books, theme parks…it’s all great for fans. Just my opinion.
You fear negative opinions of TLJ. Search your feelings…. You know it to be true.
No, I’m not afraid of people having stupid opinions. Just glad I’m not as miserable as they are.
You seem to have a very strange view of the world – if you love the latest SW, you’re happy and well adjusted. If you don’t and have the unmitigated GALL to say as much…in PUBLIC NO LESS!!!!, you’re a miserable wretch and a sad troll. I mean, you do you obviously, but most normal people don’t hang so much of their happiness on a flick, dude. Lighten up.
And EMPIRE grossed less than SW did.
I think you misunderstand his point. He isn’t comparing two film’s total revenues. Instead, he’s looking at the implications of a film’s revenues dropping off sharply after opening week. “Second Weekend Drop” is a real phenomena and can (but does not necessarily) indicate what kind of quality the film is.
OK. So if a sequel makes considerably less in total gross than its predecessor is that not an indicator of quality as well applying the same logic? Does that mean that people are less motivated to see it as well? Or does that only apply to week to week gross?
Fair question, but there are hundreds of more variables in your scenario due to there being two films screened, two different years, newness of an original film vs. familiarity of a sequel, etc. So long story short: “comparing the total revenues of two films COULD be an indicator” (which is why alot of terrible sequels never make as much money as the original good films), but it’s not a very good indicator.
The better indicator would be to compare the films performance to itself week to week (ie. second weekend dropoff) when the promotional hype wears off and the word of mouth begins. Of course, it isn’t a perfect indicator either as there are other variables at play.
No surprise. This movie is trash. Old characters are wasted, new ones are pointless, dialogues are embarassing, not to mention the rushed plot. Mark Hamill was totally right to “fundamentally disagree with virtually everything” with the director.
Hey, if you’re cool with Earth-based cell phone humor and a “pasty” white guy joke in your Star Wars, who am I to judge?
Hey, if you’re cool with Earth-based cell phone humor and a “pasty” white guy joke in your Star Wars, who am I to judge?
You are aware that this scene was once in a SW film, right:?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHCyDxxXog4
Hey kid, If you’re into fart jokes, who am I to judge?
I think that may be proving his point. Those kind of jokes are only found in bad Star Wars films. [*runs out before PT fans throw stones*]
Han is called a “half-witted, stuck-up, scruffy looking nerfherder” in the best SW film to date. Tarkin is mocked for his “foul stench.” That’s no worse than mocking Hux.
No… Earth-based cell phone humor and a “pasty” white guy jokes are far worse.
I must have missed the scene where someone was using a cell phone.
And making fun of one’s complexion is worse than making fun of one’s stench?
Give me a break.
Just like “What the hell are you doing?” We had since 1977. Earth based and English. It’s been there from day one.
Chewie’s impression of Tarzan Lord of the Jungle in Return of the Jedi.
Roger Moore in Octopussy did it better in my opinion.
Still hate that to this day 🙁
Likewise.
Sign the Petition!
https://www.change.org/p/the-walt-disney-company-stop-nerds-from-watching-star-wars-movies
Stop 80% of the target market from watching Star Wars movies. I’m sure they’ll go for that!
Can we stop them from buying the toys too so that kids can have something to play with?
Actually thats not a bad idea.
You’d first have to get Hasbro to a) produce toys that kids are interested in, at a price point their parents are willing to pay and b) actually fucking get them on retailer’s shelves in a timely manner. Hasbro does not have a good track record of either over the last 5 years or so.
I wasn’t surprised by the SWNN poll being so positive. I don’t think the moderators were trying to sway votes, but I saw the poll announcement as a rallying cry to come to the support of this film. After all, when you refer to previous negative user polls as “rating drama” and then ask for people to vote on the SWNN poll for a “more accurate result,” you imply a negative bias against critics. So I wasn’t that motivated to participate. That’s just my two cents. Others probably disagree.
Not to mention mediocre numbers 6-7 were included with 8 along with 8-10 being a separate thing. If you had 0-4 5-7 8-10 I think you’d have different results,
oh and the poll’s demographic is Star Wars fans, not the most random choice
Or maybe they liked it?
That doesn’t conflict with my point. Most of the people who voted genuinely liked the film (I won’t claim a positive bot theory), but (and my point) alot of negative people didn’t feel encouraged to vote. So the poll came out positive in the end.
Again, that’s just my two cent anecdotal theory.
I didnt vote in it because it was clearly an agenda from get to. The harder they try to make people like this film, the more it will become clear why it’s not a good strategy.
*Yawn* It could just as easily have been used as a rallying cry for negative people like yourself. You seem to have a real hard time coming to grips with the fact that your opinion is not shared by the majority of people.
Not at all. I’ve appreciated and welcomed people who take the time to respond with the reasons for their conclusions rather than just tell me what their conclusions and assumptions are. That’s why I’ve enjoyed and complimented many of the comments by TUD, Crixxx and others (even though I disagree with them).
You should probably see someone about that narcolepsy.
Is that supposed to pass for clever?
Only in respect to the tedious bored teenage shit you opened with there. Fuck me. Yes, we get it; you’re edgy, dark, and bored – everyone is really impressed.
You’re rather disgusting, not to mention that your message is a non-sequitur. Go seek help somewhere, and stop inserting yourself into my discussions that do not involve you, troll.
My first question is, do the people running the site make a “living” out of hyping the Star Wars brand? Secondly a lot of film critics are and do give less than honest candy coated reviews for fear of not being included by Disney for things such as red carpet premieres and such. So when I look at a sites and polls I look at who has what agenda that they are pushing. I am a fan since 77 and seen every film in theaters. I am not alt-right or a bot and I found the film utterly forgettable and am done with the franchise now. Again, if you liked the movie good I’m glad you did. But my eye’s saw something very different than you did apparently. Everyone has an opinion and it’s your right to have one. I won’t dismiss or attack yours because neither is really right, it’s just perception of the individual.
“Secondly a lot of film critics are and do give less than honest candy coated reviews for fear of not being included by Disney for things such as red carpet premieres and such.”
The fear of missing out. Every respected critics worst ever nightmare. Bought and sold for with one night per year.
If you are a website creating Star Wars content then you surely don’t want to be cut off from premiere showings, exclusive interviews, etc… Disney has shown that they will happily exclude newspapers if they disagree with them so I wouldn’t dismiss some of the points he made so readily.
In Disney case it’d be for far more than one night, especially with the newest pick up.
Yeah, critics get advanced screenings to nearly every new movie released. Can you verify that all critics from across the country that reviewed it positively were at the premiere?
If you didn’t like the movie, fine, but coming up with conspiracies to explain why others liked it is kinda pathetic.
Huh?!
Creating constant new content for a website like this is difficult, at this point after the release of the film, new content is bound to dry up so the editors here are looking at whats going on in the world of Star Wars and discussing that.
At this point in time we have an incredibly decisive Star Wars film, more so than any I can remember. IMO the editors should look at this more objectively, but they’re not journalists, they’re fans and it’s their right to be subjective. Unfortunately this can come across as damage control.
As someone else said in this comments section, there are a lot of legitimate complaints about TLJ getting lost in the love/hate argument.
Another person who thinks that all critics are in a scam to review the film positively because they get invited to advanced screenings – something that happens with nearly every movie ever made. 309 reviews are positive, against 27 negative. Do we know that all 309 of them were at the premiere? That’s a hell of a lot of people that needed to be bribed. And none of them have blown the whistle on the conspiracy.
I mean, sure it sounds unlikely….until you remember that Disney got absolutely SAVAGED only a few months ago for attempting to manipulate, suppress, and control professional reviews of their films….by threatening to lock out reviewers that wouldn’t play ball.
Yeah, they blocked access to one newspaper because they didn’t think their reporting on Disney’s dealings in Anaheim were fair and accurate. I don’t know how you get nationwide bribery scam with hundreds of news outlets and critics all on board.
Bribing people is the American way… Look at your government and politics… Why do lobbies exist if only to bribe…
You think Disney can’t afford to give critics free Red Carpet tickets (I’m sure it’s a write off). When you tell critics to only do non-spoiler reviews or put embargoes on reviews for a few days. Is that not a form of control and manipulation?
When your studio is making billions a year is it out of the realm of possibility that they spend a few hunrded thousand or even a few million on a mutual pandering relationship between studio and critics? Does it seem out of the realm of possibility?
This insane and pathetic. Accept the fact that people liked the movie. People not blinded by entitled fanboyism. Again, critics get pre-release screenings of every nearly movie that comes out. Over 300 critics form across the country are all in a scam, and no one blows the whistle? I guess they forgot to pay the same critics who trashed Pirates Of the Caribbean earlier in the year. LOL.
The ultimate measure for who was right will be the overall box office it makes that is how we will tell or the studio will…
The ultimate measure for who was right will be the overall box office it makes that is how we will tell or the studio will…
That’s was gibberish!
That’s was gibberish!
Episode IX title has been leaked too. It’s Star Wars Episode IX Revenge Of The Prequels. Also Rey’s lineage is also uncovered her name is Rey Mary Sue.
boring.
People voting the movie down on RT are mainly giving it a punishing 1/2 or 1 star. I have seen some pretty terrible movies in my time for which I would reserve such ratings. TLJ is certainly not among them.
Many of the reviews also show lack of understanding of the movie, and also the potential that has been set up for IX. I hope JJ does an amazing job and shows the naysayers the value and meaning of TLJ – for the sake of the naysayers more than anything.
What I do think is detrimental is that among such bizarre reviews you can lose the really meaningful and critical feedback. The sabre toss – one step too far and unnecessary in my opinion. Figuratively throwing away a mythical moment.
Moving characters through the story without taking the audience with you; BB8 disappears and reappears to save the day multiple times. These kind of things I would like fixed.
So many other things about the movie were amazing. I think a good review should also tell the makers what they did right.
The natural upshot of this is that you should be able to get in RT summary scores for specific types of reviewer. Trustworthy long term contributors that give proper reviews are more interesting for me than someone without a general movie barometer and no reviewing history.
Review the reviewers and factor their performance into how you calculate the total audience rating.
And other reviewers give the movie a 4,5 or 5. On IMDB 20,1% gave TLJ a 10/10 and only 6,1% gave it a 1/10. We can probably agree that both, a 10/10 and a 1/10 is ridiculous but it still this shows that the fanboys outvote the haters by quite a bit which makes the RT rating even more troubling.
The question is more about how many people scored this 1/2 or 1 vs how many gave it 2. Because what I see is a rather sparsely populated void between 1 and 3. The upper bound on the other hand has a more smooth transition. The fact that a lot of critics like the movie and other surveys agree with that justifies the higher RT audience scores as being legitimate.
Good morning 🙂
Morning 🙂
in my case, for exemple, i am not obsessed with ratings. If I hadn’t seen TLJ, this 53% wouldn’t affect me at all. ALthough the critics said it’s a bad film, i would have seen it too For various reasons, because is SW, because the genre, because is a scify/fantasy film, the theme, because i liked previous director works, because actors involved… But i have to admit this 53% or the falling 7,7 in IMDB (where TFA has 8,1) and the decreasing box office, could mean something. Probably the disappointment is there. It’s fair criticize but always with respect and good language. Always read TFA was so much Disney, but in m opinion TLJ has more aspects of this. Not a really bad sign but Is like If Ryan wanted to like producers so much, and definetly is not his style. He is not specialized in great humor (gags) with his films. That’s probably LF are so happy with him. And I think we all give personal ratings to films with our methods. So, sometimes we can understand why a movie has low or high ratings. TLJ probably is a generous 6’5/10, far from the 9’5/10 i give to TFA. But that’s just my opinion It doesn’t have to affect you ;P
I also think that “the hordes of trolls downvoting TLJ” is an unproven hypothesis. In robust statistics it’s not uncommon to remove the highest and lowest extremes. If we remove the 1/10 and the 10/10 however the overall average on IMDB decreases which means that the fanboys actually outvote the trolls. This is the reason why I don’t buy the whole “butthurt botters did it” excuse.
It’s unproven, I agree. Then again, at least there are some credible arguments to believe trolls might have played a part. Maybe they didn’t, of course.
But it’s more convincing than the “Disney paid everyone” hypothesis the other side has, at the very least.
It’s unproven, I agree. Then again, at least there are some credible arguments to believe trolls might have played a part. Maybe they didn’t, of course.
But it’s more convincing than the “Disney paid everyone” hypothesis the other side has, at the very least.
Both hypothesis are potentially possible but equally unproven. I think it’s simple. Rian wanted to challenge the audiences and he did. Some liked that challenge, others were estranged by it. Breaking with traditions is never easy and it shows in the ratings.
Actually, that’s my point, and your simple explanation is, I’m pretty sure, the truth.
So both sides can agree with something when none of us try to get into conspiracy theories.
True, but everyone has to admit that giving TLJ a 1/10 is just plain stupid. You would only give TLJ less than 4-5 if you’re really butthurt. TLJ is a far better movie than Trolls 2, Star Wars Holiday Special or The Ewok Adventure
My favorite current hypothesis floating around in the great toilet bowl of the internet is that “The Alt-Right” did it. But apparently DIDN’T do it to TFA. Because reasons. I have yet to see the film, but holy Christ, the mental gymnastics people are doing to discredit any opinion of it that is less than laudatory is truly impressive.
