[The E]

What they see is a trend line pointing downwards and steeply; and it is a very worrifying for the top brass. Revenues have been on a steady decline from the Force Awakens, ending with Solo in the negative, the first Star Wars movie ever having done so. Couple that with the fact people are starting to leave Star Wars altogether casts a very heavy shadow to the investments in theme parks and in merchandise business. Who wants to take his children to Disney's Pansexual Land? Essentially, this is a book case of a management level failure. Not only was Last Jedi a poorly reviewed movie, but it also managed to damage the brand itself. And yes, I've been vocal about other management failures such as Nokia's Elop, but that didn't belong to Hard Light Productions context at all, so you never saw it.

You know, I would invite you to check the history of box office returns for the preceding two Star Wars trilogies, just to see how you can twist the same phenomenon happening there into something that doesn't apply to the new films.

The only film that you have a point on is Solo.... which was a production disaster and was based on giving fanboys like you exactly what they always wanted (except without, you know, making sure that said fanboys were actually interested)

[Luis Dias]

Both you and Karajorma are getting there.

There's no eyerolling smilie that would ever express what my eyes are trying to do with my skull right now.

Just to point out a simple thing that you're probably missing out (amongst all the others that I just can't bother with): the movies are not the only profit-making things about Star Wars. I'd even guess they're not even representative of the majority of revenue.

[Akalabeth Angel]

Why do you feel alienated by the casting of a woman in the lead role?
It's worth noting that the quote you've referenced of Kennedy is her response to fan criticism.

Except, I didn't say I felt alienated by casting women in the lead roles. It's what LucasFilm and Disney have publicly stated. It's a PR stunt that attempts to spin things around and tries to apply guilt to the people who didn't like the movie so that they would at least shut up. It's similar to what happened with Sony and the 2016 reboot of Ghostbusters. They blamed the fans for the poor success of that movie, claiming fans hated women leads. Didn't work well that time, and it doesn't work for LucasFilm and Disney either. Well, Disney and LucasFilm actually went even further and claimed bots were affecting the movie reviews (seriously!!!). 

I honestly don't understand the point of your argument, you're apparently mad at some comments made by the producer, and you're trying to say she's a bad producer because of this, that and the other.  And further that these bad decisions are going to cost Disney a bunch of money.  And- who cares?  Disney's corporate welfare is the least of my concerns, these guys own half of hollywood, it's getting to be a borderline monopoly and this point when you factor in their service companies like Skywalker sound.  Are people worried about getting a bad star wars movie that will hurt the brand? That boat already sailed at the end of the last century.

The more Star Wars movies that come out, the more likelihood that some of them will be bad.  This is just fact. And Disney is going to put out a lot of movies. And if some strategy leads to them getting less money, you can be sure that they will adjust their strategy to get more money.  As for "family orientated" disney, they're already putting explicitly gay characters into say Beauty & the Beast so- pansexual lando? I don't think it's out of left field in the disney wheel-house.

And don't worry, I'm sure if you disliked TLJ you'll enjoy EpIX more. JJ Abrams is back in the seat, and given fan backlash and the fact that he steals old **** all the time this guy is probably gonna put Thrawn into EpIX just so the nerds go crazy and spend a bunch of money again.

Or maybe just for you he'll put in Admiral Daala.

[Enioch]

Frankly, I can't begin to understand why the gender of the producers and actors, and the sexual orientation of the characters has anything to do with the quality of the final product.

I don't give a flying fornication with a Mynock if Disneylucasfilm is headed by a woman, or if Chewbacca is a gender neutral romantic Falconsexual. Frankly, if the old trilogy was filmed today and e.g. the sexual tension was between Han and Luke instead of Leia, I wouldn't mind a bit, provided it was tastefully done. I would find it hard(er) to relate with the couple (as I would be able to empathise with the romantic side of things while failing to compute the sexual attraction undertones, as I have experienced in other gay-couple movies), but as long as the characters were consistent and their arcs were well-written, I'd be all for it.

