The trajectories of merchandise sales, movie ticket sales, physical copy sales, etc, is all in the wrong direction. The opposite is true for Marvel. If Marvel is considered successful, and its data is moving in the opposite direction from Star Wars, then we can at the least say Star Wars is demonstrating opposite results than a successful franchise. There is very little I can find about Star Wars in the financial data that suggests things are going well.
Really not an apt comparison.. Data isn't moving in the opposite direction but rather has a different model (which perhaps Star Wars should adapt). Not every marvel movie is an Endgame-level event. There are big event movies (Endgame, Infinity War), tentpole franchise movies (Civil War, Ragnarok, GotG), and there are smaller, more niche offerings (Ant Man, Dr. Strange, etc.) that make about as much as Solo did.
Re some of your points on SW:
* TLJ revenue-wise followed the revenue drop of both Empire and of Attack of the Clones, a 30+% drop from the first film in the trilogy. If the pattern holds, Rise of Skywalker should either show a slight increase (like Return of the Jedi) or a substantial increase (like Revenge of the Sith). But was Empire a failure because it earned 30% less than A New Hope?
* Merch: Merch is still up over pre-TFA. It's declined because a) the merch was awful for TLJ, quality was down, b) there have been no new movies in the last 18 months; merch sales follow big movies, and c) there was always going to be a decline after the pent-up demand of TFA.
The big test will be Episode 9. If it earns another 1.3 billion+, then I don't think the Star Wars franchise has anything to worry about. If it slips below that number, then there is really cause for concern.
Now can we please stop turning these threads into a debate on the current state of Star Wars as a whole and just focus on Galaxy's Edge?
I agree that it seems to have a pretty deep bag of tricks!
