The word has been that Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker was a disliked film by many fans. For some time, I didn’t believe it, seeing its impressive 86% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes.
Then, just this week, it dawned on me that The Rise of Skywalker has a lower IMDb rating than Star Wars: The Last Jedi. The latter film is hated by an estimated half of the Star Wars fanbase.
The IMDb ratings of the films
As of the publication of this article, The Rise of Skywalker had a 6.6 IMDb rating (out of 10), a solid four-tenths of a point lower than The Last Jedi‘s 7. (They both rank lower than Star Wars: Episode III — Revenge of the Sith, which actually had a rather respectable 7.5 rating.)
Part of this, however, is that The Last Jedi’s IMDb rating isn’t that bad. Further, a 7 is as good as Shazam!, Elf and The Croods: A New Age. It’s better than Aquaman. Audiences generally view these films positively. (This goes to show how vocal the detractors of the film are. And that to the average IMDb user, The Last Jedi is a decent enough film.)
What’s curious about The Rise of Skywalker and its reception as expressed on the most well-known of film review websites?
Despite its rating on the one, it scores so high on the other.
How does this work? Is it comprised on Rotten Tomatoes of a bunch of 3.5s? If so, does that make for the high score but also explain how it was not relatively well-received?
Perhaps that’s it.
Then again, perhaps “relatively” is the keyword here. Star Wars fans could do mental gymnastics about how The Rise of Skywalker has the rating it has on IMDb, yet, the audience score it has on Rotten Tomatoes. Or, they could accept that its IMDb rating isn’t bad, and thus it makes more sense why its Rotten Tomatoes audience score also isn’t bad. (The Rise of Skywalker‘s IMDb rating is still as good as Bad Boys for Life‘s and better than The Craft‘s, Pinocchio‘s and Birds of Prey‘s.) And they could allow that to spur some introspection that they are more radical in their perceptions of Star Wars than your average IMDb user and almost certainly by extension, your average movie-goer.
Of course, with The Rise of Skywalker having a lower IMDb rating than The Last Jedi, but The Rise of Skywalker‘s rating not being bad, fans could accept that both films have IMDb ratings that aren’t bad. (Even though both are met with disgust by some fans.)
What do you think? Comment below!
Learn more about The Rise of Skywalker and The Last Jedi at StarWars.com.