My single concern about the new movies is that thrice-be-damned plot and how the characteristics of the characters were woven into it. Luke's arc notwhithstanding (much has been said about this already, and I have no more to add; I have even come to accept some of the other side's counterpoints to my own arguments), what I expected to see in both movies was character growth through failure.

What I expect to see my young, inexperienced characters to do (and all of the new protagonists are clearly meant to be the 'new blood') is, at some point, fail because of their choices. I felt that this (for me) crucial element was lacking. Poe's mutiny comes close to what I wanted to see - he ****s up, and he suffers the consequences for it, including that very important thing: humiliation. His failure is not the result of luck or of circumstances beyond his control: he's impulsive, he's arrogant and he makes the wrong call. Kinda reminds me of Luke and his utter curbstomping in Bespin, when he went to face the avatar of Dark Side awesomeness while still in training. ****s up. Gets utterly destroyed in physical battle; gets his psyche shattered by the big reveal; loses his sword arm and edges one step closer to becoming his father. Which, of course, makes him an even better character when he overcomes his past failings and completes his original trilogy arc.

At this point in time, I have yet to see a personal failure of this level (and the ensuing physical / psychological pummeling that follows) from Rey or Finn. I expect people and characters to make mistakes - bad, crippling mistakes, as a matter of course. I don't care how many tight spots they have managed to get themselves out of - I want to see them get themselves into tight spots, because they had the information, they had the option to choose, and they still chose wrong. Make your protagonists **** up, Disney!

If that doesn't happen, I am completely and utterly uninvested in these characters, because they just don't register as fully realised; and I resent the writers who wrote them that way.

[Luis Dias]

I get what you're saying, but if they had done that, it would have been an utter Empire remake, and do we really need any of that, again?

I'm more interested in new storylines. Contrary to some opinions, there's more to writing than just Joseph Campbell's mythic structure, and surely there's more things to say about human nature and the universe than having the protag being cut his hand by his father.

[Akalabeth Angel]

At this point in time, I have yet to see a personal failure of this level (and the ensuing physical / psychological pummeling that follows) from Rey or Finn. I expect people and characters to make mistakes - bad, crippling mistakes, as a matter of course. I don't care how many tight spots they have managed to get themselves out of - I want to see them get themselves into tight spots, because they had the information, they had the option to choose, and they still chose wrong. Make your protagonists **** up, Disney!

So how does that apply to Han and Leia? They screwed up because they trusted Lando? Or because Han didn't pay his debts? Or Leia was arrogant thinking she could save Han so got forced into being a slave?

Also does Finn trying to do a kamikaze count? Or getting his back slashed open by a light sabre? The guy seems governed by fear, fear of Empire, fear of Rey getting hurt- it's not very well articulated in the movies but it does drive most of his actions.  First movie he spent running, second movie tried to kill himself to get some revenge. . .

[Scotty]

No no, clearly it was Luke going off half-cocked and walking right into a confrontation with the bad guys.

Naturally, this is entirely different from what Rey did, just because this trilogy's Vader turned on the Emperor a movie earlier.

Anyone who thinks Rey walking onto the flagship wasn't a colossal ****ing mistake even though it ended up working out well in the end is missing the point.

[Mika]

We can all be safe, since Mika is on the front lines, fighting the culture war for us.

Yeah, I'll be there for you. Cassian told me to.

You know, I would invite you to check the history of box office returns for the preceding two Star Wars trilogies, just to see how you can twist the same phenomenon happening there into something that doesn't apply to the new films.

The only film that you have a point on is Solo.... which was a production disaster and was based on giving fanboys like you exactly what they always wanted (except without, you know, making sure that said fanboys were actually interested)

Actually, no. Rogue One had similar problems, although the reasons could be different. I actually respect Gareth Edwards for doing it with an entirely different creative process and that he was able to make it work. The biggest downside of Rogue One were the characters; K2SO practically steals every scene he is in. Adding the scene with Darth Vader to the end of the movie was actually a last minute fanboy service. Speaking of fanboys, who are they and where? I own two things Star Wars, KOTOR 1 and KOTOR 2, that's it. It's also not me who has been keeping the topic up for half a year.

