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The Rise of Skywalker box office results: predictions and expectations — Page 4

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 (Edited)

So what are everyone’s box office predictions for TRoS? I’m keeping mine at $700,000,000 domestic and $1,400,000,000 worldwide for now, but I fully expect to revise that upward depending on the hype.

Here is a list of the Star Wars movies domestic box office adjusted for inflation with Endgame thrown in just for fun. The numbers correspond to where they rank on the all-time domestic adjusted list.

2.Star Wars - $1,604,857,600

11.The Force Awakens - $974,117,000

13.The Empire Strikes Back - $884,607,500

16.Avengers: Endgame - $858,041,646

17.Return of the Jedi - $847,475,300

19.The Phantom Menace - $813,711,800

44.The Last Jedi - $609,026,300

62.Rogue One - $544,579,000

69.Revenge of the Sith - $534,514,500

100.Attack of the Clones - $481,750,900

Here’s where they fall on the all-time unadjusted domestic list:

1.The Force Awakens - $936,662,225

2.Avengers: Endgame - $858,041,646

9.The Last Jedi - $620,181,382

12.Rogue One - $532,177,324

16.The Phantom Menace - $474,544,677

17.Star Wars - $460,998,007

41.Revenge of the Sith - $380,270,577

77.Attack of the Clones - $310,676,740

79.Return of the Jedi - $309,306,177

95.The Empire Strikes Back - $290,475,067

184.Solo: A Star Wars Story - $213,767,512

If TRoS only makes the $700,000,000 that I predicted, that would put it in a decent spot on both lists, but good reviews, positive word of mouth, and marketing it as the end of the Skywalker saga could boost it considerably.

Looking at these lists, I think the demise of Star Wars has been greatly exaggerated. Galaxy’s Edge will open at the end of this month in Disney World, which is a considerably larger park. I think both will do well once all rides are fully open.

Multiple live-action shows are coming to Disney+ as well as animated series. We have video games, novels, and comics as well. In the world of today with such a wide variety of instantaneous entertainment options that are only a click away, I think Star Wars is doing great and couldn’t be in better hands.

Even when it comes to Star Wars, some of it has always been less popular than other parts. The Star Wars Holiday Special, The Ewok Movies, the Droids animated series. But the sky didn’t fall then and isn’t falling now.

Life is short, and there are only so many Star Wars movie premiers I will get in my lifetime. I’m going to enjoy each one to the absolute fullest. I’m going to make The Rise of Skywalker a huge part of my holiday season. I am already excited and the real hype hasn’t even started! Can’t wait!

The Force will be with you, always.

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DrDre said:

yotsuya said:

DrDre said:

yotsuya said:

DrDre said:

DominicCobb said:

DrDre said:

DominicCobb said:

Huh I guess Star Wars really is dead and TLJ killed it. Good job, you proved it. Haha

Nope, Star Wars is in decline, and I’ve said nothing about TLJ being the cause, just that Disney’s strategy hasn’t worked, which is a reasonable conclusion, if the objective is growth, a conclusion supported by the recent analysis of bloomberg:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-08-07/star-wars-is-struggling-to-win-over-the-marvel-generation

What then would you say is Disney’s strategy that has been so disastrous?

Out with the old, in with the new. The Galaxy Edge theme park is the best evidence, that Disney gambled on the strength of the new canon. In the process they alienated a subsection of the previous generations of fans, whilst not being able to win over the new generation. They essentially rebooted the franchise with characters that aren’t as compelling, and so people lose interest.

I see you are unaware of what has happened at Disneyland. It is not the failure you think it is. The access to Galaxy’s Edge has been full up. Crowds have been good. What has not been good is overall attendance because no one wanted to compete with the crowds they expected for the opening period. Disney made plans to address that, but not before people had made their vacation plans and skipped over this summer. I expect next year to be one of Disney’s best at the two parks with Galaxy’s Edge.

And it is your opinion that they rebooted the franchise. That completely ignores the cyclical nature of the story and how much the ST is paralleling the EU stories that so many fans are familiar with. I don’t see any issue with attracting a new generation at all. A number of people who are more casual fans like the ST more then the previous movies. And the box office numbers (adjusted for inflation) show that the ST is more popular than the PT was. The only group I see with a big problem with the ST are those who had expectations of what the ST would and would not include and don’t like that it doesn’t live up to that. A repeat of the PT all over again. Let the writers tell their story and sit back and enjoy. I indulge in spoilers so I can divest myself of all expectations and just enjoy how the story unfolds. Your theories of deconstructing and rebooting over analyze the trilogy and widely miss what the movies say about themselves. The ST was always going to involve the death of Luke in the first Episode (the first one he was in) and Harrison has been saying Han should die for 30 years. They passed the torch and Carrie’s passing forced that to be even more complete. This is the Rey, Finn, Poe trilogy and the OT characters are really just enlarge cameos. You had expectations, perhaps not of exactly what the characters would do, but definitely what they shouldn’t do. It is almost as if Lucas, Abrams, and Johnson set out to make a trilogy that was exactly what you didn’t want to see. I see symmetry in the repetition. I see the parallels in myth, history, and pop culture (Star Wars is a more serious take on Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers after all) and I’m enjoying the tale. It is very much what happens after the great war is over and how things move on. Often it is ghosts of the past that haunt the future and bring back a defeated enemy. I find the story of the ST to be very mythic and very classic and not repetitive at all. Certainly not a reboot. If you want to know what I call a reboot, just look over at Star Trek under CBS. The ST has nice echos of the Zahn trilogy while being new and fresh. Just in the ST, they took 30 years instead of 10 years to regroup and attack the Republic.

