Yahoo News Why is The Last Jedi the most divisive Star Wars film?
This article is going to stay as spoiler free as possible, but may hint at some plot elements in Star Wars: The Last Jedi.
Star Wars: The Last Jedi has finally been released and it has has split opinion in half more than Darth Maul at the end of The Phantom Menace.
The film has reviewed very well with critics (you can read our five-star review here) but a good amount of fans are really, really hating it.
At the time of writing, the Rotten Tomatoes score stands at 93% positive from the critics, but only 56% positive from fans, easily making it the most divisive film in the series.
Okay, so a site visited by film buffs and hardcore fans may not be representative of the general public, but you only need to look at Reddit or social media to see some people dislike this film more than Anakin Skywalker hates sand.
In some cases, this has led to fans verbally attacking critics, as is the case with IGN's Joshua Yehl (don't do what this person does):
The only way to respond to a Star Wars themed death threat is with Star Wars themed sass. pic.twitter.com/Y54a2bgbtA
- The Last Joshua (@JoshuaYehl) December 15, 2017
Without going into full-on spoilers, why are people so angry? There is no 'one-size fits all' answer, but a lot of it seemingly has to do with The Force Awakens.
Not only did that film play it very safe and revel in nostalgia, it spent a lot of its runtime setting up questions for future films to answer.
The Last Jedi is all about subversion, from Poe's storyline to how Luke acts, to how it deals with the two topics from the previous film that have had the most fan theories.
Maybe it's because fans feel they have been played for fools, after spending so long researching and going in with an air of 'I know just how this will play out' and having the rug pulled out from under their feet.
Audiences are so used to going into a film knowing exactly how a film will play out, from spoiler-filled trailers to enough behind the scenes photos to piece it all together, that anything going against the expectations is 'wrong'.
There's also the way the film really expands on the mythology of the Universe, the Force and the Jedi and Sith beyond the simple 'good guys and bad guys' morality of the older films – now, the characters are more complex who are neither all good nor all bad, and are more reflective of the real world we live in.
Not everyone is going to love The Last Jedi and that's fine. It does have genuine pacing issues, and beyond that, not everyone appreciates the same things, especially the humour. But hopefully, given time, the huge (and sometimes volatile) divisions will disappear.
Let's not forget, people hated The Empire Strikes Back when it first came out, because it (gasp) took the happy-go-lucky first film and turned it on its head.
Star Wars: The Last Jedi is in cinemas now. Watch director Rian Johnson talk to Digital Spy below:
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