On the 14th of December 2017, The eighth instalment of the Star Wars franchise, The Last Jedi, was released to critical acclaim. After the tremendously successful seventh title, The Force Awakens, fans of the series were left highly excited by how The Last Jedi would build on the story told by The Force Awakens, and how it would contribute to the planned trilogy of movies.
However, despite an opening weekend that has amassed $220 million, some fans have been left dissatisfied with the direction that director, Rian Johnson, has taken the franchise. Fans have cited Johnson’s failure to address key plot points from the previous movie, The Force Awakens, as well as poor character development and various plot holes. On the other hand, critics have been heaping praise upon the movie which has shown a clear divide between fans and movie critics.
On the movie review website Rotten Tomatoes, film critics have rated the movie 93% out of 100% with 284 regarding the film to be fresh, meaning great, and only 11 branding the film to be rotten (bad). Going by this rating, The Last Jedi is just as good as The Force Awakens which also garnered a 93% critic rating. When taking audience reviews into account however, The Last Jedi’s 53% audience rating is not up to the standard of The Force Awakens’ 88% audience rating.
When looking at the reviews for The Last Jedi, critics have been keen to praise The Last Jedi. Stephanie Zacharek of TIME Magazine described the movie as having a good “sense of humour” and also a “sense of joy” whilst Jeff Beck of The Blu Spot said in his review that the movie was a “grand step forward” for the franchise. David Edelstein of New York Magazine wrote that the director Rian Johnson “achieves what no one else has since The Empire Strikes Back: a fusion of junkyard genre parts and passion.”
Rotten Tomatoes’ audience reviews include scathing criticisms of the movie with fans describing it as having “glaring plot holes” and being “worse than” The Phantom Menace, which has long been regarded by fans and critics alike as the weakest movie in the Star Wars Movie Franchise. Fans also took to Twitter to complain about how the movie did not follow a traditional Star Wars narrative.
Ironically, when the first critic reviews appeared on Rotten Tomatoes, The Last Jedi had been given a rating of 96% which would have had it rated as the best Star Wars movie of all time, whereas the audience score for the movie regards The Last Jedi as the worst Star Wars movie since Attack of the Clones; the second chapter of the universally detested prequel trilogy of movies.
Overall, the largest question from this is who to believe. Should audiences hold critics’ opinions in higher esteem to those of audiences? Or should fans’ opinions be held in a higher esteem as they could be considered experts of the series?