On what I checked from IMDB, the original trilogy and the prequel trilogy differ from the current one with the rate of change perspective. The middle installment dips in each of the trilogies, yet the multipliers associated with the ratio of gross net income studio's profit to cost ratio for original trilogy are very high, and are affected significantly by inflation and I'm certainly not going to go through the yearly profits and make the inflation adjustments from 1977 to 1997. I don't have access to statistics that show the income for the three to first five years which would make for a better comparison, so if you want the OT included, then do it yourself. More valid comparison is the prequel trilogy.

EDIT: Oh how silly, the table suggested 50 / 50 split between production costs for theaters and the studio. Doesn't work like that. Marketing costs included also. The studio's Profit / Cost now includes the marketing cost as well for more realistic number.

Episode	Gross	Studio Gross	Production cost	Marketing cost	Profit	Profit/Cost
Phantom Menace	1.03 B	515 M	115 M	58 M	342 M	2.0
Attack of the Clones	650 M	325 M	115 M	58 M	152 M	0.9
Revenge of the Sith	849 M	425 M	113 M	57 M	255 M	1.5
Force Awakens	2.07 B	1.03 B	200 M	100 M	730 M	2.4
Rogue One	1.06 B	530 M	200 M	100 M	230 M	0.77
Last Jedi	1.33 B	665 M	200 M(1	100 M	365 M	1.2
Solo	370 M	185 M	300 M	100 M(2	~ -200 M	-0.5

¹⁾ No Last Jedi production cost available from IMDB. I estimated it to be the same as the movies before.
²⁾ Here it's assumed re-shots did not cause significant revision to marketing materials.

If you have read what I said earlier, you'll also note that the Solo numbers have been altered (earlier post not edited). Typical figure for marketing cost is about 50 % of the production costs. Studio gross is calculated with 50 % of the total gross as the deals between theaters and studios range typically between 45 to 55 %.

Based on above, you could say the individual Star Wars stories may not be as good business as the trilogies. However, let's have a look at the general reception of the movies, as the company income and customer satisfaction are the key parameters to follow. That's unfortunately way harder to measure from the public sources as the statistical methods of how the reception numbers are obtained are typically not disclosed. Furthermore, the difference of reception between the known critics and general public was very jarring in the case of The Last Jedi, so the closer we get to the general public number the better, as this will likely be a better indicator of the reception. IMDB has one number, and we don't know how the weighing is distributed. Rotten Tomatoes provides known critics score and public score. Metacritic does the same. What's known is that Rotten Tomatoes also ignores below or equal to one star ratings of the movies, but does not do so for the 5 star reviews. Metacritic provides the actual distribution of votes for three bins (positive/mixed/negative). NetFlix reviews were astonishingly negative, but the service is stopped and the reviews only comprise a fraction of the Netflix customers.

The way I see it, the public reviews from Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic would likely provide a more reliable result. Still, accounting for the shift of the scale in reviews is a problem for the case of Rotten Tomatoes at least. There's also typically way more reviews in RT than there are in MC. Numbers given below are (RT / MC), and Metacritics distribution of [POS / MIX / NEG]. RT uses 0 to 5 star scale (actually, 1 to 5 star scale), while Metacritic's number is based on maximum of 10. For that reason, I've scaled the RT numbers with factor of 2.0 to make them more comparable (but this does not account for the below one star reviews). RT Reviews simply means the number of reviews in Rotten Tomatoes.

