Broom Kid

Sidebar: Adjusting for Inflation is a pretty terrible metric, not only because the math is pretty clunky and imprecise, but because it also doesn’t account for a large number of competitive factors that contribute to attendance levels fluctuating yearly. It’s a big problem with box-office analysis/discussion in general - the decision to not measure by tickets sold is a built-in failing, but also completely unavoidable at this point due to how marketing-friendly the dollars-earned number was and still is.

Adjusting for Inflation doesn’t level a playing field so much as it just redistributes the lumps according to an overly simplistic formula.

A more accurate way to acknowledge historical context would probably be to measure the distance between how much each movie made compared to how much the average film in its release year made. That way you’re effectively comparing how much more popular each Star Wars film was than the other films that came out in that release year.

I don’t know how you can disagree that people feel it’s bad. People obviously feel that it’s bad. Bad movies still make money (Michael Bay’s very existence is proof of this phenomenon) - but that’s a different argument than the one I’m making, which is that this movie would have made MORE money had it not been bad. TFA was well-regarded! But it was well-regarded because of it’s safeness. That reputation came immediately, and further, was considered a very smart move. The studio CEO basically admitted as much in his recent biography. Had this movie been “safe” along the same lines, it likely would have gotten a better reception and avoided the word of mouth that is obviously hurting it at the box-office. Movies with good word of mouth don’t have the Friday-to-Saturday drops this film had early in its run. Movies with good word of mouth don’t get those drops AT ALL, really.

The general audience can like it more than the critical reception and the movie can still be overall poorly recieved if the critical reception is low enough. Batman v. Superman (or similarly, Suicide Squad) is the example I keep coming back to here, and I think it’s very much applicable.

Again, this isn’t to say that had the movie been good that the predictions around 700mil DOM and 1.5bil WW would have won out. Its ceiling probably would have been +/- 20mil of The Last Jedi’s numbers. But I don’t think the numbers we’re seeing now could have happened without the film coming in THIS far under anyone’s expectations, quality-wise.

DrDre said:
but given the recent history, and Abrams’ reputation, I don’t think many people expected a masterpiece. Hence, this outcome was not all that suprising to some of us.

The quality of the film being this poor was pretty surprising to a large number, which is why the word of mouth hit the film’s legs as hard as it did. There’s a pretty big gulf between masterpiece and The Rise of Skywalker, and it wasn’t an either/or proposition - Masterpiece vs. Stinker, record-breaker vs giant disappointment, etc. I’m not saying people were expecting a masterpiece - just that pretty much nobody expected it to be THIS bad. And being this bad is obviously, absolutely having a big effect on its box-office. Which is why I’m saying I don’t think those early projections would look accurate now had the film not done its damndest to turn off the general audience, which was a factor I don’t think anyone making those projections was accounting for.

If it were a masterpiece obviously its box-office would be better. But even if it was barely as well-regarded a film as The Force Awakens (i.e. safely serviceable), the numbers wouldn’t be where they are now.

DrDre said:
Good reviews might have boosted the numbers somewhat, but even the opening weekend indicated a final BO of around the 1 billion mark. Also, let’s not forget TPM’s inflation adjusted BO is $1.8 billion, the third most financially successful film in the franchise, so evidently the financial success of a Star Wars film is not strongly correlated with its reviews.

Good reviews would have definitely boosted the numbers, as the interest in the film began declining markedly as the early word began coming in that the film was not only possibly the worst of the sequel trilogy, but maybe the worst film since Phantom Menace, whose repuatation has only declined since its 1999 premiere. The film’s opening weekend was definitely stunted by its word of mouth, which points to how big a factor it’s quality was in damaging its own box-office. Essentially - post-premiere, the film’s legs started shrinking IMMEDIATELY. It was a Batman v. Superman situation more than anything. Social media’s speed and prominence makes a much bigger difference in how quickly word of mouth gets digested and disseminated now compared to the late 90s.

TPM was also the first Star Wars film since 1983, which is good to keep in mind. Word of mouth during that summer was better (and slower-moving) than Rise of Skywalker’s word of mouth is this winter. I don’t think anyone early-estimating the numbers it wound up at was doing so under the assumption the movie was going to be what it ended up being.

