Matt.F said:
Mrebo, it’s a false equivalency.
There are those online who have declared The Last Jedi a box office turkey, and yes it has performed significantly worse than The Force Awakens did.
However - this false equivalency fails to note that The Force Awakens was the 3rd highest grossing movie of all time. The Last Jedi has in fact already earned a staggering $1.3 billion and is one of the top ten most successful movies of all time.
There are those who have declared that The Last Jedi is a bad SW movie, nowhere near as good as Empire Strikes Back.
However - this false equivalency fails to note that Empire Strikes Back was recently voted the best movie of all time by Empire magazine. Naturally, comparing any movie to the best movie of all time is always going to result in it appearing second rate.
Compare like for like. Compare The Last Jedi (2017) to the other films released for family audiences in 2017. That’s fair, that’s sensible, that’s equivalent. It doesn’t ‘skew’ the results to create a false narrative. It gives a genuine picture of the quality when measured against its peers (which are exactly the like of Pirates Of The Carribean, Justice League, and Transformers The Last Knight).
This is one of the reasons why we still need professional critics. People who can be trusted, unlike youtubers, to have seen a lot of films and possess an understanding of where the benchmark line is set.
Who are the prominent movie critics today? The rise of internet guy with blog and opinions seems to have eroded the power critics once had. It was pretty much Siskel & Ebert for me when I was younger, plus a local reviewer or two on tv.
The blurbs that adorn ads and video boxes these days tend to be people I’ve never heard of.