It took a month in theaters, but Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker is now the worst-reviewed movie in Lucasfilms’ entire Skywalker Saga. As of Saturday afternoon, Rotten Tomatoes has received 469 certified reviews for the movie, which now has a series-worst 52 percent Rotten rating. The previous holder of the spot is the widely-panned Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, which has a 53 percent rating on the review-aggregating site.
Surprising few, the best-reviewed Star Wars flick on the site is The Empire Strikes Back, which rocks a 94 percent Certified Fresh rating on the site. That’s then followed by The Force Awakens (93 percent), A New Hope (93 percent), The Last Jedi (91 percent), Rogue One (83 percent), Return of the Jedi (82 percent), Revenge of the Sith (80 percent), Solo (70 percent), and Attack of the Clones (65 percent).
The only “Rotten” Star Wars movies on the site include The Phantom Menace, The Rise of Skywalker, and The Clone Wars feature film from Dave Filoni.
Commercially speaking, The Rise of Skywalker become the fifth Star Wars movie to gross at least one billion dollars worldwide. The Force Awakens continues to reign supreme for the franchise at the box office, with a monstrous total of $2.07 billion. The next movie on the list (The Last Jedi) is nearly a full $700 million behind.
“We think of Star Wars as a fairytale. Two twins: one is sent off to be a farmer and one is sent off to be a princess. Rey is kind of both,” The Rise of Skywalker writer Chris Terrio previously revealed to GQ. “She becomes a junk trader on Jakku but she’s also royalty. She’s the descendant of the Emperor, she’s essentially a princess of the Dark Side. This goes back to so many stories.”
He added, “Moses, for example, was a commoner raised as a prince. The whole concept is really mythologically strong to us. She’s inherited this power but ultimately chooses to transform her lineage and decides her ancestors are the Jedi, basically. In fact, you can hear it near the end when you hear all the Jedi voices. One of them says, ‘We are your ancestors now.\'”
Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker is now in theaters. If you’re home-bound, you can catch most other Star Wars movies and The Mandalorian streaming on Disney+.
Where would you rank The Rise of Skywalker amongst other Star Wars movies?