My favorite current hypothesis floating around in the great toilet bowl of the internet is that “The Alt-Right” did it. But apparently DIDN’T do it to TFA. Because reasons. I have yet to see the film, but holy Christ, the mental gymnastics people are doing to discredit any opinion of it that is less than laudatory is truly impressive.
At least we still have Doctor Who.
No controversy in that franchise, right?
😉
At least we still have Doctor Who.
No controversy in that franchise, right?
😉
Hey, I’ll give her a fair shot, like I have with all of them. I am not SUPER encouraged about the way the production team has been talking about it, and I’m REALLY not happy with the rumors that PC was in fact gently forced out just as he’s been getting some better writing behind him, to make way for her however. Thank god we’ll have like a year and a half before any new episodes air (◔_◔). The scheduling fuckery that’s going on is going to kill this show faster than any casting news.
It’s ironic — they kicked out PC (the man) in favor of PC (the idea). Regardless, Jodie is an exceptional talent — I hope that she and the show are recognized based on creative merits rather than the new gimmick. It’s unfortunate that the 3-year cycle is seemingly mandatory now — Peter definitely had another season in him (as did Matt Smith). I wish someone would eventually come along and own the role for several years as Tom Baker did, but maybe the hype surrounding the regeneration episodes provides a temporary ratings boost, for whatever that’s worth.
To keep this on topic, I’d say that one thing DW currently has in common with Star Wars is that both franchises seem to want to profit from all of the attention and buzz given to tearing down & rebuilding, rather than remaining something creatively consistent that we can count on. It’s somewhat greedy and alienating to fans trying to keep up, at least in my opinion.
It’s not unproven at all, a fanatic and relatively large (internet measures ofc, so a couple thousand people) horde of DCEU fanboys admittedly troll every Disney related product on the internet. Just the number of trolls is the question.
I personally programmed a bot that downvotes TLJ 10 times a day on rotten tomatoes. My word should be proof enough for you, I admitted to being responsible for the 52% on RT, and I don’t need to back up my claim of course 😉
I personally programmed a bot that downvotes TLJ 10 times a day on rotten tomatoes. My word should be proof enough for you, I admitted to being responsible for the 52% on RT, and I don’t need to back up my claim of course 😉
I didn’t say a single word about bots. This might surprises you, but the thousands of 1/10 votes on IMDB release day weren’t from dissatisfied press-screening audience…
On IMDB the 10/10 outvote the 1/10 by a 3:1 ratio. TLJ is as far away from a 1/10 as it is froma 10/10. There are always hyperboles like “worst movie” and “best movie” when it comes to Star Wars, It is clear however that the fanboys outvote the haters so if anything the fanboys skew the IMDB rating and not the haters! Which is even more troubeling when looking at the mediocre rating for TLH on IMDB (considering TLJ is a SW movie).
Now lets try it again for the third time. I was talking about the very first day of voting there, when noone outside of the press-audience has seen the movie. The ratio was far worse. In fact, the top 1000 voters (!!!) had over 40% of 1/10 on the press-screening day (of around 40-60 votes). Note, non of the voters have seen the movie at that point.
The haters/trolls are very active ever since the first TFA teaser was released. I’d say that never before in SW history have the haters/trolls been more active. Sure, the PT got a lot of crap on the internet, but never this vile, precursory type of hate. I suggest you to check out the Youtube channel “Jar Jar Abrams” and tell me there are no anti- modern SW trolls…
Also what do you mean by “troubeling” reviews considering TLJ is a SW movie? TPM has a 6,5… Considering how divisive the movie is I’d say anywhere around 7-8/10 on IMDB is reasonable for this flick.
I didn’t give a damn everyone liked 7; still thought it borrowed too much. Episode 8, same, but tried to be cute doing so.
TLJ did only 24 million on Friday night. To give context, R1 made 22 million on that same night and a TFA made 49 million. There is no way a movie with Luke Skywalker should be on par with R1 (a movie with unknowns characters) unless there are a section of fans who hate it.
I don’t care about polls or rotten tomatoes, it goes deeper then that. Some fans just hate the movie and aren’t coming back as repeat business is what drives the Box office after the first week.
The idea that this film was ever going to match the success of the mega-hyped TFA is simply ridiculous. I have no idea why any of you think that this film was going to come anywhere near those numbers. Both previous trilogies saw huge drop offs from film 1 to film 2.
Nobody expected it to do TFA numbers, but please don’t tell me Disney expected TLJ to do R1 numbers? They brought Luke Skywalker out in this movie for a specific reason as he sells to the masses. The only reason the Box office dropped this big is there is a backlash which was ignored this week as just internet whiners.
I guess they could’ve had a 66 year old man swinging a lightsaber around like he was still 25 to make epic lightsaber fights for brainless fanboys to gawk over and come back to see it again and again, but thankfully, for the sake of story they didn’t do that. Oh, well. maybe they can make up the difference with Solo if it’s another Rogue One style fan service festival.
Typical speculation as that is not something I wanted to see either. In fact I think Luke is the least of this movies problems. Poor character development, poor pacing, out of place humor, bloated script with Finn/Rose and a failure to even care about TFA narrative is why I don’t like this movie.
Please. This was the best written and executed Star Wars film since 1980.
The Poe/Hux cellphone joke alone disqualifies it to even compare to ESB. That scene was better suited for Spaceballs 2.
I don’t even think it was fit for Spaceballs 2 lol
Yoda was failed fan service…
Not really. He served the purpose of departing some wisdom to Luke at a critical point in Luke’s story in this film.
TFA was fan-service as well. The difference between R1 and TFA is that R1 didn’t pretend to be anything but and went down better than expected. Nothing wrong with fan-service when served correctly.
I can’t see the issue with a 66 year using a lightsaber either, Dooku had a stylish form of lightsaber fighting in AotC and RotS against Obi-wan and Anakin, and I’m not talking about the scene with Yoda. There was no jumping around that I recall.
I’ve no problem with TLJ other than some of its choices and a weak story. Its still a visual treat and worth watching a few times to grow and digest.
CGI Dookie does a fucking somersault of a balcony in AotC. It looked bloody ridiculous.
Luke couldn’t face Kylo Ren in a one-on-one lightsaber duel, because Luke is no longer as young or as strong as he was in Return of the Jedi. He knew that, it was much the same as Vader facing Obi-Wan in A New Hope. Instead, he outwitted his old apprentice.
Lol – well not seen for a while. It was more the sparring/fencing fighting style I’m referring to than an embellished stunt. I realise for much of that a stuntman was used, so stands to reason Hamill could of had a stuntman.
It’s the character that’s too old, not just the actor. Luke gets bested by Rey in a scuffle, Luke even acknowledges he’s no longer the Return of the Jedi legend. He knew he’d lose if he’d have to face Ren in a lightsaber duel. That was my interpretation anyway.
Yes, totally agree that’s how the character is portrayed and it wouldn’t suit the direction they went. I’m saying if Luke wasn’t like that and had a lightsaber duel then though considered to be fan-service, it can still be good if executed well. Any Easter-Egg should be considered fan-service, but we all enjoy those little gems.
Finally got around to rewatching the scene of Dooku’s lightsaber fight in RotS. I confess there are two flips, both off the same balcony (the 2nd from a kick off Anakin). Also a lame back-kick from Dooku at Obi-wan.
However, there is some really good technique to the fighting, not the usual twirls associated with the PT. Recommend rewatching and putting aside 2 or 3 minor issues and looking more closely at the technique. Though that said, as an older Jedi/Sith he does lose to a younger Anakin.
I’ll not mention the older Palpatine taking on 3 Jedi Masters, felt that scene was a bit…….well…..rubbish.
I sometimes watch specific scenes from the prequels. They definitely have their moments. If only George had made them for all ages to enjoy, like he did the OT. Fair play to anyone who loves them.
Nobody should have expected the same numbers as TFA, as the conditions were so totally different (first SW in a decade, launch of a new trilogy, the sacred trinity back in action, vs Disney releasing at least one SW movie every year, and now Han is dead). The drop off between week one and two however is, no matter how you try to ignore it, staggering, and there’s no way around that. It’s even more surprising because the initial defense of a weaker opening was “oh, the kids are in school. You’ll all see NEXT week, when people have time to see the film.”, so by that logic, we should have seen strong numbers in week two. It’s not happening though.
Empire making $100 million less than A New Hope is staggering. I guess everyone thought that movie sucked.
Empire making $100 million less than A New Hope is staggering. I guess everyone thought that movie sucked.
Well, that’s a lovely non-sequitur. Would you care to discuss the drop off between week one and two now, or are you going to keep plugging your ears and going “lalalalalalalala – I can’t hear you!”? Full disclosure, I haven’t seen the movie yet, so don’t have an axe to grind, nor an opinion on it yet. The facts of the box office results week to week (less tickets are being sold, by a LOT) are pretty interesting though, and it’d be neat to have a discussion around that.
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EDIT – Further to your point about Empire, keep in mind Star Wars ran something like a year in a lot of markets (yes, children, movies sometimes used to do that). By the time Empire rolled around, that wasn’t so much of a thing anymore). Add that to the fact that, no, Empire was not quite as a well received critically, or by fans (freaking defined a whole bunch of stuff about storytelling and movie-making for me though, I can tell you), and you have your explanation for the box office difference.
So the only thing that matters is the micro drop off and not the macro?
What is being implied (and you can stop pretending to be impartial) is that because the film made far less in the second Friday than the opening Friday that everyone hates it and no one wants to see it again.
I am merely applying the same logic to the picture to picture drop off comparative to the other Star Wars trilogies.
If Empire sold only 50% the number tickets as Star Wars (’77) did, I guess people had far less reason to see it again and again. Is that not a fair comparison?
Again it was different in 1980. My family didn’t see it until the 3rd weekend in 1980 simply because my mom was not waiting hours outside to get a ticket. Today the blockbuster is built for a huge first weekend because anyone can get a ticket now and the next few weeks are all about legs and repeat viewings. This movie will probably not even be #1 next weekend cause it’s fans like me who saw TFA 4 times aren’t coming back for TLJ a 2nd time.
Just looking at the numbers, I think Jumanji has a real shot at knocking it out actually.
(see my edit about Empire for some responses). Obviously, for Disney the total BO is what they’re going to be the most interested in, but the week to week IS an important piece of data that you can BANK on them analyzing right now too though. It suggests that the big opening was largely due to the die hards – people who pre-purchased their tickets, paid their money before they had anything apart from the trailers to judge it by, but the general public and all those kids who just weren’t there opening day because of school or whatever STILL haven’t shown up, and further it suggests that WoM, for whatever reason, is not strong on the film. Again, for THIS film, it may not signify much apart from ‘it’s not going to crack a billion dollars’ – it’ll still be financially successful though. There’s, I think, a longer term worry though.
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If the drop off is worse than TFA, yeah, it’s not super, but not totally unexpected. If it’s worse than R1? That’s a little alarming, because now you’ve got the start of a three movie trend, with larger and larger drop-off each time Disney spends $300 million dollars. I think they’re going to be watching very, very closely what Solo does as a result. Keep in mind, there’s nothing on the schedule apart from Episode 9 at this point. If Solo continues this trend (which may be unfair pressure to put on a film that’s had such a troubled production, has some built in fan antipathy, and is going up against some major releases from Marvel), I can absolutely see Disney telling LFL to scale back on production.
Blockbusters were different back in 1980, as nobody had a context of a Trilogy. I was there in 1980 and I will tell Why fans were mad, not at the movie, but the cliffhanger ending. Then ROTJ came out and you could watch it as part 2 of 3, it started to change.
Everyone walked into TLJ knowing there is a part 3 and knowing every mystery box from TFA and the movie ignores its narrative and does it’s own thing. What’s even more odd is JJ is writing Episode 9 so that probably won’t fit with Episode 8 narrative.
I blame Disney for not forcing JJ and RJ to atleast abide by an outline. RJ said nothing was developed after TFA and he could do what he wanted. That is why they are literally 2 different movies.
(I was there also, and, for the record, I do not recall anyone I knew being mad about the cliffhanger. Critics however didn’t like it, didn’t like Han and Leia’s bantering, didn’t like Threepio, etc etc.. I understand a lot of fans didn’t like the darker place that the film went to, and together with the shorter run, a 6 month recession foreshadowing the one that hit a year later, and a 20% jump in ticket prices pretty satisfactorily explains the difference I think.
Yea, that was a big mistake. I feel like Rian wanted to be the guy to end an iconic character. Because originally it was said that Ep. 9 was gonna give Luke and Leia a epic send off. Now neither get one.
Just looked ESB gross up and the 4th weekend it had its biggest gross so its impossible to compare 1980 movie Blockbusters to 2017.
ANH wasn’t just a movie, it was a phenomenon when it came out. Of course ESB couldn’t keep up with this competition. But the same standards don’t apply to TLJ. The fact that it is only selling roughly as well as R1 is troubeling.