The Zahn trilogy does not have Empire vs rebels 2.0, or have the New Republic wiped out of existence, such that we reset the galaxy to an OT state. It does not have a Darth Vader wannabe, who also was a former Jedi pupil of the hero’s Jedi mentor. It does not have a fascimile Emperor. It does not have another Death Star like super weapon. It does not have another Jedi prodigy from a Tatooine clone. It does not have another ground battle involving walkers on a white plane. It does not have another throne room scene, where our hero has to witness the destruction of the rebel fleet, and an apprentice betraying his master to save the life of the hero. The Zahn trilogy was new and fresh. I can’t say the same for the ST. I’m not saying the films aren’t entertaining, and there are new elements, and nuances, but the so called cyclical nature is a poor excuse for resetting the story, and essentially giving us the OT with a new coat of paint. I’m not saying I dislike the ST in general, or that they’re bad movies. I’m saying it could have been a whole lot better, if they hadn’t undone most of the OT’s victories, and in stead given us a new and original story with new and original heroes, and villains, that weren’t in some way a slight variation of characters and stories we have seen before.

The Zahn trilogy does have a reminant of the Empire. It does have a unique Jedi student situation. The Republic is unsteady so the players are pretty much the same as Empire vs. Rebels 2.0. And in The ST, the republic has not be wiped out, only the government. We won’t know what the state of the galaxy is until TROS comes out since only days or weeks have passed since the Hosnian system and the fleet were destroyed. I feel you are making too much of what you see as parallels and you aren’t seeing how different the ST is from the OT. I do not share any of your feelings as to what the story of the ST is. I see closer parallels to the Zahn Trilogy. But in any case it is supposed to be similar. Read or seen the Cloud Atlas? Lucas has been going for a simlar story telling feel in Star Wars. Different generations face similar trials and handle it different ways. Anakin failed. Luke redeemed Anakin. What will Rey do? TROS will reveal it. And I think if they create the right trailer and buzz, the movie is going to do very well.

For one the PT is far less similar to the OT than the ST is. Secondly just because Lucas used similar trials to highlight the choices made by Anakin, and Luke, which unlike the ST were part of a single narrative with a beginning and an ending, doesn’t mean that he meant Star Wars to be an endless cycle of similar characters facing similar situations. Lucas also made it very clear he feels each trilogy needs its own visual style:

“They wanted to do a retro movie. I don’t like that. Every movie, I worked very hard to make them different,” Lucas said. “I made them completely different – different planets, different spaceships to make it new.”

So, Lucas obviously felt TFA was too much of a repeat of what we had seen before. Apparently he doesn’t share your views on similar storytelling to the extend that it was used for the ST.

I disagree. I think the PT had more parallels to the OT. To really understand the trilogies you have to focus on the hero and their journey. Anakin’s journey ended in his downfall. Luke rose to great heights and redeemed his father. Rey… what will she do? The death of Qui-gon is closer to the death of Obi-wan than any death in the ST. The great celebration at the end of ANH and TPM. The young boy from Tatooine finding a way off the planet and on the road to becoming a Jedi. The middle chapter where the training is tested and both fail in their major battle and lose a limb. The final chapter where they face their greatest challenge and one fails while the other succeeds. The girl, the guy, the droids, the galaxy in turmoil. In terms of plot points crucial to the final outcome of the main plot, they are far more similar than the ST is to either. Sure it features a McGuffin like the OT, and a hotshot pilot like Han, but it gives the girl the lead role and replaced the princess with the ex stormtrooper. Rey’s training does not flow to success like Anakin and Luke’s and she does not face an opponent she is unprepared for and she doesn’t lose a limb. The mentor only dies AFTER the hero moves on on her own. In some ways TLJ may feel a bit more like TESB in tone, but in plot points it is laid out differently and serves a different purpose.

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Strongly disagree, but the OT-ST parallels have been beaten to death. Still though, TFA and SW have basically the same plot. Different story, but the plot is so similar that if Lucas were to sue claiming it’s a ripoff I’m sure he’d win. Most of TLJ’s plot points have also appeared in TESB or ROTJ as well, so TROS is the one film that finally might bring something new to the table.

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 (Edited)

yotsuya said:

DrDre said:

yotsuya said:

DrDre said:

yotsuya said:

DrDre said:

DominicCobb said:

DrDre said:

DominicCobb said:

Huh I guess Star Wars really is dead and TLJ killed it. Good job, you proved it. Haha

Nope, Star Wars is in decline, and I’ve said nothing about TLJ being the cause, just that Disney’s strategy hasn’t worked, which is a reasonable conclusion, if the objective is growth, a conclusion supported by the recent analysis of bloomberg:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-08-07/star-wars-is-struggling-to-win-over-the-marvel-generation

What then would you say is Disney’s strategy that has been so disastrous?

Out with the old, in with the new. The Galaxy Edge theme park is the best evidence, that Disney gambled on the strength of the new canon. In the process they alienated a subsection of the previous generations of fans, whilst not being able to win over the new generation. They essentially rebooted the franchise with characters that aren’t as compelling, and so people lose interest.

I see you are unaware of what has happened at Disneyland. It is not the failure you think it is. The access to Galaxy’s Edge has been full up. Crowds have been good. What has not been good is overall attendance because no one wanted to compete with the crowds they expected for the opening period. Disney made plans to address that, but not before people had made their vacation plans and skipped over this summer. I expect next year to be one of Disney’s best at the two parks with Galaxy’s Edge.

