I think you’re reading too much into audience scores and ratings

Maybe, but it’s the best way to gauge public reaction to a film. Box office used to be a more helpful indicator but in the streaming era, besides anecdotal stories (like my personal experience of almost no one I know claiming to have enjoyed Knives Out 2), those user-rating based sites are really all we have to gauge the reaction to something.

But for his older pre-streaming work you could definitely still point to box office and lackluster exit polling as an indicator that his work wasn’t exactly winning over audiences—at least relative to the critical reactions.

Connecting with art is so subjective that I just give up on any universal rule for it. This is why it all feels like some popularity contest of cool kids leading the way while everyone latches on to what they say to seem cool too. As for me, I like Johnson's work. Knives Out and Green Onion were great...for me. Looper was great...for me. The Last Jedi was the best of those three...for me. Honestly, I don't care what other people think. It's nice to get other perspectives but ultimately my perspective is the one that counts...for me.

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Star Wars fans are the biggest crybabies on the face of the Earth, that's why.

Before that it was no different to any other director like that, but the pile-on really began after Star Wars. End of.

Most viewers don’t rate a movie anywhere, only movie snobs

I totally agree. I’m not saying audience reaction should shape your opinion or my opinion.

But as a film fan and as a discussion point I think it’s still interesting to at least recognize and talk about how there can be a divide between critical and audience reaction. Sometimes it adds to a film or director’s legacy and it can go both ways — sometimes there are films that get ravaged upon initial release by critics (like the original Blade Runner or so many poorly reviewed comedies like Dumb and Dumber) but become iconic with time because of audiences reacting differently to them. Rear Window was initially considered by critics to be a massive disappointment and one of Hitchcock’s lesser works and was a box office disappointment. Now it’s routinely ranked as not only his best work but in some cases the greatest film of all time (I believe a British poll ranked it as such not long ago).

So, I’m not arguing that it’s important per se. I just find it interesting to talk about I suppose.

I’m getting downvoted and I think a lot of people are just reading the title and getting defensive because they like Rian Johnson but I’m not bashing the guy. I like a lot of his work, or even pieces of the films I’m less fond of like Last Jedi.

I don’t think this is true these days with social media and everyone on their phones and giving thumbs up/down on Netflix or a rating on RT etc. Many average viewers passively rate films in a way that used to only be reserved for the “film geeks.”

A site like Letterboxd is obviously a different animal though.

There’s also the fact that critics have to watch everything, so they’ll praise what they like. I don’t think I know a single person who subscribes to Peacock, so anecdotal evidence like buzz is pretty irrelevant when something is only available on a minor platform.

Disconnect between critic and audience score is nothing new. Realistically, his only really divisive work was Star Wars VIII. Disney pissed on the accomplishments of the characters of the original trilogy by rendering them pointless with The Force Awakens. Abrams might have started this, but Rian completely derailed any potential in the new Star Wars trilogy for the sake of "subverting expectations" as well as being pretty dismissive online.

Perhaps read my response to another comment below explaining why I find the audience reactions to be worth at least discussing. I’m not saying it should shape anyone’s opinion or that it influences my own. I think the really defensive and slightly aggressive tone is unnecessary.

And The Last Jedi is already aging really well seeing how the tv shows are all basically fanservice.

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To be fair I didn’t realize it came out yesterday because I’d been reading about it for like the past week and assumed it had been out since then. I opened my android TV yesterday and it was on the homepage.

Ozymandias would have been the highest rated episode regardless of who directed it, it's highly rated because of what happens in the episode.

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People love RJ's stuff. Except for SW crybabies.

Again, I will ask you to refer to my other comment for an explanation of why I find it interesting to discuss or acknowledge. To be clear, for my own personal enjoyment (or lack thereof) of a piece of art, I couldn’t care less what the general reaction is amongst critics or fans.

But in discussing the history of a film or a director (especially in circumstances where opinion shifted over time or things were reassessed) then it can absolutely be interesting to consider.

Downvoters are performative.

Not that this is 100% of it, but there are a lot of butthurt fanboys that are determined to hate anything he does no matter what. Take a look at the actual negative reviews of knives out. Most of them talk about it like it's the worst thing that's ever been made ever and that Rian is the worst human on the planet. There's just so many more positive reviews from the average joe movie goer that it mostly cancels them out.

As per Pokerface, it's on a streaming service that isn't terribly popular so there's a good chance that not a lot of people have seen it yet. In fact, I'm willing to bet that a sizeable percentage of the viewer reviews that are there are from people in the butthurt fanboy group that haven't even seen it.

For me, the guy’s just a genre bender, and not much else.

He just takes an established formula, and flips it on its head.