(anecdotally: I remember much discussion on the early internets about how Titanic’s record WOULD have been broken in 1999 had The Phantom Menace actually been good. Not to say such analysis had merit - hell not to say mine does either, obviously! But there were definitely conversations as to how Phantom Menace’s quality did hinder it at the box-office somewhat)

It wasn’t the waning interest that led to these totals though. It was the quality of the film. Again, I don’t think any of those predictions were being made under the assumption the film in question would be the most poorly reviewed Star Wars since The Phantom Menace. Had the film been at the quality level of even Solo, those numbers wouldn’t have borne out.

A writer like Hossein Amini having all the context of what “Jar Jar” has come to mean, culturally, plus knowing what the meta-story is behind not just the character, but the actor who played him? I don’t think we’re going to get a redux of what Jar Jar was (and what he meant) in Phantom Menace or The Clone Wars.

This is probably going to be a show about atonement (it can’t not be, really) and seeing this creature, this hated, pitiable thing, trying its best to be better and make up for its mistakes - I think there’s a lot of potential there, especially considering the writer and the director bringing Kenobi to life.

I would not be surprised if they use the “dirty trick” of reminding us, as viewers, of our part in demonizing both the character and the actor who portrayed him.

They could mess it up, absolutely - Star Wars gets messed up all the time, it’s certainly not special in that regard - but I think there’s a good opportunity here for Jar Jar to be reintroduced decades later, and somewhat redeemed. I think Deborah Chow has the chops, I know Hossein Amini’s got the ability - The Mandalorian just made an assassin droid LOVABLE, I think Jar Jar isn’t beyond a transformation in Kenobi.

Rodney-2187 said:

The sound on Disney+ is considerably lower than any other streaming service I use, and I stream a lot. I have to turn the volume up a lot higher whenever I watch anything on Disney+.

I find that HBO Now is also about as quiet as Disney+

Also, lately Disney’s blu-rays have had quieter audio mixes, too. I need to turn their discs up in my home theater about 4 or 5 clicks louder than normal.

It’s not rambling at all! And I’m honestly glad it connected with you on an emotional level. I have my problems with it but I absolutely don’t want it to seem like I’m trying to argue you OUT of having those feelings. Even if that was a thing I wanted to do (and I don’t) it would be an exercise in futility. I’m glad it worked for you, and I don’t think you’re insane (or anywhere near it) for enjoying it on a level I didn’t.

Again, the big problem with devoting so much time and energy to a lot of these little fiddly details in the plotting is that even if those questions were answered satisfactorily within the narrative - it still wouldn’t be a good movie, would it?

If I put together a 1000 piece puzzle perfectly, but the picture I assemble with no missing pieces is of a broken mirror reflecting a junk-strewn yard… does it matter that all these fiddly details are there and accounted for?

the only notion I want to push back a little on in this ongoing discussion is that there are somehow ironclad “Star Wars Specific” rules that got broken here, and there aren’t, really. There are plenty of storytelling and filmmaking mistakes, and the normal sorts of things that happen to make ANY movie mediocre and uninteresting to sit through, but I don’t think most of The Rise of Skywalkers’ sins are specifically Star Wars related, and I don’t think if many of these grievances had been fixed prior to release, the reception would have been markedly different.

Star Wars tends to break its own “rules” with every movie anyway, and that’s good, honestly. They’re completely made up in the first place. So long as you can cleverly break them, with satisfactorily emotional results (even if the result is as surface level as “whoa, cool!”) then breaking “Star Wars” rules isn’t a big problem at all. Nobody’s going to Star Wars movies to see its rules upheld. They’re going to Star Wars to be emotionally engaged by the story being told. And that’s not really happening with Rise of Skywalker for a fair amount of its viewers.

Hal 9000 said:
Here, jumping in and out of light speed would be expected to look like skipping a stone on a pond. It might be in a straight line, or perhaps alternating a number of directions, but this scene implies they are more or less teleporting. This is baffling when placed alongside any and everything else we’ve ever gotten about hyperspace.

It made visual sense to me. I don’t understand why you expected it to look like a stone skipping across water.