AOTC was widely regarded as better than TPM not much better but still better & dived by $350 mill worldwide….it’s a natural thing the sequels in most cases never match the original….The Empire Strikes back dropped $250 mill worldwide compared to the original Star Wars… TLJ had the 2nd largest 7 day opening of all time domestic –
If you hated it that’s fine but many people loved it & I’ve heard of many going for a second viewing….
Just imagine how well it would have done if not for the negative. This was Luke’s grand comeback movie. I heard many say that’s why the young went. Yet after hearing the comments are now waiting. This movie was marketed like crazy.
Bet Disney takes an active role in landing this ship.
Once you accept the creative choices this movie made – by that I mean, realise that this isn’t a debate, or a choose your own adventure book – then we can have a conversation about the merits of those choices and whether they achieve the vision of the artists or not. This is not about whether they delivered on fan expectations. It’s always about the story and what makes the best movie. Personally, I was slightly upset by a few things on first viewing, shocked by others, but generally enjoyed myself. Second time, I just considered why the choices were made. Something like the saber toss is a great example. First time, I laughed but thought it was perhaps a bit of a rug pull. Second time, knowing what happens with Luke and where he has come from, this moment not only makes perfect sense, but I applauded the artistic choice to give Luke a real show don’t tell moment. It could have been dialogue, or some awkward handing back. Instead we got something pithy and direct, fun and physical. For me, it really works. And, honestly, that’s how it went for all the other choices for me…
And I wasn’t desperately trying to like it either. I’ve got my faults with many of the SW films. I love them all. But compared to the worst we’ve seen, this to me is a exceptionally well crafted, beautifully made film that makes bold and challenging choices that will divide some fans. But I think we would be better to argue over our opinions on the choices, rather than equate those with the quality of the filmmaking and storytelling – which I honestly think is high most of the time, and, at worst, average for blockbuster fare.
I agree, this film is well made, particularly in the context of some of the other SW movies. I do think RJ got caught up trying a little too hard to be unpredictable and some of the humor is just off. I also didn’t care for the middle act starting with Maz’s plainly stupid holo. Is it an outrage? Did he totally disrespect the material? Those comments are just silly.
I laughed my ass off when the sabre went over the shoulder, you just knew how butthurt some would be over it. Pithy and direct and consistent with the character’s mindset at the time.
The storytelling is some of the worst.
Hyperbole. Watch it again.
Exactly!
Still yet to see an article addressing the specific legitimate arguements involving plot holes, character/universe inconsistencies, needless hashtag humor, shallow explanations, etc…
Its very simple, people explain the issues yet all you hear is “haters this” and “haters that”. Any percieved anger in calm complaints is most likely from having to explain something simple over and over again to a brick wall.
I saw a commercial for Inside Edition (dont watch) that suggested people didnt like it because of a “strong female lead”. Are you kidding? Rey is great. She has nothing to do with any of the problems.
I just gave you the answer to this secret “mysterious dislike” of this film. Write articles about why Holdo never told Poe the plan, she never even explained why she didnt or one of the other issues.
Any other kind of article like this, at this point, just smells of trying to get people to click on it, otherwise this total lack of comprehension makes no sense.
Interesting, I thought the relationship with Poe and Holdo is pretty clear. Holdo doesn’t tell Poe the plan because she doesn’t know him. Leia is unable to vouch for him and just demoted him. He’s a potential liability. It’s also possible the ‘plan’ is not a full plan at the start, it’s just s strategy – we need to do what we can to survive. Crait may come up later. But even if it was the plan all along there’s no reason she should tell him. That’s just how military command works. Poe’s whole lesson in this film is to stop thinking he’s a one man army and that fighting is the only way to win. Both Poe and Finn have a lot to learn about true courage and heroism. The Holdo/Leia relationship shows that cooler heads sometimes need to prevail.
Poe is the most famous and best pilot in the resistence,hes also practically the leader of all x wing pilots.The idea that holdo woud not know him is really not credible at all.Her not telling him the plan,even if its not a full plan,is ridiculous and causes mutinys,chaos and untold carnage aboard that ship.It is most definitely a plot hole,and reeaaly bad one at that.
Yeah…that’s not how it works in the military.
Yet she tell Leia she likes him. And even when Poe took the ship and was about to try something else, Holdo was silent.
Yet she tell Leia she likes him. And even when Poe took the ship and was about to try something else, Holdo was silent.
Johnny, I appreciate the respect and professionalism you demonstrated to all fans with the tone of this article. I have been a big fan of the Star Wars News Net for the years. I was one of those hardcore fans that really did not enjoy the Last Jedi. I have a myriad of reasons for this, which I will not go into. Given my extreme disappointment in the film, I haven’t been checking up on Star Wars news as much as I usually do. I see I missed your pole, though I wished I hadn’t.
I and a lot of other fans who did not like the movie are growing frustrated that our misgivings are being passed off as trolls and bots. I am a HUGE Star War’s fan and was really looking forward to this movie. In response to the idea of a lot of bad reviews coming from new Rotten Tomato accounts that could also be from many other disappointed fans who care heavily about this brand and signed up for a new account just to make their voice heard. Many Star Wars fans are now adults with full time schedules and busy lives. Star Wars is something we pass down to their children and this movie seems to have awoken a slumbering beast in the hearts of many old school Star Wars fans.
I am a busy father who works full time and have written 5 books in the last 5 years. I don’t have time to review every movie, but many of us were so disappointed by this movie and its blatant disrespect for the source material we had to speak up. Which is why I think your example of complaining to a manager at a bad restaurant works, but on a much grander scale. We had to find some way for our voices to be heard. It was this movie that caused me to link my Facebook account to Rotten Tomatoes for the first time in my life. A lot of other parents I know didn’t like this movie either were members of many races, gender and creeds. Before this experience I had never heard of the Alt Right or did I have any issue with female or non-white leads. This is our response. Our feedback. Let our voices be heard. Thanks for all your hard work.
Well said. Thank you.
I’m actually glad they are trying to dismiss the anger as not real, because when they are forced to face it it will be all the more sweeter.
People have this idea the anger is from Luke being despondent, and it’s not. It’s what they’ve done to his entire legacy.
Luke from the Old EU was by far a more complex and worthy portrayal.
Now I’m not exactly sure why anyone should want to grow up to be a Jedi like Luke Skywalker.
I dunno, been a Luke fan for 40 years. This was the most interesting version of Luke we’ve had on screen and easily Mark’s best acting. He’s in good company now…with all the other failed Jedi masters.
If you’re judging what Luke or any of the OT characters could or should have been based on the EU, you will forever be disappointed.
Kanjiklubbed,
That’s a fair point. I did think Mark Hamill did an excellent job acting in this movie even despite his strong disagreements with Luke’s portrayal. My primary problem with Luke’s arc in the Last Jedi is that Rian never truly redeems him. Yoda rebukes Luke and he still doesn’t leave his hobo rock. Yoda tells Luke to be careful not to lose Rey like he lost Kylo but he never sees her again. Luke scarcely trains Rey which hurts both characters. If you want to start Luke off as this hobo character I can live with that, but he needed to break away from the whiny loser hermit character sooner than five minutes before his incredibly weak death.
Luke’s parlor trick while still sitting on his hobo rock is an incredibly weak way to go out. If Luke is going to die better to do it in person, I could have lived with all the movies many problems if Luke had showed up in flesh for his showdown at the end. He could have dodged laser fire, force crushed AT-ATs forcing Kylo Ren out of his ship. Then have an intense lightsaber battle with Kylo and laser fire from the First Order eventually killing Luke while the rebels escape. If it had not been too much for Rian Johnson to give fans one meaningful lightsaber battle with Luke, he would be facing down far less of a barrel of hatred for this movie.
I agree with you that judging Luke based on the EU will always leave us disappointed but if you’re going to throw out the EU and Luke’s story the writer better come up with something brilliant which it wasn’t. This movie crapped on nearly every character from the original films and the Force Awakens. It lives little to like in the name of shock value. Also, this story greatly demeans the impact of Return of the Jedi, Luke’s triumph over the Sith, his bringing his father back from the dark side and the restoration of the Jedi Order. Disney should have to rename Return of the Jedi to Return of the Jedi, Not! Instead of Luke rebuilding what his father destroyed he fails, sulks on a hobo rock and dies. How does this vision help the Star Wars saga in any way?
Watch it again.
I’ll watch it again when it comes out on Netflix and they don’t earn an additional dime from me in the box office, that’s how strongly I disliked it. I saw TFA 4 times in theaters and R1 5 times. My financial support only comes when the movie is worthwhile and this movie has WAAAAAY more issues than the tiny few I mentioned in the above post. But thanks anyways. 🙂
yes! Luke’s handling/ mishandling is minor in comparison to the other issues with the movie. It isn’t far off in tone from a transformers movie and even closer to a Marvel movie. Its the entirety of the film that is a problem not just one particular area.
Fantastic post and I did exactly the same. I saw ANH when I was 7 years old and have been a fan ever since. I loved both TFA & R1 and was really looking forward to TLJ. However, I was so disappointed after watching it that I left a review on RT for the first time ever! It has also left me feeling pretty despondent about episode IX. I just can’t see where they can go that will make it exciting and interesting. I don’t envy JJs task ahead. In one movie he’s going to have to explain/show the rise of a new resistance/rebellion and then have said resistance/rebellion defeat the first order. Also, we’ve seen Rey is more powerful than Kylo so we know how the rematch between them will go! This also probably means the end of the Saga films now as there won’t be any skywalkers left!
funny, I also linked my facebook to rotten tomatoes for the first time ever to add a review.
Can someone tell me how they were supposed to flee from Crait once they got there???
They were going to use the base to hole up until other systems came to support them after they sent the signal out for help.
Aha, Thanks.
Aha, Thanks.
Star Wars 9: A Newer more Aware of Failure Hope
Outside those who’d apologize for the firm no matter what it did, I rarely run into people who thought this was good.
However, it seems those keep pushing this narrative that we just don’t get it are the ones missing the criticism. I shouldn’t have to write episode nine in my head to make sense if choices in 8.
This movie was made to make us forget about the original three and keep love only new characters.
Bold isn’t bringing the entire Saga full circle and tell me the heroes of my youth only real contribution was they failed so the new heroes can learn from them. Hey Rey, if the Bragg kid on Canto starts to show signs of being a dark sider and you go confront him, chop him up or don’t even go. Yay probablem solved.
So I wonder if Fin, Cherie, Rey, etc. can beat back the second Empire called the first order in one firm.
Let me give them a hint, my guess is they’re building a super weapon and solidying power.
Bold would have been going to Achtoo and having Luke say he discovered that both the Republican and Empire are dark, and that Leia was surrounded. And a choice would have to be made that could make it appear the Jedi had helped the first order.
Or flip the script, right when Kylo Ren — leader of an order of Knights — kills off Snoke, an entire separate enemy manafests itself and causes The First Order and Resistence to join forces in the name of survival.
Bold isn’t telling the Original Trilogy with tweaks that lead to the same destination. Bold is taking the story narrative where it’s never gone before, not just a new path to the exact same destination.
“The First Order and Resistence to join forces in the name of survival”
Though slightly along the lines of a EU Legends Truce at Bakura, this is what is needed for the average film goer. A fresh spin in the film saga. Said it before, the FO should of been more a fringe extremist group, they could of had a split in this film showing the true extremes that many felt were unnatural, hence the Rebels (I mean Resistance and FO working together).
Many months before TLJ I posted a similar idea of the need for the resistance and first order to unite against a common evil in order ever close the saga. The idea was panned by people in this forum. So the retrospective proposal that TLJ should have been such a truce/unification story would have also been disliked. I believe my idea was compared to x-men at the time – and it has all been done before. There us basically no way to please everyone.
I am happy to be among those that just enjoys the saga. I like TLJ. I even like AOTC and am pretty shocked about the hate that movie receives. TPM is in many ways also brilliant – but fans just cannot help themselves in complaining.
Eventually, introducing a new external threat is the only way to move on from a circular Rebellion/Resistance vs Empire/First Order theme. Star Trek did it for example with the Dominion War where the Federation, the Klingons and ultimately the Romulans had to team up against a common enemy from a remote quadrant in the galaxy. The old Star Wars EU, on the other hand, had the Yuuzhan Vong, which was a very creative arc,
Rewind to the original trilogy and we had a hotch potch of vader betrayed and murdered your father, i am your father, and a certain point of view…and then the other skywalker. Without knowing ROTJ, ESB left so much open and to make sense of. It is revisionist to claim otherwise.
How do you know we are going to the same destination when you have not seen IX yet?
I think they should never announce that they will make “trilogy”. Because then eveyone pre-emptively complains about the last act before it even exists.
The theory as to why so many in the industry are still pushing this movie as the next Lawrence of Arabia is because of the ripple effect it will have on the movie business.
Star Wars gross helps out the culminative numbers of all movies for the year so the studios can say movie ticket sales were up 3% overall this year. If a Star Wars movie does not live up to its projected gross then it goes from +3% to possibly a negative overall number. That’s a PR problem for the Studios if it’s they have to explain less people went to the movies this year.
That makes little sense… Why didn’t they do it with the DCEU then? Or the other dozens of failed big tentpole names.
That makes little sense… Why didn’t they do it with the DCEU then? Or the other dozens of failed big tentpole names.
