* 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.
>4. They kept the elderly Leia around, instead of having her do a hero's sendoff at the end.
I don't want to get into a long drown out fight about Star Wars on HN so I'll ignore most of your points, but this complaint has always really bothered me because it shows such a huge lack of human empathy. A real person died, a person that was one of the 4 or 5 most important people to the success of Star Wars. And it has become the standard opinion of her "fans" that her last performance should have been largely thrown away to slightly improve the overall narrative arc of the movies. It really puts into perspective what fans care about. It is all about the product on the screen. Anyone involved in making the product is meaningless. Their only significance is in their role of servicing the product.
I'm glad they didn't re-edit the movie after Carrie Fisher's death even if it created new challenges for the next movie.
Rian's intention was to demonstrate some semblance of humanity remained within Kylo. But the optics are that he is truly weak and in the end isn't even bothered much by the (for all he knows at the moment) imminent death of his mother. Had Kylo fired the shot he at least would have surpassed Vader in evilness, whether or not Leia saved herself.
I agree with the "fans" that she should have died in that scene, but since Rian was too scared to snuff Leia before Luke the scene shouldn't have been written in the first place.