After not seeing it coming, an examination…

Yesterday I was frankly stunned to find that over on rottentomatoes.com the latest Star Wars film, Star Wars: The Last Jedi, after receiving so much near universal love by critics (who currently have the film at a very lofty 93% positive), has far, far less love from audiences.  Yesterday, only 57% of them felt the film was good.  That rating has dropped a point to 56% today, with a total of 97,100+ reviews.

As a comparison, the much reviled Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice has a 63% positive with nearly 230,000 audience reviews offered.

I still find this just… incredible.

If nothing else, Star Wars: The Last Jedi (let’s refer to it as LJ from here on) is -obviously!- splitting audiences and fans almost right down the middle.

Because I clearly have way too much free time on my hands, I read through many of the audience reactions presented, both positive and negative, and found the following (and this ain’t brain surgery, folks):

The reactions are split into three distinct camps:

  1. Those who love the film
  2. Those who feel the film was good but not great (this seems to be the smallest group)
  3. Those who hated the film

The ones who love the film feel it was an emotional tour de force, that it was filled with great action, excitement, and plenty of surprises.  They felt an emotional connection to the cast and characters and were floored by many of the surprises presented within the feature.  Some have also noted the film actually presents a clever theme: One involving failure.  Each and every main character in the film, they note fails in their own way, which may well be a way of then showing them, in the next film, learning from their mistakes and succeeding where they failed before (until the final film in this most recent trilogy is released, obviously, this is a complete guess on my and some other audience reviewers’ part).

The middle group, which appears to be the smallest of the three groups offering their opinions on the film, note, among other things, that LJ is a decent/good “action/sci-fi” film but not a very good Star Wars film.  In other words, that this film doesn’t feel like it belong to the others, and many wonder whether director/writer Rian Johnson “gets” the Star Wars universe.

I find that analysis fascinating because, to some degree, this critique, only far more negative, appears and repeats by many in the third group, those who feel the film is terrible.

Many of these complaints center on the story: That it is full of holes, that there are parts of it that were better left on the cutting room floor.  Though I haven’t seen the film, some of those who even liked the film admitted its second act was too slow and/or unnecessary.

Now, let me repeat: I haven’t seen the film but as I didn’t think I’d catch it in theaters anyway, I didn’t mind reading some of the comments and critiques and having parts -indeed the whole- of the story spoiled.

Another bit of criticism I’ve found repeated by many who didn’t like the film (and even among some who did) was that they felt the film’s makers had contempt for the character of Luke Skywalker.  That’s not to say they thought Mark Hamill was bad in playing the character again over for the first time after so many years.  Quite the contrary, most feel his acting was one of the film’s highlights.  What they felt was bad was what he became since last seen in Return of the Jedi.

What’s fascinating about that is that before the film’s release, actor Mark Hamill, in an interview with Vanity Fair, said the following regarding his reaction to first reading the film’s script:

…after reading Rian Johnson’s script for The Last Jedi, Hamill said, “I at one point had to say to Rian, ‘I pretty much fundamentally disagree with every choice you’ve made for this character. Now, having said that, I have gotten it off my chest, and my job now is to take what you’ve created and do my best to realize your vision.’ ”

Good, bad, or indifferent, clearly the film will make huge box off money this week.

The big question, given how many people seem to not like the film: How big of a drop off will we see in week 2?

I’ll most certainly be curious to see.

Time, as with so many other things, will tell.

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