23 hours ago, AllWingsStandyingBy said:

I don't think I'm the arbiter of how movies have been received by audiences (in fact, the whole point of my first post was to look at the empirical data that might be used). Looking at what is, in my opinion, the best available data out there on audience reception to TLJ, it suggests that most people didn't like it (~65%). Of course this isn't a scientific poll that includes in its sample size every single person who ever saw the movie, but that type of data does not and never will exist. So if we want to say anything about a film's reception, we can either look to the best available data or else say nothing at all beyond mere unfounded speculation.

You are now, in fact, PROVING my assertion that you don't understand statistics or polling. It is not remotely necessary to ask every single person who ever saw a movie to get scientific data about it. What is required is a representative sample size of the entire population. The larger the sample, the better, but it is not remotely necessary to get 100%. That means that the poll's participants are carefully selected by the people doing the poll and attempts to remove possible variants are made.

For example, to reduce the chances of variance in terms of culture or nationality, you'd want to make sure you asked a representative people from each region. In the case of a movie like Star Wars, let's say 10% of the people who watched it were from Japan. You'd want to try to make sure about 10% of the people who took the poll were too, that way if Japanese people liked or disliked the movie more than the rest, that would be properly accounted for.

To the degree which these things are not possible, you can assign a "margin of error". A perfect poll would ask every single person, and therefore cover every possible answer, and would therefore have a margin of error of zero. Such polls almost never exist, but it's not uncommon to see a poll with a margin of error of + or - 3 or 4%. In other words, they will state that "27% of all viewers of X movie liked it, plus or minus 5%. That means maybe it was only 22%, or maybe it was as much as 32%, but they can say with a high degree of certainty that the true answer lies somewhere in that range.

The numbers you cite were as unscientific as it is possible to get. It is a small sample size, and self-selected, with high probability of bias in the selected sample.

So I would say your 65% figure has a margin of error of about 64%. You can call it "data" if you want, but it's just about as worthless as throwing a dart at a page with numbers on it, and choosing that.

11 minutes ago, FTS Gecko said:

Popular
(adjective)

1. liked or admired by many people or by a particular person or group.

Wierd, my dictionary shows first definition as "prevalent among the general public"

18 hours ago, FTS Gecko said:

Popular
(adjective)

1. liked or admired by many people or by a particular person or group.

My son liked it. It's popular.

Thank you @FTS Gecko

Yes, it sounds like I guess we're just running circles around a very different usages of "popular," but in the end we are all pretty much on the same page.

So it sounds like @direweasel @Sekac and @Red Castle and I can all agree on this:

"TLJ sold a lot of tickets and made a lot of money in its theatrical release and merchandising, despite that the film itself was one of the least well-liked Star Wars movies by the audience."

On 5/25/2018 at 10:51 AM, direweasel said:

So I would say your 65% figure has a margin of error of about 64%. You can call it "data" if you want, but it's just about as worthless as throwing a dart at a page with numbers on it, and choosing that.

Worst part is that he won't say where he took this number. I'm guessing it's Rotten Tomatoes, but it is actually showing an Audience Score of 46%, which would suggest, if one wanted to use this number against The Last Jedi, that 54% didn't like it. But if we take a little moment to analyse the score, that's not really what it tells us. We find out that this score is really subjective.

First, what is the Rotten Tomatoes Audience Score really? It's not the average rating (which shows 2.9/5), but the percentage of users that rated the movie 3.5 stars or higher. So technically, if you like a movie and review it on Rotten Tomatoes, you should always rate it 3.5 stars or higher. But that's the subjective part, we all have a different rating value. For some people (me included), 3 star is still a good score for a movie they liked, for others, it's average but still not something they didn't like. Same could be said for even 2.5 stars not being seen as a bad movie by some, or very bad by others. Just taking a quick look in the first couple of page, I saw 2 people rating the movie 3 stars and yet saying that they liked it, while others still rating it 3 stars and saying that it was meh or that they didn't like it. So, since Rotten Tomatoes doesn't have a real scale of how their star system work, we have a grey zone where while the reviewer did not really liked it, it doesn't mean he hated it. So, to use this number to say that 54% people didn't like it is false, since the system is subjective to each individual and what they consider a good movie rating. So we can only speculate and it is open to interpretation.