And it is your opinion that they rebooted the franchise. That completely ignores the cyclical nature of the story and how much the ST is paralleling the EU stories that so many fans are familiar with. I don’t see any issue with attracting a new generation at all. A number of people who are more casual fans like the ST more then the previous movies. And the box office numbers (adjusted for inflation) show that the ST is more popular than the PT was. The only group I see with a big problem with the ST are those who had expectations of what the ST would and would not include and don’t like that it doesn’t live up to that. A repeat of the PT all over again. Let the writers tell their story and sit back and enjoy. I indulge in spoilers so I can divest myself of all expectations and just enjoy how the story unfolds. Your theories of deconstructing and rebooting over analyze the trilogy and widely miss what the movies say about themselves. The ST was always going to involve the death of Luke in the first Episode (the first one he was in) and Harrison has been saying Han should die for 30 years. They passed the torch and Carrie’s passing forced that to be even more complete. This is the Rey, Finn, Poe trilogy and the OT characters are really just enlarge cameos. You had expectations, perhaps not of exactly what the characters would do, but definitely what they shouldn’t do. It is almost as if Lucas, Abrams, and Johnson set out to make a trilogy that was exactly what you didn’t want to see. I see symmetry in the repetition. I see the parallels in myth, history, and pop culture (Star Wars is a more serious take on Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers after all) and I’m enjoying the tale. It is very much what happens after the great war is over and how things move on. Often it is ghosts of the past that haunt the future and bring back a defeated enemy. I find the story of the ST to be very mythic and very classic and not repetitive at all. Certainly not a reboot. If you want to know what I call a reboot, just look over at Star Trek under CBS. The ST has nice echos of the Zahn trilogy while being new and fresh. Just in the ST, they took 30 years instead of 10 years to regroup and attack the Republic.

The Zahn trilogy does not have Empire vs rebels 2.0, or have the New Republic wiped out of existence, such that we reset the galaxy to an OT state. It does not have a Darth Vader wannabe, who also was a former Jedi pupil of the hero’s Jedi mentor. It does not have a fascimile Emperor. It does not have another Death Star like super weapon. It does not have another Jedi prodigy from a Tatooine clone. It does not have another ground battle involving walkers on a white plane. It does not have another throne room scene, where our hero has to witness the destruction of the rebel fleet, and an apprentice betraying his master to save the life of the hero. The Zahn trilogy was new and fresh. I can’t say the same for the ST. I’m not saying the films aren’t entertaining, and there are new elements, and nuances, but the so called cyclical nature is a poor excuse for resetting the story, and essentially giving us the OT with a new coat of paint. I’m not saying I dislike the ST in general, or that they’re bad movies. I’m saying it could have been a whole lot better, if they hadn’t undone most of the OT’s victories, and in stead given us a new and original story with new and original heroes, and villains, that weren’t in some way a slight variation of characters and stories we have seen before.

The Zahn trilogy does have a reminant of the Empire. It does have a unique Jedi student situation. The Republic is unsteady so the players are pretty much the same as Empire vs. Rebels 2.0. And in The ST, the republic has not be wiped out, only the government. We won’t know what the state of the galaxy is until TROS comes out since only days or weeks have passed since the Hosnian system and the fleet were destroyed. I feel you are making too much of what you see as parallels and you aren’t seeing how different the ST is from the OT. I do not share any of your feelings as to what the story of the ST is. I see closer parallels to the Zahn Trilogy. But in any case it is supposed to be similar. Read or seen the Cloud Atlas? Lucas has been going for a simlar story telling feel in Star Wars. Different generations face similar trials and handle it different ways. Anakin failed. Luke redeemed Anakin. What will Rey do? TROS will reveal it. And I think if they create the right trailer and buzz, the movie is going to do very well.

For one the PT is far less similar to the OT than the ST is. Secondly just because Lucas used similar trials to highlight the choices made by Anakin, and Luke, which unlike the ST were part of a single narrative with a beginning and an ending, doesn’t mean that he meant Star Wars to be an endless cycle of similar characters facing similar situations. Lucas also made it very clear he feels each trilogy needs its own visual style:

“They wanted to do a retro movie. I don’t like that. Every movie, I worked very hard to make them different,” Lucas said. “I made them completely different – different planets, different spaceships to make it new.”

So, Lucas obviously felt TFA was too much of a repeat of what we had seen before. Apparently he doesn’t share your views on similar storytelling to the extend that it was used for the ST.

I disagree. I think the PT had more parallels to the OT. To really understand the trilogies you have to focus on the hero and their journey. Anakin’s journey ended in his downfall. Luke rose to great heights and redeemed his father. Rey… what will she do? The death of Qui-gon is closer to the death of Obi-wan than any death in the ST. The great celebration at the end of ANH and TPM. The young boy from Tatooine finding a way off the planet and on the road to becoming a Jedi. The middle chapter where the training is tested and both fail in their major battle and lose a limb. The final chapter where they face their greatest challenge and one fails while the other succeeds. The girl, the guy, the droids, the galaxy in turmoil. In terms of plot points crucial to the final outcome of the main plot, they are far more similar than the ST is to either. Sure it features a McGuffin like the OT, and a hotshot pilot like Han, but it gives the girl the lead role and replaced the princess with the ex stormtrooper. Rey’s training does not flow to success like Anakin and Luke’s and she does not face an opponent she is unprepared for and she doesn’t lose a limb. The mentor only dies AFTER the hero moves on on her own. In some ways TLJ may feel a bit more like TESB in tone, but in plot points it is laid out differently and serves a different purpose.

