ST Critics' reviews for Star Wars: The Last Jedi

But again, isn't that something that can fairly be argued either way? Is it that critics are missing this crucial element, or is it simply that they disagree? I mean, the fans who like the film obviously see it differently.

 

Lol. As a StarWars fan I'm used to disagreeing with the critics ;-) always feared the day critics liked a StarWars movie. In retrospect I think your right as for a fan story wins out. Reading the reviews there seems to be little to no mention of the SW Story of hope etc being a part of their review where they look for technical aspects. But as with so many things nothing can be taken as absolute. Yes the critic reviews are higher than usual but there are still many that are very harsh. You pick the one that reflects your personal view.

 

I think part of it is that critics are rating TLJ in comparison with other modern blockbusters, while Star Wars fans are rating the movie in comparison with the other Star Wars movies. That skews things a bit, and also speaks to the differences in expectations between the two groups.

 

Buzzfeed - Journalists Are Nervous About What A Disney And Fox Merger Would Mean For Them
“We’ve seen a pattern in Disney’s behavior. The more power they have, the more they wield it,” one entertainment reporter said.

https://www.buzzfeed.com/krystieyan...y-fox-merger?utm_term=.bwONO480r4#.ih7eAQgo1Q

 

I can definitely see them as a company crossing lines like this in order to "protect the brand".

 

I completely agree with you. I suspect they are going to have a tougher time going through the regulatory approval process than some might think. Not to get "inside baseball," but there are a lot of folks who work at both Disney and Fox that stand to lose their jobs with this merger.

 

https://www.buzzfeed.com/krystieyan...y-fox-merger?utm_term=.bwONO480r4#.ih7eAQgo1Q

"Some reporters noted that this is not a problem specific to Disney, but that in the world of entertainment journalism, your relationships with press representatives determine your access to interviews, film screenings, set visits, and other means of coverage. Future press opportunities, they said, are dependent on how favorable your coverage has been of past films, television shows, and other news related to the company.

“As a critic, I’ve had Disney tell me they don’t want to invite me to a film because I didn’t like the last one,” another film critic said. “It really scares me to watch them get even more power.”

Really makes the point doesn't it?

 

In my opinion, TLJ has many of the same problems as Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Yet the reception of the two movies has been very different.

 

Can't say I'm totally surprised that Disney would put pressure on critics for good reviews, not after they blatantly tried to blacklist the LA Times a few months back as some sort of payback for running a news story that was negative for Disney. Not sure how useful these tactics will be in the long term though: if the critical consensus doesn't actually mean anything anymore eventually people will start to wise up to that fact and start ignoring it entirely.

 

Oh yay now we get theories on other end of the spectrum that the press was pressured and bought to give good reviews. Looking forward to it.

 

it's extremely difficult to look at this with any semblance of seriousness when AoTC and TPM have a higher audience rating, but a much closer gap between the critic score and the audience score.

 

Is the audience rating back in that time all that relevant? Was RT even around or are those scores created by people going back and entering them well after seeing the movie? I would assume the numbers now for any movie are a more inclusive/accurate figure as internet coverage has increased.

TLJ also treats the audience quite differently from PT as it insults/attacks a portion of fans and their dearest beliefs. The PT could be viewed as bad movies the only left disappointment and so the discontent is on a different level and scale.

Personally I think the RO score is correct and seems to mirror the wider voicing of peoples reaction. But I don't have the conviction that I'd be betting my house on it or anything like that.

 

It's been crystal clear to me since the first critic reviews started rolling in that something was seriously amiss and unnatural about the ratings.

That's the problem when one company has so much power. Fortunately, the can't gag the public.

 

I don't think that's the case but I'm pretty certain that the old proverbial "You don't bite the hand that feeds you" holds true.

My colleagues at work (none of them remotely qualify as fans) were utterly disappointed, trusting the positive TLJ reviews. I'd say that professional journalists find themselves increasingly between a rock and a hard place as the gap between their expectations and those of general audiences increase.

A good example that comes to my mind is Passengers. Most critics didn't like it, most general audiences loved it which is evident when you read the reviews over at Amazon or at the AVS Forum. Even my female colleague at work liked the film a lot, although she had expected worse after reading the reviews (same applies for myself).

I guess that in the future we'll have to learn to read between the lines of reviews to learn whether those really qualify as a recommendation or rather a warning.

