That Persnickety Last Jedi Rotten Tomatoes Score
In the grand scheme of life, the Rotten Tomatoes score of the latest Star Wars installment will not cause the downfall of civilization, put an end to world hunger, or derail the increasingly monopolistic Disney empire. The film The Last Jedi has set off a minor culture war over what makes a good movie, and whether we should be “modernizing” a series of movies that are set “a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away…”
But that’s the film, not the score. And yet, the score of the movie on the review aggregator website that has led to multiple tweets, stories and drama. Left-leaning critics cry foul when hackers claim to have flooded the Last Jedi voting forum with ‘bots,’ while righties stake their case that the film’s score shows how misguided Lucasfilm has become since George I sold his baby to the House of Mouse and left uber producer Kathleen Kennedy in charge of his life’s work. Those are the excuses, anyway. Why drama? Because the film is universally loved by critics (90%) and deeply hated by at least half the Rotten Tomato votership (49% audience score).
While political arguments are surely part of the story (looking at you, SJWs vs. butt-hurt fanboys); a glance at the audience reviews show page after page of vitriol directed at the movie. Why devote so much time to trashing the latest installment of America’s most beloved franchise? Well, because it’s America’s most beloved franchise (sorry muggles and Trekkies).
For the record, Rotten Tomatoes is owned by Fandango Media, the movie ticketing company that is itself co-owned by NBC Universal (70% stake) and Warner Bros./Time Warner (30%). The site’s Alexa score is 142. I honestly have no idea what that means, but considering Google is №1 I’m just going to assume 142 isn’t half bad.
At last count, there are 178,160 user ratings for the film. According to Rotten Tomatoes, the 49% audience score is equal to the number of user ratings 31/2 (out of 5) or higher.
And this is where I come in. I don’t care about the arguments for or against the movie. I will disclose, for disclosure’s sake, that I found a lot of it pretty stoopid (sic intentional) but I did laugh when Poe paged Hux, I got giddy when Rey and Kylo slashed those red doods (sic you get it) and knew roughly .3 seconds after Luke arrived on the salt planet (let’s call it fake Hoth) that he wasn’t actually on site with the rest of the Rebs. I also agree with at least two of Kevin Smith’s points that the reunion of R2-D2 and Luke was very effective and the call back to the original Star Wars as the Jedi master spots two setting suns in the distance was equally moving. But the film missed in as many parts as it hit (here’s looking at you gambling planet prequel dreck).
The difference between the critics and audience scores is the greatest among the 8 Star Wars films, and means The Last Jedi has a lower audience score than any of the generally derided prequels. But after reading so many negative reviews, and doing what little math I still remember from 9th grade algebra, I could not for the life of me figure out how a movie with page upon page of down votes still managed to hold a 49% rating.
And that’s what bothers me. Not whether the movie was good or not — ’tis a free country laddies and lasses, ye all be entitled to ye own opinions — but the math bothers me.
Granted, I haven’t taken a college level statistics course, but my basic understanding of the Rotten Tomatoes equation is that in order for The Last Jedi to have only 49% approve, then there must be at least 86,408 user ratings of at least 3.5 or higher.
Tonight I scrolled through the user review pages. I got as high as page 51 (of 1,943), and then on page 52 I started getting error messages. But what I did find from 1–51 was not good.
From what I could gather of this very small sample (about 1,000 of the 178,160 scores) is that the user ratings don’t jive with the official count. I’m not surprised the movie has proven so controversial, nor that there is a huge gap between professional reviewers and ordinary folk. I’m arguing that the user rating, at least by Rotten Tomatoes’ public metric, should be much, much lower.
Ok, now for the math:
Again, small sample, but there are no more pages available for scorekeeping. I am basically analyzing 10% of the publicly available user ratings, and what you have are 18 positive, 77 negative (below 3.5 stars) and 5 not interested. If not interested votes are simply discounted, that would mean Last Jedi should have a user score somewhere around 19%, which would put it more on par with the infamous Star Wars: Holiday Special.
So what are we to believe? Were there thousands upon thousands of up-votes initially that we can no longer see? Or is Rotten Tomatoes gaming the system to inflate the score? I’d love to see an explanation from RT’s senior editor (Grae Drake). Also troubling to me is the fact that on the pages I saw, the average user rating for negative reviews was a measly 1/2 star. How can 15 1/2 stars, added to three 41/2 star reviews come up with an average rating of 3 out of 5? 15 1/2 stars = 7.5, + 13.5 = 21 out of 54, or 1.9 out of 5 (technically 1.94445, but I always thought you only rounded up at 1.95).
Maybe that’s the answer — they just really, really, really rounded up, or because of the bot claims RT has taken to wiping out the vast majority of negative review scores.
I don’t have a stake in this. I love Disney. My wife and I are taking the kids for the fifth time in a few short weeks. I also love Star Wars. I think the original film is the most important movie ever produced, and also one of the 10 best.
I didn’t hate Last Jedi nor did I love it. I sat through it. But I don’t like the idea of voters being silenced, even for something as trivial as the user ratings for one movie on some random website whose Alexa score still hovers in the triple digits.
If I had to guess I don’t think the brass at Disney particularly cares — they are surely concerned that the film absolutely tanked in China, and the total box office is going to be at least 30 percent off from The Force Awakens. That’s reason №1 Ms. Kennedy went back to good ole’ J.J. Abrams for Episode IX.
But if the next movie on the docket struggles (and by struggle I mean earns less than $300–400 million domestic), maybe Bob Iger will conduct a review of the leadership over at Lucasfilm. Only time will tell.
