STAR WARS : Episode IX December 20, 2019 6 6

[@therealsilvermane]

23 minutes ago, Gatsby77 said:

BTW - I feel the same way about the Avatar sequels.

James Cameron is one of the best sci-fi / action directors of the last 50 years, and yet he basically stopped working after the twin ridiculous successes of Titanic and Avatar.

The man could have been pumping out new Aliens/Terminator/True Lies - quality original action films over the last two decades, but instead he's bet it all on four supposed Avatar sequels that took a full decade+ to make?

What happens if the next one only grosses $800 million worldwide?

On the one hand - yeah - he's more than earned the right to simply retire; on the other, I feel like we lost a great action voice because he's decided to go all-in on Avatar.

Alita?

[@therealsilvermane]

28 minutes ago, Bosco685 said:

Yeah, box office matters. It’s why the DCEU as originally conceived is dead and buried. BvS and JL were relative flops. At the same time, the immediacy of the internet has allowed studios to gage audience satisfaction in real time. Last Jedi made a ton but it divided the fan base, thus we got a soft about-face with Rise of Skywalker.

Edited January 9, 2020 by @therealsilvermane

[Bosco685]

7 minutes ago, @therealsilvermane said:

Yeah, box office matters. It’s why the DCEU as originally conceived is dead and buried. BvS and JL were relative flops. At the same time, the immediacy of the internet has allowed studios to gage audience satisfaction in real time. Last Jedi made a ton but it divided the fan base, thus we got a soft about-face with Rise of Skywalker.

Not to good with posting, are you? I'll help you along. 

[@therealsilvermane]

2 minutes ago, Bosco685 said:

Not to good with posting, are you? I'll help you along. 

I’m working from my iPad. Sometimes it doesn’t do what I want it to. #timcooksucks

[Buzzetta]

5 hours ago, Larryw7 said:

The Prequels destroy the Sequel Trilogy. They tell a cohesive, coherent story. GL knew where he wanted to begin, and where he wanted to conclude. Hayden acted with his body language and especially with his eyes. The dialogue may not have been great, but Hayden was speaking in a cadence similar to the masked Vader. Standing with his arms behind his back, looking at the landscape of Naboo as he would later use the same stance staring into space or watching the Millennium Falcon escape his clutches. His words to Padme in the Naboo scene... "Your presence...is soothing" - is said in the same way that James Earl Jones speaks his lines for the classic Vader. And there are many more instances of this in 2 and 3. Many people didn't like some of Lucas' decisions, but quite a few didn't understand them either.

You are right.  You know, I never picked up on that in regards to the body language. 

The closest I came to it was mentioning that Anakin was as much of a drama queen as Vader when it came to the dialogue.  This was evident with the word choice but I never picked up on it the way that you did.  I think that people glossed over it and did not realize it simply because James Earl Jones has 'that voice' that makes it sound 'cool' and 'powerful'.

But seriously, good observation.  

[Mr Sneeze]

The idea that a creator of an IP is a poor caretaker of said IP is a bit of a ludicrous statement if for no other reason than the creator is under no obligation to be a caretaker or to meet anyone's expectations. We are all free to love/hate or walk out and have our art/entertainment/pornography needs met elsewhere or create our own IP's that check all the boxes.

Obviously in reference to Lucas and everything he's done since the first film. I'm not trying to deify him but the vilification get's a little long in the tooth after a while.

[Buzzetta]

4 hours ago, Bosco685 said:

I love when these debates come up how some use box office big results as a negative or a positive.

Transformers: 'Yeah, they made a huge amount of money - but they're garbage'

Worlds of DC: 'Sure, overall they are profitable - but even Transformers movies made a bunch of money and look at those'

Star Wars: 'Yeah, not everyone is happy with them - but they made a bunch of money'

To be fair, the last Transformers was such garbage that Hasbro cancelled it's sequel and instead went the route of Bumblebee.  From my own personal experience, I had to actually look at Wikipedia during Transformers: The Last Knight to figure out what was going on in certain scenes.   

I just looked up the box office on TF: The Last Knight...

Supposedly it cost $217 Million and brought in $605 million, supposedly* lost $100 Million. 

 

* = I say supposedly because we know how Hollywood gets creative with the books so they don't have to pay out certain parties. - Paramount the studio behind Transformers still claims financially that Forrest Gump was a financial failure.

[Bosco685]

37 minutes ago, Buzzetta said:

To be fair, the last Transformers was such garbage that Hasbro cancelled it's sequel and instead went the route of Bumblebee.  From my own personal experience, I had to actually look at Wikipedia during Transformers: The Last Knight to figure out what was going on in certain scenes.   

I just looked up the box office on TF: The Last Knight...

Supposedly it cost $217 Million and brought in $605 million, supposedly* lost $100 Million. 