Can anyone tell me how Rey got from Snoke’s flagship to the Falcon?
It says in the movie. She took Snoke’s personal shuttle and rendezvoused with Chewie who was piloting the Falcon.
And could that have been a better story line to follow rather than Rose and Finn?
No. There is no story there. She escaped in the shuttle, radioed the Falcon where she was and got on board. Big deal.
I had the same question. Although it’s kinda answered in the movie, I missed the scene where she reunites with Chewie: specially because we have no idea where does the Falcon goes after Rey’s capsule is propelled to the flagship. I mean the Falcon is just in the middle of the chase and it’s such a relevant ship.
Lucasfilm should’ve written the trilogy out ahead of time.
Totally – a rough outline should of been used. Things could of been changed as required or with fresh new ideas, but at least a rough outline gives guidance.
I still baffles me that they didn’t write the trilogy ahead of time. I sometimes publish short novels as a hobby and to make some money on the side and even I, an amateur writer compared to the people working at LF, carefully plan out my stories before I start writing the final manuscript. After thinking about an overall plot/idea I usually star by making mindmaps including the most important events and characters, how they are connected to each other and how they develope over the course of the story. It’s mindboggling that Lucasfilm seems unable to map out at least a basic story for their trilogy but happily kicked George’s vision for 7-9 into the trashbin. If you guys can’t come up with your own coherent story then maybe you should have taken George’s ideas, rewrite the dialogue, include some of your own ideas and remove parts that you didn’t like instead of having a story that doesn’t lead anywhere. Another blank canvas after TLJ is one of the most boring scenarios leading up to the final episode of a trilogy I can imagine.
“Another blank canvas after TLJ is one of the most boring scenarios leading up to the final episode of a trilogy I can imagine.”
More so than waiting for Revenge of the Sith? Knowing that we’ll finally see Anakin become Vader, Palpatine the Emperor, and witness the birth of his Empire.
If the canvas is blank, doesn’t that make it more exciting?
A blank canvas is fine for a series like James Bond or Indiana Jones. An adventure spanning one movie and then everything is back to normal. However for a franchised based on overarching stories like Star Wars this is terrible. The fact that IX could play 10 years after TLJ or only one day later is a symptom of a trilogy that is utterly disjointed. A multi part trilogy like Star Wars traditionally demands a buildup towards a certain goal. Character developement happens alongside story developement but It can’t replace it. I am happy to see Kylo evolve but the story surroundign him needs to evolve too. Kylo’s goals were Snoke’s goals in TFA and the first half of TLJ but we never learn what Snoke’s goals were to begin with. It’s ridiculous and unworthy of a franchise that is famous for it’s interconnected trilogies. Rey vs Kylo again? You got to be kidding me. I don’t care if he now has the worthless title supreme leader and Rey is even more overpowered . The setup is almost exactly the same we had at the end of TFA. We are moving in circles (storywise) with two contrary visions (JJ’s and RJ’s) fighting each other rather than building upon each other.
Interestedly, James Bond has evolved with the Daniel Craig movies. Not just the character and tone, but also the structure. Spectre tied the last four movies together quite nicely. The last two movies are in my opinion, easily some of the best in the franchise. I get your points, they’re pretty valid, but personally I like how Rian Johnson broke down the conventions, and made his own movie. It’s not even like he disrespected J.J. Abrams, as J.J. loved his script. Maybe it’s just that I’m more character orientated than anything else.
My problem is that the Character evolution is pretty bland too. Kylo’s motives were always Snoke’s motives. We don’t learn about Snoke’s motives so we don’t know what Kylo motivated either. Why he turned to the dark side, why he had to kill Solo (he still turned against Snoke after all, rendering Han’s death in TFA meaningless for Kylo’s character developement ). We also don’t know why Kylo was such a massive Vader fanboy (I would expect quite the contrary, given the stories he must have heard about Vader form his parents and Luke). Now he is Supreme Leader but what exactly does that mean . How does it change anything? It’s not like Kylo said: “now I can finally follow my own plan which is X and then I will finally accomplish Y which I never could when Snoke was alive.” At no point did anyone in the First Order say: “Sorry sir, access only granted to the supreme leader” or “We cannot tell you about this, only the Supreme leader is allowed to know this information”. So why should I be impressed by Kylo now wearing the worthless title of supreme leader. There is no power, no freedom and no burden connected to that title unlike “Darth” that comes along with a set of rules and charatertraits that actually mean something. Kylo hasen’t moved a bit since TFA. We never saw Snoke restricting Kylo in any drastic way but now we know that Kylo is finally free. Uhm okay I guess. But free from what exactly?
I don’t mean to be a negative nancy without offering alternatives what I would have done. Let’s take the knights of Ren for example. Why didn’t we get a scene in TLJ where Kylo enters the throneroom with the knights of Ren backing him up upon entering. Snoke yells at Kylo for losing the fight against Rey on starkiller base and even mocks him for losing to a complete beginner. Kylo is infuriated. he ignites his lightsaber and commands the nights of ren to attack Snoke but instead of attacking they move over to Snoke positioning themselves like the praetorians we see later in the movie. Snoke rambles on how Kylo is unworthy to lead the knights of ren, how their talents (they were students of Luke) would be wasted with Kylo in command. Snoke tells Kylo that he will now take care of the nights of Ren, from now on known as the praetorians. Kylo is even more infuriated, screaming at the knights of ren asking them how they could betray him after their time at Luke’s academy and after all tehy have been through since then. Snoke mentions how the praetorians are no longer confident inkylo’s ability as a leader. He taunts Kylo by telling him that one of knights might prove himself worthy and might even rise above kylo, replacing him eventually. Snoke sends kylo away, escorted by some first order riot troopers, telling him that he is nothing next to the supreme leader and that he will have to prove himself if he ever wants to be taken seriously like vader.
This scene would explain who the knights of ren are, where they went after TFA, what the praetorian guard’s are and why the praetorian guards are so powerful. It would add a layer of conflict and give Kylo a motive to rise above Snoke, it would add another layer of tension to the figth between Kylo and the praetorians. It would make Kylo’s efforts to take over the first order less random and more goal oriented.
Interestingly enough, even though we all knew what was going to happen, I was looking forward to seeing how Anakin would become Vader, or how the Empire would be born, and what Padme’s fate would be. So there was a fair amount of “blank canvas” still to be filled from my point of view.
Why? Lucas didn’t. Either time.
But even though the original trilogy has since been ranked on sites such as Rotten Tomatoes, they originally released in theaters at a time when the Internet didn’t exist for public use. So it’s easy to forget how fans reacted to another one of the most shocking entries in the franchise, The Empire Strikes Back.
Sci-fi magazine Starlog was one of the popular sources for geek news back in the ’80s, with many fans writing in their thoughts much like they’d post on social media nowadays. Website A Critical Hit recently compiled some responses to The Empire Strikes Back in the pages of Starlog, giving us an idea of how fans reacted to what is widely regarded the best film in the saga to date.
Some fans were skeptical of the big reveal:
Others thought the film didn’t answer enough of the mysteries permeating throughout the film (hmm, that sounds familiar):
I know they wanted to leave something to settle in the other sequels, but they left a little too much. For instance, Han Solo’s predicament. The movie should not have ended until Han was either killed by Boba Fett or Jabba or rescued by Lando Calrissian or Chewbacca, the former, preferably. Also, the fate of Bespin is not told. Was it taken by Lando’s troops, taken by Imperial troops or destroyed by Vader? I like Lando Calrissian and Billy Dee Williams was very good playing the part. – Sean Bernard
Some didn’t enjoy the Leia/Han romance:
’mon Leia, why don’t you take a look around? Can’t you see what Luke is up against? You could have a “nice guy” like him. Instead, you are turning your back on him. Forget that it was Luke that saved you from having your atoms scattered throughout the galaxy. Forget that it was Luke, and not Han Solo, that wanted you rescued from the Death Star detention area. But you don’t need to remember all that, Leia. As long as hot-lips Han is around, who needs Luke anyway? – Carol Kane
And others thought it was downright offensive:
George Lucas has made a movie even more racist and sexist than the first. I would think that Billy Dee Williams would resent being the token black in the film. Also, there was only one other woman, apart from Carrie Fisher, in the movie. – Richard Hess
Even Starlog’s own staff writer David Gerrold wasn’t a huge fan of the movie, as evidenced by his review:
I liked it. I really did. I just didn’t like it enough. Just about every other critic in the country has been telling you how good the picture is; they’ve been falling over themselves to tell you. It’s embarrassing. I feel guilty for not liking it as much as I’m supposed to.
All in all, it sounds like The Last Jedi is getting similar treatment that The Empire Strikes Back received all those years ago, only amplified by the presence of the Internet. Time will tell where it lands in the saga’s “Best Of” rankings.
Fair, but in terms of film making Empire is far superior. It added more to the lore than TLJ and had characters you actually give a fuck about.
The only redeeming quality of this new trilogy is Adam Driver.
When seeing Empire as a child the “I am your father>” line sucked all the air out of the theater. There was no line like that in TLJ I actually cannot remember a stand out line.
I mean, yeah but no other Star Wars movie, or pretty much any other movie, has a line that’s as infamous as ‘I am your father.’
I personally felt there were many more quotable lines in this one than TFA. Yoda’s ‘We are what they grow beyond’, is pretty wonderful.
Why does there have to be? What about the other 6 films? Which lines from those “sucked the air out of the room”?
TLJ is a piece of a puzzle. One chapter.
It’s great. Not perfect. But great.
Hoping TLJ will grow on me with repeated viewings like ESB did. ESB is my favorite episode now, but I remember leaving the drive-in unhappy with the cliffhanger. It took a few viewings on glorious pan and scan VHS to change that.
I really can’t remember how I initially felt about Empire. I remember queuing up outside the cinema for a couple of hours beforehand, in a line that looked like it was never going to end. All a blank memory after that.
Return of the Jedi was always my favourite SW film as a kid.
This movie reminds me alot of how I felt about ROTJ…a great story with some brilliant bits weighed down by drek. In that case it was too many muppets, teddy bears with spears and the 3 stooges death of BF. But ROTJ grew on me too.
Great post! I remember well the pissed off reviewers and fans at the time of ESB ragging on how the movie was “incomplete” and a horrible cliff hanger. I scratched my head then, as I do now, at how short-sighted some people are. Their loss.
I don’t think it’s totally fair to compare with ESB reviews. Every masterpiece (or what we think is a masterpiece for us) had bad user reviews. I think the matter here is compare scripts and cinematography. ESB is a very well executed film, well scripted, well acted, with wise humor and a more tangible world that mantains its solidity through the years. TLJ has great moments yes, is absolutely very well acted, and has beautiful shots, but some characters have no evolution, the tempo is bad executed, has lots of jokes (not wise humor like for exemple “that’s not how the force works”) and forced situations. This is Only my opinion and i give a 6’5 to TLJ, so I don’t hate it, just giving my thoughts 😉 ESB has no Jedi through space for exemple, something only time will give some credit or not. No, it’s not a bad scene, but lacks of naturality. It’s forced, like sone other scenes. I would prefer a more dramatic situation, seing Leia creating some kind of protection and arriving exhausted into the ship.
I am sure time will tell good things about the risk in TLJ, something i really apreciatte and like, but i doubt it will tell is a brilliant movie to be included in important lists in general cinema. That’s probably how nostalgia works ;p
I don’t think it’s totally fair to compare with ESB reviews. Every masterpiece (or what we think is a masterpiece for us) had bad user reviews. I think the matter here is compare scripts and cinematography. ESB is a very well executed film, well scripted, well acted, with wise humor and a more tangible world that mantains its solidity through the years. TLJ has great moments yes, is absolutely very well acted, and has beautiful shots, but some characters have no evolution, the tempo is bad executed, has lots of jokes (not wise humor like for exemple “that’s not how the force works”) and forced situations. This is Only my opinion and i give a 6’5 to TLJ, so I don’t hate it, just giving my thoughts 😉 ESB has no Jedi through space for exemple, something only time will give some credit or not. No, it’s not a bad scene, but lacks of naturality. It’s forced, like sone other scenes. I would prefer a more dramatic situation, seing Leia creating some kind of protection and arriving exhausted into the ship.
I am sure time will tell good things about the risk in TLJ, something i really apreciatte and like, but i doubt it will tell is a brilliant movie to be included in important lists in general cinema. That’s probably how nostalgia works ;p
Compare TLJ to the prequels. It’s not quite a masterpiece. But it’s a great star wars movie.
I absolutely agree. Yes. Although Canto Bight gave me some weird prequel feelings ;p
Hey, for everyone yelling that one person destroyed the whole of the Star Wars universe. Try talking to a Whovian (which I am also) how one person (Moffet) destroyed 50 YEARS of Doctor Who. He actually went out of his way to utterly change, alter, throw away 50 YEARS of established history. Rian tried to make some new and fresh, but stay within the Star Wars history. I hate Moffet to this day.
Know what I am doing right now. Watching a marathon of Doctor Who…
Hey, for everyone yelling that one person destroyed the whole of the Star Wars universe. Try talking to a Whovian (which I am also) how one person (Moffet) destroyed 50 YEARS of Doctor Who. He actually went out of his way to utterly change, alter, throw away 50 YEARS of established history. Rian tried to make some new and fresh, but stay within the Star Wars history. I hate Moffet to this day.