If you’re rapidly going to lightspeed and rapidly dropping out of it - I don’t know how else it could look except for teleporting. There’s no real way to show how the ship is “skipping” like a stone on a pond because the pond in this case isn’t stationary, and it’s not very easy to set up a scene where the four locations he’s skipping into and out of are all on screen at the same time as he bounces across them.

You could do it in a comic pretty easily (with the falcon breaking the gutters between panels) but I don’t know how you’d do it in the movie. The camera has to change locations with each jump, and at this point, from the POV we’re looking through IN those locations - the ship IS teleporting in and out, basically. Every exit and entry in Star Wars also looks like that.

I don’t know - it made sense to me, visually. I thought it was cool.

lightspeed skipping would have worked just fine from a storytelling perspective if there’d been a few seconds of setup as to what it was before he did it, especially since Rey and Poe get in a fight over his even trying it. So obviously it was a “known” thing to those characters - we just needed to have it hinted it was even a thing before he pulled it off. It wouldn’t have taken a lot, and it wouldn’t need to be tied into the plot any more than it already is (which is not at all).

But I do agree with Dom that I thought it was pretty cool. But I’m a sucker for that bucket of bolts doing things it has no reason to be doing. You show me the space equivalent of a hot-rod Datsun doing sweet jumps, I’m going to react positively, if only for a few seconds.

It’s a good question. For whatever reason, consumers have told content providers that they’re not really interested in physical media anymore (despite the fact our internet infrastructure is pretty bad, way overpriced, and regulated poorly by our government) and it seems pretty plausible that 4K is essentially where physical media stops. While this is a bad thing in a lot of ways - the removal of the cost of producing physical copies could remove a barrier or two.

Of course, the cost probably isn’t a very big concern as to why the original versions aren’t being released - but it would probably be easier to make them a digital only release. Digital only releases are likely what we’re looking at in the next 10 years anyway.

It’s a good point that in both TFA and TROS Abrams doesn’t seem to understand the basic tension principles at play that made the climax of Star Wars and Jedi work. It wasn’t just that the weapon was destructive, and could cause destruction. It’s that the destructive weapon was pointed at people we cared about, and the heroes had to disarm and destroy the weapon before it went off in the worst way.

It’s why fan-edits that combine Starkiller firing on Hosnian Prime with the climax of the movie tend to make that film work better. The battle at the end of TFA and ESPECIALLY the battle here at the end of TROS are dramatically inert because THAT’S the difference between knocking a gun off a table and KILLING THE PERSON POINTING A GUN AT YOU.

ROTJ’s climax was a re-tread (a lot of ROTJ was a re-tread, Lucas admitted as much a couple times - it’s his ANH makeup with more money) but at least the idea of the gun being aimed (and even fired) at our heroes directly was still intact and it added stakes and tension to the proceedings. In TROS you had an entire fleet of Star Destroyers, some of which had planet-destroying guns, but there was never any goal but “Don’t let them get out.”

They should have already gotten out and the race was to stop them from being able to fire.

My understanding is that it’s the same as the blu-ray mix (done by Matthew Wood, I believe?) but I don’t know if that’s actually the case or if it was an assumption made in the early days of the 4k release being out. It took awhile for people to realize what the 4K masters were, too. Audio changes tend to not get noticed as fast or as thoroughly, so it’s a really good question that I’m curious to see answered too.

idir_hh said:

You assumed his video was a less unintelligent retread of other critique’s.

I’m not reviewing his video. I didn’t critique his critique. I assumed it was less intelligent than others because he’s presenting it in an unintelligent way. I don’t know why I’d want to “give him a chance” when it seems like what he’s offering is more YouTube negativity which I feel like there’s already way too much of. Again, I’m not discussing his work at all. I’m discussing that presentation and why it’s a turnoff for me. It’s not that hard. There’s probably a ton of stuff you don’t ever watch or read simply because it doesn’t seem like it’d appeal to you. Everyone does this. They’re not wrong for doing it.

It’s a two hour YouTube video about a movie I already know I don’t like and I already know what it is I don’t like about it, because I’ve spent some time thinking about it, I’ve spent some time talking about it, and I’ve already spent some time reading other critics who I already know I enjoy and appreciate. All by itself, on that alone, it’s a hard sell. Adding the whole “two-hour rage rant” thing makes it extra-unattractive.