I too strongly disagree. Your argument hinges on the fact we should just focus on one element of the story, the journey of the hero, which you argue is original, and ignore the vast majority of other highly similar plot points, because they don’t fit your narrative. A film is much more than the journey of the hero. However, even if we go your way, and just focus on the hero’s journey, your argument breaks down. While I would say, it is debatable, which of the heroes, Anakin or Rey, is more similar to Luke in their first films, Rey’s journey in TLJ is anything but original. Her arc is an obvious mix of elements taken from TESB and ROTJ. Her arc starts by first following the plot of TESB, seeking guidance from a Jedi master, who initially turns her down, but after an old friend persuades him gives the hero a few lessons/training, then the hero enters a dark side cave, which gives her some cryptic preview of a reveal that will follow at the end of the movie, then after having a vision of the future, leaves that master against his advice to face the enemy, then switching to the plot of ROTJ, where she delivers herself willingly to the enemy in hopes of redeeming the villain, then that villain betrays and kills his master to save her life, and then back to the plot of TESB for the offer to rule the galaxy at the villains side, and the big reveal about the her parentage at the end. Anakin’s journey in AOTC has far less similarities to the OT than Rey’s journey. While he may lose a limb in a vain attempt to rescue his friend and mentor at the end, the bulk of his story is actually about his feelings for Padme, which lead to forbidden love, resulting in a secret marriage, while his attachments to the past, and subsequent emotional trauma, steer him down a dark path, and together with his secret marriage lay the seeds for his eventual turn to the dark side in the next installment. I should add that we haven’t even discussed the context of the hero’s journey, which in the case of the ST is just a copy of the OT, where a tiny band of rebels are facing an overwhelming force of Space Nazis led by a former Jedi student of the hero’s mentor, who has turned to the dark side, and had been instrumental in the destruction of the Jedi order. The context of the PT is a villain operating from the shadows, who through subversion, and manipulation starts a war, where he controls both sides, and uses the crisis to convince the Senate to willingly hand power over to him, a completely different premise from the OT.

These two videos clearly show how both TFA and TLJ heavily borrow scenes, plot threads, and visuals from the OT, and while I wouldn’t go so far as to call them rip-offs, they represent more of a mix tape of the OT’s greatest hits, with some new elements added for good measure, than an original story:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_BX18Icf6fQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0AgRgwW1Ovc

Hopefully TROS will finally change that, and offer a story that isn’t in some way an adaptation or remix of the OT.

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Time
 (Edited)

Rodney-2187 said:

So what are everyone’s box office predictions for TRoS? I’m keeping mine at $700,000,000 domestic and $1,400,000,000 worldwide for now, but I fully expect to revise that upward depending on the hype.

Here is a list of the Star Wars movies domestic box office adjusted for inflation with Endgame thrown in just for fun. The numbers correspond to where they rank on the all-time domestic adjusted list.

Great stuff! Appreciated including Endgame numbers, gives perspective. On that note I think in addition box office for the DC universe movies should be added into the mix.

None of these are adjusted for inflation, all my numbers are from total worldwide gross:

Man of Steel - $668,045,518
Batman v Superman - $873,634,919
Suicide Squad - $746,846,894
Wonder Woman - $821,847,012
Justice League - $657,924,295
Aquaman - $1,148,061,807

Obviously just limited to domestic would put DC to shame against Star Wars, though with the poor numbers in China that’s a two way street. Reflecting on this I would say even if a large consensus of the people and critics don’t like what you’re doing, these brand name mega movies should still be able to hold water and bring in expected money (marketing costs and other technical number crunching aside), very few real flops and the billion mark for global is expected now.

For TRoS to prove itself I agree with the 700mil domestic, what I expect is 1.3b worldwide but on the more cynical side total domestic below 550 would be the embarrassment, it should at least hit a billion globally despite any bad faith, nothing like Solo’s numbers.

The part where it all burns to the ground could be the next cycle of trilogies, a risk I think they’d rather not take and just move it all to streaming which explains why even their highest profile anthology story everyone was begging for is now becoming a show instead of a movie. Disney is savvy about these things, they want to preserve their investment. Declining numbers is a way worse look than just not giving away your numbers and boasting about the success of your exclusive content streaming platform and new cash-flow of subscriber money.

“The ability to destroy a planet is insignificant next to the power of the Force.” - DV

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Time

DrDre said:

yotsuya said:

DrDre said:

yotsuya said:

DrDre said:

yotsuya said:

DrDre said:

DominicCobb said:

DrDre said:

DominicCobb said:

Huh I guess Star Wars really is dead and TLJ killed it. Good job, you proved it. Haha

Nope, Star Wars is in decline, and I’ve said nothing about TLJ being the cause, just that Disney’s strategy hasn’t worked, which is a reasonable conclusion, if the objective is growth, a conclusion supported by the recent analysis of bloomberg:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-08-07/star-wars-is-struggling-to-win-over-the-marvel-generation

What then would you say is Disney’s strategy that has been so disastrous?

Out with the old, in with the new. The Galaxy Edge theme park is the best evidence, that Disney gambled on the strength of the new canon. In the process they alienated a subsection of the previous generations of fans, whilst not being able to win over the new generation. They essentially rebooted the franchise with characters that aren’t as compelling, and so people lose interest.

I see you are unaware of what has happened at Disneyland. It is not the failure you think it is. The access to Galaxy’s Edge has been full up. Crowds have been good. What has not been good is overall attendance because no one wanted to compete with the crowds they expected for the opening period. Disney made plans to address that, but not before people had made their vacation plans and skipped over this summer. I expect next year to be one of Disney’s best at the two parks with Galaxy’s Edge.

