The response to Star Wars: The Last Jedi has been deafening, overwhelmingly positive. The box office was huge, very nearly record breaking (If it wasn’t for that pesky The Force Awakens), and there is already a palpable buzz for what director Rian Johnson plans to do with his upcoming trilogy. So everything’s all good, right? Well, not exactly. If you check out Rotten Tomatoes you’ll see that critics loved it to the tune of 93% positive and a “Certified Fresh” rating. But audiences? Inexplicably that number sits at 56% and officially “Rotten”. What gives? The Force Awakens and Rogue One had audience scores well into the 80s.
I’ve posited that the audience scores were weighed down by trolls wanted to stick it to Disney a little bit, but also by angry fanboys who thought the film should’ve answered all of their questions (Do we really need to know who Snoke is? Come on.) and taken fewer risks with some of the long-established characters. Well, there’s more evidence to suggest this is true.
While the Rotten Tomatoes score is weak, its Cinemascore is vastly different. I often cite Cinemascore in my box office roundup each week to explain certain trends, and here it shows that audiences gave The Last Jedi an “A” grade. That flies in the face of Rotten Tomatoes and suggests, yes, that there are some bitter folks out there with too much time on their hands and not enough real shit to worry about.
