Rotten Tomatoes’ audience score for The Last Jedi has tumbled to 49%, 16 points below Revenge of the Sith

From Forbes:

“On the widely-tracked Rotten Tomatoes movie review site, both the critics’ “Tomatometer” score and the audience score for Star Wars: The Last Jedi have been ticking downward in the weeks since the film first released.

There’s nothing unusual about that; many studio tent-pole movies receive high scores during the initial flush of fan enthusiasm, and then more sober-minded assessments from the wider audience roll in and cause the scores to drop.

But there are two things that are highly unusual about The Last Jedi’s scores.

The first is that the audience score, now at 49 percent, is truly bad. That’s by far the lowest audience score ever given to a live action Star Wars movie, 14 percent lower than the 57 score of the next most disliked Star Wars film, the 2002 Hayden Christiansen-starring prequel Attack of the Clones. A great many people—hardcore fans, casual fans, and non-fans alike—consider The Last Jedi to be a terribly disappointing movie.

The second unusual thing is the huge gap between the 90 percent Tomatometer rating and that 49 percent audience score. That’s the widest gap for any Star Wars picture by a big margin.

With regard to that very low audience score, quite a few conspiracy theorists ignored the overwhelming evidence that many moviegoers disliked the film, and circulated accusations of organized vote campaigns designed to drive down the film’s scores, despite the absence of any credible evidence to support this notion.

In late December I spoke with a Rotten Tomatoes representative named Dana Benson who assured me that the company works assiduously to prevent such manipulation and goes to great lengths to verify their ratings’ accuracy and authenticity. “We have several teams of security, network, and social database experts who constantly monitor reviews and ratings to ensure that they are genuine,” Benson told me. “They haven’t seen anything unusual with The Last Jedi, except that there has been an uptick in the number of written user reviews submitted.” […]”

0 Comments

andywylde77

11 January 2018 at 18h14 Reply

Ah and now here we have it folks, the truth has finally reared it head. And some folks aren’t handling very well. I remember when TFA came out and I was out there voicing my displeasure with the film and I was bombarded by defenders using both the critic and fan scores of TFA and why those scores meant I was “wrong” for disliking it. Well now the tables certainly have turned.

Because now with TLJ, RT scores don’t mean much regarding the “quality” of a film. Or that they were “manipulated” somehow. But RT themselves have verified that the fan score is 100% legit. But I have no doubt that if the critic and fan score were both in the 90’s, I would be hearing from those defenders about how the scores are so important. Now I personally don’t hate any film. I usually either like or dislike. But no film is without its redeeming qualities even if they are few at best.

Though anyone familiar with me over the years has known I have always detested “critic” or “audience” scores on any sites. And I couldn’t care less about box office takings. Because if someone likes or dislikes a film and wants to debate, then tell me why you feel that way and don’t throw scores or box office earnings at me, it won’t give you any edge in a debate with me. I debate only what is presented on screen and whatever other films it is connected to.

Because for 18 years now any person that defended the PT, myself included had to hear how “awful” and “atrocious” they were. And how the RT scores proved they were “objectively bad” films.
But what we see now is Karma in action. Now the shoe is on the other foot and the new film defenders aren’t liking it. I don’t personally wish bad on anyone, but for these folks I think 18 years of whining deserve it.

Oh and for the record. if I hear, “it’s the best one since Empire” I am going to puke! Are all these defenders reading a script or something? Because all the defenses are basically just rehashes of others. Wait? Rehashed defenses? I think I am seeing a pattern here…