Episode	RT	Metacritic	POS	MIX	NEG	RT Reviews
Phantom Menace	6.6	6.0	595	518	225	1.2 M
Attack of the Clones	6.6	6.0	513	413	206	851 K
Revenge of the Sith	6.2	7.6	1282	242	145	33.7 M
Force Awakens	8.6	6.9	4594	965	1375	228 K
Rogue One	8.4	7.6	2222	399	267	100 K
Last Jedi	5.8	4.5	2697	1020	3524	200 K
Solo	7.0	6.2	586	178	245	36 K

Spot the one that doesn't belong to the trend. That's the Last Jedi, with worst average reviews and also it's the first time ever for Star Wars movie for the negative reviews exceed the positive ones. They do so overwhelmingly. You could argue about bots voting down the movie, but why they wouldn't do that for the others then? Why wasn't Revenge of Sith pointed out by anyone, that's the more likely case? Metacritic scores mirror Rotten Tomatoes here, but their number of reviews is the same between Force Awakens and Last Jedi - so no, it's not about bots. You could argue about the Star Wars fatigue, but this is apparently only for Star Wars and not for Marvel superheroes, so why would that be the case? You could argue for poor release time of the movie in case of Solo, except that didn't happen for prequels. You could argue for white supremacists (they did, seriously) intentionally down-voting the movie. You could argue Empire Strikes Back was poorly received at first, but became well received later. All of above reasons have been publicly stated by various media outlets and Disney itself. In my first message to here in 6 months, I asked when's the turning point of Last Jedi then supposed to happen as these effects should then be temporary? 'Cause for me it really doesn't look like there will be any reversals.

At some point as a manager you'll need to start exploring the frightening possibility that the negative reviews are actually a genuine (this is actually supported by poor merchandise sales). And if so, that means they have pissed off estimated 50 - 66 % of the people. Worse, about 20% of the people take up 80% of the sales. What if it's those guys they pissed off? That's what Disney is likely seeing and assessing just now. So what I'm saying is that this case is different from prequels: while prequel trilogy received mixed reviews and was panned, it left massively successful original trilogy intact. The sequel trilogy differs there, because this time it's the original trilogy characters that are directly on the screen and that will follow you to the original trilogy when you watch it the next time.

As a result, Disney has already put individual movies Kenobi and Boba Fett on hold - their production is stopped. If Ep. IX fails, Star Wars franchise is likely done for years to come. There ain't gonna be new movies or episodes for a long long time! Frankly put, JJ Abrams used his share of goodwill already with Force Awakens, and I really don't believe for a second he'd be able to pull this off given Star Treks and Force Awakens. I doubt anybody can at this point, well, at least without writing off events in Episode 8.

There's no eyerolling smilie that would ever express what my eyes are trying to do with my skull right now.

Just to point out a simple thing that you're probably missing out (amongst all the others that I just can't bother with): the movies are not the only profit-making things about Star Wars. I'd even guess they're not even representative of the majority of revenue.

Then you didn't get it. The sales worth of 4.5 billion dollars covered that bit. That's all there is.

EDIT: Should have been net / cost ratio profit / cost. Thanks BlueFlames, that escaped me.
EDIT^2: Corrected the table for all entries with marketing cost included to studio. Marketing costs also included to profit / cost.

[The E]

The way I see it, the public reviews from Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic would likely provide a more reliable result.

Oh you poor deluded fool....

[BlueFlames]

Oh no....  The Last Jedi only grossed six times its production budget at the box office, is the second highest-grossing film in the franchise, and the eleventh highest-grossing film ever, ever.  WHAT A FLOP!!!  CANCEL STAR WARS!!!  WOMZ RUINED STAR WARS!!!

[Enioch]

I get what you're saying, but if they had done that, it would have been an utter Empire remake, and do we really need any of that, again?

I'm more interested in new storylines. Contrary to some opinions, there's more to writing than just Joseph Campbell's mythic structure, and surely there's more things to say about human nature and the universe than having the protag being cut his hand by his father.

That's fair, to a degree. But I'm not saying that the entire plot of any of the movies should have hinged around that ONE BIG MISTAKE; I'm saying that I find it utterly jarring that some of the new characters have yet to experience any significant personal failure and its consequences, two movies in. We have been shown them making mistakes; let them get slapped down for them, instead of circumstances or other characters always bailing them out.

It grates the same way that Star Trek used to (and occasionally still does) do the Spock logic stuff: Spock says something is illogical, Kirk does it anyway, it works, and the Aesop we get is a muddled mess, because the only reason Kirk got away with it is sheer dumb luck. Urgh.