And it is your opinion that they rebooted the franchise. That completely ignores the cyclical nature of the story and how much the ST is paralleling the EU stories that so many fans are familiar with. I don’t see any issue with attracting a new generation at all. A number of people who are more casual fans like the ST more then the previous movies. And the box office numbers (adjusted for inflation) show that the ST is more popular than the PT was. The only group I see with a big problem with the ST are those who had expectations of what the ST would and would not include and don’t like that it doesn’t live up to that. A repeat of the PT all over again. Let the writers tell their story and sit back and enjoy. I indulge in spoilers so I can divest myself of all expectations and just enjoy how the story unfolds. Your theories of deconstructing and rebooting over analyze the trilogy and widely miss what the movies say about themselves. The ST was always going to involve the death of Luke in the first Episode (the first one he was in) and Harrison has been saying Han should die for 30 years. They passed the torch and Carrie’s passing forced that to be even more complete. This is the Rey, Finn, Poe trilogy and the OT characters are really just enlarge cameos. You had expectations, perhaps not of exactly what the characters would do, but definitely what they shouldn’t do. It is almost as if Lucas, Abrams, and Johnson set out to make a trilogy that was exactly what you didn’t want to see. I see symmetry in the repetition. I see the parallels in myth, history, and pop culture (Star Wars is a more serious take on Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers after all) and I’m enjoying the tale. It is very much what happens after the great war is over and how things move on. Often it is ghosts of the past that haunt the future and bring back a defeated enemy. I find the story of the ST to be very mythic and very classic and not repetitive at all. Certainly not a reboot. If you want to know what I call a reboot, just look over at Star Trek under CBS. The ST has nice echos of the Zahn trilogy while being new and fresh. Just in the ST, they took 30 years instead of 10 years to regroup and attack the Republic.

The Zahn trilogy does not have Empire vs rebels 2.0, or have the New Republic wiped out of existence, such that we reset the galaxy to an OT state. It does not have a Darth Vader wannabe, who also was a former Jedi pupil of the hero’s Jedi mentor. It does not have a fascimile Emperor. It does not have another Death Star like super weapon. It does not have another Jedi prodigy from a Tatooine clone. It does not have another ground battle involving walkers on a white plane. It does not have another throne room scene, where our hero has to witness the destruction of the rebel fleet, and an apprentice betraying his master to save the life of the hero. The Zahn trilogy was new and fresh. I can’t say the same for the ST. I’m not saying the films aren’t entertaining, and there are new elements, and nuances, but the so called cyclical nature is a poor excuse for resetting the story, and essentially giving us the OT with a new coat of paint. I’m not saying I dislike the ST in general, or that they’re bad movies. I’m saying it could have been a whole lot better, if they hadn’t undone most of the OT’s victories, and in stead given us a new and original story with new and original heroes, and villains, that weren’t in some way a slight variation of characters and stories we have seen before.

The Zahn trilogy does have a reminant of the Empire. It does have a unique Jedi student situation. The Republic is unsteady so the players are pretty much the same as Empire vs. Rebels 2.0. And in The ST, the republic has not be wiped out, only the government. We won’t know what the state of the galaxy is until TROS comes out since only days or weeks have passed since the Hosnian system and the fleet were destroyed. I feel you are making too much of what you see as parallels and you aren’t seeing how different the ST is from the OT. I do not share any of your feelings as to what the story of the ST is. I see closer parallels to the Zahn Trilogy. But in any case it is supposed to be similar. Read or seen the Cloud Atlas? Lucas has been going for a simlar story telling feel in Star Wars. Different generations face similar trials and handle it different ways. Anakin failed. Luke redeemed Anakin. What will Rey do? TROS will reveal it. And I think if they create the right trailer and buzz, the movie is going to do very well.

For one the PT is far less similar to the OT than the ST is. Secondly just because Lucas used similar trials to highlight the choices made by Anakin, and Luke, which unlike the ST were part of a single narrative with a beginning and an ending, doesn’t mean that he meant Star Wars to be an endless cycle of similar characters facing similar situations. Lucas also made it very clear he feels each trilogy needs its own visual style:

“They wanted to do a retro movie. I don’t like that. Every movie, I worked very hard to make them different,” Lucas said. “I made them completely different – different planets, different spaceships to make it new.”

So, Lucas obviously felt TFA was too much of a repeat of what we had seen before. Apparently he doesn’t share your views on similar storytelling to the extend that it was used for the ST.

I disagree. I think the PT had more parallels to the OT. To really understand the trilogies you have to focus on the hero and their journey. Anakin’s journey ended in his downfall. Luke rose to great heights and redeemed his father. Rey… what will she do? The death of Qui-gon is closer to the death of Obi-wan than any death in the ST. The great celebration at the end of ANH and TPM. The young boy from Tatooine finding a way off the planet and on the road to becoming a Jedi. The middle chapter where the training is tested and both fail in their major battle and lose a limb. The final chapter where they face their greatest challenge and one fails while the other succeeds. The girl, the guy, the droids, the galaxy in turmoil. In terms of plot points crucial to the final outcome of the main plot, they are far more similar than the ST is to either. Sure it features a McGuffin like the OT, and a hotshot pilot like Han, but it gives the girl the lead role and replaced the princess with the ex stormtrooper. Rey’s training does not flow to success like Anakin and Luke’s and she does not face an opponent she is unprepared for and she doesn’t lose a limb. The mentor only dies AFTER the hero moves on on her own. In some ways TLJ may feel a bit more like TESB in tone, but in plot points it is laid out differently and serves a different purpose.

