The people rating movies on IMDB are not average audience members though. They are movie geeks and enthusiasts. But compared to professional critics, there is a significant difference because they still pre-select moves to watch based what they think they will enjoy. A movie enthusiast might have seen all science-fiction movies in existence but never a french new-wave movie. The professional critic on the other hand will watch a broader range of different movies, and probably a lot more older movies.
Younger people goes a lot more to the movies, so the average critic will probably be notably older than then average movie audience member.
Critics tend to be negative towards remakes because "this is unnecessary, the original was better". But most in the audience haven't seen the original so it doesn't matter to them.
Critics tend to hate formulaic and derivative movies, but for the audience it is not that bad, they haven't seen the formula enough time to get bored by it. Fans loved The Force Awakens because it was exactly the same formula as the original Star Wars. Critics were less enthusiastic.
Critics tend to value originality more than the average audience. Hollywood have always been formulaic and rehashed old ideas, but they have still been able to make great movies. But the current movies relies on franchises to a larger extent, and the franchises put hard constraints on the amount of originality and character development which can be allowed.
IMDB and RT scores cannot really be compared since they're measuring two fundamentally different things. Movie that everybody gave a 7/10 would have an RT score of 100% and an IMDB score of 7.0. Also RT scores are mostly based on reviews written shortly after the release of a movie, while IMDB scores keeps getting updated over time. For movies that come out with a burst of enthusiasm and then lose their luster on repeat viewings and closer analysis, IMDB score tend to drift downwards with time.
On RT the audience score is also lower than the critic score. My point is simply that GP’s statement about fans preferring the film doesn’t match the numbers.
But even those numbers cannot be compared since RT audience score and critic scores are calculated completely differently. Also if you read some of the negative audience reviews many of them are clearly written after the final movie of the trilogy has been released and are judging this movie in the negative light of that whole experience.
Now it may very well be that GP's statement is wrong, but the numbers you are quoting can't really be used as evidence either way.
If these numbers are as problematic as you claim, it wouldn't explain why they don't hold true for Rise of Skywalker which fans overwhelmingly preferred to critics.
Now that I think about it: it's likely that's the film that GP had in mind.
Younger people goes a lot more to the movies, so the average critic will probably be notably older than then average movie audience member.
Critics tend to be negative towards remakes because "this is unnecessary, the original was better". But most in the audience haven't seen the original so it doesn't matter to them.
Critics tend to hate formulaic and derivative movies, but for the audience it is not that bad, they haven't seen the formula enough time to get bored by it. Fans loved The Force Awakens because it was exactly the same formula as the original Star Wars. Critics were less enthusiastic.
Critics tend to value originality more than the average audience. Hollywood have always been formulaic and rehashed old ideas, but they have still been able to make great movies. But the current movies relies on franchises to a larger extent, and the franchises put hard constraints on the amount of originality and character development which can be allowed.