The Rise of Skywalker box office results: predictions and expectations — Page 19

If the opening weekend is anything to go with so far I think they’re in trouble.

$175.5 dom, 373.5 worldwide.

if WOM continues to solidify as mixed-to-negative (and it’s probably going to, if that happened with The Last Jedi despite better reviews and higher box-office, I can’t imagine it won’t happen here) there is probably no way it crosses $1 bil.

This has made less than Incredbles 2’s OW, and is making less worldwide than Batman v. Superman did in its opening weekend.

It’s unfortunate that Disney won’t learn the correct lessons from this fallout.

Disney’s already learned the lesson they’re moving forward with:

Star Wars is a television property now. It’s essentially Star Trek. It lives on TV, you watch it on TV, and every now and again they try a movie and you go to the theater and you hope they didn’t botch it too much and then you put it on your shelf next to the rest of your collectibles and you go back to watching the TV shows (and every now and again the movies you’ve already seen).

Honestly, you could make the argument that aside from Rise of Skywalker, the quality of their output is mostly very good so far as the general audience is concerned. This is the first property that’s garnered a Prequel-level score, with prequel-esque word of mouth. (And even in the prequel-era, the word-of-mouth was hard to put a finger on because it SOUNDED like everyone hated them, but the numbers looked like people were having a good time).

edit: OW = Opening Weekend. DOM = Domestic. WW = Worldwide. WOM = Word of mouth.

Also, looking at the day-to-day drops and the projection adjustments even on the day of, arguments that this is primarily a reflection on The Last Jedi don’t hold too much weight. The two years of constant arguing and toxicity probably did have an effect on people wanting to even mess with this thing on opening weekend, absolutely. But the way this thing declined day-to-day starting with Thursday night says this movie is doing what it’s doing because of its quality.

We’ll know more in a couple days when we get a chance to see how high the Christmas Day bounce goes.

Hopefully this proves listening to the fans never ends well.

There’s this talented director on the rise now I think his name is Ryan Johnson. Give it to him!

In my opinion, if anyone could take some blame it probably would be Bob Iger for feeling they needed to get the company’s ROI as soon as possible.

Does anyone have it all? Even Lucas himself failed spectacularly in most of his attempts. They just need to lower the bar enough that some Marvel nobody can make one and not offend anyone I guess.

NeverarGreat said:

I can’t think of a single director who would be a great fit for Star Wars.

George Lucas. 😉

Gareth Edwards makes gorgeous compositions and understands the importance of worldbuilding, but can’t seem to make an interesting character to save his life.

Strong disagree here. Jyn is, to me, the best of the new characters since Disney took over. Sure, Baze and Chirrut aren’t well developed at all, but I know enough of the others to be emotionally invested in what happens to the crew. But I won’t discuss this here any further, this is a TROS thread after all.

Omni said:

NeverarGreat said:

I can’t think of a single director who would be a great fit for Star Wars.

George Lucas. 😉

Wow! I never would have guessed! Maybe that’s what we’ve been missing all along!

I disagree - I think there’s a ton of amazing directors out there who could make great Star Wars movies. But nobody’s going to make a perfect movie, and there’s not a magical “perfect” director for Star Wars.

Hell, George Lucas created the series and 3 of its poorest-quality movies are his.

There’s nothing about Star Wars so special that simply asking a strong, capable, and interesting director to play in that sandbox isn’t all you really need to do. There’s always going to be pluses and minuses, things that the individual directors bring to a picture that will turn some viewers off BECAUSE of how individual that voice is. I’m willing to make that trade every time, because that individual voice is probably what’s going to make a movie more special than it otherwise would have been.

It’s hard to argue for Star Wars to adhere to what makes it unique while simultaneously arguing for a one-size-fits-everything approach to the material. People can’t even agree on what “Star Wars” is, there’s no way that agreement is going to embody the shape of a single director.

I will say this, though: Filoni isn’t the answer, and probably never will be.

NeverarGreat said:

Gareth Edwards makes gorgeous compositions and understands the importance of worldbuilding, but can’t seem to make an interesting character to save his life.

Agree. They need his style but a script that actually works and has heart. Then they just need someone to edit the damn thing properly, without feeling like huge chunks where lost at the last minute. That’s the problem with most of the new movies, nobody seems to have a proper idea of what works and what needs to be left out. They all feel like a reshuffle of the parts is needed, some more than others.

I think searching for ANY “formula” is probably a bad idea, at least any “formula” beyond “find good collaborators, listen to what they’re saying, team up with skilled craftsmen, and synthesize those talents.”

But that’s more or less the “formula” for any movie that ends up being good, really. And I think that’s maybe the greatest lesson this film (and this trilogy, and this era of ownership) can teach us: Star Wars isn’t anywhere near as precious as everyone thought it was, and treating it as such is just going to stunt it’s potential and make it stale and disappointing. There really isn’t anything special about it, not in the way there used to be. There’s no behind-the-scenes magic that other movies aren’t able to call upon in order to execute their respective visions.

That preciousness about Star Wars is obviously starting to hold it back, and that fear of “breaking” it is, ironically, what’s breaking it. It’s an entire studio playing not to lose instead of just trying to make good movies.

It’s not going to be “one director” that gets this right, and I don’t know that we should even WANT a singular figurehead in control. Even when we had that we didn’t like it, and it’s not like it made for better movies, either.