LSLS
Well-Known Member
Ironic it will probably the 9th biggest movie of the year too.
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Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker Reactions: SPOILERS
- Thread starter Animaniac93-98
- Start date
Ironic it will probably the 9th biggest movie of the year too.
Sirwalterraleigh
Premium Member
In case anyone wants to dispute this with superficial google searches...what i’m alluding to is this: fewer people will end up buying tickets to this movie than all but solo or attack of the clones.
“A billion is still a billion!” You say?
...what if Disney expect more like $2?
“What does it matter long term?”
Everything...Star Wars is what it is because it has produced - by far - the most amount of licensed product deals in history. Everything with a character or logo on it gave George and now Disney a cut. And those product sales drove interest in the longterm and lead to even more monies all over the place. It wasn’t the box office that drove Star Wars into what it is...it was this.
But declining box also drives less demand for product...it’s dragging the cash cow down the staircase.
I assume we don’t need to debate this further?
The “nays” have it on the DT, 8, 9 and frankly Disney’s handling of Star Wars as a whole (and 7...which was strategically a bad move and we can finally call it that). They would have been better off not to touch it and go break the Marvel deal in their parks - in retrospect.
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Mike S
Well-Known Member
You mean use the $4 Billion for Star Wars to buyout Universal’s Marvel contract instead? Heck no. I’m not losing the only good Spider-Man ride in the world
LSLS
Well-Known Member
You mean use the $4 Billion for Star Wars to buyout Universal’s Marvel contract instead? Heck no. I’m not losing the only good Spider-Man ride in the world
To be fair they have made more of star wars than they ever would buying the marvel theme park rights
Mike S
Well-Known Member
True and also a bit sad when you consider Marvel is the far bigger success.
Bairstow
Well-Known Member
Agreed. From a theme park perspective, even crappy, post-sequel, degraded Star Wars is massively more important and useful than the Marvel stuff, from both a financial and creative standpoint.
...but they certainly didn't need to buy Star Wars to build any of that stuff. Their working relationship with Lucas was already very good, and by all accounts considerably less expensive than Universal's arrangements with Spielberg.
LSLS
Well-Known Member
From neither perspective. I dont think a marvel park would drive a huge spike in WDW anymore than star wars. The money is in merch. But I'm pulling us in a tangent.
Sirwalterraleigh
Premium Member
I was making an anecdotal point that really wasn’t about parks at all:
Disney has thrived with marvel due to a Mostly “hands off” approach. They didn’t understand it so they left it alone for Those that got it.
On Star Wars...they went “hands on” and the franchise is weaker...significantly.
They had to have known that any Lucas prequel/overexposure mistakes was gonna be met with major longterm blowback.
To think that Spielberg’s underling would “get it” was silly...why? Cause George and Steven have lunch?
Ugh...I’m done (for now
)
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Mike S
Well-Known Member
Actually I think they did. I think it was said Lucas wasn’t interested in letting Disney make a whole land.
Sirwalterraleigh
Premium Member
Yeah...so they went ahead and built solo/farce awakens land...
Brand new monument to a failure of a series and a a bomb that had the series canceled
Mike S
Well-Known Member
No I mean when Lucas still had control of the IP he was content with just Star Tours and annual celebrations. Disney could’ve built whatever land they wanted once they owned the IP without any pushback. They chose to base it on their Star Wars on their own accord.
Then again this is all just here say I vaguely remember when anyone brought up a Star Wars Land before the purchase. Lucas wasn’t interested in that kind of thing like J.K. Rowling was.
Sirwalterraleigh
Premium Member
No...I get you
What i’m saying is it’s obvious what they did/designed.
They built most of their land off the force awakens...and the sequels they assumed people would swallow...
Ignored rogue one - which they didn’t care for
And the rest tied in to the new solo franchise - which they wanted to be another 3+ movies
Look at the design window...started late 13-14...accelerated into go in 15....
Solo took a long time to develop and shoot...so the timelines of that they “wanted” correspond.
So now you have a new billion dollar land for a hit trilogy - solo - that flopped.
And the other big time trilogy...whose third act will have a have a full 50% drop in box from the first and and flatlined in 25 days...just like return of the Jedi and revenge of the sith...
...Only NOT AT ALL!!!!
Edit: sorry...that was really choppy
Wendy Pleakley
Well-Known Member
I think a lot of people take too much glee in any box office shortcomings of these movies, real or imagined, because they really really like to use it to show how "correct" they are about Star Wars under Disney.
This focus on box office, as opposed to story telling, is worrisome. The Force Awakens is the high mark now, and it was a movie that played it safe by largely repeating what worked before. Is that what people want, because if it's all about the numbers that's what people are going to get. This is the studio, after all, that continues to pump out safe and easy remakes of their animated features.