Know what I am doing right now. Watching a marathon of Doctor Who…
Come on now – the Grand Moff had his moments tho. Death in Heaven, The Doctor’s Wife. Vincent and the Doctor. Listen (as much as I loath Clara, holy crap did the end of that episode work like gangbusters). Heaven Sent/Hell Bent. I can’t hate the Moff as much as I hate Davies.
Do you listen to Big Finish?
Some of them, very few – mostly Tom B, as he was my Doctor.
Totally understandable — I’m partial to the 8th Doctor as far as Big Finish goes, to help me bridge the gap between old & new ‘Who’. And while I’m not as critical of post-2005 Doctor Who on TV, I think some of the most well-written adventures of recent times are the audio ones.
(Something to consider in the long downtime between seasons, I suppose.)
i think moffit’s biggest issue was he stayed on past the time he ran out ideas, to the point where things became very stale. i do love how many fans he pissed off with the sonic sunglasses though.
i think moffit’s biggest issue was he stayed on past the time he ran out ideas, to the point where things became very stale. i do love how many fans he pissed off with the sonic sunglasses though.
Any Star Trek fans here? I was wondering if this was similar feeling to when JJ’s film basically said the history of Star Trek never happeneed because of some time travel stuff? It never bothered me but I’ve never been an uber ST fan, I just seem to remember a lot of hard core fans hated it.
I thought the reboot of Star Trek was actually extremely well done and the history was still there, in the for of Prime Spock.
To be honest in regard to the Saga, as I loved R1, I felt from TFA that the story group in not having an overall arc had missed a trick. Also the retelling on a similar story, TFA borrowed heavily from the OT, was a mistake. The ST needed to be its own beast, much as the PT are for right or wrong Lucas’s vision and not what the fans thought the background should be.
That’s quite a good analogy with Star Trek. I like Star Trek films and thought what JJ did was quite clever and a fresh idea of rebooting the franchise. They were excellent films. I’m not a die-hard “trekkie” though and so viewed the new films with an open mind and was blown away by them. However I can understand the life-long trekkies being disgusted at what happened.
Now move to Star Wars and the Last Jedi. People with a casual interest in these new films will undoubtedly love them for the exact reasons I loved the Star Trek reboot. But the die-hard fans who have invested many years following everything in the Star Wars universe are now annoyed, and that really comes as no surprise. It’s a hard pill to swallow and I’m not comfortable with the direction SW is going either. Time will tell.
Don’t normally chime in, but in light of this article and all these polls, I just wanted to say I loved the movie. I was severely disappointed by The Force Awakens. This is a fresh, subversive bit of storytelling and, for me, there’s no real point to making new Star Wars movies unless they achieve this. I think this film is really going to grow on fans, warts and all. There are problems but they’re all part of its charm. At least someone took some actual risks in this franchise and for that, Johnson is a true artist.
This ^^
This ^^
I don’t mind fresh or subversive so long as it’s good and well executed.
I think that’s a lot of the problem people have with the TLJ. Some think he handled it brilliantly… others think it was a hamfisted mess. I personally feel it’s right in the middle. Some of what he crafted was amazing. Other times I felt it missed the mark so badly.
This is a movie that requires repeated viewings. There’s so much to process.
It’s not a mess. It’s just dense.
It’s no more ham-fisted than the 7 preceding films. Seriously. Watch the first 7 in proper order, then watch TLJ again. I did this. It really ties everything together. Particularly the PT and OT. Haters are missing this important point. I hated the PT, but I’ve come to accept it. Even like it. TLJ calls back to it and re-frames it. This was a necessary movie.
Me too. TFA grew on me. The new story and characters wrapped in a rehash is fine. TJL was a weird first viewing experience. But on second viewing almost everything worked for me. It was great. And as you say, it’s faults are part of its charm, yeah. Well said. It’s a shame that some people can’t see the forest for the trees. They’re really missing out on something special. Faults and all.
Many people hated the movie. Get over it. This is just a movie.
I feel like this site is gearing up to solicit itself towards being purchased by Disney. Articles like this are embarrassing to me as a long time Star Wars fan. The bias on this site of being pro Disney is ridiculous. I’m neither pro nor anti Disney and I’m willing to have an open mind. The Last Jedi is a middle of the road B-movie and its wide swath of “consumer” ratings suggest as much. Star Wars is a product at this point and we are the consumer. For Disney its not about much more than that. For SWNN its also not about much more than that.
Product / Consumer – well said.
Also, add “Brand” and “Shareholders” and “Bottom Line”. Disney is simply a big corporation. That video of Bob Iger talking about how he only looks at stories with the bottom line in mind… kind of makes you realize why things have become so vanilla.
TLJ, vanilla?
All evidence to the contrary.
Or…they liked it more than you did?
If you liked TLJ you must be in Disney’s pocket…open mind indeed
whoa buddy, I didn’t say anything about the site liking it…. They are protecting it like they created the film themselves or more importantly Disney’s interests. Liking vs Protecting 2 different things. They also haven’t accepted offers from viewers who asked to review the film from the perspective of someone who didn’t like the film. Media outlets should share opinions from all side- SWNN is biased because they are receiving payolla. Maybe you need to review your snarky comment.
Hey, we should just ignore the people’s voices so it doesn’t damage the brand! I just lost all respect for this website. I want to hear people’s opinions good or bad. I take more stock in that than a critics.
You are commenting on a discussion board that literally serves that exact purpose. Also, the site has an extensive fan forum – The Cantina – for extended discussion.
I get it you want people to hold your hand through all your decisions.
You’re right, we shouldn’t discuss user reviews vs critics reviews…no one else is talking about it and besides, only certain opinions have merit
Do your homework. A bot spammed Rotten Tomatoes to falsely lower the score. You can keep on hoping the negativity spreads, but the truth is quite different.
Do your homework. A bot spammed Rotten Tomatoes to falsely lower the score. You can keep on hoping the negativity spreads, but the truth is quite different.
marry christmas everyone.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/3220a1ccb5fd26f501670534424553a8cf024eb4abaa42f54a64a41c8e8cc004.jpg
TLJ’s weekend box office in the US is estimated to show a whopping 69 % drop compared to the opening weekend, which proves that the negative reaction to the movie is not confined to a handful of social media “trolls” as some posters claim in this forum. I thnk it is time for RJ, the LFG and the reviewers on this site who still think that RJ can do no wrong to show some humility and admit that TLJ has many flaws that need to be addressed in future Star Wars projects.
Lol we posted at the same time.
In comparison, Rouge One dropped 58% its second week – and everyone thought that was bad…
TFA ‘s second weekend drop was only 39.8 % according to BoxOffice Mojo, TFA’s two-week gross in the US was approximately 540 milliion versus 365 million for TLJ.
Nope. Catering to anyone is exactly what lucasfilm shouldn’t be do.
They should continue to give Star Wars to storytellers, filmmakers with vision and something to say.
The evidence shows that the majority of fans, critics and casual moviegoers loved the film.
that there is also debate, criticisms and hate for the film does not alter that evidence.
If you hated the film,you’re not wrong, that’s your opinion, but you are in the minority.
Please. Christmas Eve on a Sunday, last day shopping on a Saturday. Every movie suffered this weekend. Mon – Fri will be the true tell.
To everyone who I told to talk to me after the second weekend. Here you go:
“However, what’s potentially worrisome is that The Last Jedi isn’t holding onto as much of its opening day audience. Or as Forbes reports, The Last Jedi has the worst daily holds numbers of any Star Wars movie ever. As of Wednesday, December 20, after six days of release, The Last Jedi had retained only 16 percent of its opening day gross. That’s lower than every other Star Wars movie across the board, even Rogue One. In fact, that’s even lower than Justice League‘s daily holds, which held on to 27 percent of its opening day gross on the sixth day of release.”
In addition, the six-day accumulated US box office for TLJ was already nearly 100 million US$ below TFA’s. and that gap has probably widened after TLJ’s relatively poor second weekend.
Putting figures into perspective, TLJ is still a highly profitable movie (the two-week worlwide box office is already near US$ 750 million), but that is to be expected pretty much from any movie that has the label Star Wars on it. The question is how much the brand will be hurt in the long run by divisive movies like TLJ. In particular, I see problems for RJ’s new planned trilogy.
A Star Wars movie with the Return of Luke should have been huge.
I have no interest in Star Wars right now. I stopped playing BF2 and stopped reading the books I was reading.
On the plus side, I have discovered anime and I am addicted.
Then why are you here? Presumably, since you have no interest in Star Wars, that will be your last post.
You presume wrong.
Why? To convince people who liked the movie that they’re wrong?
It’s his lot in life.
“I have no interest in Star Wars right now”.
Yet here you are. On a Star Wars site. Reading an article on Star Wars. And posting about Star Wars. Everything you just said is wrong.
I don’t think “I have no interest in Star Wars right now” means what you think it means.
IMPOSSIBLE! Haven’t you read the SWNN article above
I was iffy on a few things first viewing. This film was waaay better the second time. Things people thought were “bad jokes” or jokes that didn’t work are missing the point: they’re not necessarily supposed to be funny. Luke’s sabre toss isn’t a joke. It can be if you think so, but otherwise it’s a truthful character moment. He’s done. It means nothing to him. And he’s making a point of petulantly showing it. And Luke had always been petulant. Reys “can you put a towel on” was weird first time. But then I realized that its an honest character Moment. She can’t control the telepathy and has always been uncomfortable with anything macho or remotely sexual. It’s not a joke. The porgs, they’re the only real jokes. Other moments, even the beginning Poe hux exchange, which bugged me at first, didn’t the second time, while humorous its also true to the characters. He’s a cocky wise ass and hux is s singleminded clueless first order zealot. It’s fine.
The leia scene is beautiful. It’s odd on first viewing. But it’s really perfect.
Luke’s arc is great.
This is not a perfect film. Holdo and the horses being the weakest for me. But it’s still great. The flaws are minor. This was a really smart film. Rian gave this a lot of thought. I think the “haters” are missing out on a hell of a lot of subtext. It’s really quite subversive, and completely true to everything that preceded it.
Haters: watch it again. Unlearn what you have learned. Otherwise, I really think you’re missing out.
Well said!
Luke throwing the saber was symbolic of what Rian and J.J. were doing to the OT hereos. Bad father, bad husband, bad brother, worse uncle, failed Master, but super duper Leia. 40 years later a small band of rebels and the new New Hope must not repeate the mistakes of the past.
Bold new direction!
I think they should just cut to the chase and get rid of all the bad men.
I think some of you are trying too hard to like a mediocre movie with dumb juvenile humour, weak villains in emo Kylo, comedy relief Hux and the cartoonish Snoke. Plus, the contrived Dark Luke drama; Mary Sue Rey, daughter of no one, but as powerful as Kylo despite no training; Leia using the force for the first time in the movies, to nothing less than breathe and fly in space, an out of nowhere Super Jedi!! Among other flaws, but if you want to like it just because it’s a SW movie, go ahead, most critics also liked the prequels despite everything:
The Phantom Menace: 55% (Audience Score 59%)
Attack of the Clones: 66% (Audience Score 57%)
Revenge of the Sith: 79% (Audience Score 65%)
The Last Jedi: 92% (Audience Score 52%)
TLJ is hated as much as the prequels, and no trolls excuse please, there are enough votes to balance it out, and the biggest second weekend drop of any SW movie, proves once again many fans are not happy with the film. You can watch it I don’t how many times, the flaws get worse because there’s no surprise factor anymore, so you don’t get distracted by it and analise everything more rationally.
“Mikel andrewtoronto • 5 hours ago
I think some of you are trying too hard to like a mediocre movie”
You and a few others are trying too hard to convince people that liked the movie to stop liking it. Despite what you are telling me I should believe, I’m liking it more with each viewing. I guess that means I must just like it because it’s a Star Wars movie…right?
Its fine if you like it. Too bad people are leaving Theaters ENRAGED by this film. I’ve never seen people leave a Theater more genuinely upset and at some screenings audiences have BOOED at the ending.
Yeah, that’s a total lie.
Yeah, that’s a total lie.
Aaaaaaaaaaaaand there it is. The comment I have been waiting for. “This sucks like the Prequels suck!” – I knew this movie would be the one the Prequel haters hated – because it, like the Prequels, tells a much different story (on multiple levels) than the OT. The originality and daring to take chances with our established beliefs in the Star Wars universe is what so many fans are hating. Gotta love that. “I want nothing new!! Just give me exactly what I’ve seen before or else it SUCKS!”
Aaaaaaaaaaaaand there it is. The comment I have been waiting for. “This sucks like the Prequels suck!” – I knew this movie would be the one the Prequel haters hated – because it, like the Prequels, tells a much different story (on multiple levels) than the OT. The originality and daring to take chances with our established beliefs in the Star Wars universe is what so many fans are hating. Gotta love that. “I want nothing new!! Just give me exactly what I’ve seen before or else it SUCKS!”
