Posted in: Movies | Tagged: HRL, justice league, rotten tomatoes, star wars, star wars: the last jedi, The Last Jedi

Rotten Tomatoes Exec Says Star Wars: The Last Jedi's 55% Audience Score is Totally Legit

Published Wed, 20 Dec 2017 18:10:14 -0600

The controversial saga of Star Wars: The Last Jedi's controversial Rotten Tomatoes score continues with more controversy! Despite near-universal praise from critics with a 93% fresh rating, the audience score for Rotten Tomatoes is a baffling 55%, seeming to indicate that moviegoers strongly disagreed with critics' positive assessment. However, as Bleeding Cool reported earlier this week, not only is there a Facebook user claiming to be behind artificially lowering the score, but an analysis of the review data seems to back up the theory that the score has been manipulated.

It could be a small group of particularly angry Star Wars fans upset that the movie didn't live up to expectations. It could be angry DCEU fans out for revenge on Rotten Tomatoes for the negative critical score of Justice League, which contributed to the movie's financial failure. It could be part of an early Russian plot to ensure Donald Trump's reelection. We don't know the true motive, but we do know that Star Wars: The Last Jedi received an A rating from Cinemascore, which uses a scientific polling method at actual theaters, so the Rotten Tomatoes audience score seems to almost certainly be bull@#$%.

Well, Rotten Tomatoes, shockingly, disagrees. In a statement given to sandwich-themed Hollywood gossip blog The Wrap, Rotten Tomatoes exec Dana Benson claimed that the score is totally legit:

"The authenticity of our critic and user scores is very important to Rotten Tomatoes and as a course of regular business, we have a team of security, network, social and database experts who closely monitor our platforms. They haven't determined that there are any problems.

For Star Wars: The Last Jedi, we have seen an uptick in people posting written user reviews, as fans are very passionate about this movie and the franchise. The number of written reviews being posted by fans is comparable to Star Wars: The Force Awakens."

So who's telling the truth? Bleeding Cool will continue to investigate and report on this extremely important issue until we get to the bottom of it or until it stops getting clicks, so stay tuned!