Audience Score vs Critic Score

I would say a lot of the negative reviews from critics seem to spend as much time reviewing the fandum as they do reviewing the film

 

No one is right unless the fandom can some how come together and identity the basics of what is a good SW movie and come up with a base line? If you ask 10 people that question you'll get 10 different answers.

 

Based on the industry audience data posted by Deadline audiences like TROS, but it's not been received as well as the other saga films. The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi both scored better. There's a lot of conflicting information about the box office. TROS was released a week later than TLJ so the calendar makes it difficult to judge which film is doing better. Friday's numbers didn't look great for TROS. The Rise of Skywalker's 2nd weeks will look better in comparison because it's the holiday week. The Last Jedi's holiday week was in week three so it's possible there's a big drop off between the two films.

Just based on the data right now it looks like TROS is trending closer to Rogue One than TLJ. FWIW these are huge numbers either way. The movie is making tons of money. It just seems that audiences didn't like TROS as much as TFA and TLJ. So the critics picked up on something the audience did as well.

The audience score on RT was changed a few months ago to prevent brigading. Now a person has to pay for a ticket through their site to vote. Rotten Tomatoes admitted the score was manipulated for The Last Jedi. So they're scoring different because it's a different method and The Last Jedi score was rigged.

 

As I've said many times, the only rating I care about is mine

 

110% agree... while it would be nice if everyone liked a movie I did... it is not necessary for my enjoyment or to validate my feelings.

 

There should be a way for RT to go back and determine who the "verified" reviewers for TLJ were and do some weeding.

 

There's really no reason to do it. It would also be impossible to determine since the old method only required an email. There's several sources for audience information if people are really curious what audiences thought. I didn't even know RT had an audience score until that one became the go to source for people who claimed audiences didn't like TLJ.

 

I'm studying film in college so more times than not, I side with critics in these cases. I'm more in-tuned to the types of things critics like Roger Ebert look for in a film than someone just looking to have a good time, details aside. That's not to say I know more than people, it's just that I tend to look at films a bit differently than someone who isn't in the same educational field as me.

When it comes to RT, more often than not I notice far less variety when it comes to Audience scores compared to critic scores. Nearly every big film of the past few months has a 70-80% from audiences while critic scores vary wildly. Most of the times, I agree with critics.

 

As someone who was around for the OT, most critics have NEVER really liked SW. It's too good vs. evil, too many Mary Sues, too spiritual, too much fantasy, too sentimental, etc. etc. At it's core, SW is old-fashioned hero's tale. Many critics fancy themselves to be above all this- they're too postmodern for any stories of good vs. evil, especially if good wins. Maybe that's why they preferred the cynicism in TLJ.

Also, I wonder what the average age of the critics is. Those of us who loved the OT, probably fell for the fan service in TROS. I sure did. It's unfortunate they had to pile it all into the last movie. They were foolish to even try to have the sequels fail to provide a satisfying arc for the issues and characters of the first 6 movies. It was too heavy of a lift to try to do all that, and have a bunch of new characters, too.

I'm sure that structurally, from a purely artistic standpoint, the film is a mess. So critics see chaos in TROS, whereas fans see closure.

 

It's the objective and independent judges that I'd give an ear to.

It's hard to make accurate judgements about things we are close to or emotionally invested in even if we have a knowledge or experience.