Dear guys from SWNN:
Like other posters have already indicated, The Last Jedi has THE BIGGEST SECOND WEEKEND DROP OF ANY STAR WARS MOVIE EVER. The people have spoken, no more excuses nor conspiracies, and please, don’t use the predictable “but there was competition from other movies!” excuse, that didn’t stop any of the other SW movies from having better legs than TLJ. Just admit you were wrong, that many fans didn’t like the movie as much as you did and move on. Thank you, keep the good work and may the force be with you, always. 😉
Not sure what we are wrong about. Some people like the movie, some people don’t. We did a poll and more than 80% of the voters liked it. Other SW fansites did similar polls with the same result. I know our readers are mostly huge SW fans and geeks, but that’s the opinion that mattered to me. Not sure why people who hate the movie can’t understand that there are people who love it. And it’s a fact that they are the big majority.
I yet to read once anyone say they don’t understand others like it. It’s this giant push to pretend like there’s nothing to see here that’s pretty funny. You just discounted most people opinions in your comment. I’ve read, watched, and collected as much SW as any on this thread, and I didn’t vote because it was clear there was an agenda.
The only saving grace is, despite some fans who refuse to admit real division, Disney will not ignore it, despite their public comments.
Hopefully they step in and make sure 9 salvages this story and turn our childhood heroes into something more than props to help a new generation shine.
GREAT Timothy. SLAY.
GREAT Timothy. SLAY.
Do you have a source to back up your “fact” that the majority liked it?
Read the post again
Yes, the quoted poll above from 5000 votes. Also our friend StarWarsExplained did the same poll with his followers with the same result.
So 5000 people represent the majority? And what about the 151, 000 people on Rotten Tomatoes? The change.org petition alone is 67,000.
Yes, it represents our fandom. And that’s what matters to me. The results won’t change drastically even if we had 50 000 votes. That’s how polls work. I know many of you didn’t like the movie, that’s cool. But much more people liked it. And again I am only talking about SW fans which visit our site.
You misunderstood, of course there are many people who like it and that’s fine, many people also liked the prequels, that’s not the point. The fact is that the movie is divisive and the biggest second weekend drop ever (close to 70%) for a SW movie is additional proof of it. TLJ is the least popular movie since the prequels and some fans are having a hard time accepting this reality, that’s all.
its funny how polls matter when they are polls you agree with.
Now watch how quick excuses for this drop off is offered up. It’s X-mas eve, other movies, etc.
Does anyone really believe that if this movie hadn’t garnered such vitriolic reaction from a huge portion of the fan base that it wouldn’t of shattered all supposed things harming the movie.
It’s not like Disney didn’t understand the timing and that it had other movies coming out.
Disney believed in Rian that his moves would be embraced by most fans. Now I often just hear people justifying, bargaining, and writing Episode 9 in order to make Ep. 8 good.
It’s funny, I did that for Episode 7. And it turned out to be useless. They’re writing the OT as a bunch of failed heroes, and now it falls on the new untrained hereos to not repeate the same mistakes. When Luke’s not debating murdering his nephue for having dark side thoughts, he’s collecting books to not read.
You are not parsing the data correctly.
TLJ will hit 1 billion worldwide by years end. It will be the biggest film of 2017.
The drop-off is expected and mathematically proportional to its opening box office.
most people loved it. Some did not.
End of story.
Yea, this is exactly what they were aiming for. If it’s the end of story, why bother trying to deride others. Guess it’s not the end of the story afterall!
They were aiming for profit. And From a Disney stock standpoint, (I’m guessing you are not a investor) the profit from this film will be well within projections.
You didn’t like the film. You are trying to validate your feelings based, erroneously, on box office math.
Why?
They made the majority of their money based on keeping the BS under wraps. People blindly showed up for the Star Wars name. They have now compromised that.
Don’t look now, but the stock was almost completely flat on the TLJ opening weekend. That’s not good news for investors.
Most people loved it? Site your source please.
You’re mistaken, no one was expecting that big of a drop, that’s the truth you don’t want to admit. And of course it was going to make that much money, that’s not the point, but making a lot less than TFA means Ep. 9 could make even less, which would set a negative trend of each sequel making less and less money till they start flopping like the Pirates of the Caribbean and Transformers movies. It will happen, nothing lasts forever, it’s just a matter of time.
You’re mistaken, no one was expecting that big of a drop, that’s the truth you don’t want to admit. And of course it was going to make that much money, that’s not the point, but making a lot less than TFA means Ep. 9 could make even less, which would set a negative trend of each sequel making less and less money till they start flopping like the Pirates of the Caribbean and Transformers movies. It will happen, nothing lasts forever, it’s just a matter of time.
It was admitted and confirmed that someone spammed Rotten Tomato with a bot and faked the score. Why is this even news? The data is flawed and some quick research would have taken you to the Facebook page where it originated. By some sad basement dwelling sweat goblin who cannot create, only destroy. Most people love it, some don’t. Move along. Or are we back the Lucas raped my childhood bull? Tired of reading people’s posts proclaiming to the world how much they hated it. As if we give a rat’s ass. It just feeds this internet culture of hate. if you hate this, go find something you do love and focus your energy on that. Go plant a tree or something.
The data isn’t flawed, just someone says they did something doesn’t make it true. Plus there’s been an effort to offset the bots.
Plus, the box office is also seeing an unpredicted hit, no matter how many excuses the apologist offer up. The negative reaction certainly isn’t helping.
As for being sick of hearing opposing points of views (be honest that’s it), who cares. If you don’t like people expressing their displeasure, go to sites who ban them.
I couldn’t care less about this, but the evidence points towards the user-reviewer RT data being flawed. If this were a peer reviewed scientific paper, it would be rejected as bad data.
In any case, why, and this is a serious question, are you here?
If it made zero money. If 99% hated this movie…why espouse your views to those who liked it?
Are you trying to change people’s opinion to coincide with yours?
Are you here to commiserate with like minded people to validate your opinion ?
I truly don’t understand.
I mean, I liked it, and I encourage people here who didn’t to see it again, like I did, to see if they’ll feel differently. I loved it the second time. It all made sense. Most of it anyway.
But it feels like you, and others here, are trying to do the reverse.
Like you’re trying to “prove” the movie sucked and your options are “RIGHT”.
You are “expressing your displeasure”
Ok.
To whom??
So RT-date is flawed eh ? Here’s new Data to consider 🙂 https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/3e9df4d25d44d51291728e7f460cf374fcf34b0f49a46bf0a6d6fedc137ca762.jpg
No, I’d much rather go to a Star Wars fan site full of fans who hate Star Wars. Waaaa TFA is too familiar. Waaaa TLJ is too different. It’s tiring.
I loved TFA and R1. I hate TLJ.
SLAY Timothy ! GO GO GO
Bullshit
http://comicbook.com/starwars/2017/12/20/rotten-tomatoes-denies-star-wars-the-last-jedi-audience-score-fa/
SLAY !
Jesus, just the fact that in this one, tiny tiny part of the inter-tubes opinion is clearly split says that’s nonsense paranoid delusion. The film is divisive; it’s time to accept it.
Merry Christmas SWNN Forum…
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/a56ba2bcfe6c1f0d27295664ddfba1b4baca126bc84df65ffddd52c0bc9cd864.jpg
May Santa bring you all the presents he’s no longer giving to Rian Johnson.
Is that Nancy Regan on his lap? If so, I might have to get a tattoo of this picture.
It most certainly is.
Well, since you have confirmed it for me… and since I’m a man of my word… the only thing left to do is decide where to put it. I’m running out of real estate here. Looks like it might have to be the left cheek . No… not that cheek…. :
If you still have room, you can get all meta with a tattoo of Tattoo from Fantasy Island.
You can kill Han Solo but you better not turn Luke Skywalker into a depressed failure or there will be Hell to pay. That being said, I liked the movie after seeing it a second time. At this point there is no way to stop the avalanche of hate.
You can kill both, but Yea if both are failures that led to Ren, it kind of sucks. We went from Luke being unable to save Ben to him very likely sparking the fire that turns Ben Evil. But evil that would sacrifice it all to sleep with the New New Hope, leader in the New Rebellion.
it was the same after TFA when all the wanna be mensa members “discovered” that it was a rehash of a new hope and ripped it constantly. give opinion some time to settle.
Honestly, this Movie was FAR FAR WORSE than I even feared. For a solid year, I have been posting that I didn’t trust Ruin Johnson — now maybe everyone sees why 🙁
On the contrary, I enjoyed this one tremendously, more so after seeing it again last night
I loved it even more after multiple viewings also. It isn’t without flaws, but I love all the chances they took because it opens things up for more Star Wars movies/stories, which is what we ALL want.
Oh… and if this guy doesn’t stop calling him “Ruin Johnson” I’m going to scream. Then again, I guess I shouldn’t be pissed, because it’s hard to take someone’s opinion seriously when they think a moniker like that is witty and worth repeating.
Somehow you seem happier that the movie fullfilled your own expectations than sad that you don’t like it.
I would have loved nothing more than leaving the TLJ theater AMAZED and WOW’D and coming back here to gush on Ruin Johnson. But instead he did everything I feared. I feel “unfortunate” that it fulfilled my expectations as I certainly wish it has been wonderful. That said, I am enjoying the satisfaction of watching this horrid-Film burn.
I´m still haunting in my dreams by the milking of the space cow….
Merry christmas!! heres a pic of Ben Solo playing with his emo rock band “The Knights of Ren”
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/579fe8dd665df43c98d581cc142a97373f7699d329da80b235dc2e3fdfed6c4c.jpg
Merry christmas!! heres a pic of Ben Solo playing with his emo rock band “The Knights of Ren”
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/579fe8dd665df43c98d581cc142a97373f7699d329da80b235dc2e3fdfed6c4c.jpg
Merry Christmas – I don’t want to fight (about second week drop-off) tonight…
Merry Christmas – I don’t want to fight (about second week drop-off) tonight…
Finally…..so those are the legendary Knights of Ren! I almost thought they were but a legend…..like missis Colombo….
I KNEW he was lying about there being a Mrs Columbo when he started telling stories about her spaceship and weird looking co-workers.
I KNEW he was lying about there being a Mrs Columbo when he started telling stories about her spaceship and weird looking co-workers.
When the Fans SLAY! #RuinJohnson
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/3e9df4d25d44d51291728e7f460cf374fcf34b0f49a46bf0a6d6fedc137ca762.jpg
Found this interesting… From Forbes:
“The Last Jedi “lost more money between its first and second weekends than any film ever, by a lot,” as Forbes
put it.
This puts Last Jedi in what Forbes dubs the
$100 Million Losers Club for “a still-rare group of films that opened so high and then dropped so hard that they made over $100m less on their second weekend than their first.””
The article goes on to mention that TLJ will most likely make HALF of what TFA made. Almost ONE BILLION dollars less than TFA.
Not posting for the arguments – just found it interesting.
WOW thank you! Even FORBES is covering this drop! The SUITS at Disney are sweating bullets over Ruin Johnson!
Don’t THANK me. I’m not wanting to win any argument. I just find it fascinating. Imagine – this movie will make ONE BILLION less than the last movie. That’s insane. Partly because of how much money TFA made – and partly because its a huge drop. Fascinating on both sides.
I agree this is monumental news!
I don’t think it’s about how much money in comparison to TFA, it’s the % drop for the 2nd weekend as it’s just getting no repeat business from fans like me. Repeat business is what pads box office numbers and gives a movie legs, and the roof collapsed on this movie in one week. I could see it last Monday in Work as there was no buzz and nobody was talking about their experience from seeing it on the weekend.
Exactly and REPEAT business is what put TFA over the top. Theaters nationwide were reporting Fans RETURNING — returning with their Parents, with their brothers / sisters, with their dating partners — over and over again to see the Film. With TLJ, this is not occurring appreciably.
That’s the irony of the “all is well” crowd. Disney pushes this movie hard.
And they know that this movie isn’t just hurting itself, they have an entire brand to think about. They took a risk in making TFA about strictly introducing new characters. It could have worked if TLJ wasn’t about trying to crap away the OT heroes as failed characters only to hopefully have done so in a way that teaches the newbies to make better choices.
And here’s a RADICAL THOUGHT — how about making a Trilogy with NEW CHARACTERS and OT CHARACTERS side by side. NOTHING would have been more thrilling than to see REY and LUKE, as this dominating duo, invading Snoke’s ship TO GE THER. *GASP* you can actually have stories that envelop BOTH generations of characters!
#Ignitethegreen https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/d239ed33d1e4ac273fc89f95db4fbcf0a278bdcabb69e2ab4b33c2cc988f9a44.gif
That hair…..oh Mark, that hair…..
Even for the 70’s….
Here’s another radical thought… cut the cord where the OT characters are concerned. There’s only so much you can do with them, and they’ve had their hero moments. If you want Star Wars as a whole to move on… you have to pass the torch to new characters. If you want constant rehashes of stuff we have already seen, go watch TFA on loop.
So TLJ was bad because it didn’t fulfill your wish list? How predictable.
I sincerely hope it doesn’t deter Disney from taking risks. I would love to see more envelope-pushing. It just needs to be done well. TLJ was not.
TLJ had hella-envelope-pushing. Maybe such “experiments” are better for the spin-off films?