I too strongly disagree. Your argument hinges on the fact we should just focus on one element of the story, the journey of the hero, which you argue is original, and ignore the vast majority of other highly similar plot points, because they don’t fit your narrative. A film is much more than the journey of the hero. However, even if we go your way, and just focus on the hero’s journey, your argument breaks down. While I would say, it is debatable, which of the heroes, Anakin or Rey, is more similar to Luke in their first films, Rey’s journey in TLJ is anything but original. Her arc is an obvious mix of elements taken from TESB and ROTJ. Her arc starts by first following the plot of TESB, seeking guidance from a Jedi master, who initially turns her down, but after an old friend persuades him gives the hero a few lessons/training, then the hero enters a dark side cave, which gives her some cryptic preview of a reveal that will follow at the end of the movie, then after having a vision of the future, leaves that master against his advice to face the enemy, then switching to the plot of ROTJ, where she delivers herself willingly to the enemy in hopes of redeeming the villain, then that villain betrays and kills his master to save her life, and then back to the plot of TESB for the offer to rule the galaxy at the villains side, and the big reveal about the her parentage at the end. Anakin’s journey in AOTC has far less similarities to the OT than Rey’s journey. While he may lose a limb in a vain attempt to rescue his friend and mentor at the end, the bulk of his story is actually about his feelings for Padme, which lead to forbidden love, resulting in a secret marriage, while his attachments to the past, and subsequent emotional trauma, steer him down a dark path, and together with his secret marriage lay the seeds for his eventual turn to the dark side in the next installment. I should add that we haven’t even discussed the context of the hero’s journey, which in the case of the ST is just a copy of the OT, where a tiny band of rebels are facing an overwhelming force of Space Nazis led by a former Jedi student of the hero’s mentor, who has turned to the dark side, and had been instrumental in the destruction of the Jedi order. The context of the PT is a villain operating from the shadows, who through subversion, and manipulation starts a war, where he controls both sides, and uses the crisis to convince the Senate to willingly hand power over to him, a completely different premise from the OT.

These two videos clearly show how both TFA and TLJ heavily borrow scenes, plot threads, and visuals from the OT, and while I wouldn’t go so far as to call them rip-offs, they represent more of a mix tape of the OT’s greatest hits, with some new elements added for good measure, than an original story:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_BX18Icf6fQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0AgRgwW1Ovc

Hopefully TROS will finally change that, and offer a story that isn’t in some way an adaptation or remix of the OT.

The problem with your argument is that some of the core story points from the OT aren’t replicated in the ST. Especially when you include pacing. TFA starts off the same as ANH, the McGuffin goes from rebel hands to a droid to a native of the desert planet. That is when things go off the rails. In ANH Luke wants to leave but isn’t willing to go until his Aunt and Uncle are killed and he meets his mentor. In TFA, Rey doesn’t want to leave, but is convinced that the droid needs to be delivered to the right hands. Luke and Ben charter a ship. Rey and Finn steal a ship (same ship 34 years later). And from there it is hard to make the two trilogies feel very parallel. There is a bit between the Death Star and Starkiller base, but none of the events play out in similar ways. The ST pushed the meeting with the mentor out until the start of the second movie and our Skywalker defeats his evil master an entire movie early. I feel the ST had jumbled things up quite sufficiently to have a fresh feeling story. Similar events in a new generation leading to different choices and different outcomes. In TESB and TLJ we even have a different number of stories. In TESB they all start out together on Hoth. Then they split into two groups (we don’t follow anyone with the rebel fleet). In TLJ they are split in two from the end of the last film and then split again giving three distinct stories. And then the confortation with Rey and Snoke parallels the confrontation with Luke and Palpatine from ROTJ. Again breaking the pure parallels of story telling between the trilogies. Also, in TESB, the Rebels escape with few losses. In TLJ the resistance is nearly wiped out and is in no shape to fight back. And while TESB and TLJ both have Jedi training sequences, they follow completely different paths with Luke not being willing to train Rey and ending in her leaving with little training and Luke following (as a force projection).

So while I agree that some scenes are similar, overall the stories take very different paths and the end result of the trilogies is going to be very different. While at the same time I feel that the PT and the OT share more beats in common. The characters also take very different journeys. So I don’t see much in common between the OT and ST.

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I don’t think TFA borrows all that much from ANH.

ANH is about stopping the Death Star. TFA is NOT about stopping Starkiller. TFA is about finding Luke Skywalker. We know this thanks to each episode’s crawls.

It is Starkiller that messes everything up. It makes no sense within the story, and feels like it just happened out of some “obligation” to recapture the success of the OT.

Up until Maz’s castle is attacked the film’s focus is entirely on finding Luke Skywalker, which is a brilliant focus because it a) takes out Luke who would otherwise detract from the focus and b) plays right into our emotions because we also want to see Luke. But then the “Hosnian” system is destroyed and we are distracted to a subplot no one cares about.

Everything else is different from ANH. There are many visual callbacks, but the context is entirely different. Yes, there’s a droid with a macguffin, but instead of the Death Star plans they are the map to Skywalker. Yes, there’s a hero stuck on a desert planet, but Rey is a scavenger who wants to stay on Jakku rather than leave Tatooine. Yes, there’s a cantina, but it makes sense in the story that Han’s friends would be in a cantina.

Maul- A Star Wars Story

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I mean the details and context are different, but the major plot points in TFA borrow a ton from Star Wars.

-Droid has crucial information that needs to be delivered to Rebellion which is also be relentlessly pursued by the Empire

-Droid finds its way into the custody of our main character, the catalyst which starts the protagonists adventure.