Disney used to be a company that steered pop culture by giving us things that were new and imaginative. Lately, they seem to be coasting. I want them to take more risks and do something different with Star Wars, lest we get nine more movies that feel like more of the same. The incessant whining over The Last Jedi seems to have scared them into a predictable "crowd pleasing" approach. The Force Awakens got away with it as a bit of a soft reboot, but The Last Skywalker with the Emperor, again, and yet another family twist, gives me the sense that Disney is only interested in generating predictable Star Wars movies that fail to do anything original.
Then again, with RoS performing close to TLJ, maybe they're realize playing it safe isn't a surefire means of success either.
I would also add, that I think they're correct about Star Wars fatigue. This is what, the fifth movie since 2015? Three years between films build anticipation. While I found Ros fun, I didn't feel anticipation like I did for other movies. I saw it three times in the theater, which is low by my standards. It didn't help that The Mandalorian aired concurrently, giving us another 4+ hours of Star Wars to consume at the same time.
This focus on box office, as opposed to story telling, is worrisome. The Force Awakens is the high mark now, and it was a movie that played it safe by largely repeating what worked before. Is that what people want, because if it's all about the numbers that's what people are going to get. This is the studio, after all, that continues to pump out safe and easy remakes of their animated features.
Disney used to be a company that steered pop culture by giving us things that were new and imaginative. Lately, they seem to be coasting. I want them to take more risks and do something different with Star Wars, lest we get nine more movies that feel like more of the same. The incessant whining over The Last Jedi seems to have scared them into a predictable "crowd pleasing" approach. The Force Awakens got away with it as a bit of a soft reboot, but The Last Skywalker with the Emperor, again, and yet another family twist, gives me the sense that Disney is only interested in generating predictable Star Wars movies that fail to do anything original.
Then again, with RoS performing close to TLJ, maybe they're realize playing it safe isn't a surefire means of success either.
I would also add, that I think they're correct about Star Wars fatigue. This is what, the fifth movie since 2015? Three years between films build anticipation. While I found Ros fun, I didn't feel anticipation like I did for other movies. I saw it three times in the theater, which is low by my standards. It didn't help that The Mandalorian aired concurrently, giving us another 4+ hours of Star Wars to consume at the same time.
LSLS
Well-Known Member
I think you are ignoring the highest grossing movie of all time, and how they told stories over 10 years and 20 movies to get to that point. That intertwined movies like (at least I don't believe) we have never seen before. It's not risk taking, it's about telling good coherent stories.
I'm also confused by your fatigue statement. You say 3 years wasn't enough time? Not to point back to Marvel all the time, but if you are going to use a TV show that is set in a COMPLETELY different time frame and use 2 movies that have nothing to do with the current trilogy, I'm going to bring up that Marvel has had like 6 movies in the last 2 years.
Wendy Pleakley
Well-Known Member
Most Marvel movies don't do as well as Endgame, or Star Wars in general. RoS is ahead of a "typical" Marvel movie like Ant-Man or Doctor Strange.
Endgame was an event, much like the Force Awakens was. I don't expect every Star Wars movie or every Marvel movie to reach those levels.
Maybe the so-called end of the Skywalker Saga should have done a bit better, but as the fifth movie in a span of five years, doing better than those "average" Marvel installments doesn't seem too bad to me.
The popularity of the MCU is a remarkable achievement, but most of its installments also don't reach Endgame levels. I'm not ignoring the highest grossing movie of all time, I'm just not using the grosses of Endgame as a baseline for how other movies perform. It's an anomaly.
Mike S
Well-Known Member
Both were heavily advertised as a big conclusion to a huge story (9 movies for Star Wars, 20+ for Marvel, but still). If the Trilogy was handled differently RoS could’ve easily at the very least gotten close to $2B and I’m sure Disney expected a lot more for this movie. It went so safe it even turned off a lot of the people that said TLJ was too different so even we say this isn’t a direction they should go in. All people wanted was a new story that still paid respect to the past considering the old heroes were returning. It really shouldn’t have been that hard.
Sirwalterraleigh
Premium Member
Wendy, let me say this with as little emotion as possible: Disney has done a bad job with Star Wars.
It’s not what any of us want. We want good Star Wars. All of us. Changes have to be made...it’s not “over”
But a 37% drop followed by a further 15-20% drop in 3 anticipated movies is not a success. We all know it...let’s not parse.
I’ve first witnessed the gross as a defense of the studio against fans that questioned it...now, as it falls it’s being used as an indictment against the fans for not loving it.