Now, what I would be really curious to know (but didn't find out how), is how many people rated it 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 stars. How many rated it 3 stars and actually liked it (or at least did not hate it)? Looking at the first couple page of the audience review, there is a lot of people rating it 0.5 or 1 star. If the average is actually 2.9, that would suggest that a lot of people rated it 3+ stars (we know that 46% rated it at least 3.5 stars) to average it to 2.9/5. But sadly, we don't have this number. And again, it's from a very small sample of people, and only from people that actually take the time to go to Rotten Tomatoes (and know about in the first place) and rate the movie. My experience from sales, is that people are more incline to go leave a comment (or review) if they are disatisfied, they won't bother to do it if they taught it was good (but not great) because that's what they expected. Looking at the first couple of audience review, it looks like a lot of people took this opportunity to vent, there is at least 2 that said at first that they joined RT just to give the movie a bad review. But how many rated it 5 stars to balance all of them? So again, we can only speculate and it's open to interpretation.

That's why I don't consider it the best available data. It's too open to interpretation. But what this this number really tells me, is that this movie is really polarizing. It looks to me that you either love it (next best thing since the ESB!) or hate it (oh god this movie killed my childhood!), with a little grey zone in the middle ranging from 'didn't quite like it but not the mess some makes it sound to be', 'pretty average', or 'good but not great and definetly not the best since ESB'. It's quite interesting actually, that a movie can bring so much passion either way (love or hate) that even 6 months after its release, we are still talking about it.

For my part, I really don't care that you like it or not (a friend of mine didn't like it and we are still best friends, we didn't killed each other), what I care about is that you respect the other side point of view. At this point, 6 months after the release, nobody will change his mind about the movie. But please respect the others opinion. Don't say the movie sucks or is stupid as if it was a fact, just say that you personnally didn't like it. Meanwhile, it's not because someone hated it that he's just a crybaby that didn't get the movie he expected or that he didn't understand it, he might actually have not liked it for his execution, or script, or any other reasons. In the end, there is no winner or loser side, there is only how you feel about it: If you loved it, just watch and rewatch and rerewatch it; if you hated it, just move on, there is a lot of good Star Wars story out there to read or watch, no need to continue to bash this one, it won't get suddenly erased out of canon.

9 hours ago, AllWingsStandyingBy said:

So it sounds like @direweasel @Sekac and @Red Castle and I can all agree on this:

"TLJ sold a lot of tickets and made a lot of money in its theatrical release and merchandising, despite that the film itself was one of the least well-liked Star Wars movies by the audience."

Well, it might be because I'm not a native english speaker, but 'one of the least well-liked Star Wars movies by the audience' makes it sound to me that generally speaking most of the audience didn't like it, which I don't think that's true (unless someone shows me some real undisputable numbers). As I said above, I would say that it is the most polarized one with a lot of fans either hating or loving it with a passion.

I'd imagine most of the audience thought it was 'ok', or just didn't really think about it much.

'That was alright. Shall we go get some KFC?

'KFC, yaaay!'.

Then there's the minority...

10 hours ago, Red Castle said:

Worst part is that he won't say where he took this number. I'm guessing it's Rotten Tomatoes, but it is actually showing an Audience Score of 46%, which would suggest, if one wanted to use this number against The Last Jedi, that 54% didn't like it. But if we take a little moment to analyse the score, that's not really what it tells us. We find out that this score is really subjective.

First, what is the Rotten Tomatoes Audience Score really? It's not the average rating (which shows 2.9/5), but the percentage of users that rated the movie 3.5 stars or higher. So technically, if you like a movie and review it on Rotten Tomatoes, you should always rate it 3.5 stars or higher. But that's the subjective part, we all have a different rating value. For some people (me included), 3 star is still a good score for a movie they liked, for others, it's average but still not something they didn't like. Same could be said for even 2.5 stars not being seen as a bad movie by some, or very bad by others. Just taking a quick look in the first couple of page, I saw 2 people rating the movie 3 stars and yet saying that they liked it, while others still rating it 3 stars and saying that it was meh or that they didn't like it. So, since Rotten Tomatoes doesn't have a real scale of how their star system work, we have a grey zone where while the reviewer did not really liked it, it doesn't mean he hated it. So, to use this number to say that 54% people didn't like it is false, since the system is subjective to each individual and what they consider a good movie rating. So we can only speculate and it is open to interpretation.

