AnguishedWalrus

Did Solo prove that though? They made a nostalgia-bait movie, centered on a beloved character heavily associated with a particular actor, all tied up in an origin story no one cared about. If you took "Solo" out of "Solo" and made just a Star Wars Space Western around a new character, it could have been a fine movie. The only thing that this current spat of Disney-era SW content really seems to "prove" is that you can't keep going to the same 40-year well over and over again.

Given that TROS seems to be aimed at some kind of perceived need for "course-correction," especially with the way you've heard some of the pre-release interviews about being "for the fans" or whatever...yes it would seem like the movie having a drop-off to $1.1B and being not received so warmly by the fans it was apparently made for would be a disappointment for Disney.

Yes, that's exactly what the value of RT's audience score could be. The difference right now seems to be that we don't know what RT's score thresholds are. Is Star Wars' 88% okay? How about Cats (current) 65%? Is Frozen/Knives Out's score (92%) a better threshold? I'd assume we'd need more than half a year-ish of scores to really know the thresholds though.

Just a lurker that made an account to chime in and say: The "Verified" scores on RT are a little odd. A movie like Playing with Fire is sitting at a 21% RT, 4.6 on IMDB and a 77% Audience RT. Playmobil is at 16% RT, 4.4 IMDB and 64% Audience RT. 21 Bridges is at 50% RT, 6.6 IMDB and a 91% Audience RT. I don't think it's particularly unreasonable to say that it's worth questioning what those kind of number can actually tell you. Maybe it's like Maoyan where anything below a certain score is average? That said, I think your hypothesis behind why the scores are inflated and seemingly strange is totally weird. No one on the planet is going around, buying tickets to Disney movies, just to overrate them on RT because they think they're going to get perks from Disney. No, Disney influencer shills and "Disney Moms" are not going around trying to skew scores in a meaningful way. If scores are weird, it's either because: The reviews are coming from a small and unique sample (people who use Fandango; likely skewing young and obviously American; and people passionate enough either positively or negatively to bother leaving a review on RT) that has a low predictive value. Reviews could be coming from actual corporate accounts (not super-fans, but actual farmed out accounts). But no, RT audience scores are not dubious because of "influencers."