I don’t know what else to tell you. And since people keep piping up to pitch their two cents in on whatever this has been, it’s probably good to just let it lie.

idir_hh said:

If you don’t want to watch a video that’s up to you I don’t really care.

If you didn’t care, none of what just happened this afternoon would have happened at all. Nothing wrong with caring.

Also, I never actually criticized the video because I never watched it. Because of the counterproductive, off-putting title that describes an experience promising a rant-filled two hours of unbridled rage.

The title ABSOLUTELY takes away from whatever merit it might have. That’s the whole point. It’s not unreasonable to be discerning about what you put into your body and your head. If someone is voluntarily choosing to advertise their “content” as a rant comprising two hours of unbridled rage it’s perfectly reasonable for me (or anyone else) to avoid it.

Again, it’s not like an all-or-nothing thing here, either. There are multitudes of opinions (most from people with better standing and resumes in terms of cultural analysis and critical thought than “MauLer” on YouTube) I can seek out if I want to read an unsparing analysis of where The Rise of Skywalker went wrong. I’m not being unfair to “MauLer” by choosing someone else’s offerings because they presented an option that’s much more appealing by dint of not presenting as an online reactionary monetizing anger on YouTube.

How bout this - I’m almost 100% convinced there isn’t anything MauLer is going to say in this video that hasn’t already been said somewhere else, by someone else, in a much more intelligent and less “upset” manner, and I don’t need to spend two hours to hear it all again from a YouTube personality, especially since I already agree that it’s a broken, misguided mess of a film.

idir_hh said:

Right… So you’re basically judging a book by its cover.

Of course I am. That’s an old cliche, not a binding rule of life and media consumption. Discernment and judgment play a huge part in deciding what media you consume, and when “the cover” in question is telling you “I’m a two-hour rant video full of unbridled rage” and I’m not in the market for consuming YouTube “film criticism” comprising two-hours of “unbridled rage” I don’t think I’m at fault for deciding to give it a pass, especially when I know (because I’ve seen and read it) there is a lot of incisive, insightful, and meaningful writing on this movie (writing that has a primarily critical bent, and negatively critical at that) that won’t take anywhere near as much time to consume and isn’t primarily focused on how much “unbridled rage” and “ranting” it contains.

If a food product said “Made with bile, vinegar, and feces” I wouldn’t eat it. Especially not if you told me I had to spend the length of a movie eating it. And if someone accused me of being closed-minded for choosing not to consume bile, vinegar, and feces, more power to them but I’d disagree with the assessment. There’s a very thick line between “open minded” and “open to self-abuse.”

DrDre said:

These sort of videos have been popular ever since the days of good ol’ Plinkett.

Plinkett never called his videos “two-hour-rages” though. Plinkett’s early-internet popularity is the curse that keep giving, absolutely, and was very instrumental in the YouTube grift that is actively making the world a worse place every day, despite the fact all Red Letter Media really wanted to do was have fun goofing on Star Wars and Star Trek —they didn’t intend to help lay the groundwork for a Tantrum-Throwing-Industrial-Complex, obviously. But Red Letter Media has never gone out of their way to either suggest their critique is all that meaningful, and they’ve, so far as I know, never bald-face presented their work as the product of pure rage, either. Even their most acid takes are presented as easy-going, not-all-that-important jests.

If you click on something called “Two Hour Rage” and you actually watch all of it, and feel frustrated trying to convince people the title isn’t an accurate description of its contents, I don’t understand. Movie-length-reviews of movies are honestly a thing that barely justify their existence even IF they’re well-made and presented as rational and reasonable. If you stack the deck even further against yourself by making your critique encompass the behind-the-scenes making-of (that is almost hardly ever made public and necessitates assumption, conjecture, theory-crafting applied to REAL people, and typically a bunch of bad information) and then you couch the actual film criticism part of your review as a “two hour rage” it shouldn’t be a mystery as to why people might avoid it on general principle.

