【Triple Play episode 5 season 1 - Joe and Mandi】

If you ask the critics,Triple Play episode 5 season 1 - Joe and Mandi The Last Jediis an unequivocal win for the Star Warsfranchise. It's stunning, it's heartbreaking, it's cute af and clever to boot.

If you ask the fans who aren't critics? Well ... that's where things get complicated.

As of writing, The Last Jedihas a 93% fresh rating from critics on Rotten Tomatoes – not quiteas high as we predicted, but solid nonetheless, and on a par with its the last chapter in this story, The Force Awakens.

Its audience score however, is just 56%. That's in the same ballpark as the prequels, which hover around the 60% mark.

It's not unheard of for a film to have wildly divergent critic and audience scores. For example, Justice Leaguegot the thumbs up from 80% of audience voters on Rotten Tomatoes, but just 40% of critics.

But it isunusual for a Star Wars movie. Before The Last Jedi, the biggest discrepancy was for The Clone Wars(19% critics vs. 38% audience). Typically, critics and audiences have been within about 15 points of each other when it comes to Star Wars.

Why is The Last Jedidifferent?

The Last Jedi vs. The Force Awakens

In part, this may have to do with what The Last Jediis trying to achieve, versus what The Force Awakenswas trying to do.

The Force Awakenswas a crowd-pleaser by design. It had to be. It was the first Star Wars live-action movie in a decade, following three consecutive disappointments (i.e., the prequels). Its job was to get fans excited about the franchise again, to reassure them they were in good hands.

As such, it seemed to bend over backwards. There were new characters and planets, sure. But the film largely played it safe, hewing closely to the formula established by the original Star Wars. Maybe too safe. A frequent criticism was that it felt a lot like a New Hoperetread, down to Starkiller Base as a bigger, badder Death Star.

The Last Jedi, on the other hand, assumes you're already on board with Star Wars – a luxury The Force Awakensdid not have. It trusts you'll tag along as it charts a course into new territory.

Its narrative turns are unexpected and unpredictable – an Empire Strikes Backremake, it ain't. It steers the story away from the Skywalkers and toward a wider world of nobodies. It tries out new jokes, with mixed results, and muddies the dark-light morality that's driven the series for so long.

The Last Jediisn't trying to please the crowd. It's trying to surprise and challenge us. Maybe you think it succeeds. Maybe you think it doesn't. But it's clear what its ambition is.

The Last Jedi is a lot of movie

If that sounds like a lot, it is. The Last Jedifeels like six hours' worth of movie crammed into two and a half hours. It's admirable that it works as well as it does, but it still makes for an exhausting adventure. You have to be alert for 152 minutes, lest your mind wander off and lose track of the story.

So much happens in The Last Jedi, in fact, that after I saw it the first time, I couldn't even tell you what I thought of it. I needed several hours to sit back and process everything I'd seen. (I did eventually come down on the side of "I really liked it.") It wasn't until my second watch that I was able to sit back and savor the details.

It's still early in the conversation

Which brings us to another point: It's still really, really early in the Last Jediconversation.

It might not feel like it, seeing as the hype train's been chugging along for months, and reviews flooded the web weeks ago. But it's been literally hourssince the film hit theaters in the U.S.

The conversation is just getting started, and will continue to evolve as fans adjust to everything they've just learned. We'll find fresh nits to pick, and spin new theories based on updated information.

Remember, even Empire Strikes Backhad some people scratching their heads when it first opened – it just felt so different from Star Wars, and fans weren't so sure about that cliffhanger.

It takes time to build a consensus around any movie, particularly one burdened with as many expectation as a new Star Wars movie. What we think of it now might not be what we think of it next week, or next year. We might change our minds yet again in 2019, once we see how the plot points set up in The Last Jedipay off in Episode IX.

Moreover, the people who vote on Rotten Tomatoes are a self-selecting group – they're the folks who felt strongly enough to log onto the site minutes or hours after the movie and voice their opinions.

Meanwhile, there's proof that "general audiences" who aren't Rotten Tomatoes voters feel just fine about the movie. Deadline reports a 90% positive ComScore as of Friday morning.

In short, the gap between The Last Jedi's Rotten Tomatoes critics' score and its audience score doesn't necessarily mean all that much at this point. The best advice here is Luke Skywalker's advice: "Breathe. Just breathe."