So how does that apply to Han and Leia? They screwed up because they trusted Lando? Or because Han didn't pay his debts? Or Leia was arrogant thinking she could save Han so got forced into being a slave?

All of that, yes (with the exception of Leia trying to rescue Han - I think she had a pre-arranged plan B in Luke). Also, they spend one-and-a-half movie sniping at each other like angry hedgehogs, because of their own personal pride and need of control, instead of being honest about their growing attraction; which leads them to having a love confession right when Han is about to be subjected to a possibly fatal procedure. Go on and re-watch the carbonite bath scene, look at how Fisher plays Leia, and tell me that both characters are not thinking I should have said this sooner, and we could have been happy all this time. Not to mention the utter horror that is Han's frozen rictus, to hammer in the point.

Also does Finn trying to do a kamikaze count? Or getting his back slashed open by a light sabre? The guy seems governed by fear, fear of Empire, fear of Rey getting hurt- it's not very well articulated in the movies but it does drive most of his actions.  First movie he spent running, second movie tried to kill himself to get some revenge. . .

Not really. Finn gets into tight spots, but he has not given me the impression that this is because of personal choices, but because of circumstance. Whenever he gets thumped, it's usually because he has no other options. He gets his back sliced open by a lightsaber, because he engages a trained Darksider in a duel, but he didn't really have another option, did he? And his kamikaze run was, once again, dictated mostly by circumstance: he knew the battering ram had to be taken out, he had no other obvious choice, he went in for the suicidal crash.

Choosing to sacrifice oneself for a goal is not necessarily by definition a mistake.

I'm kinda on the fence with Finn, frankly. I have noted that underlying fear that you mentioned and I find it a fascinating part of the character, even though (as you said) it's not explored as much or as clearly as I would like).

No no, clearly it was Luke going off half-cocked and walking right into a confrontation with the bad guys.

Naturally, this is entirely different from what Rey did, just because this trilogy's Vader turned on the Emperor a movie earlier.

Anyone who thinks Rey walking onto the flagship wasn't a colossal ****ing mistake even though it ended up working out well in the end is missing the point.

...uh, what?

Did I ever say that Rey didn't make a colossal ****ing mistake by walking onto the flagship? You are arguing my very point. The fact that things keeps working out well for our protagonists, even though they really, really shouldn't, again and again and again, is the very thing that makes me completely uninvested in them and dismissive of the plot of those movies.

@BlueFlames: While I am not contesting your sarcastic point, I am questioning the way in which you reached that conclusion. Absolute numbers mean nothing; you need to provide context. Adjusted for inflation, A New Hope grossed significantly more than TLJ (almost a billion $ more, which is almost 50% of the latter's earnings). And it did that without the benefit of a pre-existing generational fan movement and the hype culture of today.

Again, not contesting your rather dramatic conclusions.

[Det. Bullock]

The way I see it, the public reviews from Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic would likely provide a more reliable result.

Oh you poor deluded fool....

I mean, The Dark Knight is a better movie than Citizen Kane, internet nerds on imdb said so. 

[Turambar]

"but look at these reviews at this site that got brigaded by insecure right wingers!"

[Mika]

Oh no....  The Last Jedi only grossed six times its production budget at the box office, is the second highest-grossing film in the franchise, and the eleventh highest-grossing film ever, ever.  WHAT A FLOP!!!  CANCEL STAR WARS!!!  WOMZ RUINED STAR WARS!!!

Nope. As Enioch said, if adjusted to inflation, Last Jedi is nowhere near being a top earner of the franchise. The hint is the typical release years on such lists, if the list is populated by entries from recent five years, it's very likely that inflation has not been corrected. Even Phantom Menace is surprisingly close to Force Awakens, having grossed about 1.61 billion 2018 dollars. Original Trilogy does not follow nowadays 40-50 days in theaters and that's it trend. It tended to take a bit longer to get movies to theaters world wide back in the 80s. Wiki points the cumulative gross up to 1982 is about 530 million USD. The rate of inflation makes it so that 1 USD on 1977 is nowadays about 4.15 $, leading to upper estimate of 2.2 billion 2018 US dollars from the first four years (1982 dollar is considerably weaker than 1979, but the greatest income years were earlier). The movie was phenomenally profitable as the production is reported to have cost about 10 million USD.