Now, what I would be really curious to know (but didn't find out how), is how many people rated it 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 stars. How many rated it 3 stars and actually liked it (or at least did not hate it)? Looking at the first couple page of the audience review, there is a lot of people rating it 0.5 or 1 star. If the average is actually 2.9, that would suggest that a lot of people rated it 3+ stars (we know that 46% rated it at least 3.5 stars) to average it to 2.9/5. But sadly, we don't have this number. And again, it's from a very small sample of people, and only from people that actually take the time to go to Rotten Tomatoes (and know about in the first place) and rate the movie. My experience from sales, is that people are more incline to go leave a comment (or review) if they are disatisfied, they won't bother to do it if they taught it was good (but not great) because that's what they expected. Looking at the first couple of audience review, it looks like a lot of people took this opportunity to vent, there is at least 2 that said at first that they joined RT just to give the movie a bad review. But how many rated it 5 stars to balance all of them? So again, we can only speculate and it's open to interpretation.

That's why I don't consider it the best available data. It's too open to interpretation. But what this this number really tells me, is that this movie is really polarizing. It looks to me that you either love it (next best thing since the ESB!) or hate it (oh god this movie killed my childhood!), with a little grey zone in the middle ranging from 'didn't quite like it but not the mess some makes it sound to be', 'pretty average', or 'good but not great and definetly not the best since ESB'. It's quite interesting actually, that a movie can bring so much passion either way (love or hate) that even 6 months after its release, we are still talking about it.

For my part, I really don't care that you like it or not (a friend of mine didn't like it and we are still best friends, we didn't killed each other), what I care about is that you respect the other side point of view. At this point, 6 months after the release, nobody will change his mind about the movie. But please respect the others opinion. Don't say the movie sucks or is stupid as if it was a fact, just say that you personnally didn't like it. Meanwhile, it's not because someone hated it that he's just a crybaby that didn't get the movie he expected or that he didn't understand it, he might actually have not liked it for his execution, or script, or any other reasons. In the end, there is no winner or loser side, there is only how you feel about it: If you loved it, just watch and rewatch and rerewatch it; if you hated it, just move on, there is a lot of good Star Wars story out there to read or watch, no need to continue to bash this one, it won't get suddenly erased out of canon.

Well, it might be because I'm not a native english speaker, but 'one of the least well-liked Star Wars movies by the audience' makes it sound to me that generally speaking most of the audience didn't like it, which I don't think that's true (unless someone shows me some real undisputable numbers). As I said above, I would say that it is the most polarized one with a lot of fans either hating or loving it with a passion.

This ^

(because I can't like many times)

On 5/26/2018 at 11:44 AM, AllWingsStandyingBy said:

So it sounds like @direweasel @Sekac and @Red Castle and I can all agree on this:

"TLJ sold a lot of tickets and made a lot of money in its theatrical release and merchandising, despite that the film itself was one of the least well-liked Star Wars movies by the audience."

Nope, I don't think we have nearly enough evidence to state that it was "one of the least well-liked Star Wars movies by the audience". That might be true, or it might not. The only evidence there is for your claim is anecdotal evidence, and a completely unscientific poll. Both are worthless.

On 5/27/2018 at 6:46 AM, Cuz05 said:

I'd imagine most of the audience thought it was 'ok', or just didn't really think about it much.

'That was alright. Shall we go get some KFC?

'KFC, yaaay!'.

Then there's the minority...

Yeah, I'd say that more or less describes me. Of the 8 main-arc SW movies released, I'd rate this one as #5. Not the best, but certainly not the worst either. I'd say my list goes something like this:

5, 4, 6, 3, 8, 1, 7, 2

That looks pretty low on the list, except that those first few are among my all time favorite movies (along with Monty Python, Lord of the Rings, Spaceballs, Shawshank, the first 3 Indiana Jones movies, and Airplane). So I walked out generally pleased, with some minor quibbles about the storyline, but not overwhelmed either way.

