Will 'The Last Jedi' Earn The Best Rotten Tomatoes Score of the Star Wars Saga?
This weekend marked the first public screenings of The Last Jedi at its premiere in Los Angeles, [...]
This weekend marked the first public screenings of The Last Jedi at its premiere in Los Angeles, California, with many of the people in attendance taking to social media after the movie to share their admiration of the film. Critics won't be able to officially post full-length reviews until Tuesday morning, less than three days before it opens, but Mashable has predicted that it will be the best-reviewed film in the Star Wars saga.
The site claims that one of the clues that hints at The Last Jedi earning a strong score can be deduced from the amount of time between its first public screenings and when reviews are officially posted. A longer amount of time after a premiere to the review embargo being lifted shows confidence in the film, something Mashable predicted with Thor: Ragnarok. Conversely, a shorter time between a premiere and the review embargo hints at a poor score, as evidenced by Justice League.
The correlation between how far in advance a review goes up and when a film debuts is much trickier to deduce, with films like Atomic Blonde (76%), Rough Night (45%) and Baywatch (18%) all having their embargoes lift as far in advance as The Last Jedi.
Hours between a film's release and when reviews are posted aren't a big factor, but the fact that reviews will be posted early Tuesday morning, an incredibly busy time on the internet, seems to indicate Disney wanting as many eyes as possible to see critics' reactions.
The saga's current rankings are as follows:
- The Empire Strikes Back: 94%
- The Force Awakens: 93%
- A New Hope: 93%
- Rogue One: 85%
- Return of the Jedi: 80%
- Revenge of the Sith: 79%
- Attack of the Clones: 66%
- The Phantom Menace: 55%
An interesting factor that will play into the film's Rotten Tomatoes score is that Empire Strikes Back's score is derived from less than 100 critics, while The Force Awakens' total was determined by nearly 400 reviews. This doesn't necessarily impact the overall positive to negative ratio of reviews, but when it comes to determining the overall score, the number of critics sharing their opinions could potentially move the number by a few percentage points, either above or below Empire Strikes Back.
Fans will find out the film's official score later this week.
The Last Jedi opens in theaters on December 15.
[H/T Mashable]