Originally posted by BackFire
I think you're underselling TLJ's box office results, it did not underperform, and if it did it wasn't by very much. If anything, TFA overperformed because it was the first new Star Wars film in a decade and had pretty unprecedented levels of hype attached to it. TLJ was never going to match those numbers. Its drop off is on similar levels as Empire Strikes Back was to the original Star Wars.
It didn't underperform? Are you serious? Do you think if an Avengers movie grossed $1.3bill then that wouldn't be an underperformance? It would have been considered so even before Infinity War. Heck it barely made more than Jurassic World 2. Jurassic World 2 which wasn't an essential part of the new Jurassic Trilogy, wasn't a direct sequel to a cliffhanger ending and the Jurassic new movies were never even sold as a trilogy. Yet JW2 dropped from 1.6/1.7bill to the same sort of numbers as TLJ.
TLJ did not need to match TFA numbers, but to go down from a $2billion franchise to well under a $1.5billion franchise is just a massive drop off.
I think it's being kind of disingenuous to compare to Star Wars films from 30 years back instead of comparing with current $1.5billion-$2billion mega franchises. The movie sequel industry was very different back then with sequels rarely outperforming the original.
Originally posted by BackFire
If you want to compare it to Marvel, then let's look at how TLJ compared domestically to Infinity war. It only made about $50 million less than Infinity War in America, that's in no way a bad showing. Comparing worldwide numbers between Marvel and Star Wars is apples to oranges because Star Wars generally does not do well in China, which is a huge market, whereas Avengers movies make gangbuster money over there.
Some films do better domestic, others do better internationally. Star Wars has always had a much larger domestic to international ratio than normal. Which is why we compare worldwide and not just domestic or just international numbers.
As for China the New Trilogy is doing much better there now than the Prequels ever did, and still the Prequels were making close to the Billion mark almost 2 decades ago now. So Star Wars films still making a Billion worldwide now is nothing to be amazed over tbh.
That said even domestically, TLJ is known for having the lowest domestic box office multiplier for any Star Wars film to date. So again, nothing to be overly proud of, and another sign the franchise has been dented.
Originally posted by BackFire
Solo's failures should obviously be placed on Disney, as they are responsible for greenlighting the film and advertising it and all that, but to place them on the prior movies in the franchise is poor reasoning. That may be a part of it, but I've seen no evidence to support it outside of the confusion of correlation with causation.
Again Solo is an iconic Star Wars character. And a strong brand will not just flop like that, even with a characters who are not known.
We have to ask why Solo flopped, yet a direct spin off to ANH featuring Tarkin and Vader (the latter being the highlight) grossed a Billion.
I'm a numbers guy by profession, so all I'm doing is putting the numbers and facts together, first TLJ's massive drop, then just a few months later Solo's terrible flop. Putting it together clearly doesn't look good even ignoring the online hate.
Originally posted by BackFire
It's all conjecture, though. If the brand is truly damaged then we'll know it with how Episode IX does. Solo's failure may just be an anomaly because of poor planning or any other of the various possible reasons. If IX fails, then I would agree that the brand is in trouble. One relatively thoughtless spin off doing badly isn't going to convince me of that, though.
Well of course there's conjecture. But the numbers are facts.
I'm not expecting Episode 9 to flop, but I don't think it passing the Billion mark is some huge success either.
I do not think the franchise has been destroyed. It's too big for that. But I definitely believe it's been dented, and the numbers back me up on that.