Advocates for this sort of online rage obviously benefit financially from this approach because appealing to prurient interests and unearned anger is a good grift on the algorithm-focused platform that is YouTube. But it’s also worth keeping in mind a lot of people prefer to enjoy things, and not “rage” at them. If you present a thing that is asking for two-hours of your time and you’re promising it will be filled with “rage” people will probably give it a pass as there’s enough “rage” inducing content out there in people’s real lives that giving more time to it (over something as low-stakes as a Star Wars movie) will seem pretty unappealing.

I still haven’t read or heard a piece of criticism about Rise of Skywalker that did as much to point out the film’s weaknesses in a clear, concise, easy-to-understand (and feel) manner than the film freak central review, and even if someone took the harshest possible interpretation of that review as a “rage” it still wouldn’t come close to 10 minutes if someone simply read it aloud, and it takes even less time to actually read. “Two Hour Rage” is the sort of indulgence that only in a very, very rare instance could possibly justify itself, and I have hard time believing “MauLer” on YouTube is gonna manage that justification.

Hiding reasonable, justified criticisms behind something called “two-hour-rage” is ridiculously counterproductive. Why would anyone want to watch a “two-hour-rage” directed at anything?

If the criticisms are reasonable and justified what’s the benefit in presenting them as two hours of concentrated rage?

spectraljulian said:

I think so much of it is a reflection of how the majority of Hollywood has really forgotten how to make quality mass entertainment.

But this is pretty clearly untrue. Hollywood is probably better now at making quality mass entertainment (which I’m taking to mean large-scale blockbusters since most studio product is intended to appeal to a “mass audience”) than at any time in its prior history. The last 20 years of major-studio blockbuster filmmaking has considerably more legitimately well-made and affecting films than the '80s and '90s do. That Star Wars turned out a bad movie isn’t really a reflection of anything but Star Wars being Star Wars (Star Wars has never batted 1.000, and it’s sort of unreasonable to think it should). Not to excuse the film’s quality or make apologies for it (I didn’t like it either) but I don’t think The Rise of Skywalker is really a reflection of anything but it’s own production, it’s not part of a larger industry trend. If it were, it probably would have stuck the landing in a manner much closer to Avengers: Endgame. Which, as a reminder, was critically acclaimed on top of becoming the highest grossing film ever.

Also, you didn’t mention any satisfying elements to offset the negative ones. Did nothing come across as satisfying?

It’s funny to think Orwell was using a light touch when envisioning a worst-case scenario future. And yet, who needs a two-minute-hate when you can have a monetized Two-Hour-Rage on the freevee?

Except at this point, acceding to fan demands would be doubling down on the very mistake they previously made on the production of the movie itself. They’re in kind of a tough place on that point.

Their best course of action on that front is to stop making themselves available to fans on that level so that way they’re not beholden in an ugly way to whatever fandom’s whims might be. With that concern more-or-less removed from the table (however long that might take) it would be easier for them to do these sorts of things without it seeming like a response or capitulation to outside pressure. Basically - every other studio simply does these sorts of things because they want to do it for their own internal reasons.

Tangentially, this is probably part of the reason Warners hasn’t pursued a “Snyder Cut” for Justice League (only part, and probably not a very big one) - if they ever announce that, it’s going to be seen as validating a section of the fanbase that’s been seen to be very ugly about what they want. Aside from the fact fandom whims are fairly fickle and not well thought out in many cases - Hollywood producers have a thing about control, and they like to appear like they’re maintaining it. Things like this imply they don’t really have it, and that implication is not one most people at the studios would prefer to nurture if they don’t have to.

The Sonic case is interesting, but I also think a big part of it has to do with Paramount being a studio that is in a terrible position (it’s barely a major at this point) and eating the amazingly bad buzz the trailer created THAT early wasn’t a great option. The Deadpool case wasn’t so much fandom getting the job done as it was savvy producers (Reynolds/Miller) taking advantage of a studio regime change to build buzz for a project via “leaked footage” that was already most of the way there. It’s more like they used the fandom to get what they want rather than the studio organically responding to fandom pressures.