-Protagonist meets an older, wiser “father figure” who used to be involved in with the rebellion, who upon learning of the information contained within the droid offers to help deliver to the rebellion.

-Protagonists learn of the existence of a planet-killing superweapon that poses great threat.

-A covert rescue operation is attempted inside the superweapon in which older “father figure” is killed followed by an Rebel assault on the super weapon(in TFA these things happen simultaneously)

There are a ton of story and character differences of course in TFA which I think makes it distinct enough to stand on its own. Plus the climactic saber battle and the ending with Luke on the island set the ending apart as well. But for a good majority of the movie, the narrative thrust which gets our characters from point A to B to C are driven by the same sort of plot devices as in Star Wars. The movie is derivative, but I think is saved in the characters and the details.

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act on instinct said:

Obviously just limited to domestic would put DC to shame against Star Wars, though with the poor numbers in China that’s a two way street.

When it comes to Disney’s perspective (which is all that really matters when discussing BO), they make a lower share of the money internationally, and an even lower share in China, from my understanding. So, for instance, Endgame is the biggest movie ever worldwide. But TFA is the biggest movie ever in the US. So it’s entirely likely that TFA actually made them more money, even if the overall total was lower. For whatever reason, as more and more big budget blockbusters become popular internationally, SW films specifically tend to have an above average US share of the worldwide grosses. In fact, this is the main reason Solo was a flop - it did decent (if disappointing) business in the US, but did even worse internationally. What this all means in terms of Disney’s strategy going forward, who knows, but it’s something to consider.

The part where it all burns to the ground could be the next cycle of trilogies, a risk I think they’d rather not take and just move it all to streaming which explains why even their highest profile anthology story everyone was begging for is now becoming a show instead of a movie. Disney is savvy about these things, they want to preserve their investment. Declining numbers is a way worse look than just not giving away your numbers and boasting about the success of your exclusive content streaming platform and new cash-flow of subscriber money.

I agree that the real test will be in what comes after TROS. Anyone who thinks IX is going to flop is essentially deluding themselves. But there’s no guarantee what comes after will hit. In an odd way, I think doing sequels with old characters might have hurt Disney in terms of other SW films. After a ten year wait, the audience was obviously hungry for any and everything SW, as evidenced by RO’s tremendous success. But I think when you have the genuine article come out so close to the new other thing trying to be it - like how we had Ford’s Solo in 2015 and Alden’s two and a half years later - audiences aren’t as likely to try out the new thing. It’s not hard to see how successful Solo could have been if there was no ST at all, and it was ten years after the PT and LFL was now making spin-offs like that. In that scenario it’s easy to see how Disney could have built up a Marvel-esque franchise, with a Solo film here, a Boba film there, a team up film, etc., especially considering they could afford to do lower numbers because they wouldn’t have the multiple billion dollar successes of the ST films to be compared to.

Now Disney is stuck, because why would general audiences turn out to see random whatever SW in 2022 when they just saw the epic conclusion of the Skywalker saga not three years before? Unlike Marvel post-Endgame, there’s no expanded universe of characters whose stories we are invested in seeing continue after the main characters of the ST have their arcs wrapped up. It’ll be tough to sell a brand new saga when they just did a new part of the saga everyone knows and loves. I can’t think of a precedent.

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Is everyone pretty much thinking the same thing then? ($700,000,000 domestic/$1.4 worldwide) I haven’t seen too many predictions far outside of those numbers.

The Force Awakens opening weekend was $247,966,675 and The Last Jedi opened with $220,009,584, so I would expect The Rise of Skywalker to at least open around $230,000,000.

I know we don’t even have a full trailer yet, and we haven’t seen the full marketing hype, but since the title of this thread is box office predictions and expectations, I thought it would be fun to see some early ideas. The extreme high and low predictions will be especially interesting in a few months.

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I would pin the similarities more on style than getting into all these story beats, Jakku establishes a world very similar to Tatooine and that’s putting it lightly. Not to mention the cantina filled with alien mercenaries, even Starkiller had a trench for X-wings to fly through just because.

OutboundFlight said:

ANH is about stopping the Death Star. TFA is NOT about stopping Starkiller. TFA is about finding Luke Skywalker. We know this thanks to each episode’s crawls.

They do blow up Starkiller by the end much like the Death Star at the end of ANH, which also has a similar mission, find the old Jedi who can help in Obi-Wan Kenobi, down to being the same task ordered by the same character. The pacing of events might diverge but calling it totally different feels like willful ignorance.

I always think about this clip from the making of Phantom Menace https://youtu.be/hxTIlu4ldbg and the idea that, being of a different time period before the war, the artisans were still designing the ships, before war and the empire had reduced the team to a rag-tag band of rebels with whatever junked up parts they could use. For the sequels it’s just X-wings and ties again, something you may not immediately think about as wrong but overall limits the world building, hoping IX will understand they need a bit more in scope of their own.

“The ability to destroy a planet is insignificant next to the power of the Force.” - DV

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Rodney-2187 said:

Is everyone pretty much thinking the same thing then? ($700,000,000 domestic/$1.4 worldwide) I haven’t seen too many predictions far outside of those numbers.

The Force Awakens opening weekend was $247,966,675 and The Last Jedi opened with $220,009,584, so I would expect The Rise of Skywalker to at least open around $230,000,000.

I’m definitely predicting less than The Last Jedi. I really think a lot of people were turned off by it and don’t feel the need to see final installment.

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pleasehello said:

Rodney-2187 said:

Is everyone pretty much thinking the same thing then? ($700,000,000 domestic/$1.4 worldwide) I haven’t seen too many predictions far outside of those numbers.