 

* = I say supposedly because we know how Hollywood gets creative with the books so they don't have to pay out certain parties. - Paramount the studio behind Transformers still claims financially that Forrest Gump was a financial failure.

To be fair, the story Transformers have been garbage has been going on for years. Even before they became a expectation self-fulfilling prophecy.

Now as far as 'supposedly lost $100M' on a film that did 2.8X production budget. That's not a loss at that amount. But for a film that was at its fifth film in a franchise, that's horrible. But if we look at the overall franchise since you had an analysis ich you wanted scratched ...

So making 4.5X your overall franchise investment - in any business - would be far from a loss. It was the last film that was the outlier of the overall franchise.

Edited January 9, 2020 by Bosco685

[Bosco685]

4 hours ago, @therealsilvermane said:

It’s why the DCEU as originally conceived is dead and buried. BvS and JL were relative flops.

Thank goodness the old WB CEO is gone...new one is in. If they had done effectively analysis of box office results side-by-side at the same film cycle...

Justice League is the dog that brings the box office results down. And with Batman v Superman, estimated it made $105 million even after all the negative critics and bloggers response. But let's go with wild 'MAKE MINE MARVEL' analysis.

[Bosco685]

Quote

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker earned another $2.4 million on Wednesday, dropping 40% from yesterday and a whopping 86% from last Wednesday. That gives Walt Disney and Lucasfilm’s Star Wars sequel a $460.9 million domestic cume. The film is officially over the unadjusted $460 million (counting reissues) domestic gross of the first Star Wars beginning back in 1977 ($1.495 billion adjusted), and it’ll likely end the weekend above the unadjusted-for-inflation $474 million gross (counting the 2012 3-D reissue) of Star Wars Episode One: The Phantom Menace ($882 million adjusted). Alas, at its rate of descent, it not only won’t get anywhere near The Last Jedi, it won’t end up matching the $532 million domestic finish of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.

 

Disney’s Star Wars spin-off opened in December of 2016 with a robust $155 million domestic debut, along with decent reviews and an of-the-moment political topicality that at least offered a surge in positive media coverage in the aftermath of the 2016 presidential election shocker. I don’t know whether the whole “rebellions are built on hope” messaging resonated more after Hillary Clinton’s electoral loss in November of 2016, but it certainly didn’t hurt. The New Hope prequel survived an unofficial director swap, with Tony Gilroy coming in to tinker with Gareth Edwards’ initial cut, but the behind-the-scenes melodrama still resulted in a mostly coherent and entertaining sci-fi action blockbuster. It earned a “normal for Christmas” 3.43x weekend-to-final multiplier, on par with the Hobbit prequels.

 

Conversely, despite an advantageous holiday calendar that saw Rise of Skywalker’s opening weekend leading right into the two-week holiday break, Star Wars IX has, at least since Christmas, consistently dropped faster than its relevant predecessors. It has taken weekend-to-weekend drops on par with Captain America: Civil War, a film that earned just 2.28x its $179 million debut. Absent the holiday boost, where weekdays play like weekends, J.J. Abrams and Chris Terrio’s poorly-reviewed sequel would have likely suffered a similar fate, but without a 33/66 split in terms of overseas strength. Nonetheless, even with the holiday boost, The Rise of Skywalker is tracking for a lower domestic gross than The Last Jedi ($620 million), The Lion King ($543 million) and Rogue One ($532 million).

 

[Bosco685]

Same day period, The Last Jedi was 54.1% higher.

[Gatsby77]

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker earned another $2.4 million on Wednesday, dropping 40% from yesterday and a whopping 86% from last Wednesday.  

Wait - so it dropped a whopping 86% from last Wednesday, which was a national holiday with both kids off from school and their parents off from work?

Oh the humanity! 

In other words, no mess, Sherlock!

 

[Bosco685]

15 minutes ago, Gatsby77 said:

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker earned another $2.4 million on Wednesday, dropping 40% from yesterday and a whopping 86% from last Wednesday.  

Wait - so it dropped a whopping 86% from last Wednesday, which was a national holiday with both kids off from school and their parents off from work?

Oh the humanity! 

In other words, no mess, Sherlock!

 

Other than on the same day The Last Jedi was 54.1% ahead of RoS, you could be right.

[drotto]

 

The trend with Star Wars is what is important now, not the individual film box office.  With ROS now tracking to finish below R1, that is going to be viewed as a disappointment.  The recent argument has been that the trilogy films have outperformed the solo films, so all is good.  That may now not be so.

 

Where does Star Wars go now.  All the movies so far have pulled heavily on the nastolgia strings.  The strings have basically been used up, and the few remaining are much weaker.  It seems that this nastolgia fuel and manipulation, almost more than anything has fueled recent Star Wars.  Now any new Star Wars by necessity and cold reality, must be new material and venture into new territory (the general public has little knowledge of the EU).

