* If tomatometer & audience score are within 5% of each other, you can trust the ratings to give you a decent indiciation of movie quality.
* If tomatometer is more than 15%+ higher than audience score, it means it's an artsy fartsy movie that critics like and movies don't.
* If audience score is 15%+ higher than tomatometer, it's a fun movie even if it's not oscar worthy. (https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/old_school is a perfect example)
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The Last Jedi
Tomatometer 91% Audience 41%: Artsy Fartsy
[Really?]
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The Greatest Showman
Tomatometer 56% Audience 86%: Fun, not oscar worthy
[Won Oscar for Best Original Song]
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EDIT: Truthfully, it was the release of these two films (both Dec 2017) that caused the Tomatormeter and I to part ways. Simply indefensible, IMO.
[0] Think space-walrus cliffs, or red-salt Hoth, or lightspeed kamikazee, or the Snoke throne room battle
1. Luke went from the most optimistic and positive Jedi in the world, who found the good in Darth Vader, to a dude who tried to kill his own nephew without any explanation on how he got to that point aside from "I had a bad dream". Pathetic even if you ignore he also had dreams about becoming Darth Vader himself, and overcame those.
2. They completely destroyed any sense of time or speed with their "this turtle is so slow but too fast" race as the main plot point
3. Leia went into outer space unconscious but magically flew back in without dying???
4. They kept the elderly Leia around, instead of having her do a hero's sendoff at the end. Instead, they killed the only good character that was set up perfectly to be the new cutthroat cunning but likable leader of the rebellion.
5. They ruined every other fight in star wars with the hyperspace joust. Why was any other fight a big deal when they could have just rammed a few ships with jump drives into the star destroyers, or hell, the death star.
6. Rey is somehow the strongest force user now despite no training. Every other Jedi that got to be that strong had a lifetime of training and tribulations, but now Rey can just beat kylo ren, a lifelong trained Jedi Skywalker with the power of the dark side, just because she's a Mary Sue.
And this is just what I can remember on my phone while sitting at this bar. If you think this movie wasn't a deep betrayal to the universe, you didn't pay any attention to it.
For what it's worth, I agree with him. When I saw the movie and even just the promotional materials I thought it was visually striking and had very strong color themes. But wow, it was a train wreck in terms of plot, characters, faithfulness to the series, etc. I could go on for hours.
But to be fair, I also think The Force Awakens was terrible and painted the story into a dumb direction. Instead of “what if the Nazis came back to power in Argentina”, they should have moved the story into a direction more like “the alliance against a common enemy is fractured”, like what actually happened after World War 2, or “there are now many factions of ambitious warlords rising among the widely deployed and still incredibly powerful imperial military”, or some of both. The Mandalorian did the setting much better in that sense.