 

Yeah thats interesting. I'm in Australia and didn't read any reviews until the next day after the midnight screening. I assume it was several hours before the USA as per usual though so the reviews weren't publish before the movie played. However as soon as the movie ended I was following the twitter hashtag that was just venom in reaction. Very, very different to TFA and RO. So the positive critical reviews were somewhat of a surprise. However many of the Australian reviews have seen to be less positive than the big media USA ones. There are plenty of gushing ones as well. eg http://www.news.com.au/entertainmen...i/news-story/833733e449b0e1c6e53fa0d1ea163ddc

 

http://www.news.com.au/entertainmen...i/news-story/833733e449b0e1c6e53fa0d1ea163ddc

Quote: In The Last Jedi, movie magic has been replaced by hocus pocus. Or perhaps even mumbo jumbo — never has the eastern-western pop psychology of the franchise rung so hollow.

Looks like Sir Alec Guinness was right, but his "mumbo jumbo" was a prediction for later films.

 

Well it's up to you whether you take it seriously or not... To me it looks like you are in denial about how unpopular this film is with it's audience but that's up to you of course...

 

Right. And critics had free reign to take shots at Lucas because he was and independent filmmaker making 1 movie every 3 years. Is it any surprise that they are more cautious with Disney who pumps out film after film after film and has no problem blacklisting newspapers?

It is interesting to note that even the RT critic score is dropping. Now down to a low of 90%

 

I honestly don't know what the reason is why TLJ (and TFA) got such amazing critical reviews when it was a clear as day that they were both flawed movies (TFA more so than TLJ IMO)

But whatever it's been obvious ever since they made Mark Hamill post that tweet just after Christmas that there's clearly a problem with TLJ and the audiences reaction to it.

To try and deny that is a waste of everyone's time... For those that support TLJ and Disney SW it would be better to argue that at least they've done something original (even if its controversial with movie-goers) than to deny the issue in the first place.

 

nah I'm not blind to the dissatisfaction with the film. I'm here, after all. It's just hard for me to take that percentage as reality with all of the factors I've seen to indicate that it does not accurately represent the audience reception of the movie. A lot of people admit that they liked a few aspects of the movie yet they still give it the lowest rating possible. I enjoyed reading a review where someone brought up a large list of complaints about the film but still complimented the cinematography. They rated it a 3/10. Not a 0.5/10.
But I digress. The audience reception isn't supposed to be the topic of this discussion.

 

I'm not dismissing actual, legit complaints about the movie, but I find it hard to take some of the user reviews on RT seriously when I've seen quite a few along the lines of "Adam Driver is ugly. 0/10" or "I didn't like the music in some parts. 0/10." I don' take those seriously and there a quite a few like that. Kind of defeats the purpose of user reviews. That's why I come to these boards.

 

When do we get Mr. Plinkett's full review? I don't always agree but always entertaining.

 

I don’t think anyone is denial, it’s just the extent. RT was clearly brigaded yet it’s the metric everyone keeps propping up like it’s fact.

As for Mark being told to tweet I doubt it. Mark has never been disingenuous and always speaks his mind. As you said though if it’s what you believe so be it.

I too am also looking forward to it. Their half in the bag episode was so so, and as such I’m looking forward to their more structured less off the cuff review so to speak.

I said this before but shouldn’t the critics reviews plateau from here? How many legitimate critics have yet to review?

 

I'm not going to deny that film studios exert some pressure for critics to give positive reviews. It happens.

But before we decide that the critics' 90% RT score is the result of pressure from Disney, we should stop and consider the RT scores for other recent Disney films.

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (2006) - 54%
Pirates of the Caribbean: At Worlds End (2007) - 45%
Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides (2011) - 32%
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales (2017) - 30%

Apparently Disney wasn't paying off any critics, nor exerting any pressure on them, for the last four Pirates movies. (The first one had 79%)

Cars 2 (2011) - 48%
Cars 3 (2017) - 68%

Nor either of Pixar's Cars sequels.

Maleficent (2014) - 50%
Tomorrowland (2015) - 50%
Alice: Through the Looking Glass (2016) - 29%

Nor some other live-action fantasy/sci-fi films.

Thor: The Dark World - 66%
The Incredible Hulk - 67%

Even some of the Marvel Universe films don't get stellar reviews from critics.

So apparently Disney is only exerting pressure to give The Last Jedi good reviews, because reasons.