Which is a cool trick on a technical level, but for me, doesn’t amount to much in the long run. Because outside of the structural change, I don’t think there’s much to his films. The characterizations and writing isn’t particularly deep or relatable, and though he bends genre, he usually returns to status quo by a film’s conclusion, so any subversion doesn’t seem as brave as it could be, and any social commentary he provides feels so blatant and of the moment it has the subtlety of a sledgehammer to the head.

He plays with genre, but for me, he still feels locked within the confines of genre.

“Too smug for its own good”

“Pretty mediocre”

“Sloppy writing”

You nailed it OP. Not much else to be said imo.

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These are good points to consider and I hadn’t realized the show just came out yesterday. Thanks!

I’ll still stand by my anecdotal experience of KO2 not receiving much love from folks I know but that’s just my subjective experience.

I watch more movies than anyone I know and I’ve never rated or reviewed anything officially on any website. No one I’ve ever met has either.

That’s not true at all

I think the reality is that you read my topic title, made false assumptions about what my intent was, and then lobbied accusations at me based on your incorrect assumptions.

Now that I’m clarifying my intent and my perspective and giving you substance to respond to, you can’t do so and you’re just telling me I’m “wrong” and that I’m “lazy” instead of explaining what it is that you disagree with in my other response where I explained why I find the topic interesting. I never once said or implied that an audience reaction should “matter” in terms of one’s own enjoyment of a piece of art.

If you can’t have a civil disagreement or discussion and have to insult people and call them lazy when you can’t actually defend your accusations, then perhaps you shouldn’t be on a message board. That’s just not how this works, even if you do think I’m wrong.

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Mrm.. no. He is repeatedly anti-establishment. He hasn't bent any genres. He does homage to mystery movies.

He looks at an established order and points out the hypocrisy and dirty truths of that order, be it upper-class north-easterners, centuries old established religious orders, or new-age tech-bro billionaires.

Lots of people don't like tweedy people pointing out the flaws in the world they have vested interests in. Lots of people want to see the toughest person win because they're the toughest person. How many 'who's the strongest avenger' posts do we get here?

Rian Johnson is a treasure because he questions the system. He's also a bit tiring once you realize this because he always puts this spin on things. There's nothing wrong with it, but it feels like he's painted himself into a corner creatively.

Twice so far in this thread I’ve acknowledged that I did not realize the show only released yesterday, as I had been reading about it for at least the last week, and saw it featured on the home screen of my smart TV, so I thought it came out last week. So yes, I did respond to that and admit that I did not know it just came out.

But that wasn’t really the crux of what you were saying about me / my post. Again, I am not and was never implying that audience reaction should impact one’s personal enjoyment of something.

You have some confirmation bias. Glass Onion was very much talked about in my circles and enjoyed. I think the split isn’t between critics and audience, but that the audience itself is split.

The reason Rian Johnson was so skewered by Star Wars fans was because he was handed both characters and lore he didn’t create and given carte blanch to do whatever with them. It’s pretty clear his inspiration came from projects like Aliens, a film that only loosely connects to the original and bares the signature touches of its current director

This was where he ran into trouble…..

Regardless of how anyone thought JJ Abrams did as a writer and director of TFA, he clearly had these characters (both new and legacy) set on a (flimsy) story arc that Johnson decided he would upend in order to sigh subvert audience expectations

The problem with that is now we all know in hindsight that neither Disney nor Kathleen Kennedy had any idea of what story arc they were trying to tell beforehand, and were subsequently left with a middle film that relied on the succeeding director (who was not Rian Johnson) and screenwriter to coherently tie all of our subverted expectations together and still stick the landing, both of a trilogy of films and a trilogy of trilogies.

Sadly…they could not, and what we got as a mea culpa was a loud, silly fan service final film that no one particularly liked

Rian Johnson treated the Last Jedi like it was Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom or Back to the Future Part 2-essentially a stand alone plot in a series of films; what he should have tried to emulate was LOTR: The Two Towers-the middle section of a three film saga

Maybe not confirmation bias per se—I acknowledged people loved the first film.

I was surprised by what I observed amongst my social circle of people not really digging it or talking about it. But I said in my post it was just my own anecdotal experience. I didn’t dislike the film, but just found the ending a bit of a let down.

Looper was pretty well received with audiences. I wouldn't say Knives Out is his only majority pleasing movie

Sampling bias then? This is the same kind of critique I heard from others who didn’t like Glass Onion. It was somehow too much of a social commentary against rich grifters. As though glass onion wasn’t specifically a social commentary about rich entitled families lol.

But, my circle enjoyed it immensely.

Brick was fantastic

With Johnson I always felt that he is much more of an aesthetics guy, a visual director than he is a good writer, and the audience reaction is split between people naturally gravitating towards one or the other. TLJ is one of the best-looking movies I’ve ever seen, but even its biggest fans often admit that its script, particularly the Finn subplot are not the strongest.