The IP must be reinvented and reinvigorated.  To avoid further slide, the new films must be special, or dwindling returns will continue.

 

[Bosco685]

2 minutes ago, drotto said:

 

The trend with Star Wars is what is important now, not the individual film box office.  With ROS now tracking to finish below R1, that is going to be viewed as a disappointment.  The recent argument has been that the trilogy films have outperformed the solo films, so all is good.  That may now not be so.

 

Where does Star Wars go now.  All the movies so far have pulled heavily on the nastolgia strings.  The strings have basically been used up, and the few remaining are much weaker.  It seems that this nastolgia fuel and manipulation, almost more than anything has fueled recent Star Wars.  Now any new Star Wars by necessity and cold reality, must be new material and venture into new territory (the general public has little knowledge of the EU).

The IP must be reinvented and reinvigorated.  To avoid further slide, the new films must be special, or dwindling returns will continue.

There are a few articles lately touching on insider limited details leaking out that hints to pushing forward without the current trilogy model. So worst-case, this is forcing the Star Wars brand leadership to think differently.

This all could turn out someone really great moving forward.

[drotto]

18 minutes ago, Bosco685 said:

There are a few articles lately touching on insider limited details leaking out that hints to pushing forward without the current trilogy model. So worst-case, this is forcing the Star Wars brand leadership to think differently.

This all could turn out someone really great moving forward.

Also not jumping into solo films will give them more leway to see what ideas and characters work.  It is less of a financial risk.  One film flops or underperforms it will not have the potential domino effect.  For instance Solo was clearly intended to have a sequel.  What items concerning story, personel, characters, etc were affected by that trilogy being cancelled?

 

If a group of characters catches on, their story can then be expanded.  More the OT model where ANH was made as a single film and then expanded when it was successful. 

[Gatsby77]

30 minutes ago, Bosco685 said:

Other than on the same day The Last Jedi was 54.1% ahead of RoS, you could be right.

No. The film's aren't comparable on a count-the-days comparison because of the differences in the calendar and respective release dates.

Compare each film's New Year's Day to one week later and you get the following:

Last Jedi

• New Year's Day: $14.3 million
• 7 days later: $1.8 million

(minus 87.5%)

Rise of Skywalker

• New Year's Day: $17.1 million
• 7 days later: $2.4 million

(minus 86.0 %)

 

[Bosco685]

4 minutes ago, drotto said:

Also not jumping into solo films will give them more leway to see what ideas and characters work.  It is less of a financial risk.  One film flops or underperforms it will not have the potential domino effect.  For instance Solo was clearly intended to have a sequel.  What items concerning story, personel, characters, etc were affected by that trilogy being cancelled?

 

If a group of characters catches on, their story can then be expanded.  More the OT model where ANH was made as a single film and then expanded when it was successful. 

For me, The Mandalorian now spoiled me as Disney+ can do all sorts of spin-off shows with very limited risk. Like you are noting, more flexibility because you don't have this massive franchise being built out requiring continuous character development across years to get them there. It all can be done in 8 to 13 episode sessions that is like seeing a massive Star Wars film when you are done. If that make sense?

[Bosco685]

Just now, Gatsby77 said:

No. The film's aren't comparable on a count-the-days comparison because of the differences in the calendar and respective release dates.

Compare each film's New Year's Day to one week later and you get the following:

Last Jedi

• New Year's Day: $14.3 million
• 7 days later: $1.8 million

(minus 87.5%)

Rise of Skywalker

• New Year's Day: $17.1 million
• 7 days later: $2.4 million

(minus 86.0 %)

 

Sorry, but the reality is the days line up when it comes to day-to-day. And all the hard work to capture this is done.

You may feel the exact stage it is at is different. But not really. Disney more than most other studios knows its business and when to release these films.

[Gatsby77]

2 minutes ago, Bosco685 said:

Sorry, but the reality is the days line up when it comes to day-to-day. And all the hard work to capture this is done.

You may feel the exact stage it is at is different. But not really. Disney more than most other studios knows its business and when to release these films.

?

*Of course* Disney knows how to read a calendar, but that's irrelevant, and has nothing to do with the actual math.

My point?

It's absolutely disingenuous for either Scott Mendelson or you to highlight an "86%" drop from last Wednesday (New Year's Day) to this Wednesday as "whopping," let alone *unexpected* when the data show The Rise of Skywalker outperformed The Last Jedi both in absolute terms on those comparable days *and* on a % drop basis.

If anything, the opposite's true -- Rise of Skywalker *held better* than did The Last Jedi over that period -- it made more money on New Year's day than did The Last Jedi *and* it had a smaller % drop a week later.