Lucasfilm
A photo of the character Rey from "Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker."
- The highly anticipated final entry in the latest Star Wars trilogy, "The Rise of Skywalker," is just days away from its big debut - but the movie is already being savaged by critics who saw it early.
- As of Wednesday morning, "Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker" had a 56% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. It's the lowest rating for any "Star Wars" movie except for the widely reviled "Star Wars: The Phantom Menace."
- That rating is determined by a crew of human editors at Rotten Tomatoes who comb through all reviews of a movie or TV show and calculate the percentage of positive and negative reviews.
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The highly anticipated new "Star Wars" movie, "The Rise of Skywalker," isn't officially out until this Friday - but it's already certified "rotten" by the popular reviews aggregation site Rotten Tomatoes.
As of Wednesday morning, when the first reviews of the movie were published, it's sitting at a rating of 56%. Any movie that comes in under 60% positive gets slapped with the "Rotten" ranking, according to Rotten Tomatoes.
That 56% ranking is based on 137 different reviews, but things get worse when you filter the movie's reviews by "top" critics - these are critics who work for established outlets, who have spent several years reviewing movies.
As of Wednesday morning, Rotten Tomatoes' rating for "The Rise of Skywalker" was sitting at just 46% positive among top critics.
Disney/Lucasfilm
Given that each publication handles reviews differently, you might be wondering how Rotten Tomatoes puts together all those reviews into a percentage-based rating.
In short: Why is this new "Star Wars" movie rated as "rotten" by Rotten Tomatoes?
"The Tomatometer score represents the percentage of professional critic reviews that are positive for a given film or television show," the Rotten Tomatoes FAQ explains. "A Tomatometer score is calculated for a movie or TV show after it receives at least five reviews."
Critics are able to determine for their own reviews whether they're positive or negative, or they can leave that determination to Rotten Tomatoes - the site employs a crew of human editors who read through movie reviews and determine whether, overall, they're positive or negative.
If the Rotten Tomatoes staff isn't sure about a particular review, they reach out to the reviewer or outlet in question for clarification.
Disney
In the case of the latest "Star Wars" movie, which debuts in theaters everywhere this weekend, 137 reviews were taken into account.
Of those 137 reviews, 77 were determined to be "fresh" (positive) and 60 were deemed "rotten" (negative). Among 37 reviews from "top" critics, just 17 were considered positive while 20 were considered negative.
In order for a film to be determined "fresh" by Rotten Tomatoes' ranking system, a movie only needs over 60% of reviews to be positive. But for a film to earn the "Certified Fresh" seal from Rotten Tomatoes, the criteria is more stringent: at least 40 reviews (75% or more being positive), and five of those reviews must be from "top" critics.
Even if it meets all those criteria, it still needs to be approved manually by Rotten Tomatoes staff.
In the case of "Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker," those considerations aren't a concern: It's officially carrying the "Rotten" rating, and it would take dozens of positive reviews to dig it out.