I agree as nobody has a problem with taking risks. The problem with the movie is it disrespects or ignores the narrative set up by TFA and the previous 6 Saga movies and then some of the decisions are just terribly executed. It’s mind boggling how Disney threw away all that goodwill they said up with the fans regarding TFA and R1. I’ve lost total faith in the company because the more I read about the development of this movie, you could see the roof collapse a mile away.
I agree as nobody has a problem with taking risks. The problem with the movie is it disrespects or ignores the narrative set up by TFA and the previous 6 Saga movies and then some of the decisions are just terribly executed. It’s mind boggling how Disney threw away all that goodwill they said up with the fans regarding TFA and R1. I’ve lost total faith in the company because the more I read about the development of this movie, you could see the roof collapse a mile away.
https://www.the-numbers.com/movies/franchise/Star-Wars#tab=summary
Also interesting: ALL Star Wars movies up to TFA had a cumulative total of about 4.6 Billion worldwide. Since Disney bought it – TFA, RO, and TLJ are going to pass 4 Billion cumulative by themselves! Disney is not hurting here.
It’s all relative though. And the comparison of TFA and TLJ box offices is even BLEAKER than I expected…….
It’s not hurting no, but they know a franchise can diminish in value quickly if it appears to be hurt by those running it.
I doubt they’re happy about this, but they can really start pointing fingers just yet.
I’ll point fingers —–> Ruin Johnson
Not saying this shouldn’t be concerning at all, but Jumanji made $34 million and Pitch Pefect 3 made $20. A ton of people went to see different movies this weekend. You can’t expect many films, including Star Wars on its second weekend to do $100 plus on a holiday weekend with that kind of competition.
Side note: I will never understand why people continue to root for these movies to fail.
Or at least…why root for failure and come here
I LOVED watching TFA and R1 succeed! This Movie was terrible tho so I am thoroughly enjoying watching it FAIL in comparison.
TLJ is consistenly doing 38% better business than Rogue ONe, day-to-day. Have fun with your delusions, though. What will you say when TLJ hits $1.6 billion worldwide?
SLAY SLAY SLAY
lol troll
considering TLJ also had the second biggest box office opening of all time this is less of a big deal then sounds. not great news, but not world ending either.
TLJ’s final gross will be significantly lower than TFA’s (it is already 200 million US$ behind TFA domestically at the same point in time), Although that is not a tragedy for a US$ 1.5 bi box office movie, it is somewhat disappointing for a movie that features the return of Luke Skywalker for the first time in 30 years,
iger already told their shareholders that a repeat of TFA box office was unrealistic. having another top 10 ten box office gross of all time is nothing to sneeze at even by star wars new lofty standards.
Again, that’s true, but the more alarming thing I would be looking as a shareholder would be that the stock price was flat on release and first week numbers. That’s not what analysts are looking for when a publically traded company releases a massive new product into the market.
i suppose going from two billion to 1.3 or 1.4 could be considered disappointing, though its still an amazing showing and very profitable. disney might be becoming a victim of its own success.
http://variety.com/2017/film/news/star-wars-the-last-jedi-box-office-844-million-1202649005/
Merry Christmas
Merry Christmas all! Just from my POV, I think so many Star Wars fan sites are scratching their heads as to why TLJ got such a low fan rating on RT, but what’s really baffling -and a little unsettling- is how the film got such universal, gushing praise from critics. That to me, is way more suspect. In other words, in my view, the reviews should be a bit more mixed to be taken seriously.
It’s a great movie, but not the one fans had built up in their heads since TFA. It was probably a good thing I haven’t watched TFA since it was released in theatres because I saw it plenty of times then and I went into TLJ just hoping for a good time and happy just to see Luke on screen again. I loved it and thought his story was tragic and deeply moving, but others will disagree and are pissed about not getting all the surprises JJ teased them with about Snoke and Rey. The thing is, that was all mystery box stuff not proper storytelling. The Luke stuff to me told a real tragic story with a bittersweet ending and I had the same feeling of being left on a sad note as I did at the end of Empire. It’s a shame others didn’t see it that way and got bogged down in the expectations JJ had set up even though there were never any planned payoffs to that stuff, it was just fodder for the next person to play with
I disagree about fans expectations of the character arcs. A good movie is a good movie and when it’s good you go with the narrative. This movie reminds me of the PT where it has a combination of good stuff and bad stuff, but the bad stuff is jarring and sometimes overshadows the good stuff. And when will these current day directors learn that these 2 1/2 Blockbuster movies are always bloated and have pacing issues? Jaws, Star Wars, Raiders, Alien, ET all came in at a perfect 2 hours.
I see what you mean, but I’m not sure it’s 100% about expectations. I think many of us thought it was a poor movie, full stop. In terms of plot, character development I think it’s easy to, objectively, point out quite a few faults. I wasn’t a huge fan of the TFA, so my expectations in that sense, were low going in. But what I saw, in my opinion was a film that fell flat on many fronts, nothing of them necessarily having to do with Star Wars continuity issues…just as a film, per se.
Most of the Critics, especially smaller INTERNET-BASED media outlets, will always give Star Wars films GRAND reviews — so they can remain on the Guestlist for SW / Disney events.
It certainly seems that way.
This is a horseshit theory. Critics get advanced screenings to nearly every movie that comes out. Over 300 critics reviewed the film positively compared to 27 negative. Are all those people from publications and media outlets across the country in on a scam? If so, why did they trash other big budget Disney movies like Pirates Of the Caribbean, (2017) and Alice through the Looking Glass, (2016) which both have 29% positive reviews? Is this really the best excuse you can come up with for the critical acclaim the movie has received? It’s really quite pathetic.
Right. So all the “Top Critics” on RT, which gave it a 96%, are small and independent and in Disney’s pocket. Like… Christian Science Monitor, NPR, Rolling Stone, Boston Globe, New York Post, RogerEbert, Entertainment Weekly, the AP, Wall Street Journal…go look.
Such a troll
The movie critics gave it great reviews because it was very out-of-the-box for a Star Wars film… which is why so many fans hated it. Had they done another rehash like TFA, the fans would have loved it and the movie critics would have bashed it. It’s pretty simple. Movie critics don’t watch Star Wars the way we do.
Then there’s this.
4 reasons for the drop:
1. Victim of its own success – $220million opening weekend. To drop 50% would need to make $110million in its 2nd weekend. Only 4 movies have ever made over $90million in its 2nd weekend- The Force Awakens, Jurassic World, Marvel’s The Avengers, and Beauty and the Beast.
2. Less people to go and see it, as they already saw it opening weekend.
3. Negative buzz.
4. Competition.
Negative buzz is clearly a factor, but not the overriding reason.
https://youtu.be/tk1liRWoBC0
star wars is mortal after all.
This is BoxOfficeMojo’s Sunday am assessment:
“SUNDAY AM UPDATE: With an estimated $68 million, Disney and Lucasfilm’s Star Wars: The Last Jedi remained at #1 for the second weekend in a row, doubling its closest competitor. The film, however, did drop 68% from its opening weekend, but that’s not as much as a surprise as it may outwardly seem, particularly due to the lack of business over the weekend, especially on Christmas Eve, for all titles. The film is expected to top $100 million by end of day tomorrow, which is expected to be huge for most all films in release”
Exactly. That statement puts it into context.
“is expected to be huge for most all films in release”
Such blockbusters as….The Greatest Showman, All The Money in the World and Ferdinand? What are you comparing it against exactly? TLJ has no real competition as far as genre right now, the first week excuse of “the kids are still in school because of the weird calendar this year” is no longer in play, but the film is still dropping like a rock. I’m just saying that something is going on here that’s worth paying attention to.
Everyone scrambling to find excuses to fit their narratives. The base is split. By the time everything calms down we’ll see by how much. I’m thinking 60/40. 60 being the ones who like it and 40 the reverse.
Rumor all is not well with the Solo film, if this is true I expect a shake up at Lucasfilm if it performs badly.
http://www.screengeek.net/2017/12/24/disney-expects-solo-a-star-wars-story-to-bomb/
some where lord and miller are laughing.
SOLO shold have never been a topic of conversation in the first place…i hope that movie blows up in their face. They should have listened to the fans outcry when the movie was announced…nobody wants to see that damn movie..
absolutely! I won´t see it in theater nor give them any money for it. Bring Evan fkin Kenobi now! 🙂
They don’t care about fans only money.
That will be their downfall.. In the future someone is going to buy SW from Disney and say all Disney SW are non canon 😀
Yeah, that’s not how that works.
It was George Lucas who wanted it made. And George don’t give a flip what you think.
What would be worse PR – shelving the movie this late in the process, or having it completely tank upon release?
they can’t shelve it after all $$ they spent on reshooting 80% of the film. they have to at least make their money back and damn the torpedoes.
I´ve heard they shoot almost entire movie again so instead 200 we are now on 400 millions. Plus standart 250 advertising so in order to be in + numbers it has to make 1 billion at least 🙂 it will be failure and it won´t see my money….
If it tanks then SW is in real trouble and I think Kennedy is toast, which may be better in the long run.
I can care less about some score on a website..the only reason it even did so well was because it had STAR WARS on the title..and then people had to go take a second viewing to make sure they werent just hallucinating becuase they just watched the biggest pile of trash theyve ever seen in Star Wars..They wont fool anyone with their hype for Episode 9..and if they were smart they would just scrap SOLO and focus on KENOBI…SOLO will just sustain the sour taste in everyones mouthes
Hard to argue with the numbers here: https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/3e9df4d25d44d51291728e7f460cf374fcf34b0f49a46bf0a6d6fedc137ca762.jpg
Speaking of numbers:
“Star Wars: The Last Jedi topped the box office yet again for a $19.4 million Thursday gross. That’s the second-biggest “day 14” Thursday gross ever behind The Force Awakens’ $22.9m day-14 total. That’s up 8% from last Thursday, meaning that every single “second weekday” gross for the Star Wars sequel has been higher than the previous week’s respective weekday gross. So it stands to reason that we shouldn’t see much of a drop this weekend as The Last Jedi take a shot at a $55-$60m third-weekend gross, which would be (depending on if it gets past $56m for the frame) the third or fourth-biggest third weekend of all time.”
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
i’ve been thinking about this for a while and i think the biggest mistake TLJ made was being a sequel to TFA. JJ spent an entire film taking us back to 1983 and then rian comes in and tosses it in the bin. that is where i think a lot the issue is for some fans. they were primed for one direction and instead we went in the complete opposite. while many love it for being bold others feel its too jarring and disconnected from the previous chapter. say what you will about the prequels but its clear they are different from the very beginning. the ST meanwhile is walking this very awkward line of being a OT continuation and its very own thing. and one can only imagine how jarring it will be to go back to JJ for 9. i know someone will be saying, “but Dux, empire was very different from new hope” and that brings me to the main problem: no one person is in charge. yes empire was different feeling, but it was still lucas’ story. The ST is just doesn’t feel like one cohesive trilogy, it feels like separate films that happen to have the same characters, though those characters feel different from chapter to chapter and rise and fall drastically in importance depending on who’s writing. marvel succeeds so well because feige has the overall story on lock down. lucasfilm belatedly i think has realized this when they tapped rian to develop an entire trilogy on his own and i think that has the potential to be much better than the ST because it will be one vision, one story from start to finish.
i’ve been thinking about this for a while and i think the biggest mistake TLJ made was being a sequel to TFA. JJ spent an entire film taking us back to 1983 and then rian comes in and tosses it in the bin. that is where i think a lot the issue is for some fans. they were primed for one direction and instead we went in the complete opposite. while many love it for being bold others feel its too jarring and disconnected from the previous chapter. say what you will about the prequels but its clear they are different from the very beginning. the ST meanwhile is walking this very awkward line of being a OT continuation and its very own thing. and one can only imagine how jarring it will be to go back to JJ for 9. i know someone will be saying, “but Dux, empire was very different from new hope” and that brings me to the main problem: no one person is in charge. yes empire was different feeling, but it was still lucas’ story. The ST is just doesn’t feel like one cohesive trilogy, it feels like separate films that happen to have the same characters, though those characters feel different from chapter to chapter and rise and fall drastically in importance depending on who’s writing. marvel succeeds so well because feige has the overall story on lock down. lucasfilm belatedly i think has realized this when they tapped rian to develop an entire trilogy on his own and i think that has the potential to be much better than the ST because it will be one vision, one story from start to finish.
That is not surprising actually. Long before TLJ was released, Daisy Ridley and John Boyega themselves had already said in past interviews that, for them, it felt like a different movie from TFA even though it was supposed to be a sequel (their words exactly).
I have a strong feeling that the actors were uncomfortable with RJ’s script and maybe that is why they have been keeping a low profile since TLJ’s release.
MH was clearly and publically unhappy with it. Who cares though? Dramatically, Luke was much more interesting as a broken character and MH was at his best as an actor in this.
I’ve heard several people talking about RJ dumping JJ’s story, but I dont’ get how? Serious question. Is it the lightsaber humor or what?
JJ – a despondent Luke vanished looking for the first Jedi temple
RJ – a despondent Luke is a hermit on Ach To
JJ – Rey’s powers awaken, she finds Luke, holds out sabre
RJ – Luke wants nothing to do with the sabre or the resistance, at first
JJ – Kylo kills Han, but is still torn apart
RJ – Snoke calls out Kylo as unbalanced and implies weakness, using the Force to lure in Rey
JJ – who is Rey/parents?
