Some 'Star Wars' Fans Are Tanking 'The Last Jedi's Rotten Tomatoes Audience Rating — Why?
SPOILERS AHEAD
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*Just a heads up, there are spoilers below*

At the time of this article's publication, "The Last Jedi" is "certified fresh" on Rotten Tomatoes with a 93% positive rating, yet the audience score is only at 56%. Setting aside for a moment the question of whether this is due to an organized effort from the sorts of folks who toss around the label "SJW" unironically, what does it say about "The Last Jedi" and about Star Wars fandom that writer/director Rian Johnson's decision to challenge the series' maxims has proven to be so divisive?

For starters, we must remember that this middle chapter in the new trilogy was bound to tick some people off from the very beginning. The groundwork laid by J.J. Abrams and co-writer Lawrence Kasdan in "The Force Awakens" amounted to a whole lot of questions and Luke staring at Rey on a rocky bluff (as close to a literal cliffhanger ending as they could get without audience groans). In the two years between films, fans anticipating a shocking revelation a la "The Empire Strikes Back" turned their attention to theorizing about all kinds of subjects, including Luke's exile, Supreme Leader Snoke's backstory and Rey's parentage. Rian Johnson had to give some answers, and any answer that contradicted a pristine fan theory was sure to ruffle some feathers.

Okay, Now We're Seriously In 'Last Jedi' Spoiler Territory

So: Luke lost his faith and cut himself off from the Force, Snoke (for the purposes of this trilogy) is a mere manipulator who can't see his pupil's growing resentment, and Rey's parents were just inglorious scrappers. These three threads seem to be the biggest sticking points for people who don't like "The Last Jedi," and by considering each in turn, we can start to untangle the dueling positive and negative reactions.

Why Are People Mad About Luke?

 

Jacob Hall's response to "The Last Jedi" at SlashFilm is titled "'The Last Jedi' Doesn't Care What You Think About 'Star Wars' – And That's Why It's Great," but the gamble Hall points out Rian Johnson is takes with Luke suggests anything but:

"The Last Jedi" features a Luke Skywalker that is unlike anything we've seen before – a broken shell of a man who believes that everything he fought for and achieved was for naught. By telling young Rey that none of this matters, he's also telling the audience the same thing. The stuff you love? The details that have reshaped pop culture and created a geek language that everyone speaks? Yeah, they're wonky. Or rather, they're broken. Your faith was flawed.

[Jacob Hall at SlashFilm]

"The Last Jedi" cares so much about what you think about Star Wars that it, through Luke, begs you to think harder: if the events of "The Force Awakens" were similar to "A New Hope," what happened such that the cycle of war starts all over again? Luke's had time to consider his own role in the events of the Star Wars series and has come to some harsh conclusions — namely, that he failed to ensure peace and harmony just as the Jedi Order did before him.

The takeaway: Love his attitude or hate it, for the beats established by "The Force Awakens" (Luke in self-imposed exile, a galaxy falling to a fascist regime again), Luke had to be different from the man audiences last saw at the end of "Return of the Jedi." For the sake of drama, it makes sense that Luke blames himself: after all, his nephew and star pupil turned evil while under his care. Whether Luke should be so flippant in his bitterness is up to debate, but his bitterness is nonetheless earned. Would it really be better if Luke acted like hiding on an island while the galaxy went to hell in a handbasket was noble?


Why Are People Mad About Snoke?

 

Almost everybody expected to learn more about Snoke in "The Last Jedi," whether or not they cared to. All we really learned was that he's partial to the color red, he likes to lounge in a gaudy bathrobe and he really loves messing with the insecurities of his followers. Then, he gets chopped in half. What's the point?

Who is Snoke? Why bother. Instead, "Jedi" zeroes in on the most crucial relationship in this series, between Rey and Kylo. Their bond, captured in a series of psychic conversations throughout, is the centerpiece. And when their union finally occurs, nearly 90 minutes in, a movie that had been pacing itself after a breakneck opening turns purely kinetic.

[Sean Fennessey at The Ringer]

The narrative choice to kill off Snoke in a power grab by Kylo Ren is respectful to one of J.J. Abrams' biggest successes with "The Force Awakens": People liked Kylo Ren as a villain because the script set him up as a wannabe Vader, doomed to never live up to his evil idol. Snoke prods Ren on this point at the beginning of "The Last Jedi" and ends up paying for it when Ren decides Snoke was right. Ren doesn't want to be Vader anymore, and Vader only killed the Emperor when he turned good. If Snoke wanted a loyal lackey, he shouldn't have rubbed Ren's face in his own inadequacy.

The takeaway: We know enough about Snoke to understand how his mastermind play backfired, and now that he's dead the role of chief baddie can be filled by Kylo Ren. No matter what backstory could be drummed up for Snoke, it's obvious that Kylo Ren would've always gotten more screen time and development anyway. It's still possible that we'll learn more about Snoke in Episode IX, but killing him off now lets the trilogy's real conflict between Rey and Kylo Ren have higher stakes.