I mean, The Dark Knight is a better movie than Citizen Kane, internet nerds on imdb said so. 

Yeah, they tend to do that. Absolute scoring does not matter here, as we are looking for relative changes between the scores. Note also that I compared the results within the franchise as Star Wars is one of the few franchises where you can actually do that.

"but look at these reviews at this site that got brigaded by insecure right wingers!"

If only there were evidence of that actually happening. And why would they do it only with The Last Jedi, when one would think that Black Panther would incite that group even further? I know a couple of my left leaning friends who actually have a significant amount of Star Wars stuff at home hated the movie's guts. If you checked out the Metacritic's numbers, there's about 10 % between the number of people rating Force Awakens and The Last Jedi. So, where do you get this?

[Luis Dias]

a few things struck me

I'm saying that I find it utterly jarring that some of the new characters have yet to experience any significant personal failure and its consequences, two movies in. We have been shown them making mistakes; let them get slapped down for them, instead of circumstances or other characters always bailing them out.

I get it, albeit Poe having to watch many of his comrades being shot down because of his mistakes was something that existed.

All of that, yes (with the exception of Leia trying to rescue Han - I think she had a pre-arranged plan B in Luke). Also, they spend one-and-a-half movie sniping at each other like angry hedgehogs, because of their own personal pride and need of control, instead of being honest about their growing attraction; which leads them to having a love confession right when Han is about to be subjected to a possibly fatal procedure. Go on and re-watch the carbonite bath scene, look at how Fisher plays Leia, and tell me that both characters are not thinking I should have said this sooner, and we could have been happy all this time. Not to mention the utter horror that is Han's frozen rictus, to hammer in the point.

Yes, I agree with all of this, except to say that it's patently obvious when they finally reach Bespin they're already a banging couple. This is shown how Han treats Leia when they land and when they talk to each other at the tower.

I'm kinda on the fence with Finn, frankly. I have noted that underlying fear that you mentioned and I find it a fascinating part of the character, even though (as you said) it's not explored as much or as clearly as I would like).

I'm all the way agreeing with all of this.

[Det. Bullock]

I mean, The Dark Knight is a better movie than Citizen Kane, internet nerds on imdb said so. 

Yeah, they tend to do that. Absolute scoring does not matter here, as we are looking for relative changes between the scores. Note also that I compared the results within the franchise as Star Wars is one of the few franchises where you can actually do that.

Most Star Wars movies came out before internet was a mass thing and before internet assholes learned to use bots or move en masse to **** on something they didn't like.

[Akalabeth Angel]

Nope. As Enioch said, if adjusted to inflation, Last Jedi is nowhere near being a top earner of the franchise.

It's still better than either Attack of the Clones or Sith, and given that some (crazy) people would rate Sith as better than Jedi that probably says something.  If a movie that fans hate does better than a movie that supercedes one of the original trilogy, then- that's a bad thing?

Also comparing ratings to the prequels or the original trilogy is pointless.  Passion doesn't last 19 years, it cools with time- so anyone who hated the prequels probably doesn't care to rate it or hates it less with time- especially with the catharsis of the RLM reviews that ripped all three movies a new one.  Whereas passion would play a huge part in the TLJ reviews, with many of them probably written within a day of the viewing.

I get it, albeit Poe having to watch many of his comrades being shot down because of his mistakes was something that existed.

Yeah but let's be real- Luke showed more emotion at either Biggs or Dak's death than Poe did in the entire combined two movies that he's starred in.  In Abrams movie in particular, showing any deep emotion- ie having a quiet moment, would mean that the movie would need to slow down- lose its free-flow pacing. Generally not gonna happen too often if at all

[Luis Dias]

I think you're touching on part of the problem here. It's a fact that nowadays, half of starwars fandom are young people who grew up with the prequels, and actually liking them. This cannot have no consequences.

