As controversial as The Acolyte may be, Star Wars has always been broken on Rotten Tomatoes. There’s something strange about the way Rotten Tomatoes has come to dominate online discussion when it comes to talking about the quality of movies and TV shows. In theory, it’s a review aggregate site, a way of simply seeing the average opinion on the latest film or show. In practise, it’s far more, and good Rotten Tomato scores are often major parts of a marketing strategy.

Suffice to say The Acolyte‘s audience score on Rotten Tomatoes has not been used for marketing purposes. At time of writing, it sits at a staggering 14 percent, with over 25,000 reviews – a clear sign The Acolyte has been review-bombed. Incredibly, this is actually an improvement, because until a few days ago it had a score of just 13 percent. As wince-worthy as this may be, it’s just another sign of a much more long-running problem; Star Wars and Rotten Tomatoes have never gone together well.

Star Wars Has Been Review-Bombed Since 2010

Even the prequels were review-bombed

It’s easy for modern viewers to forget that Star Wars has always been divisive. Nowhere is this better illustrated than in the initial response to the prequels, where there was initially quite a savage backlash. I was on the outskirts of the fandom at that time, and quickly learned there were parts of the forums I would choose not to venture. Now, the generation who grew up with the prequels have come of age, and their reputation has recovered; but years ago, the prequels provide the first case of Star Wars review-bombing on Rotten Tomatoes.

Review-bombing only became a “thing” in 2008, when gamers flooded Amazon’s review pages for the video game Spore. It didn’t take long for the tactic to find its way to Star Wars movies on Rotten Tomatoes, though; there’s evidence of a review-bombing campaign that ran from October 2010 for the next two years. The movie’s audience score dropped from 85% to 64% after a 160,000% increase in votes. It’s unlikely to be a coincidence that 2010 was the year Red Letter Media‘s Mr. Plinkett reviews and the comedy documentary The People Vs. George Lucas released.

Review-Bombing Has Continued Into The Disney Era

No surprise that it happened with The Last Jedi

Moving into the Disney era, it’s no surprise to see that the most controversial sequel trilogy movie – Star Wars: The Last Jedi – was victim of a review-bombing campaign. Rotten Tomatoes initially denied this, but ultimately admitted the truth in an interview with The Verge. It was immediately clear something was wrong, though, based on the sheer number of reviews and the suspiciously large gap between the critic and audience scores. On social media, some influencers openly attempted to drive the campaign.

There was an even darker side to this. In October 2018, Morten Bay of the University of Southern California conducted an analysis of the social media backlash against Star Wars: The Last Jedi. He found “evidence of deliberate, organized political influence measures disguised as fan arguments.” There were signs many of these posts were non-human bots, while others bore signs of being Russian trolls.

Rotten Tomatoes eventually made changes to try to protect the audience scores for movies, but these are harder to implement for TV shows, and the problem continues. There are some signs of review-bombing for The Mandalorian season 3, while there’s abundant evidence of a review-bombing campaign against The Acolyte. Modern review-bombing often generates a high number of critical, one-star reviews using bots and AI; I randomly selected 30 audience reviews of The Acolyte from Rotten Tomatoes, and all but one of them scored as likely AI-written.

Why Is Star Wars Particularly Vulnerable To Review-Bombing?

This is a divided fanbase

All this raises a simple question; why is Star Wars so very vulnerable to review-bombing campaigns? In part, it’s because of the nature of the saga; Star Wars is generational, and every generation struggles to let go of it and pass it to the next. Every Star Wars backlash is really about ownership, whether it is targeted against George Lucas or Disney. This makes the fandom divided by nature.

At this stage, I really should make an important clarification: all this isn’t to say there aren’t legitimate criticisms to be made of either the prequels or The Acolyte. I rewatched Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace on the big screen as part of the 25th anniversary celebrations; while I loved the experience, I could see the movie’s flaws. The Acolyte, meanwhile, is far from perfect; but it’s hardly the worst Star Wars story ever told, as the Rotten Tomatoes audience score would suggest. Nuance is sadly lost as a result of such review-bombing campaigns.

Sadly, in the modern world, there are always going to be those who prefer division. While legitimate criticism of the various movies and TV shows is to be encouraged, the sad reality is that some act in bad faith, whether because doing so gets them clicks or because of their dedication to the culture wars. Star Wars has focused on improving diversity in recent years, which makes Lucasfilm a target (Lucasfilm boss Kathleen Kennedy was even mocked on a South Park episode).

Does Review-Bombing Even Work For Star Wars?

It’s a foolish approach

Ironically, there’s no evidence review-bombing even works in the first place. Glenn Sanders worked on the marketing campaign for Star Wars: The Last Jedi, and he notes that studios increasingly expect it and so ignore it. In the case of The Acolyte, Kathleen Kennedy and showrunner Leslye Headland even got their shots in first, stepping forward in defense of their cast. Meanwhile, audiences seem increasingly aware of what’s going on, and the review-bombing itself becomes a story. Its effect becomes muted, meaning the whole strategy has diminishing returns.

Circling back, though, this does cause issues for Rotten Tomatoes as a whole. The review aggregate site found ways to protect its movies a little more after the controversies with Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Black Panther, and Captain Marvel, but there is now clearly a need to do the same when it comes to the TV shows as well. Hopefully, it won’t be long before changes are implemented – and they’ll perhaps end this long-running Star Wars problem at last.