On May 23, 2018 at 12:20 PM, AllWingsStandyingBy said:

Phantom Menace: 59% audience score (over 1,200,000 ratings)
Attack of the Clones: 57% audience score (over 850,000 ratings)
Revenge of the Sith: 65% audience score (over 33,000,000 ratings)
A New Hope: 94% audience score (over 1,000,000 ratings)
Empire Strikes Back: 97% audience score (over 1,000,000 ratings)
Return of the Jedi: 94% (over 1,000,000 ratings)
The Force Awakens: 88% audience score (over 225,000 ratings)
Rogue One: 87% audience score (over 99,000 ratings)
The Last Jedi: 46% audience score (over 190,000 ratings)

Okay, first off, I'm just gonna say this may have been addressed already but I'm not reading three pages of forum responses and forgetting what I want to say just to check. If this came up already, sorry. Ignore me.

Second, I'm not actually gonna take a stance for or against you, or tell you if I think you're wrong or right. I'm just gonna point out an error in your reasoning using these numbers, and why they don't work as a comparison (and by proxy, why contemporaneous reviews and the bubble of public perception may also be somewhat invalid).

The Force Awakens, Rogue One, and The Last Jedi all lack something that the other six movies on that list have: time. In a perfect data set, all of these things would be the same age and the sample sizes, though differing, would still constitute a statistically accurate sample of the population. So assuming the sample was already fairly free of other biases, a group composed of 190k subjects and 1,000,000 subjects would still be statistically accurate. However, if you were to break down the samples by era, and look at the ones taken within the first few years of it's release, the numbers for Empire Strikes Back would look substantially different. The film was pretty famously panned when it came out for being too much of a downer. It wasn't until a few years had passed and people gained some perspective on it that it began to accumulate praise, and thus 30ish years of accreted reviews have balanced out the early negative ones. And on a more anecdotal scale, I feel the need to point out that though Empire was the worst received of the original trilogy, it's actually the one now considered to be the best of the three.

Sorry to revive this thread, but I just found some interesting new informations regarding the Last Jedi audience reception. I didn't knew IMDB also had a review system, and it brings some new data to the table. An interesting fact is that you don't have to write a review to rate a movie, simply give it a star rating. You still need to create an account though.

As I am writing this message, 385 341 persons took the time to rate the movie. The average score is 7.3/10. That doesn't look like a bad movie to me.

Here's a breakdown of the rating given: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2527336/ratings?ref_=tt_ov_rt

it's interesting to see that of the 385 341 persons, 118 732 gave it a rating of 6 stars or less, or 30.9%.

-----

Now, users can also write a review. As I am writing this message, 5 181 users took the time to write a review. Here's where you can read them if you feel like it: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2527336/reviews?ref_=tt_ov_rt

There is no breakdown table like with the ratings, but you can be selective, so here's the breakdown

0 star: 117

1 star: 1646

2 star: 542

3 star: 430

4 star: 289

5 star: 269

6 star: 282

7 star: 299

8 star: 423

9 star: 412

10 star: 472

So, of the 5181 users that wrote a review, 3 575 users gave it 6 stars or less, or 69%.

-----

So what does it tells us? As you could see, I went with the subjective idea that from 6 stars and down, the user didn't like it, and that from 7 stars and up they did like it, or at least didn't hate it.

While 30.9% of the users gave the movie a score of 6 stars or less, 69% of the users that wrote a review gave it a score of 6 stars or less. That's what I meant earlier when I said that an unsatisfied customer will be more likely to take the time to express his opinion about a product. He had a bad experience and need to express his frustration. It also looks like a majority of users did like the movie, or at least didn't hate it.

That's also what some people means by vocal minority. While a minority (30.9%) of users didn't like the movie, a majority (69%) of vocal users (those that wrote a review) didn't like it.