Why Are People Mad About Rey's Parents?

 

Of all the hanging threads left by "The Force Awakens," the identity of Rey's parents was the most tantalizing. Just by introducing the question, Abrams and Kasdan were pushing the big button in fans' brains that "The Empire Strikes Back" created — Rey logically had to be descended from some important line because Luke and Leia were too. Competing parent theories were like catnip to fans, and in all fairness, after the great lengths "The Force Awakens" went in order to fuel speculation, revealing that Rey's parents are just nobodies is a bit of a "gotcha." Question is, is it being a "gotcha" a bad thing?

Rey has always, on some level, known—she's really just a nobody, parentally speaking. No secret lineage, none of Lucas' love of monomythic, Harry Potter-style "unknown king growing up in the wilderness" tropes. No deeper Abrams-esque mystery. Just Occam's Lightsaber, chopping through the bullshit, and leaving a powerful young woman with no lingering, grasping connections to the wider Star Wars universe.

[William Hughes for The A.V. Club]

When audiences learned that Darth Vader is Luke's father, that forced them to reconsider their idea of Luke: instead of being a supernaturally gifted farm boy with a heart of gold, his power came from being the son of a fascist space wizard. What would learning that Rey's descended from a famous Force user tell us? That despite growing up orphaned and alone she's actually special thanks to her secret bloodline? Didn't everybody hate midichlorians anyway?

The takeaway: To those who want to brand Rey as a Mary Sue and flush both films down the toilet, there'll no convincing them. If she'd been Luke's daughter, or Obi-Wan's or whoevers, some subset of fans would be upset by the implications. Now that Rey's parents are nobodies, it's "too much of a stretch" to believe that she could be so powerful. Remember that Rey's introduction in "The Force Awakens" establishes her as the ultimate Star Wars fan: she lives in an AT-AT and wears a dorky Rebel pilot helmet just because she likes it. The message is just as clear in "The Force Awakens" it is with the kids of Canto Bight in the final scene of "The Last Jedi" — where you come from doesn't matter. Heroism isn't hereditary (just look at Kylo Ren).

What About The Rest Of The Movie?

 

Amongst various tweet threads responding to "The Last Jedi" negatively, there are legitimate concerns about pacing and tone interspersed with vitriolic complaints and absurd anti-Johnson, anti-Disney screeds. When "The Last Jedi" isn't answering questions about Luke and Rey, it busies itself raising questions about how the Resistance fights and who can be trusted in a galaxy where war and slavery are the biggest drivers of profit. After watching the movie, I found myself referring back to a piece published by Austin Walker after the release of "The Force Awakens" and its mixed fan response:

Hux and Ren–and, I think, those angry fans–look backwards towards an elusive (and fictional) past where things were simpler, but The Force Awakens wants us to look forward instead, even though that might be challenging. The world is unfair, it says, and unstable. The things we thought were structural and eternal are in fact man-made and mutable. They're just very, very convincing.

[Austin Walker at Giant Bomb]

"The Last Jedi" goes so, so much further to reinforce that unfairness and lack of stability. War isn't fair, and its outcomes are never palatable in an uncomplicated sense. Losses are sustained, miracles happen, mistakes are made and survival is fought for inch by inch (or in this case, parsec by parsec). That's not to say you've got to like the heightening of uncertainty and the moral greys embraced by "The Last Jedi," but appreciating their presence and purpose is necessary whether or not you think they belong in a Star Wars film.

Everyone is entitled to their own, thoughtful opinion on The Last Jedi. But no matter what the hot takes try to tell you, Episode VIII's legacy will not be decided or quantified this weekend.

[Joanna Robinson at Vanity Fair]

Not everyone who is upset with "The Last Jedi" is tweeting angrily at Rian Johnson or signing a petition to have it removed from the canon. Some people are upset for reasons I'm sure I haven't even covered here, and perhaps everybody who feels let down would be better off reading fewer pieces like this. There's a legion of writers, myself included, who are more than willing to chalk this up to an "Empire"-like early pushback that'll change with time. People can quote box office figures and mount impassioned defenses of Admiral Holdo's military leadership all the live-long day — and because this is Star Wars, they will. More often than not, nobody's going to have their mind changed.

A bad audience rating on Rotten Tomatoes leads to pieces like this one, but this will pass as a blip in the history of an already 40 year-old series that's set to continue for years to come. "The Last Jedi" won't be remembered as poorly as the fans upset by it feel now, and by the time someone follows up this trilogy, they'll have ever more expectations to live up to or to intentionally subvert. Critics and fans will be used to the presence of "The Last Jedi" in the series, and it'll be cited for its strengths and weaknesses accordingly.

<p>Mathew Olson is an Associate Editor at Digg.</p>

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