The first reviews for Star Wars: The Last Jedi were unleashed onto the internet on Wednesday, two days before the eighth main film in the legendary saga is released across the world. The space opera currently boasts a 93% score on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, with over 150 reviews counted.

The site’s critical consensus reads, “Star Wars: The Last Jedi honours the saga’s rich legacy while adding some surprising twists -- and delivering all the emotion-rich action fans could hope for.”

In comparison, 2015’s The Force Awakens - the last entry in the saga - also scored a 93%, but with significantly more reviews. 2016’s spinoff film Rogue One meanwhile, scored a healthy 85%. Both films were major commercial successes - The Force Awakens made over $2.5 billion at the box office, while Rogue One crossed the $1 billion mark.

Industry analysts are expecting The Last Jedi to open to over $200 million in the US.

Here are some blurbs:

“(Rian Johnson) achieves what no one else has since The Empire Strikes Back: a fusion of junkyard genre parts and passion,” wrote David Edelstein for New York Magazine.

“(Director Rian Johnson’s) movie has a sense of humour about itself and a sense of joy, but its emotional generosity, even in the midst of all the extravagant green-screen work, is its best special effect,” Stephanie Zacharek of TIME wrote.

Matt Zoller Seitz of RogerEbert. com called it “Everything a fan could want from a Star Wars film and then some.”

“It is a satisfying, at times transporting entertainment. Remarkably, it has visual wit and a human touch, no small achievement for a seemingly indestructible machine that revved up 40 years ago and shows no signs of sputtering out (ever),” wrote the New York Times’ Mahohla Dargis.

The New Yorker’s Richard Brody wasn’t as impressed, though. “The movie comes off as a work that’s ironed out, flattened down, appallingly purified,” he wrote.

The highest rated film in the series - at least on Rotten Tomatoes - is 1980’s Empire Strikes Back, with a 94% rating. The original Star Wars, released in 1977 also has a 93%, while the prequel saga - generally looked down upon by fans - hovers between the 55-79% range.

Directed by Rian Johnson, The Last Jedi stars John Boyega, Daisy Ridley, Oscar Isaac and Carrie Fisher in her final role.

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