Ridiculous. We know the answer is good Star Wars and they haven’t delivered.
There is also no fatigue if the Star Wars is good. That propagated by Disney is a “non- apology”. They’re apologizing for a mistake they didn’t make...not the one they did.
It’s not what any of us want. We want good Star Wars. All of us. Changes have to be made...it’s not “over”
But a 37% drop followed by a further 15-20% drop in 3 anticipated movies is not a success. We all know it...let’s not parse.
I’ve first witnessed the gross as a defense of the studio against fans that questioned it...now, as it falls it’s being used as an indictment against the fans for not loving it.
Ridiculous. We know the answer is good Star Wars and they haven’t delivered.
There is also no fatigue if the Star Wars is good. That propagated by Disney is a “non- apology”. They’re apologizing for a mistake they didn’t make...not the one they did.
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Sirwalterraleigh
Premium Member
Yep...the idea there’s box office takes for Star Wars in today’s dollar is “good” is so far out in left field, you’re in the parking lot.
Wendy Pleakley
Well-Known Member
It may have been advertised as the end of the Skywalker Saga, but it was really a conclusion to the new trilogy. In many ways, it was merely part 2 of the JJ Abrams SW saga. A tagline in the trailer isn't enough to turn RoS into an Endgame level event.
Maybe it would feel more like a conclusion to the saga if the Emperor had been more present from the beginning, and if it came down to Luke as the main protagonist in the end. That's still a maybe. I don't buy that it would have been "easy" for anyone to have made this new trilogy more popular. There are things I have criticized, but it's awfully easy to do so in hindsight and from behind a keyboard. TFA seemed to do what you claim everyone wanted, and it was popular, but there were still many many people who hated how much it leaned into the past films.
On a side note, I've always felt the idea of MCU being a bit intertwined story to be overstated. Infinity War was fun because it brought together a bunch of great characters and actors with fun chemistry, but as a conclusion to an overall story? I never found the movies to be that connected, other than the infinity stones being mentioned on occasion. Many of the interconnecting story elements were relegated to brief scenes during the end credits. In Infinity War, didn't Tony Stark ask "who's Thanos?". That's not a sign of a story that has been building to a showdown with a major villain.
LSLS
Well-Known Member
They were both the ending movies of major events. Endgame shouldn't compare to TFA, it should be more like ROS. Infinity Wars should be closer to TFA. End Game was the conclusion to that Saga.
But you mention doing better than the average MCU movie. It's disingenuous to an extent. Star Wars wasn't starting from scratch. As you stated, TFA did $2 billion. It was an event BECAUSE it was so well known. The MCU had to build itself up (and FYI, do it by having a ton more movies than 5 in 5 years, which again, disingenuous when discussing the final movie that was nearly 2 years after the last release). In that same time frame between Star Wars movies, you have Black Panther, Captain Marvel, Spiderman, and Ant Man and the Wasp. 3 of those 4 movies blow the conclusion of the Skywalker Saga away in Box Office. And those are not full Avenger Movies. 7 movies between 2 Star Wars Movies, and 6 of them did bigger numbers than ROS. Now, maybe they never would have had a shot at End Game numbers (not sure I agree on that), but there is NO WAY the finale should be the lowest of the 3 and 4th lowest of the 5 total releases.
You actually summed up why people discuss what a failure this was (despite the billion dollar box office). You say it didn't feel like a conclusion of the Skywalker Saga, but a separate trilogy. The point of this trilogy WAS to be the end of Skywalker, and the jumping point into a whole new universe. They really didn't come close to achieving this, and the end result is you now have discussions of new trilogies set hundreds of years apart from anything remotely connected to what everyone knows.
I will forever say fatigue is insanely overrated. Again, you can't claim 5 movies in 5 years and not claim a ton more with the MCU since 2 of those movies had no connection to the trilogy. It was a poorly done trilogy. If you want my opinion, essentially they decided to go full on artsy for 8, and turned off a bunch of fans. They truly believed Star Wars was too big to fail, and that they could alter things to bring in new crowds and the die hards, while maybe mad, had too much love for Star Wars to ever stop watching (I think Iger continued to believe it when he stated that he didn't even need to market Galaxy Edge and thought they could open half a land). They got cold feet with the reception (especially after Solo), and so they tried to do what they thought the non-artsy fans wanted. Again, I think the assumption was the fans are so die hard they will come back after a year and a half and all will be forgiven. My guess is, a miscalculation, and what you now did was that while you still have a lot of fans that have not come back, you have now completely angered the artsy crowd who feel THEY have now been spurned. I have no inside anything, but this is just how I have kind of pieced things together.