I think best case scenario are deleted scenes on disc 2. I don’t think there’s going to be an extended cut, mostly because I don’t think Abrams ever planned on doing one, didn’t really want to do one, and nobody at Lucasfilm seemed to be entertaining the notion that one would be possible. Or would need to be possible. That studio especially is probably pretty jumpy at the notion of post-release alterations being applied, for reasons that are pretty obvious here. In order for one to be made, they’d have to be working on it now for an as-yet unannounced double-dip release (which certainly wouldn’t be done in time for the Skywalker Saga set, I don’t think) and I don’t think anyone involved really wants to even mess with The Rise of Skywalker anymore. Pretty much everything said in the past two weeks by anyone who worked on that film seems to be just… angering everybody.

Besides which, Bad Robot has more or less moved on, and are a Warner Bros. affiliate now anyway. Lucasfilm, in that case, would have to essentially handle any “extended cut” business themselves, without Abrams - and that’s a whole 'nother can of worms to consider.

act on instinct said:

The times they are a changin’. I made the thread because the demand is there and Hollywood does seem to respond when there is significant demand (not that this is a form of petition or any call to action), the means might be unconventional but not unprecedented in the social media age.

I don’t think they’re really changing. I can’t think of any real examples of “Hollywood” increasingly giving into fan demand by releasing “fixed” versions of popular movies already in release. More often what happens is these extended versions are already being worked on before fans even start “demanding” anything. Another good example is the Batman v. Superman extended cut, which Snyder had already prepped for home video release even before people ever thought to ask for it. And again, that’s a Warner Bros title - “Hollywood” isn’t a single hive mind, many people at the different studios have different ideas on how to extend the life of a film once it leaves theaters. Warners has had a lot of success with the double- (and triple-) dip in the past, so they’re very amenable to letting directors and producers negotiate for longer versions of their movies on home video. Other studios don’t do this nearly as much, and there’s not a lot of evidence that I can see of other studios (or that one, even) putting extended and/or “fixed” versions of their films on home video as a direct response to fan wishlists.

Anyway, if the times were really changing the Snyder Cut of Justice League would have been released already, considering that’s the single most asked for “extended cut” in the past couple years. But so far that’s a big no-go, and that’s WITH one of the friendlier studios to extended home video cuts in charge.

I didn’t start this thread as confirmation of anything or a reaction to any news I read,

Oh I’m not saying you did, but the conversation being commented upon at this point isn’t really related to your original post anymore, and is primarly dedicated to the possibilities as presented via that Saltier Than Crait fanfic and the “news” report from the unheard-of-before-now website.

Still though - even if we set aside those two “sources” as the key basis to speculate on an extended cut, we’re still proceeding from a sort of broken premise, that asking Lucasfilm to give us an extended cut will actually work out in our favor. There’s an irony involved in people on Original Trilogy believing that demand will inevitably produce supply, haha. But the biggest problem is we have zero evidence that Abrams ever wanted to protect for an “extended cut” on home video later (so far as I know he’s never done this) and no evidence that either he or Lucasfilm were keeping that possibility open at any point during production. It’s hard to suggest the option might make itself available if nobody involved ever considered the option at all.

Not to say it’s impossible, but there’s not a lot going for it either.

Mocata said:

I’m not arguing the fact, it’s just interesting to see how little (comparatively) some films made. But they carried forward anyway instead of being reactive. By Phase 2 it was clearly in the groove.

Right, that rejection of the reaction/correction impulse - at least to an ostentatious degree, as we’ve seen multiple times at Lucasfilm, both during the George and Post-George eras, is a big key to Marvel’s ongoing success. They’re not aiming at the reactionaries in the first place, and they’re not altering course based on those reactions. They make corrections and re-adjust as they go, obviously. But they’re very careful not to cede control to any real degree to the very vocal minority of their audience. They don’t do anything that makes their films THAT fragile/precious, basically.

It’s funny to look back at Captain America’s reception from here in 2020. The movie didn’t do poorly at the box-office, and it wasn’t badly-reviewed, either. But it came out just before people started to understand what MARVEL could be and how it was going to rewrite box-office rules, and was being judged against the conventional wisdom of what these movies were supposed to be, and it suffered for that. But you rewatch now and it’s like a Phase Three movie grabbed the time-stone and snuck back into Phase One. It’s got a lot of style, doesn’t adhere to the "Marvel Formula’ as people like to think of it, and makes some pretty bold choices along the way. I believe it’s still the only Marvel Movie to have a musical montage in the middle of it.