NEW YORK • The latest entry in the Star Wars franchise divided film critics on Tuesday, but is expected to bring in more than US$300 million (S$427.6 million) at the global box office this weekend, despite a social media boycott campaign over its perceived political slant.
Reviewers either loved or hated Disney's Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. Rolling Stone magazine praised its "emotional, loopy, let's-put-on-a-show spirit that made us fall in love with the original trilogy", but The New Yorker called it "lobotomised and depersonalised".
Rogue One arrives in theatres a year after the main cast of the original 1977 film reunited for The Force Awakens, which took more than US$2 billion at the box office. Analysts expect Rogue One, which started its worldwide rollout on Wednesday, to do smaller business overall, but to gross a bumper US$300 million to US$350 million on its opening weekend.
These predictions have not changed since a boycott campaign, #DumpStarWars, gained steam on Twitter, with claims that the film contains scenes that are anti- United States President-elect Donald Trump and portray the galactic Empire in Star Wars as a white supremacist organisation.
Rogue One stars Felicity Jones at the head of a new cast and follows a group of rebels who band together to fight Darth Vader's plans for intergalactic domination. It is a standalone prequel to the 1977 film, A New Hope.
Asked about the social media claims, Disney chief executive Bob Iger told The Hollywood Reporter last weekend that there were "no political statements" in the movie. "Quite frankly, it's silly," he said of #DumpStarWars.
Trump supporter Jack Posobiec, one of the people behind #DumpStarWars, said in a livestream on Periscope on Monday: "Why would you give your money to people who hate you?... Why do you want to take your kids to something that will influence them in a way to hate the president?"
Rogue One reviews on Tuesday did not mention any political bias and the movie has already grabbed the highest advance ticket sales this year, US online ticket seller Fandango said.
Variety film critic Peter Debruge said that for stalwart Star Wars fans, Rogue One is "the prequel they've always wanted" while Peter Bradshaw at the Guardian called it an "exhilarating, good-natured, enjoyable adventure". A.O. Scott for The New York Times, however, called it a "thoroughly mediocre movie" and The Wall Street Journal's Joe Morgenstern found it "a fall-alone film of dinky proportions".
REUTERS
