Launching with the second biggest box office opening of all time, and riding a wave of positive reviews, everything should be golden for “Star Wars: The Last Jedi.” However, most of the conversation continues to center around the film’s low audience scores: 5 on Metacritic, IMDB’s 7.9 out of 10 rating, and Rotten Tomatoes’ Audience Score of 56%.
READ MORE: ‘Star Wars: The Last Jedi’ Scoring Lower With Audiences On Rotten Tomatoes
It’s hard to believe that the cinematic art form, which has been around for over one hundred years, is now reduced to studios having to respond to nerds who have nothing better to do than troll blockbusters on aggregate sites. But alas, dorks on Facebook and 4chan are taking “credit” for knocking down the audience score for ‘The Last Jedi,’ for reasons so arcane and dumb that it would be hilarious if it wasn’t so depressing first:
Anyway, Disney has issued a formal statement to Deadline in the wake of all this, which basically sidesteps the issue and essentially says, we’re very happy with this movie, it’s already made nearly half a billion dollars, and these scores are meaningless. I’m paraphrasing a bit:
Rian Johnson, the cast, and the Lucasfilm team have delivered an experience that is totally Star Wars yet at the same time fresh, unexpected and new. That makes this a Star Wars film like audiences have never seen – it’s got people talking, puzzling over its mysteries, and it’s a lot to take in, and we see that as all positive, that should help set the film up for great word-of-mouth and repeat viewing as we enter the lucrative holiday period.
In short, the attempt by a certain, very small segment of the web to discredit “Star Wars: The Last Jedi” isn’t really working. Happy holidays!