RJ – Rey is no one special
Where is the “tosses it in the bin” in all this? Is it just missed expectations? I wanted Rey to be someone myself, not just another Anakin…though I like the idea that you don’t have to be a Skywalker to be strong in the force (and idea lost along the way)
congrats, you completely missed the point of my post.
I am pretty sure we get it but completely disagree. To assume there isn’t a vision is a very bold claim, I really doubt Kathleen Kennedy would agree with you. Every interview that I have there is a clear focus on what the timeline is and a real attempt to prevent the variances seen in a lot of the ‘Legend’ content.
The main problem is that people forget that there’s still another film in this trilogy that can explain a LOT of what they claim is missing. It’s like a premature freakout in a way.
Hell… we don’t even know what Rian Johnson’s trilogy will be, and even THAT could be a prequel trilogy to this one. We just don’t know what the future will explain.
my concerns aren’t about perceived plot holes, though if you need a prequel trilogy to fill in the gaps thats a problem.
there isn’t a singular vision is what i’m saying. kk is very much the ceo and her main concern has been to protect and grow the brand(which from a business side is great), but from a universe standpoint has made things a bit sloppy(imo). i stand by my bold claim that lucasfilm needs a singular creative head like marvel, be it KK or someone else.
I’ll bite. Which part of:
“J spent an entire film taking us back to 1983 and then rian comes in and tosses it in the bin. that is where i think a lot the issue is for some fans”
did I miss? Or maybe you missed my point.
seemed pretty self explanatory to me. JJ was all about nostalgia and reconnecting with the OT, in terms of look, tone and themes. Rian johnson wanted to make something fresh and new. those two ideas don’t mesh together. either be an OT throwback the whole way or be fresh and new the whole way.
Anyone can be strong in the force in a new trilogy or standalone movie, NOT in a saga of skywalkers for christsakes!
I really want to know what was thrown away?
Apparently, asking that question misses the point
So it is a throw away criticism without anything to back it up.
as i said in my post, JJ worked very hard to establish a very OT feel to the new trilogy and rian johnson wanted to go in a very different direction. not saying either person is right or wrong just wish they picked one direction and struck with it.
as i said in my post, JJ worked very hard to establish a very OT feel to the new trilogy and rian johnson wanted to go in a very different direction. not saying either person is right or wrong just wish they picked one direction and struck with it.
I have to disagree. I though the story was a very natural progression. Without concrete examples it is hard to agree with your opinion. The story progression was somewhat different then other Star Wars films. What I mean by that is that it spent a good deal in time in space with nearly all the characters in close proximity. Other then that this felt like Star Wars and I loved where the characters went.
for some reason it feels like we are all talking in circles around each other on this topic.
This is what happens when you write a three movies independently of one another, a trilogy works best if they are all written at once, one story three parts, with tweaking as you go, not separate writers on three different stories.
i will also say that TFA and TLJ are the result of writers not understanding what fans want and going in the direction they want…sometimes that’s fine, but in this case, in my opinion, was wrong way to go overall.
“a trilogy works best if they are all written at once”
The OT begs to differ…
TLJ is a result of being a continuation of a badly established story, as aside of characters JJ didn’t do a good job of grounding the lore and the world.
Also, becuase the story seems to be tired off. They can’t just keep rehashing (while mildly changing) the same story over and over again.
Rian Johnson didn’t like TFA questions and morals. Like many SW fans did too and post it about it. But he liked the characters and he goes reseting these J.J’s shallow plot resources , in some clever and more philosophical way. TLJ has some the best Force scenes in cinema. From Snoke violent strength to Jedi meditations, to ultimate Luke’s Jedi transcendental trick . Fans are not getting the visual and cinematic excellence this movie really is.
do you really think that astral projection garbage is a cool force power?? come on…
The theatre went crazy when they showed Luke hovering over that pedestal. I thought that was awesome. Like a step closer to the force ghost he was about to become.
Leia Mary Poppins, that was a little harder to swallow.
The theatre went crazy when they showed Luke hovering over that pedestal. I thought that was awesome. Like a step closer to the force ghost he was about to become.
Leia Mary Poppins, that was a little harder to swallow.
Completely agree with you. Leia Poppins SUCKED… but at least they tried something cool. I loved the astral projection thing… it was something different. Could you imagine how people would have thrown a fit had they just had Luke actually show up and have a lightsaber duel? We have seen that SO many times… I love that they tried to expand on what we already know of the Force.
In hindsight, it’s too bad Leia wasn’t the one flying the Raddus into Snoke’s ship. I agree though, they tried for something cool. I like the new force powers introduced by TFA and TLJ and the idea that force powers can be evolved by new masters…not just learning “spells” from a finite list defined by the PT.
I know a lot of people wanted to see him use that lightsabre again but I think it would have been less impactful also. Adam Driver is so much more physically imposing that MH it would have been eye-rolling. I think the astral bit showed Luke to be an even more powerful master with the force than hinted at when he blew the lid off the igloo during the hands touching scene.
It really seems to me like the people who hate the movie are the ones who want almost nothing new to be shown in Star Wars – they want what they’ve always gotten, no matter if it stagnates and damages the brand in the process. I would much rather see them trying to take chances and add things to the mythos because in the end – that’s what leads to more Star Wars movies/stories, and isn’t that what we all want?
Agree.
I read someone complaining that Kylo used the force to rotate Rey’s sabre. Talk about stuck in the mud.
The trouble is they really didn’t add anything new… its just back to the OT set-up of Empire (FO) vs Rebels (Resistance)…. what is so new and original about that?
At first I also thought having Leia take Holdo’s place would be more fitting. Having her stay behind on the Raddus and sacrifice herself I can imagine. But would she then launch herself into lightspeed at a ship that she knows her son is on? It becomes a different discussion.
It is a shame Holdo was introduced and then removed so quickly. I liked this character more than expected. As Han could jump to lightspeed within the bay of another ship without damaging his ship but damaging the nasty creature on his cockpit, I still wonder whether there is some possibility Holdo could survive.
Yes it is a uber cool power. I felt so happy to see Luke do that sitting at one place. Only it felt little empty because he was only defensive. If he could have stopped the lasers from giant walkers or shown some telekinesis it would have been better.
Yes it is a uber cool power. I felt so happy to see Luke do that sitting at one place. Only it felt little empty because he was only defensive. If he could have stopped the lasers from giant walkers or shown some telekinesis it would have been better.
I have never put a review on Rotten Tomatoes before but I felt such disdain for this movie that I felt that this was my best voice for my bitter disappointment. This movie like most have said is a massive ‘up yours’ from the director. It’s such a shame it has received such an appalling reception from the viewing audience as the actors and production staff no doubt gave a 110% and thought this was going to be something special. The fault lies firmly with Rian Johnson (THE HOLIDAY SPECIAL 2017) and he should be fired (not hired).
If he would handled Luke Skywalker properly in the island, everything would have fallen into place. Also, marvel comedies, it destroys starwars authenticity.
The Last Jedi is the best of the Disney Star Wars films yet. Better than Rogue One and better than JJ entire filmography.
Son, lay off the drugs.
You plus +1 your own post lol.
It all boils down to treatment of Luke Skywalker as a coward. He was going to kill his nephew ? cmon.. They paid the price for it in the low audience ratings. I understand the new characters need space but they character assassinated Luke Skywalker and made up for it in the ending scene which was good. Still, it did not justify the treatment.
What is this obsession with writing articles trying to micro-analyze the audience score? Get over it, Disney.
I watched this on the opening weekend in London, England on one of the largest cinema screens in the country.
I was handed a survey as I walked in commissioned by ‘the production company’. This was 2 sides of A4 full of questions, such as ‘Why did you come to watch TLJ?’ – one of the answers to this question was ‘to see BB8!!!’.
I enjoyed the movie, it was fun. But felt hollow. I had massive problems with it as a Star Wars movie. It had huge plot holes as to how things work in the SW universe.
It seemed to troll the fan base just because…
Not once did I hear any laughter at any of the ‘jokes’.
As i was leaving they were collecting the surveys – I had been watching the movie – when would I have had time to answer 50 questions (or be able to read it in the dark)?
So they asked me what I thought, and i answered ‘good’.
Thing is, if they had asked what I thought of it as a SW movie, I would have said poor.
Praising this film for taking Star Wars in a new direction… really??? It’s just a rehash of the OT. Want I really wanted was some goddamn original ideas in Star Wars. Not a reset to Empire vs Rebellion, and Evil Force user vs Good Force user.
The whole storyline of the sequels is terribly unoriginal.
Then why are you here??
Why are you here? It’s an open forum.
Because I love Star Wars. And I liked this film.
If I go to an art gallery, and see a painting that I think sucks, I move on to another painting.
To keep standing in front of a painting you dislike, telling everyone else that it sucks, is not healthy behaviour.
I love Star Wars too… for 40 years. I have waited since 1983 to see the continuing adventures of Luke, Han and Leia. So excuse me if I am disappointed in something I love.
In the same way, constantly saying how much you love something is not healthy either. Just don’t respond if you don’t like what someone else comments.
I love Star Wars too… for 40 years. I have waited since 1983 to see the continuing adventures of Luke, Han and Leia. So excuse me if I am disappointed in something I love.
In the same way, constantly saying how much you love something is not healthy either. Just don’t respond if you don’t like what someone else comments.
For creative pettiness and for the love of money above all things, Disney
killed the saga of Star Wars and took away from us, forever, the
possibility of seeing “The Three” together on the screen once again. In Episode 7 they took Han away, and in 8 they went for Luke. And to top it off, Carrie left us. Disney, I WILL NEVER FORGIVE YOU! The saga is dead for me. And do not come with the excuse that the decisions they made were the only ones possible. Lie, lie and lie! I and many fans come up with thousands of much more DIGNIFIED alternatives. Lucas should never have sold the franchise to Disney. It was a huge mistake. I’m sorry for my English.
AGREED wholeheartedly. Characters like Han and Luke are ICONS to multiple generations from kids age 5 to grandparents age 65. To kill them off, one after the other, was short-sighted, immature, and quite frankly ABUSIVE to the loyal fan base.
It seems that the intention of Disney is to eliminate everything created by Lucas. There is almost nothing left of the original saga. In just two films they swept away two of the great cultural icons of the last 40 years like trash. And now? In Episode 9 they go for what remains: they blow up the Millennium Falcon with C-3PO, R2-D2, Chewie and Lando inside. Star Wars is finished.
To do this, I would have preferred that they have not done anything.
Ok. Now that you’ve got that off your chest, you can leave.
I’m going to go alone when it pleases me to do it. Not before.
When Rose gets more backstory / character development than Master Snoke…. #RuinJohnson
Did you feel the same with the zero development and backstory of the emperor in empire and Jedi?
I thought not.
Get your head out of your ass.
Are you the son of Bob Iger? XD.
It’s a valid complaint Andrew. In the OT we’re thrown into the SW galaxy for the first time. We know the Emperor is vital to the continuation of the Empire, we find out he’s Vader’s master, and we find out he’s a force user.
With Snoke, everyone wonders how and why he came into power. Why? Because we know that he wasn’t present at all in the OT, so it’s a fair question to wonder how a guy whose never been heard of takes over the remainder of the Empire and consolidates all the power.
Palpatine is different because there’s no mystery to who he is. We’re told he’s the emperor and that’s enough because we aren’t given any point of comparison to what things were like before he was emperor. Then the PT came along, and Palpatine got a pretty big backstory.
EXACTLY — this new Trilogy only exists b/c we have a foundation before it — the OT. Wondering how Snoke usurped control of the ultimate evil faction in the universe is a pretty reasonable request and NOT minutae like Rose.
An atrocity.
Ha! HelloGreedo sarcastically slams all the TLJ-bashers with this video discussing what if the internet had been around during the OT. It should be required viewing
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u0JhhQvdIYY
Fans before and after seeing the film:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nHjUTJwnT9Q
Frankly, I’ve never let critics (or any kind of ratings system) dictate whether or not I like a film. And that’s not about to change anytime soon.
In any case it seems these sort of things can be unreliable, and easily open to manipulation.
From what I gather, TLJ has been a particularly polarizing entry into the series. With neither camp coming across as entirely that credible. In that it’s either mind-blowing/innovative, or the worst thing ever/ruined the franchise. Both somewhat extreme viewpoints IMO.
Hype is something I’ve generally grown to eschew over the years. And not being that familiar with Rian Johnson’s work prior, I don’t know exactly what to expect when I finally get round to seeing it. Though I have actually read a synopsis of the plot already, and am aware of ‘controversial’ aspects. But given fair warning, they might not be as bothersome to me as it was for the ‘NO SPOILERS!!’ crowd.
So, maybe I’ll enjoy it. Maybe I won’t. Ultimately, it won’t be that much of a big deal either way.
Certainly, I won’t go out of my way to voice any criticisms online. Since that just seems to run the risk of having your head bitten off.
I am of the opinion that the negative reviews are because Rian Johnson ruined our saga! Period.