[Grizzly]

I think you're touching on part of the problem here. It's a fact that nowadays, half of starwars fandom are young people who grew up with the prequels, and actually liking them. This cannot have no consequences.

Heh, I'm one of those people. I liked the prequels significantly less when I got older, but the prequels are definitely what got me into Star Wars - or more specifically, video games based upon the prequels.

[Mika]

Most Star Wars movies came out before internet was a mass thing and before internet assholes learned to use bots or move en masse to **** on something they didn't like.

No they didn't! There were internet review sites already around the middle of 90s. I had a rather nice broad band at that time as a university student around 2002. Steam was also launched two years later with Half Life 2. There's plenty of reviews already from 1999 and 2002 in IMDB. How do you distinguish between internet assholes moving en masse to **** something they didn't like and people who are genuinely disappointed and angry? There's really no evidence of this in the RT or MC ratings, there's no suspiciously large differences in the number of reviews between Force Awakens and Last Jedi. There's actually 10 % LESS reviews in the RT for Last Jedi than Force Awakens.

It's still better than either Attack of the Clones or Sith, and given that some (crazy) people would rate Sith as better than Jedi that probably says something.  If a movie that fans hate does better than a movie that supercedes one of the original trilogy, then- that's a bad thing?

Also comparing ratings to the prequels or the original trilogy is pointless.  Passion doesn't last 19 years, it cools with time- so anyone who hated the prequels probably doesn't care to rate it or hates it less with time- especially with the catharsis of the RLM reviews that ripped all three movies a new one.  Whereas passion would play a huge part in the TLJ reviews, with many of them probably written within a day of the viewing.

It's even with Revenge of the Sith when adjusted to inflation. The table can certainly be off about 10 %, and that's within the difference margin.

Read the review distributions as customer satisfaction reports. That's what they basically are. I'm yet to see a compelling reason why for example, Amazon customer reviews would be more reliable than what's said in Metacritic and in Rotten Tomatoes public reviews about a movie. Or Booking.com on hotel reviews for that matter. Each of them are equally subject to manipulation, yet they are still used, likely because the manipulation becomes apparent quite soon and the commercial backlash is terrifying for management. The issue with high grossing film with poor reviews is two-fold. First, a lot of people saw it, that's for certain. Secondly, it indicates the customers that went to see the movie may not return for the another one. Large number of unhappy customers is not a nice thing to have.

You seem to suggest the nostalgia feeling could affect the review results. That's a valid point. I actually went and checked this from a bunch of reviews related to the Attack of the Clones, but given the number of pages I checked, I think there might be a small tendency towards positive ratings over time. It's really bad that the review sites actually don't show the rating of the movie as a function of time and accumulation of reviews as a function of time as that would be quite interesting. The data is there, but hell freezes over before if I'm gonna comb through all of that.

There's also a counter to your point, though. The nostalgia feeling may uplift the results slightly, but not significantly for it to matter for the discussion. Why? Because similarly how the current movie business model is pretty much that >85 % of total gross is earned on first 40-50 days, it is also very likely so that the reviews are accumulated similarly for the first two to three months. For Attack of the Clones for example, there's about 8 pages of reviews for 2018 on RT, indicating a rate of 160 reviews per half a year. Total number of review pages is 1488, and 8 pages makes for 5.7 per milles of reviews. Assuming similar review speed for linear distribution, it would require about 93 years to get 1488 pages of reviews. So no, it's not linear, and quite likely heavily weighed for the beginning for the reasons I gave. So if there's a positive trend over time, I'd think the effect of it is less than 10 % of the total rating. The big flurry of initial reviews is actually included for the data for Rotten Tomatoes (est. 1999) and for Metacritic (est. 2001).

Coincidentally, we have passed the roll-off point with Last Jedi now. The movie rating is what it is, there's not gonna be large scale changes to it any more. That ship has already sailed. Incidentally, I was looking for some pages of Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones reviews with Last Jedi reviews. They all got panned, but there's one thing that's missing from the prequel reviews: reviewers are not saying in significant numbers that Star Wars is dead. Now they do. That's the striking difference.