The Force Awakens opening weekend was $247,966,675 and The Last Jedi opened with $220,009,584, so I would expect The Rise of Skywalker to at least open around $230,000,000.

I’m definitely predicting less than The Last Jedi. I really think a lot of people were turned off by it and don’t feel the need to see final installment.

Are you going to see it?

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Rodney-2187 said:

Is everyone pretty much thinking the same thing then? ($700,000,000 domestic/$1.4 worldwide) I haven’t seen too many predictions far outside of those numbers.

It may have a weak open but I’d say within that range is the safe bet, there’s reasons less and more people will go and I expect that should even out to at least 1.2 billion worldwide. After the marketing blitz especially if that 700 mark can’t be reached domestically, considering it’s the final chapter that would indicate a negative impact for me. Ending the saga on a modest exit, second place to the real cultural main event which turned out to be Avengers. And honestly looking at those Endgame numbers is not encouraging, I did not see Endgame but it was an undeniable wave, TFA was like that too, also rippled into RO which I doubt would have been as big of a deal itself if it wasn’t the first of the anthology movies just coming off TFA, fans were thirsting for more, TLJ numbers are a bit more in line. TRoS being the grand finale will really be the angle that will bring the rest out of the woodwork and at the very least hit their business as usual everything is fine nothing is broken number.

in short,
The Good - $850,000,000/$2.2
The Bad - $695,000,000/$1.1
The Ugly - $525,000,000/$974,117,000

“The ability to destroy a planet is insignificant next to the power of the Force.” - DV

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Well, at the very least you can count on it making less than Endgame so I’d get over that sooner rather than later - there’s a lot of room under $858mil domestic and $2.8bil worldwide for a non-“modest exit.” Second place domestic at least is guaranteed but at this point you might even call it a win if it can get second place worldwide (Lion King and Frozen II will provide some tough competition for that).

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I definitely think Frozen II will make more than IX. Kids (and adults) around the world love it and it has a similar repeat viewing appeal for kids that Star Wars has for their fans. Plus, Frozen is more popular in China than Star Wars is, so I think that will play a role in that as well.

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Well that’s why I gave to the optimist side for the good, the ugly is more of a joke than a prediction. By modest exit I would say par for the course in its domain, lower side of average with the rest of the Star Wars releases. I don’t think TRoS should need to be vindicated/validated through how it competes against other franchises, but if the finale of the saga fails to bring in as many that even saw TLJ I think that would be more of a fizzle than a bang, nothing to speak of the quality of the product, but proof of waning relevance.

“The ability to destroy a planet is insignificant next to the power of the Force.” - DV

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The Last Jedi made slightly more than the first Frozen.

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My last two cents on the “is TFA just SW 2.0?” argument: This video, in which the guy tries to be as unbiased as possible. It’s a good video.

I will say it’s baffling to see people saying that TFA doesn’t have the same plot as SW. The story isn’t exactly the same (even though it’s incredibly similar) but the plot is, pretty much, the very same thing…

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Rodney-2187 said:

What about The Hidden Fortress then?

There are actually less similarities of the plot, when comparing TFA to The Hidden Fortress. The Hidden Fortress also doesn’t have the same setting, visuals, and score.

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Omni said:

My last two cents on the “is TFA just SW 2.0?” argument: This video, in which the guy tries to be as unbiased as possible. It’s a good video.

I will say it’s baffling to see people saying that TFA doesn’t have the same plot as SW. The story isn’t exactly the same (even though it’s incredibly similar) but the plot is, pretty much, the very same thing…

I don’t see how it’s baffling that someone would say they aren’t the exact same. I don’t think you’re actually baffled, you know full well they aren’t the same. I don’t understand why these conversations always turn to hyperbole. (Maybe because there’d be nothing to argue about if we were all honest with what the films actually are.)

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DominicCobb said:

Omni said:

My last two cents on the “is TFA just SW 2.0?” argument: This video, in which the guy tries to be as unbiased as possible. It’s a good video.

I will say it’s baffling to see people saying that TFA doesn’t have the same plot as SW. The story isn’t exactly the same (even though it’s incredibly similar) but the plot is, pretty much, the very same thing…

I don’t see how it’s baffling that someone would say they aren’t the exact same. I don’t think you’re actually baffled, you know full well they aren’t the same. I don’t understand why these conversations always turn to hyperbole. (Maybe because there’d be nothing to argue about if we were all honest with what the films actually are.)

Honestly, I like TFA, but I would say the plot is highly similar to ANH, with a few elements of TESB and ROTJ thrown in for good measure. The question is not whether it is, or isn’t similar, because it is, and not by accident, but if it is too similar, such that in the combination with the story, characters, and visuals, it ruins the movie for you. It didn’t for me, but I think because of the similarities, it’s lasting impact may be somewhat less, than if it had been more original. I would also say, that if someone were to argue, that they didn’t like TFA, because it was too similar to ANH, that that would not be an unreasonable point of view. I would say, that I can see their point, but the other elements in the film, and the way they were presented, made it seem fresh enough for me to like the movie, and not classify it as a rehash.

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DominicCobb said:

Again, it’s not so much that SW has failed as Marvel has succeeded in an insane way.

No. Star Wars is a sacred commodity with an intensely loyal following. That was it’s only saving grace and, some might argue, it’s downfall. But Disney didn’t just ‘miss’; they butchered Star Wars.

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I think Star Wars is doing great. I’d say Lucas did more butchering with the the Holiday Special, Ewok Movies, special editions, and prequels, but Star Wars is still going. I love it as much as I ever did.