-----

There is no denial that a lot of fans didn't like the movie, this we can all agree with. But it doesn't seems to be the mess/failure some makes it sounds to be. Generally speaking, people did like it.... at least according to IMDB users.

----

As for the other Star Wars score, just for jun:

Episode 1: 6.5/10

Episode 2: 6.6/10

Episode 3: 7.6/10

Episode 4: 8.6/10

Episode 5: 8.8/10

Episode 6: 8.3/10

Episode 7: 8.0/10

Episode 8: 7.3/10

Rogue One: 7.8/10

Solo: 7.2/10

Yep, Empire Strike Back is still the best baby!

If you want to complain about TLJ or if you want to complain about the people complaining about TLJ then GO START YOUR OWN BLOODY THREAD! This one is once again about the glorious First Order faction and any speculation or desires you have concerning it.

The faction will be decently strong to start, with a Tie, a heavy Tie, a shuttle, and an Interceptor. Which begs the question, what will be the fifth ship added to the faction?

The two most obvious answers would be the troop transport from TFA and an FO bomber, which we might have seen a hologram of in TLJ, although it might have been a standard Imperial bomber, I'm not sure.

I would prefer to see a bomber because we already have a shuttle and a bomber would add a missing element of offense the Order needs.

Let me know what you think the fifth ship in the faction will be.

If, on the other hand, you want to argue about TLJ, I say again, START YOUR OWN STINKING THREAD!!

3 hours ago, DXCrazytrain said:

If you want to complain about TLJ or if you want to complain about the people complaining about TLJ then GO START YOUR OWN BLOODY THREAD! This one is once again about the glorious First Order faction and any speculation or desires you have concerning it.

The faction will be decently strong to start, with a Tie, a heavy Tie, a shuttle, and an Interceptor. Which begs the question, what will be the fifth ship added to the faction?

The two most obvious answers would be the troop transport from TFA and an FO bomber, which we might have seen a hologram of in TLJ, although it might have been a standard Imperial bomber, I'm not sure.

I would prefer to see a bomber because we already have a shuttle and a bomber would add a missing element of offense the Order needs.

Let me know what you think the fifth ship in the faction will be.

If, on the other hand, you want to argue about TLJ, I say again, START YOUR OWN STINKING THREAD!!

FO Star Wing! (Missile Boat model)

I don't actually think this will be it, but I can dream, can't I?

Still hoping for this bad-boy.







Concerning TLJ, I didn't hate it, but it's only above Episode 1 & 2 in my preference. If Episode 8 were released as a stand-alone movie, I might like it. But as a part of the Star Wars Saga, I feel it was a big let-down. After having had more than a week to digest Solo, I think it was a better movie than either of the 2 Disney-era saga films, and I LOVED Rogue One, despite it's shortcomings. I'm disappointed that Solo is tanking at the box office for the perceived failures of a movie that has little to do with it.

As much as fans of TLJ want to quote "Let the past die. Kill it if you have to." I find that quote to be terribly over-valued. One learns from history. Pay heed to the past when making decisions for the future. If we are going to be taking a single quote from the movie to repeat as the theme from the movie, it is "The greatest teacher, failure is."

TLJ may not be a commercial failure, but it did fail to resonate with a large chunk of it's core audience. Lucasfilm should be wary of working with a director that explicitly wants about 50% of the audience to come away hating the movie, and 50% loving it.

32 minutes ago, Yakostovian said:

Still hoping for this bad-boy.

I've seen that ship several times but haven't figured out what it is exactly. Is it an FO Interceptor? If so I wonder how it will differ from the Silencer.

12 minutes ago, DXCrazytrain said:

I've seen that ship several times but haven't figured out what it is exactly. Is it an FO Interceptor? If so I wonder how it will differ from the Silencer.

The Silencer's wings bend in rather than out.

13 minutes ago, DXCrazytrain said:

I've seen that ship several times but haven't figured out what it is exactly. Is it an FO Interceptor? If so I wonder how it will differ from the Silencer.

It was fan-designed before the Silencer was revealed to the public. I think it would be a perfect FO interceptor. But I really like the TIE-Advanced style cockpit-pod and the backwards interceptor wings.