If you want to understand the mostly\-broken but still kind of helpful Rotten Tomatoes score for anything, you must first understand the Tomatometer\. We discussed it months ago, when we looked at Scream 7’s release\.
To answer your first question, it is pronounced “Tomato\-Meter” and not the “thermometer”\-sounding “Tomay\-tometter\.” I was in the latter camp…for some reason\. And now I’m wondering if I’ve been pronouncing “thermometer” wrong all my life\. It IS a thermo\-meter, right? STOP\. Moving on\.
To answer your second question, the Tomatometer measures reviews in a binary “good or bad” way, so even something that would normally be 6\.5\-out\-of\-10 stars will register as “good” and push the score up\. There’s a very good, animated explanation here\.
And we do all of this because there is, of course, a market for the Rotten Tomatoes score for The Mandalorian and Grogu, set to be released in theaters on May 22\. Kalshi has “above 75” as about a 50/50 shot \(“yes” is 52¢\) and has it forecast for a 72\.9 at the moment:
And I think it’ll hit “Above 90,” which can currently be purchased for 17¢\.
Disney gave select critics a sneak peak at the first 15 minutes of the movie during Cinema\-Con — and while some raved about it \(like Lyvie Scott at Inverse and Michael Walsh at Nerdist\), other reviewers, like Polygon’s Jake Kleinman, did not\.
But Kleinman’s “meh” review of the first 15 minutes could still turn into a “good” Tomatometer review if he even gives it 3/5 stars\. Plus, his review got me clicking over to a Jon Favreau \(the writer and director\) interview where he talked about The Mandalorian and Grogu’s influences and its immersion into the original Star Wars feel\. He has a line in here — “so, we’re all playing the same music,” — that implies he took extra care to not just replicate the original Star Wars feel, but to break down what made the original trilogy special in the first place \(Flash Gordon pulp, Kurosawa storytelling, family themes, etc\) to recreate that vibe\. He’s not just paying homage, he’s sourcing the same ingredients:
Before we go any deeper \(and we’re about to dive into a borderline unbelievable set of Tomatometer scores for Star Wars movies\) I want to bring up the one factor that is keeping me up at night — Favreau, Filoni, and co\-writer Noah Kloor also wrote “The Book of Boba Fett” \(and Robert Rodriguez directed some episodes\!\), a show so disappointing that I cannot look at one of my favorite childhood characters the same way, ever again\.
My justification for basically ignoring that is two\-fold: 1\) they had already made what is basically a Boba Fett show \(as “The Mandalorian”\) and exhausted a lot of ideas; and 2\) that was a TV show — Jon Favreau as a movie director and writer is a different beast: Iron Man, Chef, Swingers, and Elf are among his critical hits\. Even the largely forgotten Made got a 72 on Rotten Tomatoes\.
As for the deeper dive, I went back and looked at past Star Wars movies and how they’ve rated on the Tomatometer\. There were four that landed above 90\. And I dare you to guess all four, because you will not\. The first two are obvious:
And then…
No\.
Look, I loved VII\. Maybe that’s an unpopular opinion\. I can see that being 90\+\. But VIII? I Have no idea how that got a 91\. And I liked it\. I hated it walking out of the theater and then watched it again — calmly, with lowered expectations — and appreciated it for what it was\. But it still had massive flaws, like the entire casino foray\.
I’m also not naive to the point where I mix up buzz or even box office with critical acclaim; nor am I conflating my feelings with what critics think is a well\-made movie\. In fact, part of the reason I love this 90\+ market for The Mandalorian and Grogu is because the buzz is so low and there are so many “fans” who are tired of the show and storyline grousing online\. They aren’t the critics… and this isn’t the Popcorn Score \(which was a 41 for VIII\)\.
This is going to be a \(possibly remarkably\) well\-made movie that captures the essence of Star Wars — plus, there is a lot riding on this, being the first Star Wars movie in seven years, coming off a run of TV shows that have generally been so poorly received \(outside of “Andor”\) that almost nobody cares about this movie\. Jon Favreau need sto save the day\.
And that’s the advantage it has\.
I think The Mandalorian and Grogu is going to catch everyone off\-guard\. For instance, there’s a whole new Hutt mythos being introduced here — we’re used to a slovenly Jabba from the movies but Hutts in deeper Star Wars canon used to be bad\-ass warriors\. There was even a Sith Hutt at one point\. And this all takes place in a finely\-crafted Star Wars universe that has been carefully designed to match the original one\. Everyone loved Rogue One\. Everyone loved Andor\. The repeated praise seemed to always include how much those felt like they were taking place in the Star Wars universe\.
Throw in some cameos from a beloved Star Wars icon or two \(essentially the entire original Rebel Alliance, Ewoks, Droids, anything in between\) and there’s more surprise and good vibes\.
As a standalone movie, directed and written by someone who makes hits for theaters and knows enough to craft a story that you don’t need to watch three seasons of TV to understand — this has a real chance to be embraced and beloved by critics\. And even if the sentiment is mostly “this was good despite some flaws and CGI missteps, but a great story and pace\!”? That’s good enough for the Tomatometer\. And that’s all we really care about\.
__The play__: Buy “Above 90” for 17¢ \(or wait for the buzz to temper it even more\) and thank your friendly neighborhood oracles later\.